diary

11:45pm

i was recently inspired by ftmichael's transition diary (or a "tlog" as i've been referring to it in my head, haha) to start my own. my name is jamie, more typically known in the cyber world as doc, and i'm 18. i suppose i started transitioning years and years ago thanks to growing up on the internet, where i could be anything – anyone that i wanted to be, so even before i began my social transition irl i was living as a trans person in, effectively, half my life, starting around when i was 11 or so. i still used she/her and feminine terms for myself (and let others do so) in the physical realm, and on some parts of the internet, but as years went by these spaces faded away, either by me removing myself or me being able to alert people painlessly about Doc's Recent Gender Updates.

my "irl transition" then i guess began in...hm... i'm going to say 9th grade, because in middle school i was still fairly confident being feminine, and didn't mind being perceived as a girl so much as long as i was perceived as a strange, gnc girl, which i was, so that worked alright, but 9th grade rolled around and i found myself tired of it. there was no big revelation that accompanied a shift in me from being comfortable with that to not being comfortable with though, to be clear. i had identified for years as genderfluid, so the gradual shift in my gender identity wasn't startling to me whatsoever.

nowadays, i suppose i'd categorize myself as a nonbinary trans guy. i'm not really up to explaining what that means to me, precisely, so make of it what you will. there's more i could say about my genderful journey, sure, but i don't really care to do so – most of it is lost to the sands of time, and i'd find it difficult to give an accurate assessment of the feelings i had when i was 14, since i am no longer 14 and do not feel those things anymore.

in 9th grade i went from binding for maybe 2 or 3 days of the schoolweek to binding nearly every day, and then in sophomore year i really started binding every day. i'm a senior now and still do so.

part of this binding every day was my "irl transition." i'll be honest – i don't remember much of it. i started going to my youth group regularly, where i introduced myself as my name and he/him, but it wasn't until maybe a year ago that i let the majority of my friends in on the secret. my closest friends have known for almost as long as i have, though.

overall, that part is painless. i don't get shit from my friends and, gradually, the knowledge that i don't really go by XXXX anymore has found its way outside of my friend group, so i have more people who regularly call me jamie than those who don't.

the painful part is my parents. the most painful part, probably, of my entire existence is my parents. i wrote them a letter – it was very thorough, this letter, because i rarely talk to my parents in any meaningful way, so i had a backlog of things to say to them. i wasn't ready to tell them, but i knew that i would never be "ready," really, so i just had to do it. so i did.

i overestimated their capacity for this. in the months after (i came out on july 16th, a sunday morning) my parents seemed to reject the idea with their whole being. they cited my girly bedroom, my girly fashion sense, my girly blah blah blah as evidence that i couldn't be trans. how could i possibly be a boy when my room has lace curtains? when i have purple bedsheets? that i still keep stuffed animals around?

my mom cried, multiple times, and at least once about her feelings about how this was all so hard for her, didn't i understand? and oh, she wished she could be okay with it, she really does, but it was so hard. it was just so hard and confusing and strange for her.

more than anything i have been angry and disappointed at them. it was obvious for entire time that i've known that i am trans. my lgbt youth group is googleable, so it's not like i was trying particularly hard to hide that. i'm president of my school's GSA. i bind regularly. i stopped wearing all my skirts over a year ago even though i like my skirts and intend to start wearing them again as soon as i pass w/o question and don't live with my parents anymore. they should have known that i was trans! everyone who meets me gets the vibe from me. my therapist was convinced that they knew. it's so blatantly fucking obvious to everyone that it's frankly baffling that they didn't catch on on their own.

not to mention that my mom begged me to be anything but a boy.

oh well.

recently, i've been binding during gym, and let me tell you, it is NOT fun. it's such a terrible choice to make: don't bind and look even more obviously like a girl, or bind and be unable to catch your breath after a sprint? i don't know. mostly i'm just sick of changing in the gender-neutral bathrooms in the office. it makes me look so... obvious.

note: i am fully aware i am not supposed to do this. my binding habits thus far in life (for 7 years! wow!) have been very safe, and this is the only glaring exception.

i've decided on when i'm going to start T. ideally, i'd like to start sometime in january or february. my reasoning for this is that i need to keep the changes on the downlow until late may, but waiting any longer than that might kill me. 3/4 months of changes should be hideable, if not completely unnoticeable to the unobservant eye, but (and i know this from observing a trans friend of mine) should be enough for me to notice and feel happy about. i'll be slightly more masculine in my grad photos. i mean, hey, obviously i wish i'd started at like 16, but i was a coward then, so.

it'll be easy to get t. i'm 18, so i don't even really need my therapist to give the ok, but i've been seeing him for 2 years and he absolutely would, ez pz. hell, he'd probably sign off on anything i wanted the moment i asked for it. so it's not a challenge in that respect. it's more a challenge that the only clinic in the area that does trans stuff has an incredible waitlist and possibly the least on-schedule days of any medical practice ever. 3 hour waits for 5-minute doc meetings, legit. its so bad. at least i'm not a first-time patient...

i suppose that's all for my first entry! i guess i'll just update next time something instrospection-worthy about gender or otherwise trans notable happens.