A Year In Review: 2021 Edition

A newfound pain

...Ruining a perfectly good item of clothing by accidentally sticking your thumb through the lacy part. I’ve done this twice now! Girl clothes are awesome; but definitely more delicate than I’m used to...

Unexpected HRT side-effect #6

I’m not really up to speed on Tumblr etiquette yet, but I believe the polite thing to do when dealing with heavy material is to provide a content preface. To that end: this is a kinda heavy. There’s abuse and stuff.

Sooo... PTSD. This is an actual, unexpected side effect of HRT. Let me explain.

I’ve previously touched on the idea that I have a female-structured brain; that certain parts of it require estrogen to function correctly; and that during the pre-HRT portion of my life, these parts operated poorly (or not at all).

A large - and rather nuanced - group of these malfunctions come under the umbrella heading of ‘emotional processing’ (or lack thereof); including the inability to:

Fully feel my emotions,

Understand them,

Connect them to my thoughts,

Communicate them to others;

...And perhaps most importantly, make sense of (and move past) the various negative events that life likes to throw at us.

Once HRT kicked in and supplied the estrogen my brain so desperately craved, all of this changed! I cannot stress what an incredible experience it was to go from zero to full emotional processing capacity virtually overnight.

The next thing I discovered, however - much to my chagrin - was that far from passing through the troughs of life with a stiff upper lip, rather I had simply deferred my response to those events. Now the bill was due.

I relived a lot of grief and anger: at the loss of loved ones; at lines crossed; at years in the wrong body.

One day, I had a disagreement; the matter was settled amicably, but afterwards I felt ill at ease. Without even understanding why, I gathered up my three animal friends and retreated into our walk-in closet; turned out the lights, and just... sobbed. Great, unrelenting torrent of tears. I didn’t understand what was happening; only that I was terrified, and hurting.

After what felt like hours, my wife coaxed me back into the light and to normalcy.

As night approached the following evening, it happened again. And again. And again. Every night, for months on end.

During these episodes, I would experience repetitive, intrusive thoughts for which I had no context. “Please don’t hurt me!”; “Please stop hurting me!”; “Let me go!”; “Why did he hurt me?”

In retrospect, what I have been able to piece together is as follows:

These events were flashbacks. They relate to a trauma that I have no memory of; perhaps because it happened very early on in my life. Based on the intrusive thoughts - and other indicators, such as an intense phobia of forcible restraint and what I believe may have been unconscious efforts on my part to relive the original acts - I believe the trauma was sexual in nature.

HRT kick-started my brain; and the first item on the agenda was - completely unbeknownst to me - processing this forgotten trauma.

For the curious - I’m much better now; my wife and I are no strangers to PTSD symptoms and well-versed when it comes to handling them. Still; I cannot say that when I undertook that first estradiol shot, that I ever imagined it would unearth this particular landmine in my psyche.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #13

For years, I've had a nuclear technique at my disposal: 'The Look'. It's a three-quarter profile, dimpled smile that would instantly summon bashfulness on her part and result in an averted gaze.

Not anymore though! I tried this a little while back, and... nothing! No effect. Through rigorous scientific testing (i.e. randomly and unexpectedly applying The Look), we have determined that it just... doesn't work anymore!

We have no idea why this is - only that it coincides with the changes that have slowly been taking place in my facial structure. It's okay - it doesn't impact our relationship at all - but it's still fascinating!

Two useful additions: First: The Paradox Of Tolerance. Per Karl Popper: “Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them... We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law...“

Second: this rather instructive video by Innuendo Studios. (Transcript for the reading-inclined.) It succinctly encapsulates the origins and character of modern Conservatism, and how contrary to all assertions, intolerance appears to very much be an intended feature and not a bug.

Conservatives will be like “Why are you holding me accountable for my bigoted beliefs? Whatever happened to tolerance???”

The boy on the left is from the pictures of my childhood; the girl on the right is from my memories of that time.

New picrew chain idea: yourself vs what you looked like as a kid

Free for anyone to join in

Link

Phone call

I had literally forgotten about this until tonight, when someone jogged my memory... but ten years ago, I got an obscene phone call.

It must have been three or four in the morning when the phone rang. I was, rather understandably, asleep at the time; and quite groggy when I answered.

The man on the other end sounded mid-thirties; had an American accent; and an inflection that I can only describe as “Poorly imitating the iconic Scream voice”. He wanted to know what I was wearing.

In my confusion, I thought that this person was a friend of mine; and told him to knock off this strange prank of his. But as he persisted with his request that I identify my clothing, it dawned on me that this was in fact not my friend. And then I hung up on him.

I don’t want to come across as downplaying the seriousness of unsolicited, sexually-explicit communication; but more than anything, I just found the entire event bewildering.

Incomplete sentences

Sometimes, when I’m writing, I will omit words or even entire portions of a sentence. I don’t know why this is; only that it’s something I’ve done for a very long time.

The solution is, of course, to proof-read vociferously. Ironically however, I will often not notice that I have made this mistake because my brain kindly fills in the missing detail instead of alerting me to its absence.

I note this because I know I have written posts previously that suffer from this issue; and I’m sure there will be more in future. To that effect, dear reader: thank you for your continued patience, and understanding!

Gardasil

During my last check-up, I got my first shot of the Gardasil HPV vaccine. The administering nurse did mention at the time that it would sting; and I say that she lied, it is only in the sense that the sensation was closer to what I would describe as a tremendously uncomfortable burning.

(I've accidentally achieved a similar effect when injecting my estradiol, by giving the alcohol I swab my skin with insufficient time to evaporate before inserting the needle.)

I did some research afterwards to see if there was an explanation as to why the vaccine had developed this reputation; the manufacturer indicated that the discomfort was the result of "Virus-like particles" in the vaccine content (which strikes me as a cop-out if ever there was one).

Today was my second shot; and playing a hunch, asked my nurse to try injecting the vaccine slowly. This was hardly a scientific test, but she kindly agreed and the injection experience was definitely more tolerable.

I am most certainly not medically trained; but I was instructed by my endocrinologist's office to administer my own estradiol and progesterone shots as slowly as possible. (My takeaway was that injecting a sizeable amount of fluid into a muscle at high speed causes unnecessary trauma to the surrounding tissue.)

Conversely, I've noticed that vaccine administration is usually done extremely quickly - I assume in part because the amount of fluid injected is much smaller; and also to minimize the length of the procedure. (You really don't want the patient to get restless and move while the needle is still inserted...)

It appears the Gardasil vaccine might utilize a larger amount of fluid; and a thicker medium, also. These things being true, I can see how rapidly injecting the stuff could be a lot more unpleasant versus most other vaccines.

So: if you're getting the shot for yourself, or for your loved ones - maybe ask the administrator to go slowly?

Electrolysis

I just got done with the nth round of electrolysis on my face. My electrologist is a pleasure to deal with; the end results speak for themselves (hairs that kept resurrecting despite multiple max power laser applications - like some kind of follicular lich co-op - are now being permanently killed off); and the session fee is very reasonable.

However, I’d by lying if I said it didn’t bloody well hurt. It feels a lot like getting jabbed repeatedly with a superheated needle (because that’s exactly what electrolysis is); and unfortunately for me, one of the major problem areas is my top lip (which sucks, because that’s also a super-sensitive spot just full of little nerve bundles, ready to vociferously complain at a moment’s notice).

I’m glad I’m doing this - I’m a fan of fire-and-forget solutions - but god it would be nice to not to feel like I got hit in the face with a sack of bees afterwards!

Classic cars

My young friend, currently showing me his new car in Need For Speed:

Him: “Check out my Nissan!”

Me: “That’s a Fairlady Z, right?”

Him: “It’s - yeah, it’s a 240ZG. Damn, you really know your classic cars!”

Me: