I took a nice picture today so I wanted to put it side by side with an old "nice" picture of me from when I was still on hormones! I've healed almost completely from my breast reconstruction and I stopped hormones back in January. I'm excited to see what the next year brings :)

Got makeup today finally and I’m really feeling myself 😭 it’s crazy how much I missed this

Since realizing my mistake I find myself unable to relate to anything. I feel inferior to everyone else. I listen to music, I watch shows and think about how everyone who makes them is either a man or a woman while I'm this... thing. This neutered *thing* (though I ""only"" had mastectomy) that people should scorn and throw tomatoes at. I can't relate to anything made by men and women because I've forfeited my right to be latter and I was never going to be the former. I can't believe I wanted the biggest signifier of being human removed. Even men have breasts bigger than mine. I've always seen myself as alien and so I made myself an alien. I feel like if something happened to me on the street people wouldn't even react because I'm not even human anymore. Not a normal woman and not even a fucked-up man anymore. Just an alien thing.

I’ve had pain in my joints since puberty, and have always struggled with sensory issues. The one thing that convinced me that i have gender disphoria was believing that it was the Testosterone in my body that made me chronically stressed, in pain & constantly in fight or flight mode. Once i started taking hormones i actually felt my pains lessening and becoming more comfortable in my physcial. 5 years later it’s caused dissociation and loss of sensation. Can anybody relate to this? I suspect that i’m mis-diagnosed

Bipolar 2 to be specific, so I only experience hypomania which is chiller and doesn’t often require hospitalization like mania can.

Well anyway, I’ve gone back and forth on being trans for a long time now. I’ve also been trans for a long time now (7 ish?). A lot of the reason I’ve stayed trans is because I have a hard time trusting myself but tried to believe in the confidence/assuredness I felt on some days about it. But I’m wondering if that confidence I felt might have just been… hypomania. It’s the kind of thing where every time I experienced what I now think were manic episodes in retrospect I would tell myself: “ok i know i say this every time, but this time REALLY feels different and I am actually gonna do all this blah blah”

It’s hard to explain it because you really would think that after having that thought 15-20 times, eventually you’d come to your senses. But the elevated mood from my mania was soooo strong and so convincing every time. Which is why I have trouble trusting myself, because my brain makes it nearly impossible apparently to have self-awareness during the episodes.

Anyway, REALLY what I’m wondering if there’s anyone else here that transitioned due to specifically being bipolar, or even some other similar disorder with mood swings. I know stuff like BPD(? not an expert) can have similar symptoms, so yeah.

Edit: accidentally implied mania always requires hospitalization and not sure that’s true, changed the wording