I don’t know exactly when it happened, but sometime this year my dysphoria changed. The desire for physical change multiplied many times over. Why? I don’t know.
Maybe it was July, when I traded my decades-long asexuality for a demisexuality and discovered my libido. Or maybe it was the day all my friends partied at the CSD and I sat at home because I didn’t feel I had any business being there. Even if someone had managed to dispel my Impostor-Syndrome, the last thing I would have needed was overtly confident queers. That day, when I asked myself „Why?“ an inner voice replied: You don’t even look like yourself… how can you be confident? This sentence hit home and I thought: Fuck.
You should know the following: My dysphoria expresses itself mainly on the social level… and even here it was never the distinctive feeling of „something is wrong“, it is often more a static background noise without origin. It’s not even particularly strong. People misgender me every day and the only internal reaction I get is a quiet sigh or an annoyed eye roll. It’s not the end of the world, it’s just exhausting to be constantly reminded that my own gender doesn’t really interact with the outside world’s perception of me.
To the extent that I ever (did) experience physical dysphoria, it mainly focused on my voice, my hips and my breasts. While I have always found my voice too high, my hips are too wide, my back too small and my breasts… they are just there. I don’t hate them like I did in my teens, but I don’t celebrate them either. All in all, I would describe them as impractical. They hurt, they are a pain in the ass during sports and they prevent me from getting a super cool tattoo on my chest.
Now, suddenly, the physical desire to transition has never been greater. Feelings about transitioning, its outcomes and my actual goals continue to be all over the place. Breasts? Still no thank you, but as soon as I started actively dealing with the „where, how, what, when?“ of the mastectomy I start to panic. Suddenly it feels like the dysphoria was never there and my body feels like a woman’s, except I still fantasise about not having breasts.
Although strap-on sex deserves its own post, I can only reveal this much… Having an artificial penis that you can put on and take off and even change makes me much less of a problem psychologically. At least in relation to the topic of gender, in relation to the topic of power it looks quite different, but as I said another post.
What now? The binder I bought helps minimally. In tighter shirt my chest is flatter, if not completely flat and the sight is still more overwhelming than euphoric at the moment. Which is most likely because I’m constantly second-guessing myself. Does it look good? Does it really look better? Are you sure about that? Maybe it’s all in your head. Maybe it’s not dyphoria, maybe it’s something else that’s wrong with your head. Wouldn’t be the first time…
Nonetheless, what I once considered an idea in a distant future has now become a desire that I would love to solve with a snap of my fingers. Snap and I have my desired body, even if only for a day, to try out.