Part: 1 – Am I Mental or is it just the Hormones – emotions, sex drive, sexual preference and mental state

Hiya everyone,

Over the past few nights I have had the chance to talk to a few of my friends, after our catch ups I realised that a huge amount of me had changed since I started transitioning. I mean this in a emotional and mental sense and not a physical sense.

As you can see the physical side of me has changed dramatically. But as for the mental side I hadn’t really given it much thought I mean I was always quite an effeminate boy generally speaking, that’s not to say I didn’t do guy things but more along the lines of the fact I would more often than not be found playing with the girls, spending a lot of time talking to female friends in high school, or avoiding the more masculine games such as football or general roughness that most guys tend to get involved in.

After starting hormones I found that a lot of the emotional side that I had before seemed to become amplified, I am generally quite a controlled person but after being on hormones even only after a few months I started to notice that I was less in control of my moods than I was before, and tears seem to flow a lot easier than they had previously. To begin with I put this down to being overly emotionally attached to the fact that I had finally started hormones and my journey towards correcting the wrongs of my birth were finally starting to be righted. But after about 6 months I began to realise that this was all apart of my body changing and the new me was a lot more in touch with my inner self, it’s quite funny when you start out down the transition path you seldom realise how much of a toll hormones will take on ones body, its not until you are well down the path that you begin to see the effects that the hormones really have asides from the outwardly obvious boobs and soft skin.

At the beginning of my journey it was not uncommon to find me lusting over some girl or admiring her beautiful body as I gazed up and down her curves with longing jealousy. It now seems almost a life time ago that I would have these feelings take over me and fill me with such relish and discomfort. I find it almost bewildering to imagine that once I wanted nothing more than to have a naked girl lying next to me in bed while I coursed my hands over her silky skin and supple breasts. The thought of this now almost seems wrong or at least taboo, I wonder to myself what rewiring in the brain must have gone on because of the oestrogen coursing through my veins all these years. Can a lack of testosterone in ones body really have this vast effect on my mind, body and soul?

I think back to the first 6 or so months of hormones and I realised that during this time my sex drive went from that of a horny straight 16year old boy, to very much non existent for at least the first 1 and a half years of HRT.

I recall waking up one day mid-ish 2003 and feeling the overwhelming need for sexual release, after trying for quite some time I had what I consider to be my first orgasm as a women the tingling of my skin and muscles all over my body was such an earth shaking experience and lasted for well over a minute, I was indeed please and relieved to be finally able to express my desires as a women.

Intriguingly over the coming years I became more and more attracted to men, as I mentioned before my sexual preference was always women previously in fact I actually found the thought of being with a man repulsive and terrifying but this all changed. I still haven’t been able to pin point the period when everything reversed but all I know is that the feeling I get from being in a man’s arm is so different than with a women, whether its the feeling of being safe or the fact that they make me feel small I am not sure but I went from being weirded out about talking guys with my girlfriends to wanting too or needing too.

My mum still is uneasy about the change, I am not sure if this is because she worries for my safety or if she just sees this as another nail in the coffin on her previously son’s journey to womanhood. As I write this I feel sadden knowing that no matter how hard I try or how much I look and feel like a woman there will always be aspects of my life that I am still seen as a man, my mother for instance I love her to death but she struggles to let go of my past and see me for me, its not to hard on me because I know that she just wants the best for me and she knew from the start that this isn’t an easy lifestyle choice if you can call it that at all…

I guess the hardest part is where I have come from I will always feel as though I missed out on a lot of what I was entitled to as a little girl, such as primary school and the like. Plus I know that no matter how much surgery I have and how many drugs I take I will never know what its like to be pregnant or give birth…

I will leave it there before I get to emotional and bore you all to death.

Please comment me know if you would like to hear more or want to know about stuff I haven’t yet got into