3 YEARS ON TESTOSTERONE!!!

I’m celebrating 3 years of transitioning on testosterone!!!! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️ 3 years of becoming, a lifetime of undoing. I hope to one day just…be. Exist free from self-inflicted pain and persecution.

I’m sooo hairy now and it never seems to stop growing. I’m convinced I’m intersex, because even before T, I was way hairier than the average cis girl and I’ve just always felt different on like a genetic level (also I’m pretty sure I’ve always had a prostate, and I was AFAB). I used to obsessively remove hair to fit into restrictive beauty standards, but this is how my body was always supposed to be.

I have a certifiable tiny T dick, my bones and muscles are stronger, I’m warm blooded, my skin is tougher, I risk infertility more every month (yay), my gender continues to evolve in amazing ways, every one of my cells has changed—including my taste buds and my taste in people—and I am stronger.

3 years into my transition and I’m still not used to strangers (or anyone, really) calling me he/him. Or they/them, for that matter. I mean, I went by she/her for the first 21 years of my life, and there are those who will always insist on misgendering me. How do you fully accept yourself when the world invalidates you and tells you who you are every day?

I don’t fit in anywhere except with other transgender people, now more than ever. People see me as a gay cis man, a trans womyn, a butch lesbian, a trans guy. I just feel like a queer person who follows my heart for how I want to present. It seems to be increasingly socially unacceptable for me to wear a dress.

Being trans still doesn’t feel “real” in a sense, what with all the transphobia I’ve had to endure and all the dissociation I’m still gingerly peeling back. I don’t know how to reconcile my past self with my present yet, but I’m healing my inner child…my inner boy.

I’m fast approaching 25 and never really thought I’d see 21…or 18. I always thought girl Zoë wouldn’t make it to 21…and I was right. She died in some ways when I was awoken from the deep slumber I put myself under when my early attempts to come out were rejected. I literally forgot I was trans for years and gaslit myself to death about it.

I still struggle daily with gender dysphoria, and I think that’s going to always be a battle, like with depression. There are some permanent changes from my first puberty that can never be undone that I have to live with for the rest of my life. I struggle with some of the fat redistribution since I’m also still fighting anorexia. I’ve gained 30+ lbs since the start.

But overall, dysphoria and disabilities aside, I can’t believe that this body finally belongs to me. I now see myself in my face when for so long, a stranger stared back at me. I do feel though like one of those flip books where you can mix and match fashionable heads, torsos, and legs. I don’t quite match up yet, and I eagerly anticipate getting top surgery sometime this year (hopefully)!!! Can’t wait to yeet the teets.

Please…celebrate milestones with trans people like you do our birthdays. I was reborn 3 years ago, and that’s a big fucking deal to me!!! I guess I’m halfway through second puberty at this point. That would be the equivalent of like a 16 year old boy? Lol with the sweatiness to match.

I’m excited to see where this journey takes me—how magnificent my beard will be, how much stronger I will become, how I continue to grow into myself. Thank you for those who have been with me every step of the way. You know who you are. Thank you all for accepting and loving every iteration of me. It means more than you know.

🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍⚧️

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