1: A Light at the End of the Hall [Feb 19, 2024]

For the first time in a long time I'm interested in my future. It's for a lot of reasons but the biggest reason is trying to get on HRT. It's a giant change I know, I have thought for years about my life and what to do to make it more bearable. I tried bottling up everything and being exactly what I thought would be seen as "normal". All it did was hurt me a lot.

I was trying the fit into a square hole as a round peg. I don't fit society's norms and it has taken a long time for me to accept that. It's taken my early 20's away from me but I'm done being sad now. I'm ready to move on and become who I want to be. I know people are going to hate me and I'll be worried about how people see me but it's really not a new experience to me. I just know things have to change because I don't want to be trapped like this. Yes I want to be pretty, yes I want to have long hair and nice clothes, yes I want to feel free to be myself.

Not that long ago my motto was to live for others rather than myself. I've been hurt trying to live like that. People I cared about and people I trusted broke me. When you don't have a shield of self worth it's easy to be put down and feel worthless. I'm still not 100% on loving myself but the revelations I have come across has brought me the closest I have ever been to self acceptance. I'm losing weight, think my doctor said 30 pounds lost over the span of just a few months. Before I would stagnate, I didn't have the energy to work on myself. Don't get me wrong I STILL have barely any energy, sleeping through entire days is normal for me. But this new goal and outlook has given me the hope of a better life and I'm going to take that ride as long as I can.

In a few days I will be speaking to a behavioral therapist about my gender dysphoria. If things go well I might be able to start on HRT. It's been a bumpy ride just getting to this point. I took anti-anxiety meds to schedule with Planned Parenthood a month ago. One delay later I walked in just to be denied due because of my insurance. Mixed messages on the phone lead me to believe that my Insurance wouldn't cover it and I would have to pay out of pocket. I was willing to do that but I was told in person that because I had Insurance I wasn't ABLE to get care. So I had to do something difficult, I had to tell my doctor in person I didn't want to live like I had been anymore. She set up an appointment for me and that's where I'll be going to soon. I thought it was earlier in the month but that's another whole can of worms. Even though I'm fearful I feel excited as well. The only problem that will arise is telling my family about this. I'm scared on how they will judge me. They've been judging me a lot throughout my life and it has been the cause of a lot of stress. Still, I would rather go through with this than continuing to live like a shallow husk with barely any motivation.

I understand the impact it will have on me, and frankly it's not even all that bad. Worse thing that can happen is I lose sexual urges and my penis shrinks. First of all I'm not even that sexual of a person. I once had a former female doctor tell me I was low on Testosterone and wanted to boost it (I didn't want any of that and was kinda horrified on having more testosterone in me which should've been a big clue but ah, wasn't there yet with my self discovery). Sex feels different? Okay and? Still a virgin, in fact only sexted once and that didn't even go anywhere. So it is what it is. Breast growth would be the strangest change if it wasn't for the fact I have been overweight for a decade. I already see myself as having boobs lol. The weight loss does make me have "smaller boobs" but hey that's what the HRT is for.

I'm really glad about my weight loss progress, I bought a VR headset to play in and a small foot pedal that I can exercise every so often with. I also have this big ass jumbo exercise ball in my VR room that I like laying on and flailing around on, good for lazy push up's! This isn't the best fitness routine I know, but I'm also cutting back on what foods I eat which is the second half of my weight loss. No more soda, got Arizona Tea and flavored water which is just as good. No more junk food, got yogurt and bananas instead. Let's also take in consideration that I can't feel hungry if I sleep all day *big think fistpump*

Other than my health I have others things I've been working on. My website that I'm writing this on, cataloging YET AGAIN my gaming on Memento Database which is self managed and I might be able to export into my website. I'm going through my music for some tunes that I can put onto a CD for my new 6 disc CD changer that I can game with as a sort of playlist. It's just nice wanting to do things. I'd also like to get back into streaming but that ain't happening anytime soon, my chromebook died and that wasn't even capable of streaming to begin with. I'm using my brother's old chromebook that get's the job done for basic tasks. I'd have to buy a completely new laptop and I don't want to spend the money on it just yet. I'm saving up in case I'll be able to meet my friend this Summer. Trying to be an adult with my finances is hard though, sometimes I get that consumerist bug that makes me want to buy things I don't really need. It's a battle to appease instant gratification for sure.

So yeah! Things are actually looking up which is kind of a new feeling for me. There's still a lot of bad stuff happening around me that's tough to deal with. But the optimism for the future is really helping me right now and I'm glad to finally feel some positivity for once. I hope to continue these journal entries, depends on how much I want to talk about. Maybe I could talk about topics that mean a lot to me; who knows.

That's all for now, ttyl