being trans saved my life. now I want to aggressively live, laugh, and love forever.

TW: brief mentions of gun violence, self-harm, passive suicidal ideation

Hi! It’s been a long time since I’ve shared updates on my little PhD blog. I’ve done a lot of cool science stuff, I was awarded a fancy grant, I am a PhD candidate now, I’ve presented my research at a bunch of conferences and have given lots of invited talks. If I'm being honest, all that grad school stuff feels really silly and fake to me right now as a trans person living in an increasingly hostile anti-trans country. The most meaningful update in my life has been related to my ongoing gender journey. I started T recently, which has brought up a lot of old and new feelings for me, so I thought I’d share a part of my journey and what has been on my mind lately. Fair warning, some of this is heavy stuff but I promise there’s an optimistic ending! 

While I was visiting my family in California after attending the Society for Neuroscience meeting last November, news broke of the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs. When I found out, I was devastated. I was furious. I was heart-broken. I grieved for the senseless loss of my queer and trans siblings. My heart ached for their friends and loved ones. I couldn’t help but feel terrified for my own future. It was too easy for me to envision a horrific reality in which my best friends and I became the next victims of a homophobic and transphobic murder spree at a gay club. When I was younger and didn’t know any better, I used to believe that I wanted my life to end by the time I turned 30. Thankfully, I do not feel this way anymore. As I have come to terms with my own identities over the years, and started living my life as an openly trans nonbinary lesbian, my world has opened up and I realized that I have so much to live for. There are so many girls that I want to kiss, concerts I want to go to, lesbian bars I want to dance at, so many adventures and memories to be shared with my best friends. I have so much greatness and warmth to share with the world. I think I even want to have a family one day. I think I would be a good mom. My personal hero, the infinitely talented, academy award nominated singer songwriter indie rock legend Mitski once tweeted “I used to rebel by destroying myself, but realized that’s awfully convenient to the world. For some of us our best revolt is self-preservation”. Mitski was right. She always is. As embarrassing as it is, I came out to myself as trans for the first time in college while listening to Mitski perform her song Townie and got the very angsty lyrics [I’m not gonna be what my daddy wants me to be,] “I wanna be what my body wants me to be” tattoo’d on my arm to commemorate my epiphany. I have come to realize that the most radical thing I can do in this often cruel world is protect myself, heal and nourish myself, allow myself grace and give myself the tools necessary to bloom into the version of myself that I have always wanted to be. So a couple months ago, I quit smoking cigs and made the decision to start T. 

Starting hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is something that I have thought about for years and years, dreamed about even. Back when I was an undergrad (and baby trans), I worked in a lab that studied the role of sex hormones in mediating neuroprotection. I have been reading about and studying and thinking about estradiol and testosterone for as long as I have been a neuroscientist. Actually, it goes back farther than that. Although I have never been formally diagnosed, I likely have polycystic ovarian syndrome. Or honestly, I could have something else going on entirely! The only thing I know for certain is that I have ridiculously elevated endogenous testosterone levels for a “biological female” (whatever that means). As a result, my “imbalance” in hormones manifested in physical signs at a pretty young age; mainly thick black body hair everywhere which marked me as an outsider from the other girls (you can imagine that middle school was not a fun time for me). My interest in understanding how hormones influence the nervous system and the body in general is very personal and is actually what propelled me to pursue neuroscience graduate school in the first place. My current research has pivoted away from the hormone field for many reasons, but neuroendocrinology is still a deep passion of mine, and I’ve never stopped thinking about the testosterone already inside of me and the exogenous testosterone I wanted to add in the context of HRT as well. 

Lots of factors have held me back from making my dreams a reality. It's no secret that trans people face tremendous systemic barriers when trying to access gender affirming healthcare. Everyday my feed is flooded with news articles of different states proposing to ban life-saving trans healthcare for youths and adults alike. Most of my friends who are on hormones can enumerate the many ways in which they were mistreated by healthcare providers. As much as I wanted it, I never had the energy to seek out gender affirming healthcare for myself. I didn’t feel strong enough to fight for what I needed. Further, my own identity as a nonbinary person kept me away from HRT because I didn't feel “trans enough” to be taking it. I told myself the lie that T was exclusively reserved for trans men, and as a nonbinary person I had no business taking it. I realize now how silly I was; HRT is for anyone who wants it. Cis people take it all the time and no one bats an eye. Furthermore, anyone who says they are trans is trans enough, there are no prerequisites. As demoralizing as it was, the tragedy that occurred in Colorado Springs also reinvigorated me to fight for my life. It was the thing that pushed me over the edge and helped me finally make a decision that I had been toying with for years. I wanted what was mine; a future on my own terms in a body that feels like home. 

I went online to my student health portal and booked an appointment for the following week. I cried when I saw my appointment confirmation in my inbox. This whole time I had been telling myself a lie, that I didn't need T, that I didn’t actually want it to make my reality of not being on it less painful. But once I allowed myself to be honest with myself about how badly I craved it, I broke down. I was finally taking steps to do something important for myself. The morning before my initial visit to the gender doctor, I spent an unusually long time getting ready. What are you supposed to wear during your intake appointment? I had no idea what the appointment would even consist of, let alone what the dress code was. What do you wear on the first leg of the journey to becoming yourself? Insecurity reared its ugly head, I wondered “what do I have to wear to prove that I am trans enough?”. I browsed through my robust collection of graphic tees with queer messages emblazoned on them. My transgender rainbow shirt with a burning cop car on it seemed like I was trying too hard. After way too much time, I finally settled on a white St. Vincent t-shirt with the name of her album “Daddy's Home” written on it. Nice. 

I showed up to my school’s student health center half an hour early because I was anxious about being late and missing my appointment. I remember how absolutely terrified I felt sitting there alone in the waiting room. Never in my life have I felt more vulnerable and exposed than in that moment. Did the receptionist know what I was there for? Could they tell just by looking at me? Did they like my shirt? I am someone who prides myself on my independence and self-sufficiency, but in that moment I felt so small and afraid and all I wanted was for someone, anyone to hold my hand and tell me that everything was going to be okay, but of course I was there alone. I learned how to hold my own hand that day. I wish I didnt’t have to be so brave all of the time.

After what felt like an eternity, they finally called my name. The nurse was friendly and said she liked my shoes as she escorted me to the procedure room. For some reason, I immediately knew that I was going to be okay. My doctor walked in shortly after and introduced herself, she had a rainbow “she/her” pronoun button not-so-subtly adorning her scrubs. I told her who I was, how I felt, and what I wanted. She asked me what I knew about HRT and I recited everything I knew. I didn’t get into describing testosterone’s mechanism of action, but I could have if she had asked me. She gave me some handouts with information about the changes to expect and we talked about what dose would be best for me to start off on. And then she wrote me a prescription for T. She led me to another room to get my bloodwork done in order to run some tests and get my baseline T levels and then I was free to go. I had spent years worrying about it, and this visit had gone smoother than my routine doctor visits. I felt incredibly incredibly fortunate that the most difficult part of my trip to the gender doctor was the nurse struggling to take my blood and jabbing me multiple times before calling in someone else for assistance.

 My relative ease in accessing hormones is the exception and not the rule. I am lucky to be living in a big city like Atlanta, the LGBTQ+ epicenter of the South, and have access to trans healthcare providers. I am privileged to be enrolled in a PhD program with access to student health insurance at a fancy rich private school. I am privileged to be able to pay out of pocket for my needles and syringes which for some stupid technical reason are not covered by my insurance. I am lucky to be working with a doctor who is respectful, kind, and understanding of trans people (which honestly feels like the bare minimum. The bar is in hell). I do not take my experience for granted, and I want every trans person to be able to access the care that they need. During the appointment, my doctor asked if I would be seeking out gender affirming surgeries as well. Even though top surgery is something that I yearn for everyday and I know would dramatically improve my quality of life, I told her no, not right now. The cost of hormones versus the cost of surgery is dramatically different, and I know that the costs associated with top surgery are not fully covered by my insurance which makes it prohibitive for me on a grad student stipend with nonexistent savings. The recovery process itself is also very daunting since I wouldn’t be able to rely on my family for support. So for now, I am pushing the idea of top surgery (or at least trying to) out of my head. For now, testosterone is enough (is what I tell myself). I do have an omnipresent worry that gender affirming surgeries will be outlawed or be made even more inaccessible in my current state by the time I am on more secure financial footing, which is why I have dreams of moving back to California as soon as I am able to. I realize that relocating to a more trans-friendly state comes with a higher cost of living. I guess I'm sort of praying for a financial miracle to happen by the time I finish my PhD program, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.

When I drove home from the doctor that day I noticed a little ladybug crawling on my windshield. I took it as a good omen. I had been experiencing a pretty severe depressive episode for the weeks leading up to that doctor's visit. It was not uncommon for me to feel overpowered by waves of grief and start to cry uncontrollably while driving. That day, I cried tears of joy instead. I knew that what I was doing was the start of something magical. 

I’ve been trans probably since I was a child, but it wasn't until I started college that I had the language to describe who I am and what I feel inside. I don’t know how long I will be on T, and I don't really have a transition “goal” in mind. I am also constantly reminding myself that even if I choose to go off T for any reason, I am still trans. I don’t see my gender journey as linear, rather I am constantly unfolding, evolving, and blossoming into newer and truer versions of myself. All I know is that I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life wondering “what if”. I want my time here on earth to be spent living in a body that feels like my own. In the short time that I have been on it, T has enhanced my mental well-being and mood in ways that I didn’t even know were possible, I call it the world’s most effective antidepressant. Being on T is like being able to see new colors. I love being on T because I am giving myself the agency to redefine masculinity on my own terms, and uncouple it from my lived histories of trauma at the hands of the patriarchy. Whereas I once felt ashamed because I had naturally high endogenous testosterone levels, I am now proud of it and embrace it fully because it makes me who I am, and I am wonderful. I recognize now that there was nothing wrong with me after all, I was simply being suffocated by the violent gender binary and its narrow limitations of what people should look like. I see taking T as a sacred healing exercise in becoming more and more Yesenia and giving myself the opportunity to experience the boyhood that I was denied as a child. Everyday I am falling more deeply in love with myself and all that I am and all of the futures and possibilities that I hold. A decade ago when I was younger and felt like I didn’t have a place in this world, I used to self-harm on my thighs and now I inject T into those same parts of my body as a ritual of self-love. I love my trans existence, and I love this beautiful journey of self-discovery, self-preservation, and self-care that I am on. I dream of a future in which all of my trans siblings are free to live their lives as their true selves, safe from the systematic and interpersonal forms of transphobic violence that plagues us and disproportionately affects Black trans women. I want safe housing and access to medical care for all. I want bodily autonomy for everyone. I want trans liberation now. I want us to live long, happy, and boring lives. I want better for us.

If you made it to the end, you’re a real one. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. I appreciate you! If you are cis, I urge you to take action and step up for trans people. Call your representatives, donate money to trans people, stand up against transphobia, stay informed, do something!!!!!!!!!!