Transition Means Changes
What a difference seventeen months can make.
Look, on the left, at what one of my Facebook friends called “a sad gal pretending to be a bloke.” This photo was taken in January 2018. He’s shed most of the two hundred pounds of extra weight he carried around like armor for years, but he still looks unhealthy, sad and tired. The natural red highlights in his hair have long since turned white. The invisible burden he’s carried for fifty-seven years has taken its toll.
Flash forward to now. Look at the woman on the right. People regularly tell her she looks twenty years younger and want to know her secret. She tells them it’s not really a secret—it’s two basic ingredients: estrogen and happiness.
A few minutes after I took this photo, I got my hair colored for the first time. Several people have asked: Why did you go red? It’s hard to explain, but my best answer is that I always knew I had the soul of a redhead.
About a month after the first photo, I started on hormone replacement therapy. Even though I was in good overall health, my provider wanted to ramp things up slowly. I started with estradiol in pill form, then added spironolactone. After nine months of estradiol in pill form, I went to patches for three months, before starting on injectables at the one-year mark. At month thirteen, I finally started on progesterone.
I also started electrolysis about the same time as photo number one. My beard was mostly grey and white, so laser treatments were out. As of this writing, I have 165 hours of electrolysis done. Tedious and time consuming? Yes? Expensive? Yep. Painful? Of course. Worth it? Yes, yes, yes!
Finally, I have had a little filler and Botox to help define my cheeks and give me the upper lip that nature denied me.
The overall result? I am pleased, and more than slightly amazed. Day by day, the differences don’t seem that great, but cumulatively, I find it amazing.
Friends have also told me that I look twenty years younger. . .but then, they are friends.
Top and bottom surgery? That’s still to come.
Has it all been worth it? Do you even need to ask?
The interesting thing to some people is that the essential person inside this package hasn’t changed. She’s happier, more confident, and more at peace with herself than she’s ever been. Now the external package finally matches the person who was hiding inside for all of these years.
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Category: Transgender Body & Soul
About the Author (Author Profile)
Claire Hall was born and grew up in a large city on the left coast and has spent most of her adult years in a beautiful small coastal community where she's now an elected official in local government after spending many years as a newspaper and radio reporter. In her space time she loves reading, writing fiction (her first novel was published by a regional press a couple of years ago), watching classic Hollywood movies, and walking.Subscribe
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