Friday Update #39: Suffering From Success (Patreon)

As a word of caution, this Friday Update might be uncomfortable for some trans women to read. I have an upcoming therapy session this afternoon and need to get my thoughts and emotions written down, so it's going to be quite raw in that regard.

Hey folk, this is going to be a weird Friday Update this month, but let's just dive right in... after a word of gratitude.

While the topic of today's Friday Update is "suffering from success," one thing I am not suffering from is the Patreon page numbers. The numbers are dipping slightly from end-of-month cancellations, but it hit a record high of 321 patrons and $3,568 per month. Thank you so much for the confidence in me and the financial support. I'd like to say this is enough for me to move out from my shitty parents and have money to spare for medical expenses and emergencies, but things have gotten more complicated (as I'll explain).

As you've likely heard, I (CaptainCaption) figured out I was transgender in February and started HRT in early March. I promise this is not bragging (quite the opposite, but I'll explain that later), but let's cover what 4 mg/day estradiol sublingual and 50 mg/day bicalutamide have done to me in just under 3 months, as:

-I have 38C breasts (by US/CA sizing). They measure as 36H (Zoey's cup size, which fucking made my jaw drop), but my ribcage is a weird shape and that's not the accurate size; the accurate 38C comes from going to a Victoria's Secret by myself (not a great experience; call ahead at a specialty shop you know is trans-friendly if you're trying to do this) and getting measured on May 17th, but that bra is starting to get a bit too tight so I more realistically am approaching a D-Cup.

-I shrank 1.5 inches, going from 5'8.5" to 5'7" (174 cm to 170 cm); I'm shocked I didn't notice this one as I am now shorter than my dad.

-I somehow lost 35 pounds without doing much, going from 230 lbs. to 195 lbs. (104 kg to 88 kg). I had been exercising, but I had to stop 4 weeks into my transition after I realized how quickly my chest was swelling because I need to hide my breasts for as long as possible and losing fat on my stomach hinders that. I really don't know what's been causing this weight loss, as I haven't been eating healthier, so I'm inclined to lazily defer to an assumption of it being related to HRT and metabolic changes from that.

-I have much thicker hips and thighs despite losing so much weight. Most of my pants no longer fit and I've had to resort to sweatpants and pajamas.

-I have significantly smoother skin, and my hands are so smooth that I can't grip things very well now.

-I have much thicker hair on my head. I am 29 and have been balding since I was 20, so this one is cool. It's very frizzy, but I need to actually have a talk with my sister to see what she's been doing with her hair (god, what a stereotypical younger trans sister thing...)

-I have much thinner body and facial hair. The razor now just barely touches either and it shears off, although I can never get a safety straight razor to cut quite as close as my multiblade razor.

-I have a much, much higher libido, and God is it distracting. As an example, I had to look up references for yuri HCGs (NSFW Dropbox folders link), one of which I have already shown as being in the pipeline; I don't even prefer yuri, but I was a quivering mess for the next 18+ hours and practically hyperventilating because the way I experience female arousal doesn't fade after a session.

-And while not caused by HRT, I have what most consider a passing female voice, although it has come at a cost as I am unable mimic my male voice anymore (examples on my Twitch channel, although I've changed mics recently because my old one broke) because my voice training has been so successful that I forgot how to do that. I'm listing it here because it's still being a victim of my own transition "success" and I feel like I've actually "earned" this one by practicing in a smart way to notice results with near-instant feedback (although I didn't want to). If you're curious about how I sound or how I got sounding that way, I've recorded a sample here please give me validation this is the one part of my transition I actually seek feedback for since it has been under my full control. Also, the voice training channel in the re:Dreamer Discord server (invite) helped a lot...

So... success, right? These are incredible results a 29-year-old trans woman would be lucky to have!

Sure, but I fucking hate what's happening to me, and here's why:

-I'm in constant pain, sort of all throughout my body, decently in my hips and butt, but mostly in the chest. My boobs ache when I sit still doing nothing and have a shocking amount of momentum that necessitates a bra for something as simple as bending over or going downstairs. This is all exacerbated by the fact that I have to wear a compression bra when downstairs during the day to hide my chest from my parents, and if I wear that thing for more than an hour at a time I start to die (more on that later). I've had a day or two where I had to stay in bed resting on my back because it hurt too much to get up. This would normally be a reprieve I could use to think about re:Dreamer's plot points or dialogue for scenes, but...

-I'm so much less focused than normal. The distracting arousal is one thing (it's unpredictable and harder to trigger than it was a few months ago, but when it hits, I can't function), but did you know that a reduction in androgens, aka male sex hormones, can worsen ADHD symptoms? They have for me, and I space out far more often than I used to! My thoughts keep running into each other, but I struggle with focus in general. I lose my train of thought, I hyperfocus on things that are irrelevant, I put off basic tasks and forget they exist, and my ability to plan effectively is almost nonexistent (which is why I've put off the poll for whether or not we're adjusting Zoey's sprites' chest size, because I am probably going to mess up something in what could be an important process). Even basic writing for the re:Dreamer has been hard, but this update more than most (more on that later).

I'm not exaggerating when I say that my new ADHD symptoms are akin to what I've read bimbofication being like (and I've read a lot of that subject). Asking around and my own research has indicated that my neurochemistry just needs a few months to adjust to my new hormone levels before I stop being such a fucking ditz, but there's another related issue I'm hoping time fixes as well, as...

-My emotional stability is erratic. As guy (with incredibly high testosterone levels that caused me health issues), I might have been partly numb from a vague sense of depression and/or dysphoria, but that numbness provided consistency I could predict and I felt confidence in my mere existence; now, my baseline emotion is depressed anxiety, but I rapidly switch from calm mellowness to bubbly elation to despondent misery with simple environmental triggers (or no discernable reason whatsoever), especially when...

-I get PMS and cramps. The PMS lasts about 3-5 days and makes me far more emotional, particularly when it comes to anxiety, irritability, and overall "bitchiness" but I've only had it 3 times so far. The cramps just hurt.

To showcase an example, I woke up suddenly on May 25th, thinking I had gotten cramps earlier in the month; I had to get off bica for a bit when I ran out and I kind of forgot how bad cramps get since my cycle got reset and thought I hit them. But this morning was the real deal, as I woke up in a cold sweat, severe pain in my lower stomach, and spasming legs. I soon couldn't ignore the pain and ran downstairs for medicine before my dad got up, only to trip at the bottom steps and trip on my face and chest (of course I wasn't wearing a bra). It took me about a minute to get the strength to get up from the ground, and huffing and puffing, I made my way to the medicine cabinet in the kitchen. I opened it, but leaning up to do so shot a cold sweat through my body and made me huddle over the counter in pain as I hyperventilated. Seconds later, I felt like my stomach was going to explode, and I instinctually huddled to the nearby toilet. But of course, I didn't have to use it, and as I sat on it, I burst into dysphoric tears because this was so close to how the "real" experience was supposed to feel, and it took me five minutes to calm down but of course my dad got up by then. I couldn't leave the bathroom with just a thin undershirt on my chest, and I hadn't taken my phone with me, so I had to wait half an hour for him to finish his morning routine to safely get some ibuprofen, which only moderately helped with pain that lasted a full day, all of which reminded me what wasn't there between my legs and that the pain I was feeling was without purpose.

Maybe you could argue that it was validating to know that my hormones are working, but I mean, I can look down and see boobs that weren't there 3 months ago, so I don’t need that, yet...

-Some trans women get weirdly jealous of my transition in a way that makes me really uncomfortable. I can understand envy about me getting C-Cups (maybe D-Cups) in 3 months, especially when I hadn't fully grasped the difference between my measured chest size vs actual chest size, but they hurt constantly and come with a ton of complications. The one I don't understand is envy over me getting PMS and cramps. As I've just described in harrowing detail, it's an extremely unpleasant experience and merely contemplating how I'm going to go through that every 26 days or so for the rest of my life is enough to feel like I've descended into a nightmare realm.

I'm no stranger to chronic health issues, but the cramps were such an alien experience that I had no reference for them. Thankfully, when women posting things like jealous teeth gnashing anime girl gifs whenever my body comes up, explaining the horrors of my body going through this (not just the PMS and cramps, but the overall transition), how much it has complicated my life, and how uncomfortable it makes me to get that type of attention, they back off and apologize, but it makes me feel like a bitch and kills the mood in a room. It makes me want to never bring the topic up because I don't think there's a single trans space online where I could mention my results with and my true feelings on my transition without being judged for it, and I often listen to my anxiety and keep quiet.

I know this isn't healthy, so I'm seeking professional psychological help (I have an appointment with my psychologist this afternoon where I'll be asking for a quick-and-dirty diagnosis with gender dysphoria for a referral to a more specialized psychologist, and another reason I'll state soon). There's only so much I can do on my own for my mental health when...

-I am struggling with constant thoughts of imposter syndrome and detransitioning, and they get worryingly transphobic and even misogynistic. As an example, here's the thought process I had after posting measurements and having a girl not shut up about being jealous because of how much she hates being flat and wishes she had my breasts: "Why aren't I just grateful that my transition has been so successful despite starting at nearly 30 when I've had results younger women have envied?"; "Why aren't I as excited for my transition as some women are for it?"; "Wouldn't a more genuine trans women be more excited for this?"; "Forget being a trans woman, I'm never going to be a genuine woman, and I know that! And why would I want to be, when being a guy was better?"; "Who would even want to be a woman if given a choice? Cis women face constant social discrimination and they're viewed as being less independent, but trans women face extreme discrimination in many parts of the world, even my own country!"; "Wouldn't it be easier to lie to myself (or stop lying to myself) and be a guy again? Would I rather lie to everyone I know about who I am, or lie to every stranger I know about who I am? I'd be a fraud!"; "No, I'd be a freak! Who even thinks they're born in the wrong body?!"; "Why can't I lie to myself as well as these other trans women can? I used to be so good at it..."; "I wish I had never cracked... but maybe I can still detransition and pretend I never figured it out?"

I played off these comments with a pained smile, saying "If I could give my boobs to you, I would."

All these thoughts are eroding me. They make me hate myself for even existing, and they all circle an obvious and dangerous destination: detransitioning and transphobia. I know this, and I know I'm trans, but I wish I wasn't, and it's not that I wish I were a cis woman instead. I am considering cracking the worst thing that's even happened to me, and that includes getting diagnosed with Parkinson's disease at 21 (later diagnosed as corticobasal syndrome, but my specialist is starting to think I have an even more atypical form of asymmetric parkinsonism as my symptoms, how they have been alleviated with the course of medications I am on including HRT, and the slow progression of my symptoms are becoming so atypical as to break much of the diagnostic criteria and that's going to be fun figuring out), barely talking myself out of committing suicide, and then people on my college dorm room floor realizing it was my birthday and dragging me to a frat boy's dorm room against my will and forcing me to drink the shittiest vodka and beer I'd ever had as I drowned my sorrows and tried to avoid bursting into tears.

I know I can't go back. I've come out to people online, I've come out to my sister, and I'm making definitive plans to come out to my parents (more on that later), but I can't stop obsessing about the thought that I'm making the biggest mistake in my life and that I am getting close to burning the last bridge I have to go back. But as uncomfortable as I am being a woman, I know being a man again would be even worse. I can't unring the bell, but I simply hate how a common "fix" for that has such mixed results, because...

-The HRT isn't even helping all that much with dysphoria, even though I know it's the one thing keeping the brunt of it back. I'm no longer feeling like I'm about to collapse into a ball from slight environmental triggers that give me insatiable urge to snap my collarbone in order to cave my shoulders in just a fraction of an inch more or harboring thoughts one or two steps removed from suicidal ones, but I'm still uncomfortable just feeling my body exist. Baggy clothes don't stop me from feeling my wide shoulders, and the thing that makes me uncomfortable when I look in the mirror is my face and jaw (I had driving jobs for about 3 years total and chewed a ton of gum during them, and that jaw is still muscular and boxlike to this day). Ironically, the "dysphoria beard" helps with this a bit, as even half an inch of it on my face helps give the illusion that my jaw is thinner. Many trans women I know have been very helpful on this subject and given good advice on how to minimize dysphoria, but there's a problem they can't help with, as...

-I don't have a real support group, and trans women cannot function in that role. I thought I'd just get over the openly envious comments about my breasts, but they kept gnawing at part of my brain. I've already had an atypical physical transition, but none of it has made me feel lucky. It has made me feel like the victim of a cursed wish from a monkey's paw.

But then when the subject of shrinking on HRT came up, I got curious and measured my height only to learn that I shrunk an inch and a half without noticing. I had a genuine panic attack over this as I did not want to get shorter than I had been and thought I would be avoiding pelvic tilt due to starting HRT so late, and all my thoughts of who I would be as a woman after cracking were eventually, with work, becoming a taller-than-average "cool beauty" who dresses a bit tomboyish, and losing even a little bit of height makes that harder. But instead of anyone picking up on this through my chat messages, all I got were compliments, expressions of congratulations, and a few women posting "giwtwm (god I wish that were me)." It made me feel like such an outsider to a culture I've been interacting with for nearly 4 years (first as an outsider, then a shepherd, then an increasingly staunch ally, and then to now, which I thought was one of the flock). It made me feel like I was wrong. I didn't fit in, and I wasn't going to fit in, and I didn't want to be here anymore. There has been no trans person who has been truly sympathetic to my stance from the start. Sure, I can explain it, and they express sympathy, and they apologize, but they were still cheering and clapping for me as I underwent an event of cosmic horror by realizing I wasn't at all who I thought I was despite being so confident in that. I hate that I almost certainly can't relate to any trans woman reading this.

There have been two women I have been able to confide in, and neither are trans.

The first woman is an intersex woman I've known for over a year. Born male with no signs of being intersex, she underwent a rather unfortunate female puberty at a male boarding school. She understands the difficulties of an unwanted physical and social transition, and she's also had struggles with her gender identity. Our talks on the matter started mostly from my own intellectual curiosity (I still consider her the most "Zach-like" person I've met, including myself, and she's had a coincidentally large experience overlap), but we became fast friends. Now, our talks on gender and our coincidentally shared experiences have been very helpful for my mental health, but she's got her own mental health issues and I'm not about to burden a friend by turning her into my therapist. Plus, she's more than a touch autistic (as in ASD, not Asperger's), and she while she's got a keen intuition to realize things I can't and a bluntness to tell me those things without trying to soften the impact (something I greatly appreciate), there are gaps she can't fill. I don't blame her, and I'm thankful just to have her around as my friend.

That second woman I mentioned is my sister, who is two years older than me. I don't want anyone to worry about this rather dramatic statement as it's largely under control now and I can't go into details more than this out of respect for her privacy, but she had a seizure after driving down to Florida to visit her boyfriend on a job site (a great guy who is likely to be my brother-in-law in the not-distant future; coincidentally, he has a career quite similar to Zach's dad's, which was something that made my jaw drop when I learned about it). This was a "writhing on the ground, foaming at the mouth, face twitching, needed an ambulance, had disorientation, confusion, and slight amnesia and aphasia for a few days afterward" seizure. Her medications have her stable now, but she was not capable of driving her car back 6 hours north. Without really being asked so much as told by my folks, I was flown down early in the morning (I was on a nocturnal schedule then to hide the changes going on with my body better and was practically falling asleep standing up), spent an hour packing up from her Airbnb, and another getting lunch, and then hit the road.

As soon as I got behind the wheel of her car, I was tired and nervous as hell, but I needed to have this conversation with her since I was struggling so badly with dysphoria at that moment and had started to realize that I wasn't going to be able to pull a Zoey and hide my boobs for six months until I got out of danger and would soon have to come out to my parents whom I lived with and needed all the allies I could get.

Here's my best recounting of that conversation (or at least, parts of it) with context provided as needed (and some names omitted or changed):

Me (second after pulling out of the parking space): "Hey, are you lucid enough to have a serious conversation about something really important?"

Her: "Oh, is this about Dad? Has he gotten worse?" (Our father might be going senile, but he's probably just really depressed and going off his rocker for less catastrophic reasons, like dissatisfaction at work).

Me: "No, he's stable. This talk is about me."

I turn to her at a stop sign (ain't that a metaphor... sorta?)

Me: "I've figured out I'm transgender."

My sister turned to me as she made a literal fucking PogChamp face as her voice went high pitched.

Her: "Ooooooh!"

Me (internally): "Yep, I expected this."

Her: "Well, you know I'll always love and support you, and I very much appreciate you telling me."

Me: "I, uh... you're welcome?"

Her: "Am I the first person you've told?"

Me: "The first person I know in real life, yes."

As I pulled onto a narrow two-lane bridge over a bit of Florida coast, she had a few questions about who she could tell (I told her to tell nobody and while her boyfriend would be the first, she needed to wait for my permission; she fully understood).

Her: "So, how much do you remember about our house in Alexandria?" (We used to live in Virginia but moved when I was just under three and she was just over five).

Me: "Um... not much. My first memory was of a yellow U-HAUL truck outside of Grandma Liz's house right before we moved into our house."

Her: "Well, when you were two, I used to dress you up in my old clothes, and we both really liked it, but you loved it."

I felt time stop as a glass breaking sfx played in my head. Not even a full minute had passed since me coming out, and I distinctly remember thinking, "I could veer her car off the bridge or into traffic, like in Breaking Bad when Hank tries to get Walt to turn into the laundromat where he cooks meth, and nobody would blame me since I'm running on 2 hours of sleep."

But I didn't, although I later realized this is almost exactly a plot point from Britney's backstory with her little brother who is an egg and is 11 years younger than her. And then I realized my older sister is just Britney over the coming few weeks! But I'll explain that later.

(On the topic of coming out to our parents).

Her: "Yeah, I agree that Dad wouldn't care much after a week, since he was that way when I came out as lesbian and said I only wanted to date women. His mom and brothers would, but not him. But fuck them, especially Stan and Craig." (My dad comes from a Catholic and very Republican family; my dad is a self-described "failed Catholic" and quite liberal).

Me: "But Mom is going to be an issue. You know she's really transphobic, right?"

Her (in that sort of "sigh of resignation" tone people use): "Yeah, she is..."

Her: "I'm sorry. Mom's got all her toxicity and problematic views on gender because she looked like a butch lesbian in high school and played softball."

I freeze, briefly remembering a line I gave Samantha about how she stopped playing softball because but stopped so her future husband wouldn't "think certain things about her" because "girls who stick with sports as adults are unattractively mannish repressed lesbians."

Her: "Mom said so much gay shit about women growing up that she made me think that was normal for straight women and that I was straight." (My sister is bi; jury is out on my mom).

Me: "Yeah, she doesn't express hate in open ways, but through shitty jokes and comments that she gets upset nobody laughs at. She's even had a few vaguely racist ones."

Her: "Mom did?!"

Me: "Yeah. She grew up in Georgia and is proud of that, and I think if she were born 30 years ago, she would have been racist."

Her: "Okay, yeah... Wow, you're right."

Her: "Yeah, she's got a different generation's mindset about things."

We had a talk about how she watched The L Word or some drama on TV once in the early 2000's that had a scene where a dad is revealed to be secretly gay and kisses another guy, and our mom walked in on her and told her how she needed to turn that homosexual stuff off and how she wasn't going to have that in her house. My sister calmed her down and explained it was just a TV show, but our mom wasn't having it.

Me: "Well, I guess transphobia is just more acceptable than homophobia now. It's the new minority group to bash."

Her: "Yeah, I'm sorry. You know Mom doesn't hate gay people, at least now, so maybe she'll change?"

Me (sighing): "I doubt it..."

Me: "It'd be one thing if she was transphobic in a conservative bible-thumping way, but she's just a neoliberal boomer with shitty opinions."

Her: "Yep, that's Mom."

My sister then tried to go into talks about femininity and queerness in general, but I found her enthusiasm a bit off-putting. Keep in mind, this was a woman who was recovering from a seizure, but she went from groggy to chipper in about a second once the topic of the car drive got set. It was a drastic switch, to say the least.

The big takeaway from this is my sister has a... talent for making her friends realize they're bisexual. She can talk to someone, and slowly get them to admit it. She's done it a few dozen times, and I thought, "Oh, so we both do that, but I do that accidentally with trans women," as she admitted to getting her boyfriend to experiment with nail polish she put on him while drunk.

The conversation topic then somehow shifted back to how I've been hiding changes from our parents, because after I said I'd started hormones, she said she noticed my face being softer, but wasn't sure if it was the lack of beard. I explained how I usually wear a tight unpadded bralette (later a compression bra), and that I was wearing a padded bralette now. She expressed surprise.

Me: "Did you not realize I was wearing a bralette?" (I tug at a strap to pull it out of my collar and snap it back down.

Her: "No, I had no idea!"

Me: "Okay, well, that's good. I've been worried about Mom and Dad noticing something."

Me: "Do you remember at lunch, when you mentioned switching birth control, and how it made you gain 20 lbs.?"

Her: "Yes?"

Me: "And you told your boyfriend you were taking progesterone for it? And he asked, 'Is that the feel-good one?'"

Her: "My lucidity comes and goes, but kinda?"

Me: "And then you said, 'No, progesterone is the one that makes you grouchy and horny. Estrogen is the one that's like, 'Damn, girl! Why is your skin so smooth and why are you smiling so much?!''"

Me: "And then your boyfriend said, 'So, are you saying you want me to take estrogen?' Did you not notice me loudly coughing into my water and nearly dropping my cup in surprise?"

Her: "No, I didn't notice in the slightest."

Her: "I'm surprised you even bothered with a bra though. I always found bras annoying and cumbersome."

Me: "Well, they hurt too much to leave unsupported, and they're sensitive enough to need covering against my shirt."

Her: "Oh, oof. Yeah, that's not going to get better for the next 2 or so years, if this works like Aye Eff Aye Bee puberty." (Of course we say "AFAB" the same way...)

Before I could ask her what her puberty is like to get a baseline for what's basically a second puberty for me, she changed the subject with excited and wanton enthusiasm (exacerbated by meds making her ADHD medication barely work) to talking about a fashion podcast, and I learned about the history of pockets on women's clothing (it was okay, but it had a neat point as I didn't realize they used to be a separate garment on Victorian dresses you access through a slit in the dress).

She then tried to put on another fashion podcast about the history of skirts, but I told her I'd rather just talk.

Her: "So, my friends Alex and May are getting married soon, and I ordered a custom dress for it, but my new birth control bloated me up by 20 lbs. and I barely fit into it."

Her: "It's a wedding between a bi non-binary Aye Eff Aye Bee and a pan trans woman, so it's a very non-traditional ceremony." (My sister is queer as fuck and most of her friend group is queer).

Her: "I'm thinking of just renting a suit for it. There aren't any bridesmaids or groomsmen for that, and everyone is just free to wear what they want, so there will be a lot of women wearing suits."

At "women wearing suits," my eyes dilated slightly, and I definitely gripped the steering wheel a bit more. I know my type...

From there, we were both kind of tired and struggling to maintain a good flow of conversation, so we put on an episode of the Mortified podcast and laughed at how gay this one girl at a Catholic boarding school was in her diary and how funny it was how she was a repressing it and justifying it away (it's worth a listen). I think I also cleared up that I'm definitely still into women? Hopefully?

Since then, my sister has been overwhelmingly supportive (which I appreciate to a certain degree)... but she's also been a menace.

I had to ask her to cover for me since a Mother's Day weekend garden tour would have been near-fatal with binding my chest outdoors for several hours, and she helped ease things over with our mom.

Our mom was still furious, of course. Mother's Day is her day, and I ruined it with my absence!

My penance was cooking all of Mother's Day brunch for the family, and after a quick grocery run (on my own card, of course), I started to cook the meal.

Me: "Does anyone want eggs?"

Sister: "Yes please, but don't crack them too hard!"

I was puzzled by the odd wording of the request, to say the least.

After cooking them, I brought them to the table.

Me: "Okay, I made four eggs. Two for each of us."

Sister: "Are you sure one egg isn't missing? This looks like three."

Me (internally): "Oh god, she knows what an egg is."

Later at brunch, after I gave our mom my card (it hurt surprisingly much to sign it "Love, DEADNAME"), my sister was being the social butterfly and getting our mom out of her foul mood by making the day about her by letting her flex her love as a mother.

Sister: "So, Mom..."

My sister did that vocal pause that people do to make sure everyone present is paying attention (me included).

Sister: "What was your biggest surprise as a mother?"

My sister took a brief glance at me and flashed a quick grin.

Our mom said it was how she loved us from the second we were born. She said it was just as strong each time, but I've known I haven't been the favorite child since I was 8.

Since then, I've had a strategy meeting with her at her and her boyfriend's house about coming out. The plan is for early June (my sister has now started to call the day "DD-Day" given the early June date), and I'll go into that later, but that meeting at her place with her boyfriend (who is in on the plot) had a bunch of weird coincidental details that overlap with Britney's exact plot beats or personality, besides the ones mentioned already:

• My sister praised my female voice seconds after I used it, calling it "cute" and "natural" (I was only going for the second, and it really flustered me in a way I hope she didn't see).
• She literally PogChamped (with a high-pitched squeal this time) when I told her I'd lost an inch and a half. "You did?!" but then asking for clarification with "You mean your height, right?"
• I told her my skin was smoother, and she immediately grabbed my hand and stroked my palm for several seconds while lightly giggling, "It's like a baby's skin!"
• She's mad my boobs are bigger than hers (I'm not telling you her size), but she kept dismissively... dismissing it with things like, "Well, my back probably hurts a lot less."
• She knows what r/egg is, and those Mother's Day brunch egg comments were intentional. She said she's been reading it a lot more since I came out to her.
• She tried to give me fashion advice, all quite feminine, and I told her I'm planning on dressing somewhat mannishly like a butch lesbian. She paused, thought it over, and nodded, and then she said, "Yeah, that'd work if you grow out a ponytail. Maybe a V-neck T-shirt too?" I thought about asking her what she thought about adding red contact lenses to the outfit...

Forget me slowly turning into Zoey (I rolled 20 on prophetic foresight): I've joked that Britney is my self-insert (not Zach/Zoey), yet I never expected her to just be a version of my sister!

Hey, I had to stop typing to go to my psychologist appointment. I'm back from that, but I forgot I was writing this so I played the System Shock remake for a bit since I've been waiting literal years for that to come out after backing it on Kickstarter. Remember what I said about becoming more airheaded? If you're curious, it's good, but as someone who has speedrun the hell out of the OG, it's lacking in a real soundtrack and that is greatly disappointing, but I only did part of Medical so far.

Anyways, neither my sister nor my intersex friend can be the true mental health assist that I clearly need, but that therapy session went well. I've been seeing this psychologist since I was 9 or so (making that conversation awkward since it involved many omitted details), and while I've got a referral to a specialized gender psychologist, she used this session to help me deal with the fact that...

-I've got constant anxiety about what comes next. I cannot overstate how surprised I was to discover I was transgender after 3+ years of working on re:Dreamer as I was so sure I wasn't after all my attempts to crack myself (a very cis plan in hindsight).

My psychologist was at first very surprised to learn I was transgender, but she quickly understood as I explained overlooked clues I never fully shared with her (the OCD comorbidity with buried gender dysphoria, and the "trans OCD" I convinced myself I had and got over was likely the effect, not the cause; I hadn't even fully fit in with kids of either gender and talk about women by the guys had made me uncomfortable; I was self-medicating dysphoria by segregating it to porn because I happened to find the term autogynephilia at a very bad time).

She lightly asked some questions about whether or not I was sure, and I told her bluntly that no, but even with how stressful it is being a woman, being a man had become intolerable and the dysphoria I felt of being myself and the depression I felt were both better on HRT. She expressed concerns I was DIYing, but I told her that my parents watch my medical insurance copays like hawks and question me about charges they don't seem acceptable as until recently, we jointly paid for that health insurance, but I have gone to my general practitioner to get my blood checked (I phoned ahead of time to make sure they had the right test numbers for measuring various hormones that HRT would affect and they said a doctor would have those prepared; nobody had any idea what was going on when I showed up and I had to explain "I'm a transgender woman on HRT trying to get her hormones measured" at least 4 times and it took an extra hour). The follow-up appointment for a full physical and to discuss those results is on Thursday. I'm not expecting anything catastrophic (rather, I'm expecting a clean bill of health), which is good because...

-My boobs are forcing me to come out to my parents this Sunday. I've explained my mom's transphobia in the coming out post to you all 2 months ago, but my "success" with HRT has forced me to come out to my parents because the alternative is binding my chest in Southeastern U.S. summer heat until I can move out in October.

I promise, I will have that poll for Zoey's breast size standardization in the coming weeks, but I need to get my own ducks in a row first; although, let's just say the chest binder and its success on Zoey's 32H breasts are the least realistic parts of the VN about a sci-fi phone app that changes someone's entire body and can edit reality and I'm inclined to make that slightly more believable in light of my own difficulties in hiding my 38C breasts.

Anyways, I am not expecting that talk to go great. My sister and her boyfriend are coming over for a dinner on June 4th (something that happens often enough) and my parents will have no idea what is going on until my sister starts a short speech about family love before ceding the floor to me to tell my parents that I'm a transgender woman yadda yadda yadda. I really don't want to get into the details of that planned speech as it gives me anxiety to think about and covers some pretty private details, but I am expecting a firestorm of questions lobbed my way.

Power of numbers (3 vs 2) are going to stifle any true objection, and the date is planned for Sunday as both my parents will be doing their weekday activities. Once it's just me vs them, I fully expect my mom to go down detransitioning rhetoric, and she's going to make this about her and how other people think about her (my dad I expect to be crushed for a few days and then bounce back without much care).

The reason this gets complicated is that my parents have in effect sabotaged my efforts to move out. I have told them as such, and they do not care.

When I was out one day, my mom came into my room and said to me "6" when I got home. I asked her what she meant, and she was telling me the number of coffee cups on my desk she brought down... but I keep them right under my HRT bottles and it's pretty clear they're HRT bottles despite the Portuguese text on them given the trans flags, pink Venus symbols, and blue Mars symbols.

She didn't raise a fuss, so I'm assuming she didn't see.

I currently pay about $1,350 a month for medications (not counting HRT), but my parents subsidize about half of that and the overall insurance plan. I had to spend $360 on Vyvanse one day because Adderall (which costs about $60 a month) is out at pharmacies nationwide, and I asked to be reimbursed for it after using my own card. My dad said, "We need to have a talk about your medications first."

I broke into a cold sweat, thinking this was a confrontation about HRT, but the reality was far dumber and crueler.

I got sat down after dinner, and my dad pulled up an expenditure list of my sister's medications, my medications, and what I was asking to be reimbursed for. He didn't coherently explain it and the topic kept jumping around, but the summary was that he was reneging on a previous deal to pay for my insurance and half my prescriptions after I moved out, effectively rendering that impossible with my current occupation. But don't worry, the neoliberal boomer pair have a solution!

Dad: "I'm looking at all these charges, and I can't afford them."

Me (internally): "Bull fucking shit. You and Mom just took two $20,000+ vacations in the past 4 months. I was stuck at home looking after the pets as you went to Hawaii and Los Angeles for 2 weeks each."

Dad: "I'm saving up for retirement, and I had to buy a new electric bike to replace the one that was stolen, and I want a new car."

Me (internally): "My health is worth less to you than a goddamned car?! And I know you just spent over a thousand dollars on my plane trip for me to go and get my sister, and her medical bills and ambulance ride, and $3,000 on replacing her entire AC a few days ago!"

Mom: "Dear, you need a job that has benefits. Why don't you look on Monster.com--"

Me (internally): "That still exists?!" (It does, but it's full of fake listings and LinkedIn had overtaken it in use long ago for all but temp agency postings).

Mom: "--and look for a local programming job with a short commute or remote work, and benefits."

Me (internally): "Those don't exist, especially not with my experience."

Mom: "Tell the hiring manager that you are living at home and taking care of your sick parents, and he'll give you more flexible hours and likely better pay!"

Me (internally): "How do you think the world works, woman?! This isn't even slightly how job applications have worked in decades!"

Mom: "And if you don't want to live here with us--"

Me (internally): "I don't."

Mom: "--then why don't you move in with your cousin Billy? He needs a roommate now! You could move out tomorrow!"

Me (internally): "I am not moving in with the closest guy I have to a brother when I am a repressed trans woman."

Dad: "I hear there are a lot of good programming jobs out there in <middle of fucking nowhere where my cousin lives that barely has 5G cell towers reach it>!"

Me: "I bet there are..." (I would not bet on that).

So, my dad forced me to get my wallet and sign the insurance over to my name and credit card. He then tried to reimburse me over PayPal, but he couldn't find the "Send to Friends and Family" button. I told him to just eat the fee since it comes out of my end (and a few hundred dollars was better than nothing).

He did, muttering about the cheapskates at PayPal charging a 3% transaction fee on what amounted to about $500 of reimbursements. "That's outrageous!" he said.

He then pulled out his wallet and asked if I had any $50 bills on me, as he was going to pay me the transaction fee. I calculated it for him (somehow going into Zen mode and getting over my OCD crippling my ability to do math), but then he only paid half of it.

Dad: "We're splitting the fee, and I'm only doing this because I'm so generous."

Me: "Because 'generous' is the word of the day, right?"

I got shouted at for about 5 minutes after that, and I overhead in the morning after as I was getting out of the shower... "and his car insurance payments are $1,200 a year, and he can pay that too." Keep in mind my dad has commandeered my own car and forced me to ask for permission to use it when he wants to drive it to work, has now driven it more than I have in the past 18 months, and keeps changing the seat and dashboard settings.

So... yeah, my parents are pieces of shit, but the worst part is that they are convinced this is tough but fair parenting done out of love by good parents and not the actions of emotionally immature parents who are out of patience and empathy. They don't have a son anymore, and the unlikely realization of a hypothetical situation of them accepting me as their daughter and improving with the context of why I have been struggling to live since I've been 11 is why I am still even vaguely humoring them as my parents. I got told my life was worth that of a new car, and I can't stop thinking about how I was treated as a liability by parents who are supposed to unconditionally love me. Worse than that, I was a disappointing liability who had been an asset that had failed to live up to their expectations.

There is a trump card I am holding back against them, but it's a really shitty one because I am so desperate, and its use is based on two conditions:

• If they further try to force me to change jobs (they are convinced I don't have gainful employment despite working for Espeon's LLC as contractor, I have filed all the tax forms, and I have paid my taxes), I am telling them about the VN. Obviously, I'm not telling them enough to find this post, but it'll be enough to really show how much this project means to me. If they don't listen and still try to financially strongarm me into a career they would approve of (because let's be honest, they're going to see "hentai game" and go ballistic)...
• Or, if they try to ignore how much I need HRT and other medications to live, and try to tell me that I don't (my mom has done as much with my inhalant powder steroids, CBS medications, antidepressants, and ADHD medications, despite taking those last two herself), I am reiterating on the clearest terms possible that I need all of this medication to stay alive, and I am okay paying for most of them, but the fact that they pay any of my sister's emergency expenses without question and it hurts beyond belief that there's a night and day difference in how they treat us. This includes the detransitioning rhetoric I fully expect my mom to start using within 24 hours of coming out to her...

I am threatening suicide.

I can't overstate how much I don't want to use this manipulative threat (as I've never dropped a nuke even close to this level on them before), but I'm desperate. If they push me hard enough on these two fronts, I'm just not treating them as my parents anymore. I've suffered literal decades of abuse at their hands, and a fucking mountain of shit life has thrown my way, and I've pushed through both. As strained as my love for them is, this will be the straw that will break that camel's back should they decide to insist on the issue. I've found, for the first time in my life, and in a way I don't think most people ever will, a clarity of self and of purpose. There are still questions that need to be answered, but I feel like I know who I am and what I want to do. I'm willing to put my life on the line to defend both.

Oh, by the way, I do have places I could couch surf for a while if this fails, but it would be a bit too jerkish to impose with the cheap rent I would need to pay for my medications and I'd feel like shit for doing it. If it comes to it, I will get the fuck out of this house alive, but it'd be a weird adjustment period as I get used to that and this would be a permanent bridge burn. And despite all their shit, I do want to love my parents, and I am still giving them a chance to try and love me back, but it's their last chance.

So... let's pivot to what I've been doing for this re:Dreamer release.

My life has become a rather stressful existence, and The Mom Route™ isn't going to be complete by the start of next month. Writing focus has been hard, but there's still a big chunk of new writing, and a lot of it focuses coincidentally on post-crack Zoey coming out to her mom (needing Trans 5 and trans "therapy" answer, but I know my demographic):

Honestly, this is the closest I've come to self-indulgent wish fulfillment writing and likely the closest I ever will come for the rest of the VN, but fuck it, The Mom Route™ was always aiming for that wish fulfillment strike zone from the start.

Huh, maybe this batshit crazy Student Transfer scenario author will finally stop being jealous now that I've met her arbitrary metric for a good story?

Almost 2 years have passed and this is still hilarious to me.

Honestly, I have been treating it as therapeutic having Samantha say a number of the things I wish my mom would say when I come out, but still keeping those zesty "Samantha" flavors:

Dorky...

Horny...

And controlling (idk maybe not the best example here)...

It'll be a lighter release, but expect it to drop June 2nd, likely close to midnight.

Until next time (god I hope coming out happens after the release drops since this is not a time for delays with a release).