Friday Update #40 Part One: One Foot In The Grave (Patreon)

Edit August 28 2023: I have COVID-19 for the third time (thanks parents!) and decided to get done with some low brain power work I've been putting off for a while, such as separating this Friday Update into two parts (and editing both for typos I missed the first time and clearer wording and context). The Britney outline can be found here.

"Now I shall talk, and you shall listen."

(You're going to listen a lot, as this is over 80,000 words with both parts).

I wanted to use "We exist together now, two corpses in one grave..." but that one was said on the level High Charity and doesn't have the cool visual of Arby 'n' the Chief dangling like dolls.

Look, Halo 2 is cool, regardless of being a boy, girl, man, woman, or something in-between.

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As a word of caution, this Friday Update might be very uncomfortable for some trans women to read, and the second half will contain very, very heavy spoilers for Britney's route. I will be doing my best to label these sections, but I might miss a detail as this is so, so long.

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Happy Fourth of July (plus two), folks! This Friday Update was originally going to be about names, but it turned into the entire goddamned Britney outline because I am a lunatic who got a good idea and went way too hard on seeing it through:

The best ideas are ones you get on the spot, take, run with, and do your best to develop.

Plus, my own mortality has been on my own mind recently, so this felt... poignant, to me.

I want to get into that topic of "names" in a ton of detail later (I guess making that a 2-part Friday Update? I don't know if I've done that before), but for now, let's focus on my name, starting with how I came out to my parents, by covering something I've shared with the re:Dreamer Discord server (invite):

Hey @everyone, I had an important but weird revelation that I promise is relevant enough to warrant an everyone ping in this channel: I don't actually like the name Allison, and I never really did, because the woman I want to see myself as in the future does not use that name and uses Samantha instead.

As for how I came to this conclusion... you might have seen in #safe-space that the timeline for me coming out to my transphobic parents got moved up from Sunday to tomorrow. Given loud pressure washing going on outside and my own anxiety preventing me from focusing on work, I laid down and tried to nap to sort my thoughts out of what I was going to tell them. I couldn't get past the "Call me Allison from now on" part because it felt so wrong, and it was making me doubt the validity of my own transness. I knew coming out was going to be difficult to think about, but it was shutting me down to say that to them.

These are not parents I am going to be able to do a second name change with. If I did, they would think I wasn't being serious about such an important decision and use that to springboard into detransitioning rhetoric, but the name Allison always bothered me, like it didn't really fit and almost like I got gaslit into using it because I wrote a very eggy story starring myself that used it and got teased for it back when I was an egg (https://www.deviantart.com/captaincaption/art/710339738).

It's hard to explain, but Allison didn't feel like me or what I wanted others to call me, but rather what others wanted to call me. It always nagged me as a concession to myself and others as it sounds similar enough to my deadname (Wilson) and it had been used back when I was an egg in numerous server lore bits. I l wasn't letting myself but rather my circumstances choose my name.

As I had an incredibly unpleasant panic attack over this, I realized I'd had the name for at least 3 years now. Samantha was consistently the name I used in AI Dungeon stories for myself, or shoved into AGP thoughts, and I just plain liked the name better. I was a dense enough egg to not realize I'd chosen a female name that meant far more to me than Allison ever did, but I always kept it around in my brain. It belonged to me as my name, but as a dense egg, I naturally gave it to the next major female character in re:Dreamer when it came time to make that step with zero hesitation or self-awareness. The only reason I used Allison instead of Samantha upon cracking was that I'd already given the name to Zach's mom and stubbornly didn't want to issue a redaction.

As soon as I realized this, I felt so much less anxious about being a trans woman and coming out to my parents. I'd be happy calling myself Samantha in real life in a way I wouldn't be with Allison, and I'm still feeling giddy referring to myself as that in my head and I've literally got a smile plastered on my face as I type this despite the realization being 20 minutes ago. I could see myself being happy coming out to my parents and everyone I know with that name and using it for the rest of my life.

I still don't like using real names online, but if you must, use Samantha for me, as that feels so much more real than Allison ever did.

So, the question remains: Am I keeping the name of Zach's mom as Samantha despite it being my name, or am I changing her name?Frankly, I could go either way as it's a good fucking name, but I could understand the awkwardness of us both having it; and frankly, my own life and what I call myself takes priority over a fictional character (even one I like writing as much as her) and I'd be a stubborn idiot not to admit that.

You can vote for her keeping her name (checkmark emoji react on the poll) or replacing it with another name (x emoji react on the poll), but I want this to be a discussion given the importance, and I don't just mean people trying to suggest names for her.

Also, I am aware of the irony of me now being Zach's mom...

The vote was 80/8 in favor of keeping Z's mom's name as "Samantha," but it was ultimately my call. I had doubts about keeping the name "Samantha" for her (with "Amanda" being the leading name candidate to be the replacement name). It would have taken about two hours of work in the game folders and .rpy script files to change it, and I was thinking it over with my thoughts being on the side of wanting to go through with the name change, but then I realized:

It's funny as fuck if Zach/Zoey has two dorky OCD moms named Samantha.

Damn, she me frfr!

I expect at time that it'll be a bit confusing to differentiate "re:Dreamer Samantha" from "re:Dreamer Samantha" because... well, fuck. "Mom Samantha" and...?

No, we're both moms, in a way...

I guess just your best judgment for a label to differentiate between us, and I actually kind of want to see the chaos of unintentional confusions and wacky labels people come up with.

But just because my name is Samantha now doesn't mean that the same rules won't apply as when I thought I was using Allison. I don't like using real names online, I want to be a woman, not a girl (I'm nearly 30, remember?), so just keep calling me "CaptainCaption" or "Cap," and don't diminutize it to something childish like "Cappy" or "CapCap" or "Sammy" or "Sammi" (unless you're turning me into a bimbo IRL) or something like that.

If you put a gun to my head and make me agree to you calling me an IRL name, use "Sam" or "Samantha." But please, don't do that. Just use "CaptainCaption" or "Cap."

It took me a lot more work and mental agony than I would have liked before realizing that I hated the name Allison and wanted the name Samantha from the start. Now, I thought that was going to be the "end" of it, and I could come out to my parents and survive them until I move out in October.

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This is where the uncomfortable trans topics start.

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The plan for that was my sister and her boyfriend (now fiancé, as he proposed to her just this Friday) coming over for a barbecue dinner (which I kept thinking of as "my last meal"; it later got downgraded to grilled food), and after we ate, we'd all sit down and I'd... come out to them as their daughter.

My parents operate like a herd of cats, so and it took ages to get them into the living room, but after my sister reminded everyone that we all love each other (and that they were not to interrupt me), I shifted into girl voice (I'd been badly mimicking my male voice around them) and gave this speech:

Mom, Dad, I'm a transgender woman, and I would like you to please call me Samantha from now on. I've vaguely known something wasn't right since I was 11 but could never quite place why, I got very close to realizing it but not admitting it in college when I was living on a dorm room floor with a bunch of frat boys and began feeling so uncomfortable from that, which caused a bit of a mental breakdown as I developed OCD to try and feel more in control of my life, and I finally admitted it to myself this February after a conversation with a friend online who is also a transgender woman.

My life has been incredibly uncomfortable since then. A body I once felt safe and secure felt like a prison overnight, and it was easily the worst experience of my life. None of my antidepressants helped, and to deal with that, I've been meeting with Dr. <MY PSYCHOLOGIST>, who diagnosed me with gender dysphoria, and I have been on female hormones for 3 months now to ease that dysphoria, and don't worry, my bloodwork from my physical confirmed my health is good and all my hormone levels are borderline perfect for a transitioning MTF. I am following the science and taking the recommended steps for treatment, and this is the next one.

The reason I am coming out to you now and not when I move out 4 months from now is that my response to female hormones was far stronger and far faster than I could have anticipated, especially for nearly being 30, and I am having to accelerate my social transition to keep pace with my physical transition. Every time I've been downstairs for the past 2 months besides now, I have been wearing a very tight chest binder. I can now only wear that for an hour at a time as it causes me a ton of pain, and I am just not able to manage that pain anymore. That time window I can wear that binder without feeling like I'm dying has grown smaller as my chest has grown bigger, and I've had to switch to a nocturnal schedule to compensate.

There is nothing I or any other transgender person can do to speed up their physical transition beyond reaching a base hormone level to trigger changes, it is entirely genetic, as medical science currently says being transgender itself is. I didn't have a choice in the matter except through realizing it and sharing it, which I am doing now.

While it is validating to see my body change to being closer to what it should have been from the start, the most validating thing either of you could do right now is accept me as your daughter and not change the unconditional love you have for me as your parents just because I'm your daughter, and not your son. This is who I am, and it always was. The only thing I apologize for was being too dense to figure this out earlier.

Now, you both probably have a billion goddamned questions, so I'll take a break and give you time to think, take this in, and ask those questions.

Of course, both interrupted a lot during this, and my mom shouted at me several times to slow down as she bawled her eyes out all dramatically.

The first question my dad asked was what bathroom I was going to use from now on, and I thought, "oh, is he actually going to be a problem too?"

I just told him I was largely going to keep going into public as a man, and using the restroom beforehand, but out of respect, I'd keep using the men's room.

Then I got asked by him about surgeries (while not in these words, I said I clearly didn't need breast augmentation and that I didn't have a need for any "bottom surgery" as that was usually reserved for cases of dysphoria with that, which I didn't have).

His last question was if I'd noticed my hormones affecting my voice, and I kind of softly laughed and told him that was practice. Testosterone can permanently alter vocal chords, but that doesn't go away with reducing testosterone or starting estrogen... but in effect, I kind of had a permanent voice change, since I sucked so much at maintaining a male voice now?

Then he was done with his questions and said he was taking the dog for a walk.

He wasn't back for 30 minutes or so, probably doing "dad stuff" where you think through your thoughts in solitude, so that left me, my mom, my sister, and her future fiancé in the room.

My mom was... very accepting. Like, I genuinely thought, "Oh my God, is this about to be like Zach's mom wishing her son had been a daughter instead?" and while she had some lightly prodding questions, the atmosphere was very casual.

I explained a few of the changes with HRT, the chest being the most obvious... 36D, if she was wondering. She paused for a second, stared at my chest, and said, "I don't believe you."

She stood up like she was taking her shirt off, and I panicked and said, "Hey wait let's not do a chest measurement competition tonight, Mom!"

She sat down, then I told her my height had shrunk from 5'8.5" to 5'7", and then she asked me to stand up as she walked over to me and looked up (I think she's 5'5"?)

She stared for a few seconds then said, "Well, shit."

The conversation then shifted to how long my sister had known, and I told her that she'd known since I flew down to her in April after her seizure to drive her and her car back up six hours north.

My sister filled in some of the details, but I groaned as she flew over how accepting she'd been.

"You know you skipped the part where you admitted that you dressed me up in your girl clothes when I was two, an age where I wouldn't have that memory, right?"

My sister scoffed.

"Look, you were Princess Jasmine (from Aladdin, which had come out 2-3 years ago), and every girl needs a crush on another girl, okay?"

My mom (the jury is still out on her being bi or a repressed lesbian), laughed, with excitement, "Oh, totally!"

I sipped my water nervously, briefly remembering that my sister's future-fiancé was in the room with us as my view of him had been blocked by my sister and he hadn't said anything in a few minutes. I glanced over, and he looked just as uncomfortable as I did.

We then moved over to how this plan for me coming out had come about. I'd visited my sister and that-guy-she's-getting-married-to about a week or two ago, and we'd all agreed that frontloading this discussion with an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, blood work for hormone levels, and then about how this was "following the science" (in hindsight, that was a very good call).

"I'm upset that you didn't think you could tell me this, <first syllable of deadname>-Samantha. Did you not trust me or your dad?"

"Well, I didn't have any worries about Dad, Mom, but you've said some pretty darned transphobic things to me in the past, and now I know why I always remembered each one of them so well."

Her smile dropped for a bit, and her voice lowered from that cheery lilt I hadn't realized she'd been doing up until now.

"Well, you and your sister and <future fiancé> didn't need to ambush me. I'm your mother, and I will always love you."

She then asked me to stand up for a hug with her daughter. I did, and then she said, "You need to learn to hug from the side," as she grabbed my shoulders and moved me.

The last thing I did was remind everyone that I wanted to keep this private to the immediate family only (my dad wasn't present, but he hasn't told anyone).

And then I went to bed, thinking I had misread my mom. But in my own words: "It went worryingly well."

They've had varying degrees of acceptance since then.

After that first night, my dad has been a champ and been nothing but respectful (even calling out my mom for deadnaming me), but like I predicted, my mom is the issue here, and that night was almost entirely performative because my sister and her now-fiancé were present.

It always wraps back to Samantha for me and Z, huh...?

My mom's usual desired interaction is giving me helpful, semi-helpful, outdated, uninformed, or harmful advice (all unsolicited, of course), but she'll get mad when I tell her I am still figuring out stuff on my own and that I want this to be as much of a solo process as possible.

She's also been buying me (or handing me down) sports bras, compression bras, and V-neck T-shirts, none of which are in my size.

I told her I have my chest covered (heh) with plenty of sports bras (this being my favorite); two compression bras for when I have to go out into public (old and new; aka chest crusher vs chest squeezer); the one I wear daily around the house or at the desk, which is my most comfortable one because the padding cushions those way too goddamn sensitive boobs, the push-up nature means cups hug my breast shape better, the underwire push-up bra gives good support, the racerback helps my shoulder pain and gives a bit more mobility, and the front buckle means I can change in and out of it very quickly or just ease the tension on my chest if it ever feels too tight without taking my shirt off; and an unpadded front buckle one that I get to where whenever I go into public as a woman (rarely, as I lack confidence for that).

But the worst moments are her being annoyed when I don't want to discuss my transition with her. But can you blame me? Not only are things tense between us, but she also leads off with lines like:

• "How much of what you are doing to yourself is reversible?" (In order to prevent her from finding her own dubious sources that would have explained God knows what, I had to tell her my breast buds will be permanent after a while but that the rest can be undone by getting off HRT; I omitted that testicle shrinkage and sperm count drop can be permanent, and I later learned that bone weakness can occur with getting off of HRT -- I'm sure glad that's not going to be relevant).
• "I have body measuring tape, so I can measure you and do it better than you've been doing yourself." (I had to tell her my measurements aren't accurate but that I know my size and have been buying myself new bras as needed that fit; as of now, which is 4 months into HRT, I'm 38E (but measure 38 H/I), but while they definitely have the wideness of E-Cups, they're more like D-Cups in how much they stick out from my chest.)
• "I have a Kohl's coupon, so put most of your clothes in these boxes and we'll make a trip and buy you new clothes!" (I'm not planning on changing my wardrobe anytime soon and want to lose weight (I've gone from 235 lbs. to 195 lbs. and want to get to 160 lbs. before considering new clothes), so she just said, "Fine! I guess I'll see if your sister wants it."
• "Do you want me to teach you how to do makeup? It could help cover up that stubble and help you look close to a woman." (Do I need to explain why that bothered me? I told her that my sister and I had loose plans for a makeup tutorial sometime in the future... we didn't, and I don't know if we will. Wow, foreshadowing!)
• "Have you read <short story title>? It's... <three minute synopsis later about how a couple makes board wargames so good they get hired by the military to plan simulations like Ender's Game> ... and of particular interest to you, <deadname>, is that there's a Chinese kid in the story who helps and isn't really either gender. He's, like, this in-between thing, and I can let you have access to my Kindle to read it." (I got so close to snapping at her for that, but we were at a restaurant, so I just told her I didn't think that story would interest me, and she still got upset).

She's not actively going down detransition rhetoric like I thought she would, but she's been doing this... really shitty thing where she absolutely refuses to use my preferred name when she's mad at me, like it's punishment for making her mad, then gets even angrier when I correct her.

For instance, I had cramps from June 15th to 19th (bad aches on the first day, very sharp and also aching pain on the second and third days, tapering off a decent bit on the fourth day, and basically being done on the fifth day; also, I got "lucky" with a 21-day cycle). I was crippled for two of those days, and it took effort to get out of bed as most of my time was spent feeling pain, dysphoria, and self-hatred. I had to beg her to pick up my $410 medication that I couldn't get as I didn't think it'd be safe for me to drive, and when I texted her "Thank you" after I saw it on the counter, she texted back the receipt, saying, "Please pay your dad over Paypal or me with Venmo."

They'd reneged on an earlier agreement to pay for my health insurance and part of my medications, remember?

In a rare moment where I was downstairs because I required food (of course it was salty potato chips dipped into hummus because of course I also get cravings), she told me to do the dishes. I tried to tell her that my cramps and PMS made leaning over—

"I don't want to hear it, <deadname>!" she said, as she went on the back deck to fill the mealworm tray for the birds.

I couldn't do the dishes, as leaning over to grab things/put things in the dishwasher made my lower stomach explode, as did leaning up to put things away.

That night, I got this text.

Nothing came from it, but when my sister was over on the 18th for Father's Day dinner, my mom deadnamed me so much in front of her and was so angry and rude about how "unhelpful" I was being (for instance, not wanting to load my sister's car up with mulch because we were going out to eat in a few minutes and it would have soiled my clothes), than even my sister, usually a diplomat, snapped at my mom.

Of course, this just made my mom even angrier, like she was being invalidated, and she then made a big show of dramatically loading up the mulch... and some plants for my sister's garden, then said she was going upstairs to change, like it had been my fault.

We almost missed our reservations for dinner, but at least my dad liked my gifts (a very nice bottle of sake and a nice but not quite as nice bottle of zinfandel red wine), and it felt nice signing a card with "Samantha" after signing the Mother's Day one with "<deadname>."

Look, I don't go out of my way to make my life have all this allegorical messaging, foreshadowing, or overlap with the events of re:Dreamer. It just happens.

Now, if it was just this, I could make it until October and then move out and never talk to my mom again unless it was at something like my sister's wedding. I am good at avoiding her.

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This is where the uncomfortable trans topics really start. You might want to skip this if you're particularly sensitive to talk about dysphoria. I'll label when this is over.

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But the 2-week mental health break I took after coming out to my parents (starting on June 3rd) was detrimental to my mental health. Like, very much so. There was server drama, my dysphoria went through the roof, my self-harm intrusive thoughts from my OCD made a comeback with a vengeance... and the stabilizing thing was me working on art during this time, as checking artist's work was important enough that it was worth the 20 minutes or so a day to keep that train rolling.

And when I was working after that "break," my mental health was better, but random, tiny things would set me off and make me hate myself. Was I passing enough as a trans woman? What if I didn't pass? Oh God, I was moving out in less than four months, and I was going to be on my own oh fuck!

I've not liked my transition progress being the way it's been for a while. I was getting locked further and further into this "in-between thing" (remember how I almost snapped at my mom for that term?) and I hated it.

So much progress had been made to my chest to the point that passing as a male was very, very painful. And speaking of pain, I had so much pain from my chest. Agony, even, and I'm now starting to think that was mixing in with dysphoria. "But why would I get dysphoria over having such big boobs that most trans women would love to have this early on?" I kept telling myself, hating that I felt that way.

But despite not being able to progress being made on the one thing I viewed as being needing to pass as female: my face.

As I've explained (along with all my other issues of my transition) I've got a muscular, boxy, and bony jaw, and while I'd only been on hormones for less than four months, I couldn't see that fixing itself, even with a substance as powerful as estrogen. And by stubble? I shaved my face for 3 hours one day, basically turning it into raw flesh, and sure, that was brought on by server drama, but it was an anxiety that was there and what my OCD hyper-fixated on.

I got through that day, (I do not recommend shaving your face for 3 hours, by the way). But I kept thinking about how much I hated putting all this effort into not just looking like, but being a person I felt more and more uncomfortable being. Sure, I'd given up the idea of starting a family and having kids about a decade ago given my CBS and how my young death would shatter a hypothetical family of people I loved and all these other complicated but in my view justified reasons, but that didn't mean I didn't want it. And I didn't want to be a mother in that situation. I never had, God forbid getting pregnant!

No, the thing I was going to regret was not being a father. Hell, not a father, but a dad, and a cool, dorky dad! And maybe even a granddad!

But I would never be. I was going to be dead young, and if you discount that, I was a trans woman now, as much as I didn't want to be one...

So, with my future uncomfortable to think about, I thought of my childhood. With my strict mother with sky-high expectations of me who had convinced me to use my stellar grades to skip 2nd grade (a big mistake in hindsight), I was lonely. Isolated, even. I found comfort in typical introverted young boy things, like video games, but my mom had quite literally either thrown away, sold, given away, or destroyed every video game system I'd had by the time I was twelve.

But do you know what video game came out when I was twelve? And that I could play on the Xbox of my childhood best friend when I came over or spent the night at his house?

That's right! Halo 2, baybee!

You didn't think this was going to wrap back the title, did you?

I'm going to be honest: that childhood best friend (John, we were Halo nerds and he liked pretending he was Master Chief, and well, it was his house I was playing his Xbox at) didn't turn out so great. He moved to Tennessee when he was 18 or so, and in the decade and change since, has posted on Facebook about being in and out of rehab a few times (alcohol and what looked like coke), and I think he has petty theft charges.

But those childhood memories were important to me, and it wasn't just one video game. It was typical boy stuff, like NERF gun fights, airsoft, and even paintball a few times (I winced remembering I'd gotten a bruise right below my nipple once, and guess what was hurting now?) It was watching horror films late at night (It was way too long for me as a kid and I thought it was kind of lame, but stuff like Nightmare on Elm Street made me afraid to sleep for a few days). It was random hikes through the nearby woods and creeks. It was making a tire swing that John scared his leg deep using because we hadn't noticed a plank of wood with a nail sticking out nearby. It was talking about girls (okay that one admittedly I wasn't the most boyish with, but I did participate a bit, and it wasn't even "oh, I need to say something, or I look suspicious" participation, but from feeling like I didn't have much to contribute and was still figuring out what type of girl I liked).

And I didn't just have one friend. Though not of my own free will, I had gotten put through wilderness therapy at thirteen (aka dropped in the middle of the woods and hiking all day and having some therapy now and then, but it was mostly for kids who got caught doing drugs but didn't go to juvie). And then I had gotten sent to a therapeutic boarding school (literally called "Cherokee Creek Boys' School, it was a mix of terrible education, group activities, discipline, and therapy in the middle of the woods, but it was mostly for kids who got caught doing drugs but didn't go to juvie).

Smoking pot wasn't one of those childhood memories I'd had with John (he was briefly my sister's drug dealer, and she commented how it was weird that she was buying weed from a kid who she had babysat a few times). I was there for ADHD, ODD (like literally every troubled boy would be diagnosed with for being sent to a boarding school that they couldn't leave by their parents), and general "not liking my mom because I'd realized she was kind of a shitty person and bad mother and had gotten a bit too obvious with that" syndrome.

But while the place and structure of that school was shit, the people were golden, as were the memories.

It was like... this interesting blend of all these boys, who were the craziest, most troubled kids you could be without going to a harsher "lockdown" facility (all of those were in Utah, by the way; go Mormons and loose child safety laws!)

Almost all of them (I'd say about 28 out of 36 or so) were my friends (or at least boys I was on good terms with, but a place like that forges close bonds fast), and we got into all sorts of dumb shit (or at least, the most we could in a place with so much structure and supervision).

And there were tri-weekly (once every three weeks) "treks" where we'd go hiking (I slipped 30 feet down an icy mountainside once and bounced up like nothing happened; shoutouts to being fourteen), climbing (I fell down over 22 feet on my back once and walked away fine; shoutouts to being fifteen I guess, but I think this one was mostly luck), camping (I got hypothermia once), horseback riding (I got kicked by a horse in the balls once; it was a glancing blow that mostly hit my pants, but it still hurt like hell and I could brag "I got kicked by a horse once"), rafting (I capsized a raft I was steering down a 30-foot waterfall once), canoeing (I've almost drowned to death twice on the safest of the main boats we used), or kayaking (I had to dive off a 40-foot rock into fairly shallow pool at a waterfall basin running away from an angry swarm of yellowjackets whose nest I had just stepped into once; I pulled at least 20 stingers out of me in the shower that night, but I never had swelling).

Remember, this was the safe version of this type of school.

Obvious dangers aside, this, and a lot of my other memories from ages 3 to 18, were precious memories to me, and it was all best summed up as...

Boys being boys.

And then, as I was now, I felt like I had to trick myself into thinking I'd hated it at the time, because I was a girl now who wasn't allowed to like her childhood growing up as a boy. I was supposed to envy that childhood as a girl I'd never had.

And I felt miserable doing that, because I hadn't hated that period of my life. I had over-embellished what, if any, childhood dysphoria I felt was in that speech to convince my parents I was trans. And myself too.

I also felt miserable for a related reason. More and more, I didn't belong to this group of trans women I spent so much time with and who I had come to regard as not just a community I oversaw, but friends.

And then in the middle of all this, I'd had the worst dysphoric episode yet.

I was in a Discord voice call with those girls who I'd come to regard as friends when another girl (who was new to the server) joined. She had stopped by when I was voice training yesterday or the day before and provided some good ideas for honing my voice (and hers wasn't just indistinguishably cis female but great, so I listened).

When she joined that call, someone complimented her voice, and she showed off effortlessly switching between male and female voice in a way I envied (I'd gotten stuck as "female" and a part of me kind of hated it). She then started explaining how she did it when someone asked, and I was eagerly taking notes, although I had to ask her to slow down at some points and repeat herself. She was being so clear and concise with her explanations, showing how each one individually worked and then layering them in different ways, so I asked her more questions to clarify a few things (i.e., "How do you keep your larynx raised?") and demoed her advice and felt really happy when I noticed the immediate application improving my voice (although very marginally in a way that was hard to sustain).

All of this went on for about 3 minutes when another girl basically went "Ahem!" because this had derailed a conversation she had wanted to get back to, so I apologized  and asked the girl giving lessons if she wanted to move to the voice training voice channel to continue. She declined, and the girl who did the "ahem" said something like, "Sorry, it was just hard to have a conversation when you were voice training."

Something just... frayed in my brain after that. I think it's because I had gotten a taste of a better voice with what felt like real progress so fast that I got humbled about how much further I had to go, and I just felt ashamed of talking out loud because of how bad my voice sounded when it could be sounding so much better.

I kind of desperately asked the girl who had been giving the impromptu lesson if she wanted to move channels again, because I would, like, really like to keep working on my voice. She declined again, and said she wasn't going to be online much longer anyways, so I gave a weak little "oh" as I said I was going to leave to voice train.

The girl who did the "ahem" realized what was up and apologized, and I choked out "it's fine" as I disconnected. It wasn't really anyone's fault but mine, after all.

I opened Audacity (what I've been using to record my voice sessions) and tried desperately to apply the tips from earlier, but I felt like I was forgetting stuff and I struggled really badly to force myself to keep talking to train even though I hated how little progress I was making. I just couldn't hold my larynx up, and I kept hurting my throat, swallowing and then holding my Adam's apple in place with my fingers just to hear what I would have sounded like had I known what I was doing.

After two hours of this, I eventually did "real" voice training, but I kept hating myself because CBS fucks up how I talk when I get stressed, so I only made minimal progress in one hour. All three hours were intensely dysphoric, and I kind of noticed an improvement at the end, but my throat was in pain and I was upset by all this extra shit I was having to go through just to feel the slightest bit happier as a woman. Or at least, more like a trans woman I was feeling more and more like I wasn't.

So... I vented about it. I said how much I hated being a woman, and that if I thought I could get away with it (both in terms of dysphoria and not getting lynched), I'd repress. And that I felt like I was tricking myself into having dysphoria because it felt like I was supposed to have it with how invalid I felt as a trans woman. And that the server had a confirmation bias with seeing me stay female, despite how miserable it was making me.

I said that I'd felt so much more comfortable as a guy, and that I was doing all this work to feel a faint sense of my body feeling right, but that I often thought about how I and everyone else could be wrong about me being trans. And that I was starting the think the "crack" was a false read of some realization, but that it wasn't "I'm trans" so much as "I'm not cis" and this server being such a part of my life naturally led me to thinking that as "I'm trans," especially with how the "crack" happened and who I was discussing it with.

And I talked about how much I missed being a guy, and how much that was fucking me up. How I have nightmares knowing I'll never be a dad, and shit like that. And that'd I'd been feeling uncomfortable on HRT since almost day one, but really more at the two-week point, and it's just been getting worse and worse.

And that how I hadn't brought it up until now because of how bad it would look to "detransition."

The Patreon revenue was going to drop, as yeah, I am aware of the optics of coming out as a detransitioner while writing this gender bender visual novel with such heavy gender themes to the point that the main character is a repressed trans woman. It looks like I scammed people with a sob story, and I did kind of need that revenue boost to move out given how much my parents were fucking my finances over.

That the server was going to lynch me for this. Again, same issue with optics, but arguably worse as I'd been trusted as "one of the girls" and making a safe space for trans women, but then I go and do this.

My parents were going to lose all self-respect for me, and this was going to make my mom so much more transphobic to the world at large. After all, her son had manned up and realized it was a delusion, so why couldn't every trans woman?

My sister was probably going to be a bit upset, as our dynamic had changed with me as her sister, but she wouldn't take it too hard.

No, the hardest-hit victim would be my own self-respect.

On the night I came out (in a limited fashion seconds after the crack), I said, "Look, if I'm wrong I'm going to curl up into a ball and die / But what I'm feeling right now is so intense that I need to actually explore it and not bury my head in the fucking sand."

That night, I said, "I just don't see any of this improving with more time as a woman on HRT / I feel like falling into a hole and dying, but I'll settle for lying down."

I took off all my pronoun roles and tried to stop HRT cold turkey, but it didn't work. It made me feel like shit, and I typed and sent this in the morning.

I can't detransition, even though I wanted to. I'm having to cancel a planned 48 hour-HRT test detox 3 hours in because the way I'm feeling being just 2 hours late for an E dose is making me want to kill myself. Once my nose unclogs from all the teary snot in it and I can stop breathing through my mouth, I'm taking the E.

I hate the way my fat tits, chunky thighs, smooth skin, shortened height, female voice, and thoughts of myself as a woman in the future make me feel, but I hate how my shoulders, boxy jaw, facial hair, body hair, balding hairline, and male voice make me feel more.

I get dysphoria both ways, and I'm pretty sure the female stuff is dysphoria because it makes me feel the same way to focus on (my emotions go numb, my thinking slows down and fills with noise, and I get an instinctual urge to stop focusing on it by staring ahead with unfocused vision until I calm down).

I also get both male and female dysphoria at the same time, but it's a decent bit less overall on HRT, although the female dysphoria doesn't feel like it improves as much as the male dysphoria.

Pre-crack me was confident, very sure who he was, happy, and stable, despite that very slight bit of numbness to everything he could never quite figure out, but he could see where he was going in the future (although he had to give up certain things he was really looking forward to due to his health and that experience filled him with some bitterness). Post-crack me is a nervous wreck filled with sadness, fear, anger, and self-hatred, and she doesn't have the benefit of that numbness keeping her together, because she finally knows what that was; also, she's flying into her future blind at breakneck speed, and the ride is so fast that it causes her physical pain.

Because I was so sure I wasn't trans, I don't think I "cracked" so much as I "shattered." You can fix pottery if it cracks, but you're going to need to get a broom and dustpan if it shatters.

I feel like I'm a piece of pottery that got shattered into a hundred little pieces with no idea of how to rebuild itself, but I don't know if some pieces went missing, and the only way I know how to fit together was as a man, which just doesn't work anymore.

I'm a woman, but I fucking wish wasn't, or at least that I didn't know I was.

I thought I got over it. This was just going to be my new normal, and I was going to hate this as my physical and mental health got worse and worse until I died of CBS in 15 years or so. I could tough it out. After all, I am good at dealing with bullshit. Even the fact that my stress got so bad I couldn't read or whatever the fuck was going on was okay!

After sending those paragraphs, I realized I couldn't read for about 90 minutes. I could speak well (minus some extant CBS issues and some voice training fuckery); I could listen perfectly; I could write perfectly fine (and others understood it); I could read my own writing and understand it fully; I could re-read things as I remembered most of what was written; but I only had partial comprehension of reading new things written by someone else, only grasping what I'd assume to be 30% of the words unless sentences were kept short and basic.

Look, I do not fucking know, but this can replicated with missing an estradiol dose.

I'm not gonna screenshot the entire conversation, but I fucking science nerd'ed my way out of a panic attack by scientifically testing how bad it was, measuring what part of my brain was broken, how it was broken, how it gradually got un-broken, etc. I knew it was going to be helpful for my doctor, and it went back to normal soon-ish enough.

One of the most terrifying experiences of my life, but I got through it by evaluating what was happening to me in a cool, logical way. If I could do that, then I could survive anything.

But then the intrusive thoughts of self-harm came back for the first time in close to five years...

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I didn't want to get too deep into the details because I can't do content warnings for self-harm topics, but I think the full context is important here for this story. And yeah, that's going to be covered in this next section. I'll label when it's done.

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I started to lie down, but then, my brain decided it wasn't done being evil, and I vented about it (behind spoiler tags, of course).

Cool, the vivid self-harm intrusive thoughts are back for the first time in years, and they're all centered cutting off my boobs in various ways and how each would feel. As if they didn't hurt enough without my brain forcing me to imagine the sensations (cw with violent examples) of a deli slicer cleaving them off a millimeter at a time, or a massive belt sander going over them so fast my skin burns, or going to my bathroom and grabbing a straight razor blade with my bare hands and doing it myself, not caring if the blade digs into my hands when it slips because of blood

I really wasn't expecting today to be one of the worst days of my life yesterday

I need to state that the nature of intrusive thoughts is that they are disturbing and focus on actions that are the last things a person would do

I'm not acting on any of these nightmare scenarios, but the way my intrusive thoughts work in that I have to fully imagine the sensations like I had

I just… kind of want to exist as a formless bubble of thoughts rn. Still alive, but without a body

That'd be really nice

Gotta finish the vn, after all. This passion project is the only thing making me want to stay alive atm

I thought I stabilized, again, but then, four days ago (July 2nd), I was in a voice call when my chest started to hurt.

Like, really hurt.

Like, "their presence on my chest was causing me an existential level of pain they had to go NOW" level of hurt.

So, after trying to deal with that for a few minutes, I couldn't do it. They had to go.

I went to the bathroom, and I got a straight razor blade from my back. I didn't know what I was thinking. I just hated those tits being on my chest.

I had the razor blade in my hand as I sat down in the tub, intending to cut my breasts because of how much dysphoria they were giving me.

But then I stopped, having made not a particularly deep cut, but a long one.

This wasn't going to fix this issue of existing like this.

I moved the blade down over my left wrist, lengthwise, intending to slice that direction, even having the blade on my skin but not cutting, before dropping the razor blade and crying the hardest I've ever cried from realizing something I should have realized months ago.

I'm not a binary trans woman. I'm a much more complicated blend of bi-gender, gender fluid, and/or agender, and I'd been lying to myself about that both because I didn't know and because I had wanted to fit in.

I know how bad this looks, and not just, you know, that I almost killed myself because I'm a stubborn jackass...

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Okay, self-harm talk is done! Back to the still very upsetting gender discussions...

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It's not just that it's pathetic that it got this bad, or that it looks like I'm a combination of a scammer, a grifter, and an emotional manipulator tugging on heartstrings of trans girls to boost page views and revenue on Patreon, or that this is backtracking on me proudly stating "I'm transgender!" in a way resembling detransitioning, or that this is a high-profile example of someone walking back an announcement of someone coming out as transgender that could be used by terrible, shitty people as rhetoric pushing detransitioning, because just look how much it fucked me up, getting groomed into thinking I needed hormones by a trans community because I was unhappy and confused and had a moment of doubt.

To clarify, that was sarcasm on the last point, as an example of what a terrible person would say about my situation against trans people. Those are obviously not my own thoughts on the matter, and I do not think I was groomed; also, the recent shitty Patreon brand update (October 2023) broke the italics in the above line, making this even harder to discern.

Hi, brief post-hoc aside here since the sentences above caused so much drama.

I was not groomed, but I'm not going to deny that I got years of messages like this from well-meaning trans women projecting themselves onto me in a way that heavily warped my views of myself to match their own experiences and was given hormones by a woman who deliberately downplayed the risks of it to get me to take it and hopefully get me to crack myself despite me insisting I was cis.

I didn't word things the best at times, but messages like this and the drama I've been dealing with since are not okay, especially when I've apologized dozens of times for phrasing things this way in the context of coming off from the panic and fear and anger and hurt of a near-suicide attempt. If your first thought of reading my emotional story of discovering myself is "How does this affect me?" and not accept me for who I am nor my apology for how I expressed that in one of the darkest moments of my life, that's a problem of a narrow mindset you need to work out and not blame me for. As of August 28, 2023, I'm not even off HRT and am trying to present myself more femininely, but this entire experience soured me on sharing more of that personal journey online and made me less comfortable being feminine.

Anyways, back to the original writing.

It's that I feel like I've lost the trust of everyone who has looked at this project or interacted with the community, because the truth is, I don't know what I'm doing. I am not going to be able to be the trans spokeswoman or artful egg smasher or whatever this toxic notion I have of what you want me to be is.

The only person I can be is myself, and I'm going to kill myself if I keep trying to be anything else. I'd die for my art and this visual novel, but not like this.

Okay, backing away from uncomfortable trans topics to the crux of this first part of this Friday Update.

If you didn't catch it above:

I am not a binary trans woman. I'm a much more complicated blend of bi-gender, gender fluid, and/or agender.

I say that because there definitely is a component of femininity in my identity I've been undervaluing that exists alongside the masculinity I have, and while that ratio is in flux and never close to 100% on either side, I never feel truly comfortable existing in an "in-between" state... but truthfully, my own opinions and feelings about my gender have felt less important and more "muted" compared to the people around me, both in real life and online (particularly when compared against the typically binary trans women I've been interacting with so much in these past few years). I'm just... me, and that's never going to change.

I am still figuring things out, like what pronouns I want to use. This could be subject to change, but I guess they/them for now, as it's easiest and this isn't as pressing of an issue for me as the rest?

But the biggest question is if I'm staying on HRT, (and that, in turn, being how I present myself in public).

For now, I am staying on HRT, but at a half-dose (25 mg/day of bica and 3 mg/day of estradiol sublingual) to... keep things stable, and hopefully not advance a physical transition or de-transition.

I think HRT has been helping with dysphoria over my shoulders (or at least, I have perceived it as being dysphoria and as being helped such, but I tend to be gullible to my own brain), and it's been helping with my CBS a decent bit, but there's a very alarming symptom that shows up when I get off of HRT that quite literally makes me illiterate.

I don't want to have such big breasts. I will likely never be able to afford breast reduction surgery, but I am not going to risk getting an unwanted drug interaction through taking SERMs (https://transfemscience.org/articles/serms-transfem/ and https://queerdoc.com/serms-2/) especially when there is so little data on how these medicines work on trans individuals.

Which... sucks. I think a key aspect of the dysphoria I get thinking of myself as a woman (besides the menstrual cramping; God, why do some girls envy that?) is from their prominent existence and the physical pain they cause me, not the presence of estrogen and lack of testosterone in my system.

Those are both apparently rather common cis women complaints as well, so it alone does not disqualify me as a trans woman.

And to be honest, the estradiol does improve my mood at a low dose, and it's nice to feel a bit more vibrant as a person, even if the brighter highs come with darker lows. There's a reason that Elise's cat Mimou became a server meme, and it's because female hormones have made me turn into a blubbering mess when I see a cute animal, and God is he cute!

UIHVFGHJKGFBREYIGBUYEBSGHJFFJHASDJFKJD (keysmash for "OMG")

I am aware this all sounds like the most embarrassed denial repressor-core story possible ("Haha, I'm a guy, and I don't want to take HRT, but my mean, sick brain says I have to!") but it's an actual nightmare scenario of my real life. If I didn't think there wasn't something very worrying going on, I wouldn't have written so many paragraphs about my severe troubles with my gender identity and how I think hormones have been messing with that in an unhealthy way by essentially announcing "detransitioning, but not quite," thus making parts of the largely trans female community I interact with on a daily basis really mad at me, especially not when that same community is so accepting of trans people and accepted me as one.

Whatever happens with my HRT and gender identity, this is fully outside the realm of DIY knowledge now, be it for medicine or psychology. It's something I am going to have to discuss with my doctor in great detail in late July, but I also have an appointment in September with a specialized gender psychologist (who I learned was a trans man over the phone when his staff were scheduling me for an appointment, so he's probably got a great perspective on this I haven't seen before).

I need professional help to figure this out, and for the love of GOD do not try to push me one way or another.

I am not fucking joking about this. I almost killed myself over my struggles with my gender identity, and a large part of that was listening to unqualified advice that I implicitly trusted without realizing it was pushing me close to ruin. As of now, unless I specifically ask for it, this is not a subject you (the person reading this) or anyone else is to supply any feedback, opinions, suggestions, or anything to influence my own thoughts on where I should take my gender identity. You can express sympathy, but I will be largely private in this manner until I get professional help (and lots of it) and I will only share what I am comfortable sharing. Do not ask for more besides that.

But to end on a bit of a lighter note with a callback (because of course I need to be a clever writer)... one thing I am nearly positive about is that I'm keeping "Sam"/"Samantha" and keeping that deadname dead. I never liked it much anyways, but just call me "Cap" or "CaptainCaption" when I'm online, because that's who I am, more than a boy, girl, man, woman, or something in-between.

Okay, now that that's done with (it won't be, I am never going to fully know who I am, and that's okay), let's talk about my daughter, who knows she is trans...

If you're not here for the Britney outline, then, uh... wow, this Friday Update has been this long already? And page 19 of 144 in the .docx file I typed it on with 78,000 words? Then I guess... re:Dreamer (0.16.1) is going to be very light (and it'll likely be a day or two late), mostly just fixing things, adding Molly's sprites, and slightly fleshing out her appearance, as that 2-week break, my life, this outline, and Molly's art took over the development cycle, so if you don't care for more, then see you later!

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The entire Britney outline used to be in this post, but I felt that the drama of the intro to it detracted from some of the best writing I've ever done, hence it being moved to its own post.

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I don't have words to describe how much I enjoyed writing that outline (at least, the outline proper; the front end of this Friday Update hurt), and that's because I used all of my words already. At just over 72,000 words and what I estimate to be 70 hours of work, I wrote Britney's outline in 10 days, with the first day being a 17-hour session of 21,500 words typed.

That is a lot of output, as Natalie of natalie.tf noticed recently:

...but then CaptainCaption dropped a 21,500 word outline for the Britney route that she wrote in a single day. …Well, now I feel like a sack of trash. Here I thought I was on a roll for managing to draft out an entire 9,000 word story in a day last year, but this fuckin’ savant moseys on in like she owns the place… ‘cos she does! I couldn’t even type that much in a day if my life depended on it, and she did it with Corticobasal syndrome.

The pace went fast and slow at times, but...

No, I didn't just enjoy writing this. I needed to write this. I think she was right: "my life depended on it" to get that much writing done.

It was the mental stability I needed in one of the darkest periods of my life. I'm out of that pit enough to where I can see light around me, and while I'm not what I would call "good" yet, it's getting better.

Also, you can 100% see the unintentional overlap with my own life and particularly my own recent struggles in this outline, right?! Really, I am not intending to be this subconscious physic energy writer guru with clairvoyance, but.

It.

Just.

Keeps.

HAPPENING.

I think that's just what happens when you put everything you have — your heart, your mind, your body, and maybe even your soul — into a project.

I'm in a better place than I was ten days ago, and I don't want to let a stupid little thing like who I am stop me from doing this outline justice in the visual novel.

I hope you'll all stick with me to see me to see that.

Thank you for reading, if you're still here, and I'll see you again soon.