I don’t think the gender euphoria of transition will ever wear off, tbh. I wanted to be feminine so badly when I was young but it was a source of ridicule and punishment when I tried. But now it’s not only allowed, it’s celebrated! Like people compliment me instead of berate me.

I used to spend all of my time trying my best to be invisible, or maybe the “funny guy.” But I had no concept of what it meant to exist as a person and be seen and form relationships on that real foundation. Even when people wanted me around, I hated myself too much to see it.

I can’t even tell you how much it matters to me to post a picture of myself where I feel pretty and have other people think so as well, much less go places and feel like I can make friends as myself, or run into friends and feel like people see me enough to love me for who I am.

Transition didn’t just save my life. It didn’t just give me alternatives to self harm and self hatred. It unlocked this vast and untapped reserve of every day joy that I didn’t know existed. Events & highlights were good before, but I never experienced mundane happiness back then

I wish I could explain somehow to cis folks how life changing transition is, but it’s a thousand tiny things & we only have words for hundreds of them & I get paid to describe things for a living & even still I couldn’t even begin to grasp at the edges of what it’s meant to me.

I could write pages and pages and entire books just about the difference it makes in life when you can make basic every day choices or have reactions and mannerisms that are a part of you instead of an elaborate act you hate performing but embrace because it’s still the safe move

And to be able to look in the mirror and see myself most of the time is just constant euphoria. I used to plan for days and prep for hours to “dress up” and shave and etc, and half of the time I’d feel like my look came out a disaster, so I’d get more dysphoric instead of less.

Being closeted weighs about sixteen tons or so. There’s a Sisyphean horror to living a life where the thing that makes you the happiest is also the thing you dread sharing with anyone else the most. Cognitive dissonance sucks, but when it’s your entire existence it unravels you.

Anyway, that’s an extremely long winded way of saying you can definitely tell me I’m pretty as long as you’re not a creep about it because I fought really hard to feel OK with swinging for pretty without feeling consumed by shame & embarrassment just for wanting that for myself!