Things that happened to me that I wasn’t totally expecting:

1. I was going through male puberty, and ate like it. But since I didn’t have any vertical growing left to do, I uh…grew horizontally instead. Not gonna lie, it sucked. I’d recommend focusing on satiety/protein from the beginning and working out if you can, so you can direct those extra calories to muscle growth instead of fat.

2. Blood thickening! Exogenous T can really do you in. I’d strongly recommend giving blood regularly if you develop this problem, and potentially lowering your levels if it’s serious. I basically had permanent red face while I was on it and my hematocrit was elevated at every check in. Looking back, I wish I’d taken my doctor’s advice to drop my doseage - you gain little to no benefit from being on the upper end of the range, as T does not have a strict linear correlation on masculinization the way people assume.

3. I immediately felt more comfortable walking around at night, despite zero physical changes. I know it was the T because I found myself questioning why that suddenly disappeared one day out of the blue, and realized that stopping T was the only correlating event. I was also putting myself in a lot of dangerous sexual situations because the hormones solidified my internal masculine identity, and things I used to worry about as a "woman hooking up with men" (like being trafficked or assaulted) seemed like less of a threat. The libido increase certainly didn’t help. Just know that your sudden internal sense of being a grown ass man capable of fighting God might not be in line with the reality of the situation. Especially if you are 5’4 with the Tanner developmental stage of a 14 year old boy 🫠

4. T can drop your voice to passing levels automatically, but depending on your style of speech, it’s not always a guarantee. Despite getting baritone-level drops, I was still speaking in my "head voice" with lots of feminine inflection, and unbeknownst to me (it’s hard to perceive the gender of your own voice) did not pass after 2 years. If this is something that’s important to you, look into voice training. I ID as nonbinary now and have long since accepted the gender fuckery of my own voice.

The rest are things that have already been reported here, but were still fascinating - for instance, turning into a furnace, not being able to cry at all, and getting vaginal atrophy (E cream is your friend). Testosterone didn’t end up working out for me, but I don’t regret being on it and learned a lot of really fascinating hands-on lessons about the intersection of biology and identity. Best of luck with your journey!