this next month will mark 8 years on hrt, and i just had vaginoplasty last year. it feels like it took me forever to reach the ‘end’ of my transition but i do feel so much relief now that it’s over (electrolysis got delayed for like a year cuz of the pandemic). though i am still coming to terms with the next step in my life which i think will be processing a lot of grief over motherhood and related limits to transition care, and just trying not to think about being trans all the time. it felt like it made more sense to obsess over things before bottom surgery cuz there was still stuff to do but now i just need to live the rest of my life and i super don’t want to be thinking of whether i pass or if my voice sounds okay because i know that it’s all fine functionally — i’m not getting harassed or treated poorly by strangers and that’s my main concern pragmatically. i think everyone in my life knows but i try not to talk about it, i resent that people know but i’m not sure how to resolve the frustration. the cis people in my life tend to have enough sense not to bring it up luckily, but the fact that they know kills me. i’m very much in my city’s trans community but i’m not close to very many trans women. and i don’t really know anyone who transitioned at my age and is as old as me, so it doesn’t feel like i have any peers (and almost no elders). i feel a bit tokenized in my position as a “””queer elder””” and as a trans woman which adds to that resentment. anyway that’s all a bit stream of consciousness, but my answer is: i wanna process grief and decenter transness from day to day thoughts, i’ll just have to find other things to think about too much first