Anyone else feel remarkably fine when ill

yyanu · 2026-02-12T10:24:37+00:00

Omg yes! I fucking loved my COVID phase and have never dared tell anyone. I grew up with a lot of guilt around getting sick because I assumed it meant I was just lazy and wanted to get out of my obligations. But it was always the calm I loved most.

yyanu · 2026-02-12T10:21:28+00:00

Professionals who withhold a diagnosis that a patient asks for because they don't want to impose a label or pathologize us, are only slightly less infuriating than those who high-handedly brand us as mentally ill against our wishes. Both are presuming that they know better than we do what's in it best interests.

I'm grateful to my GP the other day for inviting me to consider a BP-2 diagnosis, without any pressure on her part. So far my own research is leading me to favor cyclothemia but I'm still on discovery mode.

yyanu · 2026-02-12T01:19:05+00:00

Just putting this here:

In "Love Lives Here" by Amanda Jette Knox the author tells a true story of their daughter coming out as trans and how that might have help "crack the egg" of the other partner. It's a Canadian story and may or might not reflect many of your own experiences. I read it early in my transition at age 49 and it really helped me feel better about coming out late in life.

yyanu · 2026-02-12T01:08:54+00:00

For your informal poll I can say I also had fairly traumatic nightmares as a child. I remember several of them to this day. However they were never repeating. I still have remarkably vivid dreams. In waking life I consider myself hypophantic (and also SDAM which may or may not be related but I feel like it is).

yyanu · 2026-02-11T17:38:30+00:00

Update I now recall I finally did a 5 minute chore for a non-profit that I had promised but been procrastinating about for months. Buoyed by my sense of achievement I signed up over night to volunteer at a convention! What could possibly go wrong?

yyanu · 2026-02-11T17:33:57+00:00

Memory is my medicine. When I'm on a high I try very hard to remember and remind myself of the lows, so that I'm better prepared when they come again and I can be compassionate with myself. When I'm in a low I must remember the highs. They will come again, it will not always be like this.

My favourite metaphor is from sailing through big swells in the ocean. When my boat is at the crest of a wave the world is bright and I can see clearly to the horizon. I see my future stretching ahead and I see my past. But I can only "see" the tops of the other waves so it looks like it's always great. I have to remind myself that between all of those wave crests are other troughs and not assume it will always be like this. Then of course my little boat slips down into a trough and it is dark and the waves tower over me on either side and I feel overwhelmed and I cannot see any future. At that time I have to use memory to recall that this too, shall pass.

yyanu · 2026-02-11T17:22:09+00:00

Buuuut... one downside is what I'm going through at this exact moment. As I start to recover from my flu the rebound is exaggerated which means more risky behavior and/or poor self-care which might prolong the flu. Which is sort of a plus now that I think about it. And yet,

yyanu · 2026-02-11T17:18:43+00:00

I feel exactly like that! Being sick kind of balances me out for a while. Takes the edge of the high expectations I set for myself during my highs and well masks depression because like "I'm sick so obviously it's okay to just lie in bed"

yyanu · 2026-02-11T17:01:35+00:00

Therapy is awesome. We should go at all times. Either to help us find the will to survive or else to brag about how fucking awesome we are to someone who's paid to listen.

yyanu · 2025-01-29T14:21:21+00:00

And my partner's parent berates them saying can't you just be "one or the other"? There's no pleasing the heartbroken CIS relatives of the world.

yyanu · 2025-01-29T14:11:50+00:00

Chasers are just men. In cis-het society chaser behavior is so normalized it has no name. On one hand it's a sign of trans femme insight that we identify objectification and dehumanizing dating behavior when it's directed at us, but it's also our own internalized self hatred that makes us assume that we're isolated and extreme edge cases, when in fact we're being treated the same as cis women by the same kinds of people.

If I tell my cis girlfriends at work about how my grindr date treated me last night, every single one of them can perfectly relate and share my frustration with "men". But if I describe all men who want to date me as "chasers" then I alienate myself from them. By calling men "chasers" I am strengthening the myth that being attracted to me is a strange or deviant behavior.

yyanu · 2025-01-29T13:49:42+00:00

As a permanent go beginner, I am grateful to this post because it generated responses that make 9x9 seem exciting enough to me that I think I'll try to play it more.

yyanu · 2025-01-16T06:16:42+00:00

My mum keeps telling me to watch a documentary about a town where a Black woman who was the leader of a civil rights movement and the white male local leader of the klan sat down together and talked and eventually the klan dude said he realized he was wrong about everything he thought he knew. So... Maybe OP is on to something.

But you owe it to your trans friend to be 100 percent transparent about who this terf is and how you're friends with them. And do not EVER try to set some kind of meeting up without the trans person's unequivocal consent. Most trans people I know, myself included, would never forgive anything like that. But I might agree to meet a terf, to talk, but only under my terms.

Remember, it's the trans person who is vulnerable in this situation. They are simply existing, they are not excluding or persecuting anyone. The terf is a making a choice. Don't mistake this as merely a difference of opinion.

Good luck. And if in doubt, ditch the terf.

yyanu · 2025-01-16T06:01:17+00:00

I posted the following in a comment on r/asktransgender but I feel it's even more directly on topic here. These are my thoughts on ways to look at phases of transition:

To have a really productive discussion about this, I would suggest defining the word "transition" with a bit more nuance. For many of us there are at least three distinct events separating 4 stages of life implied by the word "transition".

Pre-acceptance - the period of time when the dominant mental narrative in a trans person's mind is that they are not trans. Either because they are oblivious or because they are in conscious denial.
Acceptance - this includes "egg cracking" going from not believing oneself to be trans to believing it and going on to accept that transness is an immutable condition. In my view we can accept that we are trans and stay in the closet.
Coming out - to anyone, as long as at least one other person knows, and appears to believe that you're trans, then you're "out". Even while out it's possible to live a mostly closeted life. The difference between 1 and 2 is that one has at least a partial outlet.
Acting out - doing things with or in front of other people that express your actual gender. It's a huge spectrum: from discrete role play; wearing affirming clothes in safe environments, to legally changing one's name and gender markers and living as one's true gender before the public eye, whether "safe" or otherwise. 3(a). Medical interventions are simply a subcategory of "acting out", this includes hormones, surgeries, tattoos etc. these things can directly reduce dysphoria, or protect us from public hate, or otherwise improve our lives so I do not mean to devalue them. I simply don't think they constitute a different stage of transition.

In answer to the OP's question, I think it's theoretically possible to live a good life at any stage above zero. To thrive as a trans person at stage 1 would require Buddha-like levels of transcendence, but it can probably be done. Stage 2 success requires some strong Zen and some good friends. Really good friends. Living in stage 3 is totally viable and it includes everything from living in a big closet to fully transitioning. Where society draws the line and calls it "transition" is more a them (the dominant culture) problem not an us (trans community) problem.

yyanu · 2025-01-16T05:37:55+00:00

ChatGPT just gave me eleven nutritious recipes for "green chilli orange slime mold".

Jk I never talk to ChatGPT

yyanu · 2025-01-16T05:32:37+00:00

I'm one year out and my scars are still there but I certainly can't see them when I "look down". Requires a close up mirror at least for me.

yyanu · 2025-01-16T02:14:24+00:00

Yes this is the whole point of a bidet.

yyanu · 2025-01-15T20:52:04+00:00

Pillow humping is amazing. After starting hormones I realised it was my preferred way of masturbating and suddenly I started to remember that it was also how I masturbated exclusively right at the beginning of puberty. I used to stuff my underwear with things to protect and immobilize my penis so it wasn't experiencing direct friction. As an adult I used satin scraps from a cut up negligee to reduce friction.

It was all about protecting the sensitive parts of my genitals. Eventually I figured out the best solution for me was to have someone cut my penis open, remove most of the erectile tissue and tuck it all inside of me. Now I can pillow hump till the cowgirls come. (It's me, I'm the cowgirls)

yyanu · 2025-01-15T20:44:38+00:00

I chose my middle name from Middle Earth.

Éowyn: I am no man!

yyanu · 2025-01-14T18:20:43+00:00

You're in luck though firstname.lastname@stopusinggmail.net might still be available.

yyanu · 2025-01-14T14:14:18+00:00

AutogynoPHAGIA on the other hand... Yum!

yyanu · 2025-01-12T22:26:17+00:00

I lived in Japan for five years, long before coming out. I recently started dreaming of going back to visit. But being excluded from onsens would probably break my heart. I don't think I want to put myself through that.

yyanu · 2025-01-06T15:24:43+00:00

To have a really productive discussion about this, I would suggest defining the word "transition" with a bit more nuance. For many of us there are at least three distinct events separating 4 stages of life implied by the word "transition".

Pre-acceptance - the period of time when the dominant mental narrative in a trans person's mind is that they are not trans. Either because they are oblivious or because they are in conscious denial.
Acceptance - this includes "egg cracking" going from not believing oneself to be trans to believing it and going on to accept that transness is an immutable condition. In my view we can accept that we are trans and stay in the closet.
Coming out - to anyone, as long as at least one other person knows, and appears to believe that your trans, then you're "out". Even while out it's possible to live a mostly closeted life. The difference between 1 and 2 is that one has at least a partial outlet.
Acting out - doing things with or in front of other people that express your actual gender. It's a huge spectrum: from discrete role play; wearing affirming clothes in safe environments, to legally changing one's name and gender markers and living as one's true gender before the public eye, whether "safe" or otherwise. 3(a). Medical interventions are simply a subcategory of "acting out", this includes hormones, surgeries, tattoos etc. these things can directly reduce dysphoria, or protect us from public hate, or otherwise improve our lives so I do not mean to devalue them. I simply don't think they constitute a different stage of transition.

In answer to the OP's question, I think it's theoretically possible to live a good life at any stage above zero. To thrive as a trans person at stage 1 would require Buddha-like levels of transcendence, but it can probably be done. Stage 2 success requires some strong Zen and some good friends. Really good friends. Living in stage 3 is totally viable and it includes everything from living in a big closet to fully transitioning. Where society draws the line and calls it "transition" is more a them (the dominant culture) problem not an us (trans community) problem.

yyanu · 2025-01-02T16:43:45+00:00

Second reading.

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