On being trans

I’ve been on HRT for two years now, and I feel a need to write. So here’s some small insight into my feelings.
Sometimes I feel great. I put in the effort for appearances. I can almost believe I look good.
Sometimes I feel crap. As though no matter how much effort I put in cannot repair how I was made. Cannot make me appear female.
Sometimes I pass. I get addressed correctly. Whether as a genuine pass, or just a well meaning Stranger.
Sometimes I completely fail. Getting ‘sir’ed. Getting ‘he’ed. Those send me down.
Even the best and worse days can turn on a dime depending on how I get addressed.
And yet I don’t want to draw attention to myself by making a fuss. Especially to people who likely won’t see me again – coffee shop baristas, restaurant waiters etc. Yes I’ve been sir’ed in a Costa before. I don’t blame the workers. But it does cause a dip.
Sometimes I’m ok with how my body appears. Sometimes I really really am not. Some days I wake up and think I can pull an outfit off. Some days I wake up and just want to get rid of certain parts by any means necessary.
Sometimes people are genuinely nice. Smiling or whatever when we pass in the street. Other times they stare. Or kids laugh.
Kids can be the best or the worst. They don’t have the awareness of how to hold their tongues. Divide internal thoughts from external speech. This is very much a double-edged sword.
I need to work on my voice. But doing so solo means listening back to recordings to make sure I’m up in the right range. It’s a rare day that I can stomach doing that. It’s improved after the speech therapy I had a while back… but it’s not quite there yet. It’s still got a fair chunk of resonance even when trying to speak from the mouth.
My body hair is a nightmare. It always has been. My facial hair is better after the funding for some hair removal sessions. But it’s still not great. I need to look in to funding. But that means actually confronting the problem.
A lot of my issues – working on voice, keeping body/facial hair under control stem from what I call the pain of action. Doing something about it is a painful thing – the act of face shaving, the act of voice training – is a constant reminder that if all was right I wouldn’t have to go through this. The pain of inaction, of doing nothing, however is different because by not doing something about it it in some ways makes it easier to ignore… or atleast not actively think about. It’s a defence mechanism, however self-defeating it is. By not taking action you don’t have to actively think about, actively concentrate on the problem. It’s just there as a consistent background noise that to some extent you can tune out.