My left leg still hurts. But this is good news. For a change, lately.

Today I switched from oral estrogen supplements (Cenestin®) to intramuscular Delestrogen®. It was something I've wanted to do for some time. Not only because of the much lower long-run cost, but it's harder to miss doses, so PMS will (hopefully) be a rare thing indeed.

Intramuscular injection sounds scary, but it really wasn't a big deal for me. I even did it myself.

Under the guidance of a nurse, I put a special dosing needle on an IM syringe, and cleaned off the opening to the vial with an alcohol pad. Carefully, I slurped out exactly a half a milliliter of tranny dope, being sure to push out all the air pockets and bubbles to the point that a drop came out of the needle tip. Then I put the original IM needle back on the syringe.

The hardest part about the whole thing was actually poking this long metal thing straight down into the top of my left thigh. For the first time. I was a little nervous about it, but the nurse assured me that most people say "Hey, that's not so bad." I did.

I backed the syringe up just a little to make sure I was injecting into a muscle and not a blood vessel (that would be bad), and then slowly pushed the plunger down until all the girly goodness was in my leg muscle. It started to get pretty sore. She said this was normal. I left the building with a slight limp and a smile.

I go back to see the nurse in two weeks to make sure I'm able to do the procedure myself correctly. In the meantime, much fewer pills.

Unless I screw up and hit a blood vessel or two, this tiny, expensive vial (about the size of a very large grape) will supply me with gradually released sex hormone for 20 full weeks.

Posted in hormones by Milla | Post a Comment?

In the course of one day recently (Tuesday the 24th), I was insulted by some punk kid over my shoes two minutes after leaving the apartment, yelled at to "move, goddammit" and called a "badass bitch" by a nice, friendly lady in a wheelchair I didn't even see until hearing her as I walked by. I got lost two times, missed several buses, dropped something heavy along the way I'd bought and been carrying around without realizing it, and I even got read by the cashier who sold it to me. (The handles also eventually tore off the used paper bag he put my purchases in.)

More to the point, not much more than a block away from finally making it home, my rapist drove up and followed me in his car, asking for my name and "new number" (my cell phone is off) despite me not talking to him except to tell him to go away. He eventually left. I turned the wrong way on the street that connects to ours, disoriented by fear and stress.

After I got home, quit crying hysterically, and regained my senses (with the help of a couple shots of rum), I tried to call the detective on that case. When I called, he wasn't in, so I left a voice mail message telling him what happened with Melissa's cell number. He didn't call back. I still haven't been called in to do that in-person suspect lineup. I'm getting fed up with the whole ordeal.

Then I got drunkish on two large, pre-mixed "zombies" on the rocks. I slept for 12 hours that night.

I'm going out to my Anti-Violence Project therapy appointments twice a week now, an hour a session. My next appointment is today at noon, and it's 4AM.

I enjoy the appointments, but if I even make it there today, that'll be doing quite well. (Sorry if I don't, Aleksandra!)

Posted in misc by Milla | Comments (3)

(Warning: New Doctor Who season one and two spoilers follow. No, really!)

Mike and Melissa like to get me hooked on some pretty terrific TV. Most of it's British (or animated), which is no coincidence.

The new Doctor Who series is what we're mostly watching lately. I used to watch the old series with my dad when I was but a wee tranny tot, but I was too young to understand much of it, so it never clicked, and I never started watching it again until starting the new series from episode one a few weeks ago.

In one of the earlier episodes, the doctor and his companion, Rose, meet the apparent "last pure human" some 3000 years from now. She's a transwoman (made clear by lines like "when I was a boy") who's had 700-some surgeries by now, and consists of a face and skin stretched out like a trampoline, occasionally misted with moisturizers by her assistants to keep her alive.

I had a lot of reservations about this villain-ish character, but they were misplaced.

She reappears in another episode, and after some well-written science fiction-y action and drama, the Doctor and Rose take her (now in the body of her new, dying assistant) back through time and space to a time somewhere around now, when she still appeared human (and gorgeous at that), socializing in a ritzy, upper-class nightclub.

Okay, looong setup. Anyhoo. Just after finally admitting it's time for her to pass on, and traveling to this place and time, she addresses her younger self and tells her she's beautiful. Her younger self has the same expression I would have in the same situation, with pleasant surprise and slight guilt. And I started to cry.

It was another reminder that I concentrate so much on scrubbing the boy off me (like I'm doing between paragraphs with an epilator) that I overlook the girl, both inside and out, that has already emerged.

She's beautiful, both inside and out.

And I'm still scrubbing.

Posted in epilation, hindsight, transition by Milla | Post a Comment?

We Unitarians love our food.

As a (now formerly unofficial) member of the Unitarian Universalist church that Mike, Melissa, and I usually attend, Melissa and I did the cooking for a handful of Wednesday "Community Nights" over the winter and spring, where church members or any other folks could come in and have a large, decent meal for a suggested donation of five dollars.

As none of us drive, we liked to buy the ingredients and such at a certain local supermarket that offers delivery for a fee. This makes it possible to buy the large quantities needed and still shop for ourselves and not break our backs carrying it all home. The church would reimburse us, but we tried to ask for less than we spent unless money was particularly tight.

On the third anniversary of my starting hormone supplements (3/10/08), we bought all we needed and scheduled a delivery. A few hours later, a delivery man came by and carried everything upstairs for us.

Okay. *sigh* I think I'm ready to write about this now.

While Melissa was downstairs, outside on the sidewalk near his car, he carried a few plastic bags in through the apartment's front door, and saw me lying down on my bed through my door, exhausted. He greeted me and I came out of my room.

"Um, just leave them here," I said, both of us right by the front door.

He smiled at me. "Ooo.. muy bonita (very pretty)! Hablas Espaňol? Muy bonita!"

"Thank you," I replied, flattered, "No, no hablo mucho Espaňol." I only took two years of Spanish in high school.

He was cute, and he wanted to go out with me. As our relationship at Casa 3M is open, and I found him attractive and friendly, I agreed, and we exchanged phone numbers. He left.

I explained all this to M&M. They seemed surprised, but okay with it. He called me later on asking me in broken English (his English was slightly better than my Spanish) to call him at 10:15 because he got off work at 10. He called me again at 10:14 and said he was waiting outside. I grabbed my purse, said bye, and went downstairs and outside. I got in his car. It was dark out.

As soon as I closed the door he immediately got frisky with me. He started unbuttoning my long wool coat and grabbing my breasts, both through and then beneath my velvet blouse. I got really uneasy. I pulled his hand away. "No, no." After a failed attempt at communication, and another "no, I don't do that on the first date," (no means the same thing in either language), he started back up again and even started trying to stick his hand down the front of my jeans.

Fuck. I was afraid, especially of what might happen when he found something he wasn't expecting, however diminutive and nonfunctional. I wanted to run, but I was afraid of what he might have in the car, or what he might do. I was giving in.

There were people about in the neighborhood now, so he drove a short distance to a quieter, darker, more secluded area. He pulled my hand over to his lap and rubbed it. I pulled it away and looked at him. He started sticking his hand down my jeans again and I panicked. To reduce the risk of getting hurt or killed, I tried my best to explain to him in Spanish "yo soy transsexuale." Sure, that's not specific, or even entirely accurate, but that wasn't the point. He didn't understand, but didn't react much at all when he finally did come upon my Something Extra.

He pulled my hand back. He opened his pants, and put his hand behind my head and pulled it down towards his lap. After he was satisfied, he leaned back for a moment and starting driving again.

"Adonde vamos?" I asked, nervous and numb at the same time. (Where are we going?) "Do you want to go dance?"

He seemed amused I'd asked in Spanish. He said, "No, no." And without another word, drove back around the block and stopped at the apartment.

After some mild relationship drama before I told M&M what had really happened, and brief reactive psychosis on my part (including a good half hour bawl), I called a rape crisis line and they told me to go to a nearby ER. M&M went with me and made the whole ER experience a lot less horrible.

A rapekit was done by an obviously untrained nurse (with the constant verbal assistance of my advocate) and my blouse was taken for evidence. I was asked some questions by a cop and a detective, and six hours or so after checking in, around 6-7AM, we left the hospital and had "breakfast" at a diner and came home. My memory following this incident is very fuzzy, and I functioned very poorly for some time.

I didn't end up getting additional doses of prophylactic drugs either (as required by Illinois state law), but that's a story for another time. And happily, according to testing, I probably didn't catch anything from him anyway.

As a victim of violence, I'm receiving free intensive therapy (one hour twice a week) at a local LGBT clinic.

The investigation is still ongoing. My assailant gave me a false name. He tried to call me several times on two different occasions. The detective got a subpoena on his cell number. Right now I'm waiting to do a second line up, in person this time, and the DNA test could could take years.

As a gender variant woman, statistically speaking, I had an 80% chance of being the victim of assault at least once in my lifetime. I didn't expect it to be quite like that, though.

Posted in misc, news, relationships, sexuality by Milla | Comments (9)