Further thoughts on transitioning

It’s been a while. Three years ago this month, I took my first dose of hormone replacement therapy. Two and a half years ago, I took to my grandstand for the first time and wrote my first essay the same day as I introduced myself. And it felt like time to share some thoughts, check in and tell you (dear reader) what I’ve learnt.

But - again - first, the headlines. My name is Morgan, and at the time of writing, I am a 30 year old not-so recently hatched trans woman living in London. This post is somewhat self indulgent, but I think it might be helpful if you know me, if you’re trans and you’re somewhere on this journey yourself, if you’re friends with another trans person that you’re trying to support, or if you’re a teacher, a health care worker, a politician or anyone else who can influence the lives of trans people (one or many). As ever, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

And a reminder before you read that trans experiences are not universal. I’m only qualified to tell you about mine. And, with that in mind, here’s what I wish I knew three years ago.

Hormonal transition is only the start.

I initially saw my transition as a project - a project with a deadline. I planned every minutiae, because I am a planner. And my plan ended on the day I published my last blog post, came out to the world, sent off my passport renewal form and became Morgan. In retrospect, I couldn’t have been more wrong about that end date.

It’s only now, some two and a half years later, that I really feel truly comfortable in my own skin. There’s so much more to learn and figure out about the world and your own place in it after you emerge from a transition - how to feel comfortable each day, how to interact with other people, how to present to the world in the way you want to be perceived. That’s where the real work begins and where the real challenges lie.

The public can be awful.

One month after I transitioned socially, in the midst of our COVID enforced lockdown, I went out for a walk. I was on my own, minding my own business, looking at the light interplaying with the branches of the trees. A car pulled up alongside me on the almost empty road, driving at the same pace as I walked. I heard the mechanical whirring of the window being pulled down. A cisgender woman, about my age, stared at me out of the window. “Go kill yourself, freak.” She sped away. I bought AirPods that day, and I didn’t leave the house without them in and blaring music loud enough to shut out the world for another year.

Walking home from work one evening about a year and a half ago, a child pulled out my sleeve. He couldn’t have been more than ten or eleven years old, and I was worried about him. Maybe he was lost or needed some kind of help. I took out my AirPod. “You’re a man, and you always will be.” If we teach the young to hate, they will. If we teach the young to love and accept, they’ll do that instead.

On a cold November night last year, on the way back from the cinema, a small group of men started following me. My music blaring, I didn’t notice until it was too late. They pushed me to the ground, leaving only bruises in their wake and stealing nothing. I don’t know if it was a transphobic attack, but if it wasn’t, why did they leave me with all of my possessions intact? I turned down the volume on my AirPods. I avoid the darker streets.

You’ll lose people you thought you wouldn’t.

When I presented as a man, I was a different person. Isolated, insular, shy, incredibly socially awkward. That’s not who I am anymore. A lot of those closest to me back then valued those traits - perhaps shared some of them too. If you change the very fundamentals of who you are, you can’t expect to keep the interest of the people who valued who you were. And that’s OK. You don’t need to bring everyone along on the journey.

Some people disappeared seemingly overnight, a hard cut off. Some drifted into the vast caverns of time, re-emerging every once in a while to check-in. That can be nice. Some reconnected immediately after the news, only to disappear again after their curiosity was satiated. That’s OK too. It’s all fine because it has to be, but also because it provides some implicit evidence that this is working, that the changes you feel are seen and perceived, that you are truly becoming a newer, better, improved version of yourself. It’ll take a while, but as you build yourself back up, you’ll find new people later down the line.

You’re going to be a teenager again. Forgive yourself.

When you start hormone replacement therapy, you know you’re in for a second puberty. For me, this sounded incredibly exciting - truly like the best thing in the world - redistributing and moving fat around my face and body to give me more feminine, beautiful features - great! Forming breasts - exciting! No longer being at risk of losing all my hair - incredible.

But being a teenager is also an angst filled anxiety pit, and a second puberty really does give you that too in spades. That queazy feeling in the pit of your stomach when you think about certain things and people? Back. Worrying so much about how you’re perceived that sometimes you can’t bare the thought of leaving bed? Back. That awkward energy that teenagers have in their social interactions when the hormones first kick in that make them jumpy and fidgety and over-eager-to-please? You’d better believe it’s back, baby.

There were days, particularly in the first couple years or so, where it really did feel like the hormones were in charge of me rather than the other way around. Thankfully, just like the first puberty, the storm has now mostly settled - but there’s a lot of waves to weather, and they ripple around everyone you know.

At first, it’s a performance.

If I never see a bottle of ultra-high coverage matte foundation again, it’ll be too soon. I wore ultra-high coverage matte foundation to go to the supermarket and get a sandwich. I wore ultra-high coverage matte foundation to make a FaceTime call. I wore ultra-high coverage matte foundation to go downstairs with the rubbish.

And when you can’t leave the house without ultra-high coverage matte foundation, a make-up routine that takes an hour or so on a good day, the temptation is there to simply not leave the house at all. Discarded theatre tickets, cancelled plans and days in bed for ‘mental health’ become quickly commonplace, because unless you can be the very best version of your most feminine self, you don’t deserve to leave the house goddammit. You’re letting team trans down.

Performing femininity becomes an obsession. I didn’t wear trousers for the first year - spending my winter freezing in mini skirts and semi-opaque tights, dressing not for myself but to prove the world wrong. Every occasion deserves a dress, every event requires heels (and going to the shops IS an event). By the end of the day I looked into the mirror and saw my face literally melting off so covered in poorly set ultra-high coverage matte foundation it was. But at least I’d tried. I’d shown the world. I’d been the best and most feminine disaster that London had ever seen. And I had the three or four outfit changes to prove it.

Sometimes, you’ll feel like a threat. You’re not.

If every day you wake up to a Twitter feed, an endless stream of news, that tells you you’re a threat to society in general - to other women in particular, there are some days where you’ll truly believe it. Or at least, you’ll believe that’s what everyone else believes.

In the early days, so eager you are to make it incredibly clear that you’re not going to harm anyone, you cross the road whenever you see someone walking towards you on a footpath. You dart across the road, zig-zagging about on every walk that you undertake (honestly, if this is universal, transgender women early in their transition are probably more likely to be killed in road traffic accidents).

In an attempt to appear reassuringly non-threatening, you’ll construct the most impossible logic traps. “Want to grab a drink?” becomes “Hey - I was thinking - and truly only if you want to and you’d like to and it wouldn’t be a problem for you and absolutely just as friends - it might be nice to maybe go and get a drink at some point?” The irony is that your attempts to seem safe and sane will make you seem ever-so-slightly unhinged. Until you learn the art of simple, direct communication, you’ll always feel a little on the back foot. It’s a trap that - even now - you find yourself falling into.

But the reality is you’re not a threat, you never were. And the people that matter to you have always known it.

There are days you’ll question your own reality.

I remember standing, looking square at myself in the mirror and seeing the reflection of the me of the past. “This is who you really are”, my brain seemed to tell me. It’d been a tough week mentally - a few too many stares on the tube, one awful comment, a bad week at work. And I seriously considered whether I had the strength, the gumption to carry on. Whether it might be easier just to go back to the simple yet depressing life I had before.

Transitioning is really hard and like anything worth doing, people have second thoughts and moments where clarity is lost along the way. Particularly for those without a support network, without people to turn to and talk to, it can be really easy to throw in the towel. I love my life now, I love who I am and I would never turn back the clock. But in the first year or so, I thought about it - seriously, properly genuinely thought about it. Five or six times. I’m glad I didn’t listen to my brain.

It gets easier.

Eventually, the performance ends. You wake up, brush your teeth, put on some (much lighter) make-up, get dressed and go about your day. You don’t pass all of the time, but you pass reliably enough that nobody is going to clock you from a speeding car, from across the road. There are days that you feel attractive, beautiful, hot even. People have called you these things, and you’re starting to believe them.

The news cycle bothers you a little less each day now. It’s noise, and you’re learning to filter it out. The people who are close to you - who care about you and who love you - don’t believe any of that bullshit. And if they don’t believe it, why should you? Your femininity is an embodiment of who you are as a person, of how you carry yourself, of how you perceive the world. But it’s not performative anymore. You’re making the choices you want to make. Your favourite perfume is unisex and musky and it smells fucking incredible from across the room and it doesn’t have to come in a pink bottle with a pom pom and be endorsed by Ariana Grande. It’s you. It’s a part of who you are.

You fall over less in heels. It’s rare that you have to re-do your lipstick again because you’re getting pretty good at drawing within the lines. You don’t need to put on foundation to take out the bins - or ever, actually. You have great skin and it doesn’t require full coverage. You don’t feel a need to disclose your identity to every single person you meet anymore - just to those you want to bring into that circle. Some days, your trans-ness feels like a huge part of who you are and other days it fades away. It’s becoming just that little bit less relevant to your day to day decisions.

And just as people left your life, new people enter it. They fill it with support and love. With joy and laughter. With beauty and hope. They refill your heart and give you purpose. You enjoy beautiful meals, explore new corners of the world, see new shows and art together. And when something goes wrong, you know they’re there to pick up the phone, just as they know you’re there too.

You haven’t thought about de-transition in nearly two years.

But it’s still not over. You’re still a work in progress.

I still don’t know when my transition will be ‘over’, or if it ever will be. I think I want to get top surgery to round out my slightly-too-conical-for-me breasts. I’m on a wait list for bottom surgery. I’ve got a few sessions of electrolysis left to root out those pesky white hairs that the laser hair removal left behind on my face. And whilst I’ve shed much of the physical weight of more than a decade of dysphoria and depression, there’s more to do there too. After all of that, I’ll be pretty much physically done with transition (at least one person will literally murder me if I do anything to my face).

But mentally? I’m not sure if transition ever ends. I made a decision early on that I didn’t want to be ‘stealth’, to hide who I was or my origins from the world. Some people do an incredible job at that, but it’s not me. I don’t think it ever could be, and even if it could I wouldn’t want it to. Being open, honest and vulnerable is the only way I know how to do this. That won’t change.

Some notes of thanks.

I finished my last post with some thanks for those I told before I came out to the world. Today, I’d like to close by thanking those that have been there for me since. I won’t name you - because if you’ve read this far and you resonate with any of it you know who you are.

But if you’ve talked me down when I’ve been scared about some new piece of legislation or something in the news - thank you. If you’ve comforted me when the intolerable has happened - thank you. If you’ve built me up and made me truly believe that I am worthy of being loved, of being wanted or of being desired - thank you, and know that I love you too.

Thoughts on transitioning

I mean, who doesn't love a good mid-life crisis? In just a few days, I turn 28 years old, but I'll also be celebrating my first birthday as myself as I accept and embrace my transgender identity, and live as the person I think I've kind-of-sort-of-always known myself to be.

This post is unapologetically long - it serves mostly as an act of self-indulgent journaling - to share a story I've only rarely been able to talk about, to answer questions I imagine that those around me might have as I post about all of this on the myriad of social media sites that need to be updated and to clear my mind as I move to the next, truest stage of my life.

But first, the headlines. My name is Morgan, and at the time of writing, I am a 27 year old recently hatched trans woman living in London.

Also, what follows is all going to be very much the perspective of someone transitioning from male to female. It's just the lens through which I view the world.

When did this all start?

Answering this question feels like the easiest place to start, but the answer isn't necessarily the simplest thing to explain because, in some ways, the answer is forever ago but in others, it's only been a year or so. And I appreciate if you're reading this and you're not of transgender experience, it'll be hard for some of this stuff to make any sense at all. But let me try to explain.

From a very young age, I was infatuated with the idea of being a girl. It didn't make sense to me that girls got to wear the prettier clothes or be more emotionally open. I didn't understand or subscribe to any masculine ideals. I always hated sports. I didn't want to participate in any form of rough and tumble. And - let's be clear. Girls can play sports. Boys can wear dresses (Harry Styles proved that in Vogue just this month). But it was more than that in a way that's quite hard to put your finger on, quite hard to explain.

Before I knew transition was even an option, before I knew the word transgender, I would constantly think to myself "Wouldn't it be so much better if I just turned into a girl?". I thought that everyone must surely have these thoughts because being a girl was clearly superior. Realising this wasn't something everyone thought was one of the biggest turning points in my acceptance of myself.

I've always felt a sense of incongruence with my body. This got worse and worse through puberty. I didn't like the changes that were happening to me. I experimented with changing how I looked. I even experimented with very occasional forays into women's clothing. I often felt guilty about this, or like it was something I should be ashamed of.

This even led to instances where I felt it necessary to construct complex scenarios which only further perpetuated that shame and more deeply entrenched my confusion - the less that's said about that, the better really.

On many occasions I tried to suppress all of this back down and try to be "normal". After all, the media I'd seen depicting transgender people almost invariably suggested abhorrence and shame, something to be afraid or wary of. And information was hard to come by, and often where it did exist overtly sexualised which served only to confuse me further.

I bedded down and plunged every fibre of my being into my career, with the confusion that occasionally surfaced being suppressed or obfuscated at will and remaining willfully defiant of the little voice inside my head that knew this path was ultimately inevitable.

Looking back, my struggle post-puberty is pretty clear to see. I struggled to form lasting interpersonal relationships. I gained a ridiculous amount of weight and ate compulsively, behaviours I am only now truly starting to be able to kick. I grew to consider myself professionally accomplished, but unattractive and unworthy of partners or relationships. Despite being well paid, I even made impulsive spending decisions to the point that I have flirted with debt.

The trouble with denying yourself your own reality is it's a little like putting a cap on a volcano or trying to dam a flooding river, I guess. Ultimately, once the genie is out of the bottle, it can only stay there for so long.

Discovering transition

The internet has a long history, so I know that I first properly researched what it would take to change gender - thanks to a collection of discarded email drafts and Google notes - about ten years ago. At the time, the barriers seemed insurmountable.

Wait lists even then were spiralling out of control at the UK's Gender Identity Clinics - horrendously underfunded in this country. To provide an (incredibly potted) genetics lesson, the act of medically transitioning for Male-to-Female transgender people requires:

• A steady supply of HRT, to increase the level of estrogen pumping through your veins and rid yourself of the mentally incompatible testosterone - resulting in changes to hair growth, fat distribution, the development of breasts, reduction in muscle mass and similar life-long effects

• Laser or electrolysis hair removal - Whilst HRT reduces hair growth on the body, it does precious little for the face - so courses of laser hair removal are required to get rid

• Vocal therapy - if you transition post-puberty, HRT cannot fix the damage that has been done to your voice - so either voice coaching and therapy or a tracheal shave (not typically available in the United Kingdom) is required

• Gender reassignment surgery - the construction of a neo-vagina from the existing biologically male material performed by a qualified surgeon - this also removes the need to block testosterone production, reducing side effects

• Breast augmentation surgery and other cosmetic procedures like facial feminisation surgery - where the HRT hasn't done a 'good' enough job

Some people choose not to do any of this - and it doesn't make them any less transgender.

A decade ago, when I first started looking at what it would actually take to make my body match my brain, the wait list just to speak to someone at a GIC was two years.

Then, before HRT was issued, a year of 'lived experience' would be required - this would mean living as a woman without any medical intervention - an unthinkable proposition that I felt could have led to me losing my job and career. There was an unknown wait for anything else. Hair removal, vocal therapy, breast augmentation and other cosmetic procedures would likely not be covered at all.

So, I did the only thing I could. Convince myself I wasn't transgender. Get back into my box. Occasionally explode out of it. Research some more. See the situation was the same or worse. Get back into the box again.

The turning point

A year or so ago, things started moving again. At this stage, I had repressed any acceptance that I was transgender deep, deep down inside. But last New Years Eve, I found myself in New York, attending Sleep No More presenting entirely female. This wasn't a 'slap on a costume store dress' affair - I had planned.

I had learned to walk in heels (though, it turns out not entirely well enough for a seven-hour masked immersive show and costume party), I had purchased shapewear, I had done my nails. I had even had my eyebrows shaped. I carefully choreographed the whole thing, got on a plane to New York and walked out of my hotel room into the unknown.

What happened that night was transformative. For the first time in a very long time outside of a professional context, I felt seen. Despite my (very) male voice and what was I guarantee you not a high-quality contour, I felt confident. I was able to talk to strangers. I interacted with the performers. I got a tarot card reading from one of them who gave me a new name.

I felt a sense of happiness and euphoria that I had never felt before. Everything felt right that night. Even when, at 2am, there were no taxis in the whole of Manhattan, and I had to walk (barefoot, the six-inch monsters I had foolishly selected in my hand) I felt invincible. This all seemed right. It all seemed perfect. I collapsed in the bed in my hotel room.

The next morning, I wiped the make-up off my face. I got dressed in my drudgy male clothes. I headed home, still too afraid to act, still trying to logic myself out of what I think I already knew. Fearful of what it would mean for work, what it would mean for my interpersonal relationships, afraid what my family would think.

I got back into my box. But I had booked a trip to return less than 10 weeks later. And I found myself back at Sleep No More, dressed in more modest footwear, the week before the pandemic that made the world stand still. I came home, slipped back into my reality and started to feel as if I was losing control.

Over the top

I had started frequenting trans subreddits on the regular, soaking up as much information as I could. The pandemic - whilst initially shocking - began to feel like an opportunity. Time away from the office meant time to get some therapy, start on HRT, take up voice therapy with minimal impact on my work. I didn't fear losing my job in the same way as I always had before. And frankly, I was at breaking point.

At this stage, not doing this wasn't an option anymore. After several therapy sessions, on the 5th of July, I disclosed my transgender identity to my GP.

The wait to see a gender identity clinic in the UK is now likely close to five years. Laser hair removal, vocal therapy, breast augmentation and cosmetic treatments are still not covered. The wait for gender reassignment surgery could be as many as eight or nine years.

Thankfully - in no small part because I spent the last decade diving headfirst into my career at the expense of all else and burrowing my head in the sand - I have relatively considerable means. Whilst I'm certainly not rich, I have been able to - partially with the help of family - fund my private diagnosis and treatment plan (approx. £500/year), my laser hair removal (£900) and my vocal therapy (£1,200).

I have also been incredibly lucky to have found Babylon GP at Hand who have been an incredible ally and entered into a shared care agreement to ensure I can still get NHS prescriptions and blood tests.

Gender reassignment surgery - on the other hand - costs about £25,000 to £30,000 privately - so unless a mysterious benefactor appears, or I find myself in a more progressive country (seemingly almost everywhere in the western world but here) - I will have to wait a while longer for that.

But for now, I have the medication I need, my medical transition is on-going (the full effects take years) and I now have the confidence to step out into the world as my true self for the first time.

A note on trans rights in the UK

My good fortune is not mirrored by all. I think it is abhorrent that wait lists in this country have been allowed to escalate to the level they have. Basic necessities like laser hair removal and vocal therapy are not routinely funded. It's really hard to get shared care. And the cost of private diagnosis can be cripplingly high.

These policies create a hostile environment for transgender people to live their lives safely, and petty and unnecessary arguments about hypothetical bathroom scenarios and almost entirely unfounded fears are being allowed to pollute discourse in this country around a minorities rights in a way that I cannot fully comprehend.

I am more than £3,000 in the hole just for the right to live as my true self. And I am one of the "lucky ones".

Trans women are women.Trans men are men.

To disagree with these simple statements of fact - to claim that the people of my community are predators or threats or that we should 'go and use the disabled toilet' - is in my mind no different to the hateful politics of segregation.

I hope and believe that we can all be better and more compassionate than this. I hope that we can recognise that biology is not an untraversable line around which identity cannot transcend. I hope that on this issue, our country will ultimately land on the right side of history.

Some notes of thanks

I'm nearly done waffling on I promise - but it'd be remiss of me not to thank everyone that I've told already for your compassion and support.

Everyone has been wonderful - from friends told over Facebook messages in lieu of real-life meetings mid-pandemic, to managers briefed on the niceties of transition over Pizza Express, to colleagues picking up the slack so I can now take this month away to work on my presentation and let the heat die down. In particular, thank you to those who knew before I did and helped me to accept myself.

Once you've come out as trans, you never stop coming out. So whether like my parents you find out in an unfortunately loud cocktail bar, or like my brother in the living room, or like you, today, on social media - your support and compassion is appreciated and means the world. I'm always genuinely happy to connect and answer your questions.

I'm not the brave one

A final note, then. Of the people I've told so far, everyone has been overwhelmingly positive and supportive. I've been told several times that I am brave for doing this, for living as myself, for coming out. The truth is, I'm not the brave one.

I have delayed my transition until I was financially stable, in a good job, with a strong support network and with the ability to tackle this head-on without worrying about my own personal safety. I have taken as few risks as possible and enjoyed many of the advantages of being a "cis straight man" during my early career.

The brave ones are the teenagers who know they're trans and live in unsupportive households and are thinking of coming out today. The brave ones are the trans people that live in countries where coming out isn't an option. The brave ones are the people like me a decade ago, only just discovering the vocabulary and fighting an internal battle. The brave ones are the people that transitioned at school, or without knowing they'd have a job after. Frankly, even people outside the M25 are braver than me.

If you're reading this and you're one of those brave souls, take inspiration and courage from proudly and openly trans people - Laverne Cox, the Wachowski sisters, Sarah McBride, NikkieTutorials. Watch great trans YouTubers like Samantha Lux, Maya Henry and Sam Collins.

But above all else, whatever your situation, allow me - at the very start of journey a decade or more in the making to close out with an oft-repeated, but still accurate cliche. It gets better. Really. I promise it does.