My gender changed today

[Taylor Lilith]

I am agender for about 2 to 4 months at a time. I switched from female to agender on January the 4th ish.  I'm more likely to change when I'm stressed, my boss told me, "I'm sorry you were set up to fail tonight" when a party that was put down for 9 came in at 5 and had to set it up myself and run line like any other night.  I went home angry and stressed and had a lot of trouble sleeping. I was telling a friend, Hannah, that I was set up for either really bad dysphoria or a gender change and right as I hit send I feel an emptiness become full.  I dreaded my next action because I already knew what the result would be.  I said the following,

 

"I am a woman"

 

No problemo.  Then

 

"I am agender"

 

And I winced in self-misgendering pain.  My base genders had swapped, nearly instantaneously, just as predicted.  

 

I then did what every good genderfluid person does and contacted my friends that gender me as closely as possible to inform them of the change.  

 

I was set up for dysphoria in the first place but my dresses are all clean, my legs are shaved recently and my sports bra was clean and easy to find.  I already knew what was going to happen at work.  At first I worked really really well.  I haven't been doing great at work because they have been training new people and I fell out of practice.  Then I hit a brick wall, fizzled and burned.  I felt like I could feel the earth move and that I could feel every movement of every atom move for every microkelvin above absolute zero in my genitals.  I could barely even walk.

 

Agender dysphoria, if I ever even get it, is really bad, but female dysphoria blows it straight out of the water.  This is low end.  There were times I would sleep 1 to 2 hours a day before my boobs arrived in the mail.  I had to not go to bed until I could no longer function because my lack of breasts was that big of a problem.  Sleeping is now a thing I can do...because I have boobs.

 

I knew this would happen.  My gender changed on a really really bad day and I am really not happy about it.  I work in a restaurant and it changed ..... on a Friday.  I kept trying to fake it till I made it but I never made it.  I had been holding my bladder for hours but I finally had to so I just avoided looking down like the plague and got away pretty well until a drunk dude bro thought it prudent to misgender me from where he was peeing while I was just trying to wash my damn hands and get back to work.  I would rather have been dead than in that room and the dude has to break the rule of the men's bathroom--talk at the f**king stall.

 

So I pulled out my trusty dysphoria playlist, pulled out the kitchen speaker aka a crappy bluetooth speaker in a 6-pan and listened to a playlist that I hadn't listened to in months.  It helped somewhat.  I closed slow but got out of work at a reasonable time and while I yelled in the walk-in and was really really angry I still made it home without crying. 

 

Tonight friggin sucked.

 

I guess maybe I should ask a question other than just vent.  I was still mad when I got home.  I was mad at my dad for either giving me a Y instead of a fucking X like I would have liked or my parents having me i general.  Nobody asked me if I wanted to be born.  I was angry at myself because my gender decided to change on a Friday when I had had very little sleep the few days before and today.  So I took out my anger on myself in the best and most destructive way I could think of, I masturbated.  This has been empirically proven to ramp up my dyshoria if done often enough.  I learned recently I am also sex repulsed and can imitate the disgust I feel during actual intercourse if I try hard enough.  I was yelling and screaming internally that this was a really really really bad idea but I couldn't stop myself.  I was far too angry at myself--for things beyond my control--to even care.  The fact that it could make me uncomfortable increased my drive to do this destructive thing.

 

I don't think I could have actually stopped myself.  I was too angry and only saw the logic to do my best to hurt myself rather than the logic that it was a stupid idea.  In the future catching it before this happens is--probably--the best way of handling the situation.  Has anyone ever done anything similar and found a way to mitigate what, I guess, constitutes as self harm before it happens?  Thankfully it didn't increase the dypshoria but it has in the past for infractions much much less than that.

 

I am usually female for about a month to two months so y'all get to put up with girly girl Taylor for probably a month or so :3

[cinary]

Unfortunately, I  don't have anything very useful to say. I've never been in that kind of situation. I sometimes have a very nasty gender dysphoria but it works in a different way than yours and I guess I work in a different way than you. But the moment I catch that something's wrong and it's getting worse, I switch my focus to something different, most of the time my passion: literature. It's perfect because 1. It's absorbing enough that most of the time I forget about anything else and 2. When I read I became (in a way) the main character and it really helps me in distancing myself from, well, myself. But that only if I catch it early on and have time to do something with it. I'm just really sorry for what happened and hope that you'll be alright. And we'll have a lovely month or so with a girly girl Taylor  

[Guest]

I've never had gender dysphoria, so I cannot offer any advice on how to help with it. But, I am sorry you went through that tonight.  

[RK800]

Yeah dysphoria sucks big time, *hugs or preferred equivalent*.

[Guest]

Hey Taylor,

 

I'm cis but I'm sorry that this is an issue for you.  Like Serran I can't offer any advice but I'll find some nice regulars who may be able to help out.

[Taylor Lilith]

2 hours ago, Flower Boy said:

Yeah dysphoria sucks big time, *hugs or preferred equivalent*.

I asked 2 people for hugs last night and I have a person who hugs me every time she sees me. I *love* hugs but always ask the person if I can have one. One of the people I hugged...I didn't really think about. I've been afraid she has a crush on me. Especially now that she knows I'm acearo and has been acting a little...strange?...since then. I really should have thought of that but I wasn't really capable of thinking straight (ace?) at the time. 

 

@Serran and @Kisa the Kit Kat support is always great no matter if you've experienced what another person is going through or not. Thank you. 

 

I'm doing better this morning. We'll see how long it takes me to get undressed to hop in the shower but this is a common issue and I'm feeling a bunch less dysphoric today. Thank y'all!

[butterflydreams]

Glad to hear you're feeling less dysphoric this morning. 

 

The one thing I kept thinking to suggest reading your post was self care. It seems like you have some idea of what this entails, but I'd suggest really thinking about it and coming up with a directed plan. You have the advantage that you sort of know when your gender is going to shift, so you can basically have this plan all laid out ready to engage at a moment's notice. This will help keep you out of the self destructive actions...as alluring at they can be in those moments. So yeah, build the plan and have it ready to go. Then you don't have to think about anything, you just engage the plan. Whether it's listening to music that helps, or talking to a particular friend, whatever. I find this really helps me when I know something unpleasant is going to happen, and that includes dysphoria. If it's really bad, you might also consider talking to your doctor about medication that can be used in the moment. I have some that I'm allowed to use in my bottoming out moments. It's powerful stuff, but immensely helpful. I'd recommend it if you have trouble bringing yourself down.

 

*hugs*

[Taylor Lilith]

34 minutes ago, butterflydreams said:

Glad to hear you're feeling less dysphoric this morning. 

 

The one thing I kept thinking to suggest reading your post was self care. It seems like you have some idea of what this entails, but I'd suggest really thinking about it and coming up with a directed plan. You have the advantage that you sort of know when your gender is going to shift, so you can basically have this plan all laid out ready to engage at a moment's notice. This will help keep you out of the self destructive actions...as alluring at they can be in those moments. So yeah, build the plan and have it ready to go. Then you don't have to think about anything, you just engage the plan. Whether it's listening to music that helps, or talking to a particular friend, whatever. I find this really helps me when I know something unpleasant is going to happen, and that includes dysphoria. If it's really bad, you might also consider talking to your doctor about medication that can be used in the moment. I have some that I'm allowed to use in my bottoming out moments. It's powerful stuff, but immensely helpful. I'd recommend it if you have trouble bringing yourself down.

 

*hugs*

Though I knew it could be as little as 2 months I was hoping for 4 and Friday was a really unfortunate day for this to happen.  Usually I can pretreat it's something I am usually pretty good at it.  I do DBT. I also enjoy being genderfluid, it just happened at a very bad time.  Unfortunately, I can't exactly control my gender changes.  I think I actually have some proprananol which would've helped but I didn't think it through. Waaaay too far gone to even be able to think.

 

Thank you