temperance

30th Apr, 2025

I feel I'm either approaching or experiencing some kind of death.

I already wrote an entry tonight, but apparently we have more to share. Not quite sure this is the same person writing now. Don't read this.

As I said. Some kind of death.

Not the literal, mortal kind, I think. Not anything remotely dramatic. Just the... passing on of something.

I have recently felt more dysphoric that I can really remember since I started transitioning. At least, for this long and this consistently.

I am a withered thing. Quite literally. I grew wrinkles and creases before anyone else I know. My hands are a hatch'd mess of them. I've had frown lines since I was 12.

Right now, I am particularly noticing the veins running up my palms and along the insides of my fingers. I'm not sure if they've always been there, and I'm just hyperaware at present. I believe I am probably dehydrated, but it's hard to tell.

They're sorta pretty. Strikingly blue. It's fascinating to me that blood is never purple, only red or blue. It would make sense for it to pass through the shades inbetween, and yet it's an outlandish thought at the same time.

I am also covered in hair.

I hate it. I cannot get rid of it. I don't know how everyone else in the world copes.

I have the vague impression that it has gotten worse over the past couple of years, which makes no sense. I am taking more fucking hormone suppressants than anyone I know. My funny little estrogen and testosterone numbers have been in their perfect little ranges for almost 4 years.

And yet it keeps spreading. I'm not even fuzzy, which would be nice. Just hairy. Little unfathomable patches of it on my huge feet and the backs of my knuckles and around my shoulders.

No soft smooth skin for hana. Just coarse dark hair and wrinkles and scars and scars and scars.

I look at myself and see some walking corpse, actively decaying. My skin is translucent and pockmarked at my temples from the most uninteresting of malaises. The bones of my cheeks stand out unevenly where my flesh has deformed around them. Even if I wanted hair on my face, I could not grow it evenly.

I am not soft. I am not small.

I have vague memories of friends calling me pretty. I don't understand. I have vague memories of understanding.

I think living in this half-state is a kind of death.

I look at my hair hanging around my shoulders and want to cut it all short, just to see how it refuses to grow back.

The skin around my fingertips is pulled taut from the cold, highlighting all the little burn marks. I was proud of them once. Individuality, hands that nobody else has, shaped by time spent doing something I love.

It feels like it means so little now. I don't even do what I love anymore. I have nobody to cook for.

Hollow, wastrel creature. Not even fit to be a dog. Certainly not fit to be a girl.

Yeah. The dysphoria is pretty bad.

Don't really know what caused it. Perhaps inevitability. Perhaps exposure. Perhaps it was merely time.

It's okay, I'm sure it'll pass soon. Things are meant to be getting better. Everyone keeps saying so.

Oh well.