oldladyplays, 19 days ago

One thing transition brought me was relief from the rage. I often wonder how many of you had this too. In part, this is because in the fight/flight/et c. response, I'm pretty much always ready for the fight. Or I was.

I once had a car cut across four lanes to cut me off so he could turn left off the one-way street at the next light. I honked, he flipped me off. When he pulled up at the light, I bumped his car. Just a little. Not enough to set off airbags. Just a wee tappy-tap.

That one cost me CAD500 to square away.

Cut to five years later, post-transition, I'm in a gas station in downtown Toronto. We pulled up behind someone and started working the pump. The person in front drove off.

Someone pulled up behind us and honked that we should get out of the way, and go use the other pump. We waved them around. They declined, with a prominent showing of middle fingers to accompany it. My two friends, a lesbian couple, both got out of their front seats to challenge these other women to a fight. I jumped out even quicker, and got my biggest-body-on-the-site between the two groups, arms out. And they start trying to take pokes at each other, around me. I'm blocking these. They all got frustrated, but I stayed there until everyone calmed down and got back in their cars. I finished pumping the gas, went to pay, and we drove off.

What happened between incident A and incident B? Estrogen, baby. I had transitioned, and finally gotten on hormones. And when I did, the rage just...floated away like a soap bubble on the breeze. Pop! I had lived with that rage, I hadn't realized, for all the previous 27 years of my life.

And transition made it go "poof".

I thought that was all of it. I would still get angry occasionally, but the daily undercurrent of rage at the world that I'd felt since I realised I was a girl at 4...that went.

Then I had my bottom surgery. And found out what a life without T would be like. I lost almost all aggression. The rage fuel tank was empty.