Willowf's gemlog

HRT

I'm on feminizing hormone replacement therapy now. I am a trans woman and I'm finally transitioning.

I started taking HRT on January 2 this year. Since then, the main thing I notice is that I feel my emotions more intensely and I have a reduced crying threshold. I almost shed tears while having a difficult conversation with my mom on the phone today. My voice broke a little. But I effectively communicated my genuine feelings and gained sympathy for them. Before HRT, as an adult in the closing years of male adolescence, I wouldn't have been able to do that. I could only have expressed my feelings in one of the following ways:

Don't. Just maintain a calm and courteous tone of voice. Project an air of rational pragmatism. (It would seem that HRT is lowering my ability to do this at all.)
Get angry. Before HRT, as upset as I might be, the physiological response of crying simply wasn't likely to happen. But anger would have come very easily. It would have been easy to project an air of aggressive rage, which wouldn't have effectively communicated my feelings at all and certainly wouldn't gain sympathy. It would just scare people and make me seem irrational.

I don't notice much in the way of obvious physical changes to my body yet, which makes sense. Maybe I feel a little colder at the same ambient temperature, or maybe it's psychosomatic. Maybe my facial hair grows more slowly, or maybe it only seems that way because I'm shaving regularly now.