dandelion

YES! this happened to me too, now I go out and have social plans, I go dancing at the club, etc.

family who knew me pre-transition still struggle when they hear that I went dancing, etc. - it's hard for them to imagine

I was the grumpiest person on earth before I transitioned, and now I'm just happy and carefree.

I think yogurt + peaches with oats is definitely something that sounds delicious; I bet cottage cheese would also work really well and would boost the protein (and is a relatively affordable form of protein).

I wouldn't like the dairy part of this for ethical reasons, but it's an easy way to boost the protein, as long as you can find an affordable source of it - which I think isn't too unreasonable in the US (the US has major subsidies on dairy products, so they can be pretty cheap despite how expensive dairy farms are to operate).

I wonder if by "soy PVT" you maybe mean soy TVP - that is, textured vegetable protein? I'm not sure what soy PVT means otherwise.

I'm not sure how I would feel about TVP in my yogurt cereal breakfast - it is a cheap source of protein that I use in a lot of foods (yay for TVP!), but it's so chewy and like meat, I think I might find it off-putting in breakfast cereal - but I haven't tried it, so maybe it would be good (esp. a really small / fine TVP).

The oats, flax seeds, and fruit all provide good sources of fiber, too - looks really good!

If you wanted to make it more fancy, you could take the dry oatmeal and roast it, maybe make a granola in the oven with some honey and nuts, etc. - it might add a nice crunchy texture to the dish (instead of soaking and adding more of a "mush" or mash to the dish).

Do you know how much a bowl costs, and how many kcal and grams of protein there are? That's something I would be curious about, esp. when comparing to the dishes I make now.

yep, you can even pee in bottles - it takes a bit more skill, but it's possible

I just wanted to add that for people who think OP is a troll, pls just block her and move on.

It is completely understandable to me that you want to protect the community from someone you are certain is a troll, but this just feeds the troll and stirs up drama - the best response to a troll is blocking and not engaging. Let the admins and mods handle the troll, you don't have to.

so, first of all, yes - I completely affirm your point about how crucial trans community is (and I mean trans, i.e. other people who are in transition or planning to transition)

and though I'm stealth with most people where I live, I still connected with trans folks and made connections to the local trans community so I have that - I'm only out to other trans people, basically

transitioning has taught me so much:

that biological sex really is plastic, not fixed, and that trans women are not just women but also biologically female (I really didn't think this was true, and it took me a long time to accept or see this as true - it was ultimately debates about what to tell hospital staff and digging into the scientific literature that made me realize my body is really female in most relevant ways now)
I used to think that gender was pretty much just social and arbitrary (and that we should basically be hostile to gender and try to abolish gender, similar to race), but now I know that gender identity is fixed and biological - hence conversion therapy is not effective, you can't socially influence someone to become trans or to make someone not trans
I learned that people care way less about being visibly trans than I thought - it's really a small minority of people who bothered me, for the most part I was shocked by the indifference and tolerance the average person projected; when I was "a man in a dress" - most people didn't bother me or threaten me, etc. - my fear was way overblown, and the risks were much less than I expected
it was also shocking to learn what counts as passing to other people (both in terms of looks and voice), I was shocked by how genuinely clueless cis people are (esp. for how confident they are with their "we can always tell" mindset); it's especially ironic because of how easily other trans people can spot one another while cis people remain clueless ... this was all unexpected - I thought I would just forever be too "trans-looking" to ever pass
how transphobic the trans community is - we have all internalized transphobia, and because I'm passing now, the most invalidating experiences I have now are with other trans people; I didn't really expect to experience dehumanizing / degendering and invalidation in trans communities, and I didn't expect to find the most validation and affirmation of my gender from mainstream cis society (through passing, ofc)
getting a passing voice was both harder and easier than I thought: Zheanna Erose's timeline made me think it would take 5+ years of intense training I would never be able to do as well as her, etc. and that a passing voice was many years away - but I had a passing voice within 8 months, and habituated it enough to no longer need daily practice or weekly speech language pathologist sessions after 12 months.
that passing is far more common and easier in general than I expected - I thought probably most people my age would never pass, and I was just wrong - probably most of us pass eventually; I know women much older than me who transitioned later and who still pass; I signed up for transition under the assumption I would forever be visibly trans, and did not at all plan for success

I'm so happy for the euphoria and hope you are feeling! This is a great mindset, and you are doing so well 💞

the good news is that you absolutely can train your voice to sound female ... the bad news is that it takes training 😅

Go ahead and start voice training now - it can be a very long process (in my mind, I would expect progress to happen over many months of continuous / serious / persistent effort).

Personally, I did not make much progress until I saw a speech language pathologist (SLP) who specialized in helping trans women with their voices. It took 8 months of once-a-week sessions and basically practicing every time I opened my mouth to finally "crack" it and find a passing voice, and then I "graduated" from seeing my SLP after 12 months of sessions. Here's an example of my voice from 11 months ago if you are curious (also, happy to accept any critical feedback).

I think this is do-able, I've seen people develop a passing voice in 6 months. This is rare, but I've even seen a woman "crack" it and produce a passing voice within her first week of training. So it varies from person to person. Many of us practice for years and don't make much progress. Even some of the best and most skilled trans voices took years to develop, and I think most of us consider it a life-long effort (though there are definitely times of more or less investment in working on the voice).

A background in singing is really helpful, and getting into singing or a choir can be a helpful way to strengthen the capacity of the voice and develop some parallel skills that might help translate to voice training for vocal feminization.

here is a voice training "beginner's guide" to get started:

Broadly the two main gendering qualities to a voice are weight and size. With voice training the general idea is to:

ear train: learn to recognize when you weight is heavy vs light, when size is large vs small
mimic and experiment: learn to produce voices that are different weights and sizes, and esp. how to balance those to produce a typical feminine voice (suitably light and small)
practice: just keep listening and recognizing when you're slipping up and to adjust your voice back into the feminine range, over time and lots of persistent practice, this habituates and becomes your voice!

For exploring weight:

For size:

https://clyp.it/jdquw5ac
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BW8X2nXexQs (this video has some pedagogical flaws, but is still good for listening / experimenting to some extent)

For more about the balance of weight and size:

Videos to help guide expectations for beginners:

on goals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYSxobwWypI
on daily practice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fylIX28mlyY

For beginners it can also be helpful to explore more achievable lower-pitch feminine voices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OyfNLWf3UM

To ear train, it's commonly recommended to listen to and "play along" with Selene's clips:

https://selenearchive.github.io/

Note: as you experiment or do any voice training exercise, make sure to pay close attention to:

how it sounds to you as you do it,
how it sounds when you record it and play it back for yourself,
how others report they hear it, and also
how it feels (in your body) when you produce the different sounds, keeping mental note so you can reproduce the voice if you need.

Experiments to try:

using a pitch detector, sing a note and chant a word while maintain the same pitch, and change resonance/size from dark/large to bright/small while keeping pitch the same
using a pitch detector, keep pitch steady and practice going from a heavy to a light weight without changing pitch
mimic a large voice, like Patrick from Spongebob, or the Giant from Jack in the Beanstalk
mimic a small voice, like when you talk to a baby or a cute puppy or animal, or accessible overfull childish voices, like Ash Ketchum from Pokemon or Dexter from Dexter's Lab
mimic a heavy voice
mimic a light voice
try producing an underfull voice intentionally
try producing an overfull voice intentionally
try going from full masc to overfull
from full masc to underfull
from full masc to full fem
from full fem back to full masc
from underfull to full fem
from overfull to full fem

There is a lot of content there to work through, but give yourself time and just relax and enjoy the process as much as you can. Don't aim for success, instead aim to have fun and be playful and experiment. It is important to be persistent, to listen carefully, etc. - but don't expect a perfect voice from the beginning, and it's more important you are engaging and continuing to carefully notice qualities of your voice and others' voices than whether you happen to be able to produce a passing voice right now.

Also, one of the best things about voice training is that it's something you can actually control and work on - a passing voice is possible for most of us - and someone as young as you is almost guaranteed to have the capacity to produce a passing voice. (Especially if you can get on estrogen and block the testosterone from making your voice even more masculine - which continues over a whole lifetime, which is why older women sound more husky and masculine than younger women - it's due to a lifetime of exposure to androgens, even at low levels it impacts the vocal chords!).

it's extremely common for trans people to repress and deny their feelings (even unconsciously), usually due to fear of transition and living as a trans person (due to the obvious stigma and threats, etc.).

I also didn't think I was depressed or especially unhappy. I wouldn't have even described what I experienced as "distress", and in the two years leading up to my transition, I thought I was relatively happy and even would have said I was the happiest I had ever been. But I just lacked awareness of what life could be like, and I had never experienced life any differently - so ... I don't know, it's hard because I only know in hindsight I was very depressed and unhappy.

Your feelings are unlikely to be anything but gender dysphoria - and a competent therapist will be able to discern whether you are suffering from psychosis or whether you're generally grounded in reality, etc. and rule out the edge cases that might explain the symptoms without being gender dysphoria.

But you should consider the alternative: would a cis man feel the way you do?

You might want to read this part of the Gender Dysphoria Bible: https://genderdysphoria.fyi/en/am-i-trans

Particularly, checkout the "null hypothesis" section. (It's worth reading the whole Gender Dysphoria Bible sometime, too).

It's a misconception that gender dysphoria can be caused by trauma or social influence, etc. - those views are just not based in the evidence, and the current evidence has shown that gender dysphoria arises from biological factors and we even know it's genetic - it's not something you can control (basically, you're born this way). This is why conversion therapy isn't successful (otherwise, therapy would obviously be preferable to transition).

Luckily, transition is generally very helpful and significantly improves well-being.

What scares you about the body changes? Is it that you don't want those changes and you're afraid of having a feminine body? Or are you afraid of transitioning, of the commitment?

And yes, you should just try estrogen. You can quit it without any permanent changes, as I mentioned. (I do suggest you educate yourself thoroughly; for HRT you could start here). Cis men generally wouldn't even attempt to take estrogen, they would avoid it like the plague - and even if they for some reason took it (like when Alan Turing was forced to take estrogen as punishment for being gay), it results in depression and worse mood, etc. and it will be obvious you don't want to be on it.

Definitely talk to your therapist and work through your feelings with them, that's a good plan.

I trusted them and lied to my therapist to get something I never wanted in the first place.

I thought it was the therapists who suggested you needed bottom surgery to be a woman? Who did you "trust"?

I fucked myself over. This is all on me.

It's probably more complicated than that - even if you may have been negligent or didn't do enough research, etc. - a lot of details have been left out of your narrative so far ... we have no idea what you went through, what the process was like to get your surgery, what the informed consent was like, what the therapists said, etc.

I will say that the medical care has lagged for non-binary care both in terms of HRT and surgeries. I don't know what part of the world you are in, but in many places there are still out-dated views about trans people that assume all trans people must be binary - but the reality is that there are trans women who have aspects of their male anatomy that they enjoy or prefer to keep, and plenty of these people live and enjoy living as women in both social and biological ways.

I just want to be happy again, I just want to feel okay again, I don’t want to hate seeing myself naked and hate waking up.

I really think you should find a good therapist, as soon as possible. The level of distress you are experiencing warrants professional care and treatment.

Until then, find healthy coping strategies to keep your mind off of this. At least in my experience, dysphoria can become obsessive, but some discipline about where you put your attention can pay-off by keeping your mind off a source of distress. Maybe take a break from these feelings and thoughts, or create boundaries and give yourself time to journal and then commit to putting away the disturbing thoughts (and reminding yourself of your intention to redirect when you notice the thoughts and feelings coming back).

You've been post-op for over a year, so at this point I assume you have lived with the distress for a long time and probably have developed some ways to cope, so hopefully this isn't an entirely new skill (and same in general for the fact that you had dysphoria pre-transition and probably had coping strategies then as well).

Taking positive steps towards your well-being can also help strengthen your sense of autonomy and reduce despair and hopelessness.

cheezits are squeezits out of zeetits

I think it might say "blondie"

I have a fridge full of lemons, and have never done this before ... so, how do you go about this - you zest the lemons, and put the lemons in a container in the freezer? or do you dry the zest out?

Do you put the lemon juice in like an ice cube tray and freeze it?

I might have to try it out.

I cannot even read this comment 😭

how about an hour and a half deep dive into the artistic and philosophical significance of a low-brow horror franchise you've never watched: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uiGIbdrQjbI

you must live in a conservative place where climate change denial is a part of their cultural-political identity ... it's the exact opposite where I live - strangers I chat with in a waiting room will openly and proudly state they believe in climate change in the midst of an otherwise banal discussion of the weather.

and this is why I don't foster animals 😅

how does the socks jammed in vending machines hustle work? I'm curious

queer brick ✨ 🧱 💅

I know it feels overwhelming and awful right now, and I'm not going to deny being trans can be really rough ... but I also wanted to say that your awareness of being trans at this age is so much better than only finding out decades later when your body has masculinized much more. There is so much hope and positive change you are on the verge of creating for yourself.

I hear a lot of despair from young people who say they feel medical transition is pointless by the time they are 18, because they've already been through male puberty - but let me emphasize how much the body continues to masculinize over a whole lifetime. When I was your age, I couldn't grow a beard and my hair hadn't even started to show on my chest or belly. My voice was still bullied for sounding feminine at your age. It wasn't until I was in my mid 20s that I really looked more like a "man" in many ways - and the dysphoria just got so much worse. Please don't wait and find out what that's like - act now, protect yourself and your future.

And also, realize that there is so much opportunity for well-being and happiness in your hands right now - something I and many others could not have at your age. You can still stop significant masculinization and your transition will probably lead to better outcomes than many of us could have.

Yes, the anti-trans movement has gained a lot of ground and a lot of progress has been challenged - but there are still paths to getting access to care, and the laws and care in the US right now are still better than they were when I was growing up. It really isn't hyperbole to say it is actually a great time to be transitioning in the US, in terms of actual care and rights. That's maybe more of a statement of how genuinely awful trans rights and healthcare was merely decades ago, and I don't want to burden you with some of those details - but we haven't even seen the kinds of laws that were used in the 1970s to criminalize trans people through cross-dressing ... there just isn't the same political will for this, and most people don't want to see us criminalized. Even the Republicans in super-majority states like Texas have failed to even manage to get legislation to a vote on trying to criminalize trans people through "gender identity fraud" laws.

So, take the opportunity in front of you, and protect your happiness and health.

Life can be really good, and transitioning will probably help you find that life.