this is a bit of a mixture between personal blog post and AMA (ask me anything) post. i'm just sharing my experiences of the last few years / months just because i want to connect to other people through my views and stories.

i've basically known my whole life (or at least since i can remember, i gained consciousness at around age 12 and that's where my earliest memories are from) that i'm "more in touch with my feminine side than most guys" (what a nice phrase, thank you musical on ember island from the legend of aang). also btw aang from atla was long my favorite character - something like a spirit animal, just a person not a non-human animal.

anyways i've always thought that living as a woman is bullshit and impossible anyways (EDIT: for me because i can't do anything about it anyways. this was before i learned about HRT and that it exists so it's more of a "i wish there was a juice that turned me into a girl" egg moment) so i should just grow up and fit into my role in society in a socially compatible way ... which means, grow old, grow grumpy, etc. . i've had a whole lot of positive experiences when i was 19 and bumped into a whole lot of very cool people (shoutout to the maths university where i live) and they kinda ... gave me hope for a better world. after significant internal emotional turmoil which included near-death experiences and lots of meditation, ... (that description doesn't cut it. it was more intense than i'm willing to put into words.) anyways i've started taking finasteride (which blocks a bit of testosterone in the body but not all of it) a few months ago. unfortunately the rumors are true, the body does not do well if you block all testosterone without adding estrogen at the same time ... i suspect that it's actually more complicated than that, the body just takes more time to get used to it. anyways i started with 1mg of finasteride / day for a few weeks a loved it, mostly the change of smell has impressed me. i'd love to meet somebody with the same smell as me, and i'd probably just devour them on-the-spot (jk). anyways i've had to pause it for 2 weeks after a month because i developed a heart-ache that made me worried. i started again, taking it for 5 weeks and now i have to reduce dosage again because i'm developing that heart-aching again. i suspect that it's not actually about the heart-muscle btw. people say that if you're close to a heart-attack, you don't actually feel it in your heart but in your left upper arm. but if you feel it in your heart instead, that means that it's not the heart muscle that's suffering but your emotions instead. and i suspect that the story is more complicated than that, involving the gut-brain axis. the brain is made of many parts (compartments) and they are switched on/off by hormones. and if you switch all of them off at once, there's a lack of drivers (just like computer hardware drivers) for the body and that causes the ache. so your body has to develop new, independent-of-sex-hormones, drivers before you can get the testosterone completely out of your body. i don't want estrogen (i think?) because i'm worried about boob growth (i don't want boobs). but who knows how this will develop in the future. --gandalf_der_12te (nikaaa for those who know me by that name :)