I started taking Oestrogen a Week ago, but I have yet to have the blockers for my Testosterone, and I'm told I should expect a spike in Testosterone for about a fortnight after that as well. So inside me at this moment T and E (or O, depending on your spelling) are fighting a war over control of my body. Or, to put it another way, my body is deciding which it prefers the taste of.
Now I've seen my mother go through hormonal changes, and other women too, and so I have a subconscious expectation of those symptoms. Hot flushes, headaches, dizziness, sickness, general tetchiness, this morning I seemed to have them all. Or did I?
It's so difficult to separate psychosomatic symptoms from real ones, even in yourself. How do I know that these are real symptoms, not just the ones I was expecting to get? Merely being aware this might be the case does not stop it being so, or we would get trapped in a circle of I believe it so it's not real/If it's not real I don't believe it/if I don't believe it it might be real/if I believe it's real it's not real... And so on, ad infinitum.
I could be hot because I overdressed for the work environment (to the extent of having to break to nip to the toilets and take off my tights to avoid keeling over). I could be dizzy because once again I'm just hungry. I could be tetchy because I actually am talking to idiots. I could have a headache and nausea because I didn't get enough sleep. Lord knows I have them often enough before. None of these things are new to me.
I've spoken to many people in the trans community and they seem to be very either unaware of these phenomena or so willing to put everything down to the miracle of HRT that they accept everything unquestioningly. If I have the audacity to say that anecdote is not evidence I am always drowned out in a sea of dissent. It makes me wonder and worry whether such people have really applied any kind of critical thinking to their situation as a whole.
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