Emotional Overload & Gender Transition In The Time of COVID
How transitioning while depressed has given me a light to navigate through dark times
Content warning for talk of needles and, well, current affairs. Take care of yourself, friends.
There’s something odd to me about the phrase “in the time of COVID.”
Love in the time of COVID. Waiting in line in the time of COVID.
It’s got this old-timey, sepia-toned quality, like it’s supposed to be the title of a silent film brimming with romance and melodrama. And I’m seeing it everywhere.
Something about the words “in the time of” manages to encapsulate romance, nostalgia, grief, fear — a sweeping set of unusual circumstances that define an era. If I catch sight of it at an odd moment I feel a lump rise in my throat, my eyes prickle. Apparently the phrase is a callback to Love in the Time of Cholera, which I’ve never read or seen. Still, the emotional response I’ve felt when running across this language is immediate and overwhelming.
It’s definitely the grief; our world will never be the same. And fear (what if someone I love dies over the winter?) And boredom (I have nothing to do but work and binge Netflix). The irrevocable cut-off between before and after. What the world used to be is gone now. A global pandemic has plunged us all into a dark and colorless world.
Early in the morning of August 11th this year I drove a half-hour south from my apartment, where I’d been confined by myself for months, to a doctor’s office I’d been referred to by my therapist. Any doubts I’d had about starting HRT were gone and something had to give, between the depression, the dysphoria, the anxiety, the hours spent lying in bed doing nothing, the slow begrudging shuffle from bedroom to living room to open my laptop and pretend I had any semblance of functionality left under my skin.
I needed hope. I needed something good in my life or I would lose my mind completely to the dull white noise of depression.
“When can I do this?” I asked the doctor that morning, after the awkward dance of exchanging polite greetings. Our brief references to the pandemic still hung thick in the air even as they’d been coated in the veneer of small talk.
“I can go fetch the supplies right now,” he said.
I blinked at him but felt calm, and the pandemic left the room for a moment. “OK, do it.”
I’d expected my heart to be racing a mile a minute— it wasn’t. I’d expected to feel thrilled or utterly terrified — and I did, but in such a very quiet way. My hands were steady. I was glad I’d worn cargo shorts so I could just pull up the leg instead of face the indignity of taking off my pants.
I’ve always hated needles. Never been able to watch them go into my skin. But I paid rapt attention to the doctor as he popped off the green cap to the vial of testosterone and showed me how to sterilize it, draw up the correct dose, grab a hunk of my thigh, rub the alcohol wipe in a circle going out from the center where the shot would go, and damn near throw the needle into my leg like a dart.
It didn’t hurt at all, and the grace and fluidity with which he moved held me a little bit in awe (I kind of want to tattoo a dart board onto my leg now. The comparison was so strong and vivid for me, it’s permanently etched into my imagination). Also, there was a needle sticking out of my thigh. The doctor pushed down on the syringe, telling me that the injection should be fairly slow; it takes about thirty seconds or so to get the viscous yellow-ish solution into the muscle.
I watched my thigh, examining what I felt.
Interest. Curiosity. Fascination. And behind that — relief, with the slightest tinge of that quiet kind of giddiness and terror I’d been feeling all morning. And behind that, the looming specter of isolation that awaited me when I returned to my apartment.
He drew the needle out swiftly and handed me a cotton swab. He told me to put pressure on the injection site, though it wasn’t bleeding. I did. I grinned at him and he grinned back. I got my blood drawn that day, and I watched the needle then, too, and the flow of deep red that ran up the pressurized plastic tube to fill the vial. I suddenly find needles utterly fascinating, and while my heart races when I give myself my shot these days, the old queasiness has melted away.
The next day the injection site was a little sore, and there was a tiny purple bruise, but it was a good pain. I turned the music on loudly to shield my happiness from the outside world.
This isn’t how I imagined the first months of my transition would go. My sleeping is at times disturbed by nightmares, at times elusive, and at other times I can barely crawl out of bed in the bleak grey mornings by the time I’m supposed to have already been working for a half hour.
I have a list of things I want to get done, but when I’m finished with my work day all I can usually bring myself to do is collapse into my bed where I binge-watch comfort TV shows on my smart phone. Remembering and caring that I’m in the midst of an amazing and overwhelming life-altering experience that I should be monitoring and celebrating can be a battle in and of itself.
My voice is deepening. I found dark hairs above my upper lip that are definitely new, and shaving them away with my dark blue and silver razor punctured a moment of joy into my otherwise flat morning. My jaw line is more defined, I’m certain of it.
Despite appearances, I do have more mental and emotional energy than I did before August. Some days I do a load of dishes. Some days I pick up my room and do the laundry (from start to finish, even!). I shower every day, which is definitely not something I could bring myself to do before starting HRT (I have to, though, seriously, the sweating, the smell).
Since December started, I’ve been working on an essay called “Trans Doubt & OCD,” which is probably one of the most difficult pieces of writing I’ve ever worked on. But I’m confident about what I’m trying to say with it, if not quite yet how I’m saying it. The idea for this particular post came to me this morning. I’ve been writing it on and off between snippets of work and it’s flowing from my fingertips with an ease I couldn’t have predicted I’d ever feel again.
That moment in the doctor’s office was vivid and full of color. But despite some reduction in gender dysphoria I’ve noticed since then, most of my days remain dull, blending into each other without form. The news cycle. The lack of human interaction outside of my (also mentally and emotionally struggling) inner circle. The dread of facing another month in the US where the government actively works to sabotage any efforts to fight off the pandemic. Worry for immunocompromised friends and elderly relatives. And everything else I don’t have the energy to put into words.
“I still grieve the loss of my imaginary perfect transition, along with everything else that this pandemic has taken.”
There are some days when I wonder if I should stop transitioning and wait for a time when I will be able to do so and fully enjoy it — I’d like more memories from this time in my life like the one in the doctor’s office, instead of an endless fog only occasionally broken up by a brilliant flash.
I think to myself that I should wait for some day when depression unrelated to dysphoria isn’t gluing me to my bed, day-in and day-out. Some day when I’ll be able to celebrate little changes with my friends by going out and grabbing a beer. When my months are interspersed with concerts, and I can feel proud of the work I do instead of constantly checking and re-checking reminders to forgive myself for not being as productive as I want, or feel I should be.
Some elusive future transition period, when the thrill and giddiness and euphoria of finally settling into my skin the way I’m supposed to can be given the attention it deserves. Without being weighed down by grief, pain, rage, apathy, and fear, which have to be parsed carefully and logically in order for me to even see how the HRT changes are affecting me on an emotional level at all.
How do I know if I like what’s happening to my body when I spend so much time feeling nothing but overwhelm, battling unrelenting OCD cycles, and mindlessly swallowing anti-depressants that stopped working months ago? Shouldn’t the joy of transition be strong enough to overcome this depression? I know it doesn’t work that way. It’s not a magic pill, and starting the process of fixing dysphoria is not a surefire way to cure mental illness.
I still grieve the loss of my imaginary perfect transition, along with everything else that this pandemic has taken. Of course, it likely wouldn’t have been perfect at all. In conversations I’ve engaged in with trans folk going through various stages of transition throughout the past two years, I’ve learned that it is often a messy and chaotic thing no matter the surrounding circumstances. And I know that if I were to stop transitioning now I would sink back into an even deeper depression. The testosterone has picked up at least a little of the anti-depressants’ slack.
Besides, if this year has revealed anything to me, it’s that the world has always been a dark place for far too many people, and bringing light to it may take longer than my own lifespan. I’m not sure how much hope I have that there is any kind of future where my so-called “perfect transition” could happen, unencumbered by the uncertainty and chaos that seems to be swallowing the world right now. The gains I’ve made in mental health since August feel so small under the weight of everything else, but they are gains.
Healing is slow at the best of times, and now?
Whatever little joys are muffled by the overwhelm and chaos of current affairs, they are still little joys, and they matter now more than ever.
There’s an urgency to share my writing that’s come back to me recently. Perhaps it’s reading calls to action like this one to share my perspective as a trans person. Perhaps it’s thinking through all the ways I’ve relied on other trans (especially trans masculine) folk sharing their stories since I’ve come out to myself, and even before I came out to myself, to find my footing and remember who I am. Perhaps it’s just the fact that, for the first time I can remember, I have an authentic voice with which to tell stories about my own experiences.
My world before coming out to myself lacked color completely.
There is no wrong time to start being true to yourself, as cliché as that sounds. It’s a privileged position to be standing on, because it can be so dangerous for so many people. But it shouldn’t be. It should be a basic right we are all afforded by the society we live in. To come forth and be vulnerable with each other, to lift each other up, to remind each other that it’s a good thing to celebrate the victories that can feel so small set against the backdrop of relentless grief, fear, and isolation. So that’s what I’m trying to do.
Transition can be a radical and self-empowering act for a trans person — in the time of COVID or not — whether it solves other mental health issues, or simply provides more clarity with which to deal with them. Or even if it lifts only one burden among a thousand from their shoulders. It is something I’m grateful to be able to pursue, no matter how imperfect the timing or overwhelming the circumstances.
Even a single flash of color and detail amidst the backdrop of this world is worth fighting for.
