NOW THAT I HAVE A MOUSTACHE

Taking testosterone as a trans man causes more than physical changes. It's more than moustaches and muscles. The emotional changes are just as important. Click through to find out more.

Taking testosterone as a trans man causes more than physical changes. It's more than moustaches and muscles. The emotional changes are just as important. Click through to find out more.

I have a moustache now.  

Well sort of.  It's more like dark peach fuzz.  It's slightly embarrassing to look like a teenaged boy.  I'm rocking this 14 going on 32 thing hard.

In theory I want to shave it off.  I just can't though.  It's the only tangible thing the everyday person can see that's different.  Yes, Anna and I notice that I am turning into a beefcake (slight exaggeration but seriously I was pretty twiggy before), and I have lists upon lists of subtle changes: hair, voice, skin, muscles that clearly only I see. But nothing that's as noticeable to the outside world as my creepy little peach-stache. So for now, it stays.

The truth is that most of the changes I've experienced while transitioning from FTM are inner.

They feel like big shifts in my personality.

I'm not sure that they are though.  

I think the truth is that I'm the same person on testosterone, I'm just more intense inside now, I'm not small inside anymore, I'm amped up. I was socialized as a woman. I was taught to make my personality smaller, to reign it in, to be quieter. To accept that what I wanted was probably wrong.  To apologize for being such a sinful greedy little kid. To ask for less.  To learn to recognize my wants and then make them so much smaller or turn them off all together.

Now that I have all this testosterone in my body those don't seem like options anymore.  I want what I want.  I don't know how to make those wants smaller.  My wants seem bigger and more important than ever before.  I want sex and the kids to put their dishes in the dishwasher, and more sex and to watch something awesome on TV and I don't want to listen to piano music, and I want more sex, or at least I want a good make out session. Did I mention that puberty is no joke?

I want to be wanted all the time.

The thing is that I was socialized as a woman, so although my wants seem so much more important and bigger and AHHHH than ever before, unlike a Cis-guy, I still have the deep feeling of MY WANTS ARE TOO MUCH.  They are wrong.  I am wrong for wanting them.  The problem is that before I could just sort of stop myself from wanting them.  

Now I just want what I want while feeling so much guilt and shame.

I don't have the tools to know how to handle it. I flop between settling into a very sexy state of self-loathing, and resentful of my wife. I know what you’re thinking, nothing more desirable than a sulking whiney insecure man in his thirties. Oh YEAH!

I know this and yet, I can’t make it stop! I just want her to want what I want too.  I want her to want me as much as I want her. Like 7 times a day. I mean come on, that's reasonable right? In my weaker moments I want her to see how much I want her, and for that to be enough. I want her to want to make me happy.

Katherine, the ever angry feminist (rightfully so) thinks it's male entitlement coming out in me.

I’m not convinced. I'm not “male” enough to feel that yet. I wasn't trained to feel that.  I personally am such a people-pleaser that when she wants something, anything, I will bust my ass to give her that thing.

Case in point: I just ran to the liquor store and bought her scotch. The other day she was craving a hamburger, fries and a coke, so I ran out at 9pm because that's how I show her I care. Acts of service is absolutely my love language. It gets tricky when you apply this to sex. It isn't healthy to think that she should put out just because I WANT it so much. That's not fair to her. And yet here when are because the media and music and books and all of it say “If you are into someone you wanna take their clothes off ALWAYS”.

 Just like I loved her enough to provide alcohol and fast food at the drop of a hat.  And guys jobs are to provide food cravings and foot rubs and warmth and safety. OY and there come the gender stereo types, so I’ll just go punch myself in the face again.

The whole thing is cyclical and it's filled with more guilt than I care bare sometimes. It's a tricky place to be, this guilt.  Sometimes I handle it better, and sometimes not.  I hate my feelings.  All feelings really, but I'm learning to ask for what I want.  I'm learning to set a limit on how much I shame myself for wanting those things, and to make sure that my wants are my responsibility and mine alone.

These are things I hope to teach my children.  

I hope to teach my kids that their wants are good and right and that they should be bigger and louder, to teach them not to reign it in.  

I want to teach them that their wants do not determine the outcome.

I want to teach them that they will be disappointed, and that throwing a fit in the face of that disappointment will just make them a jackass.

I want to teach them that their disappointment doesn't make them wrong or unloveable, it just makes them someone awesome who's a little bit disappointed.

I want them to know that It is not someone else's job to fulfill their wants and needs, but their own responsibility.

I want them to know that without a shadow of a doubt that they are good and brave and that they can deal with rejection without meaning that they themselves are wrong.  

I want so much for them.  I'm just struggling to learn it for myself first.

Here’s to getting up and trying day after day.