Hi I'm Zoey

The small bouts of gender euphoria I get feel incredible. Every time someone calls me Zoey is unbeatable. It's so validating. I've come out to more online friends and everyone has been super supportive. It would almost feel weird but it doesn't. I don't get this crippling doubt anymore where I feel like things are too good to be true.

Which may be a side effect of what I've been doing to cope my whole life. I've been realizing more and more that this dysphoria and me being trans has always been there. I never didn't have it. I'm certain about this one, it's why I've had weird, hard to explain body image issues forever. I also learned that I may have been depersonalising my whole life. At least at a cursory glance this could be the case (This, for example). That would also fit in with how I felt immediately after I realized I was trans that it wasn't someone else looking back at me in the mirror, for the first time I saw myself looking back. I'd been removing the self my whole life until I couldn't anymore. But this is just speculation. I'm going to see real professionals first before I make any conclusions.

Today, however, the dysphoria is bad. Doing stuff with my body yesterday felt amazing but it also is a dark reminder of what I actually look like right now. I'm real mad at myself today for screwing up my diet the past few days. I fall back into bad eating habits that I really do know better already. The coworker I came out to didn't show up at the office today. Not sure if that's good or bad. Either way I told him to keep it a secret.

I'm still a social butterfly and it feels strange. I don't run out of social brain power like I did before. I've been more social than ever, in person and online, and it doesn't make me any less tired of it. Which means I finally understand how people can be social. If this is what normal people feel like, not feeling your battery draining as you interact with people, no wonder they're so capable of doing social stuff all the time.

I! Bought! Womens! Clothing! A pair of denim women's pants. Oh my god I was so scared walking into that store but I made myself look confident and it worked in making myself more confident. I mean what's mentally worse than going into a women's store? That's right, doing it while looking like a hunchback mess. Stride in and take the things you want. And it wasn't even the largest size the store offered! So that's a plus. Got a good feeling about my height being just about right to be able to find girls clothes without infinite trouble. But now I own some real womens clothing I can actually wear around. It'll only look a little weird because they're fairly neutral. The pockets though? They're just as bad as advertised, folx. But I'll happily take that.

I did a really fucking dumb thing. Maybe. I came out to my coworker yesterday. I really didn't intend to but during some after work drinking he just pushed me. Specifically he asked me if why I was so busy privately had “something to do with the trans rights sticker?” and I just broke. I didn't want to tell him but I did.

I had a huge panic attack right after. The train ride home where I had to pee badly certainly didn't help and after that I felt like someone was cutting up my insides, right about where my appendix is, with a knife. I learned from talking to someone that real physical pain like this is, in fact, a symptom of a panic attack. That feels good to learn because I've had this specific pain before several times and now hopefully I know why. It went away as soon as I calmed down too.

So yeah I told him not to tell anyone. Fuck me why am I such an idiot. Anyway uhhh I also did some more kinky stuff. Gonna write a collection of my kinky thoughts at some point.

So epilating sure is a thing huh. Oh my god it hurts so bad, I have infinite respect for anyone who goes through this torture now. I didn't know. I used it yesterday with a glass of wine in the shower. Just agony. But the results are pretty damn good so far so I will keep it up today. I missed some hairs the first time around because I've never trimmed myself on this level before, ever. And then after that I'm going to do my upper legs I think.

But I will do it because I hate this hair so much. It makes me nauseous when I see it. And when I see my fat disgusting body.

This will be another short entry because while I did have more BDSM fun times today that's... it's not an experience I actually want to be open about. It was incredibly good and I don't regret anything I just think it's best if I keep it to myself. For now. Nothing illegal, mind you, please don't worry.

Short entry today. It's slowly but surely setting in the reality of just living with dysphoria day to day. This constant hatred, disgust, and fear, of your own body. A supremely weird feeling that I could never describe to a cis person no matter how hard I tried.

And then you realize ever so slowly this is just your life now. Mirrors are your enemy. But nobody who's cis will ever understand you, at best they'll just try to help you.

Oh well, it's not like I have a choice. I'm going to be a great girl, I know that much.

CW: NSFW, LEWD, SEX, BDSM, PAIN, PANIC ATTACKS

Dear diary. Today I feel good. Very good. I touched on it only briefly yesterday but I didn't have time to say why, exactly, I tried masturbating yesterday. It was because I finally, for the first time ever, tried something I always wanted but always repressed my urges to do. And because I wanted it I repressed these urges even harder than normal. It was ERP. (Ed. Note (That's me, Zoey) ERP means erotic roleplay) It really has always sounded appealing to me and in a previous life I did masturbate to some cleaned up chat logs posted as erotic fiction more than a few times. As a kid I always loved the idea of playing a role or just pretending to be someone else (hello, dysphoria? I'm starting to see you everywhere now) for a while. And now that I figured out I'm a real kinky little bitch and I found someone else who's also into the things I want and more and she's ready to help and explore those with me??? Oh jeez oh gosh ok I can't let this opportunity slide. So I didn't let it slide but it also was very, very difficult. Like I touched on before I had repressed these feelings in particular very hard and so before I wrote the first line I had to really steel myself. As she asked for more details and what I was wearing I told her, verbatim, “hold on, I need to mind purge myself.” I wasn't lying about that. Mind purging is something I do quite often, at least as often as I need to. Because of all these things in my life I've repressed there's only one way to dig in and get it out and it's to use my strong willpower to make myself think another way or simply to do it anyway.

Again I want to break the diary to add a strong disclaimer here: Don't apply the things I write here to yourself. They work for me and me alone and I will go to lengths such as giving myself real panic attacks in my efforts to rewire my diseased mind to make it work better. Figure out what works for you, preferably with professional help available.

So I did my best to overcome these feelings. Because I always wanted to do this and because I always felt a creative side to me that never got an outlet. And I started writing. A short line at first, introducing a girl, a dress, a position, and feelings. It was painful. Really, physically painful. Hitting send on that was one of the hardest things I've had to do in a while. Immediately after my body wanted to regret it so much, to just hit delete, remove the message, unsend, oh god Zoey she's laughing at you this is bad and horrible. You're laughing at yourself. Look at how shit this is, how shit you are. This isn't what you want.

But I persevered and in spite of my deep repression I actually just told her how I was feeling and that I didn't want her to laugh at me. I was so scared that she would even though I knew already she wouldn't. Laughing would make.me run away, scared, possibly scarred forever. And she's an amazing and nice person. She won't do that, I know it. My brain knows it. But yet I needed nothing but reassurance. She did give me reassurance and then came the response. I managed to gather myself for a second message. A little longer still. A lot more confident but still with great resistance internally. The character I was playing had her feelings reflecting mine, obviously so, but I tried to make it make sense in the RP world as well. Eventually, surprisingly quickly to me, I loosened up and things started flowing fairly well from there on. And it felt like... An ERP? And it was amazing. It was super kinky. I like pain so my girl experienced a lot of it. And so did I (Me, Zoey, hi!). At first I was instructed to masturbate using only my finger on the head of the penis but as I wrote yesterday it was a surreal experience and not exactly what I'd call sexy yet so I gave it up. However then I was instructed to put wooden clothes pegs on my nipples and that instantly felt both right and extremely good. The sharp but not too strong pain? That was certifiably the shit. It escalated and at the end I couldn't sit up straight. Breathing quickly and rocking back and forth before the session came to an end.

God, heck, and crap does pain not only me feel good but also extremely alive.

Bonus meme. I never thought I'd be trans. Not for a second. I realized this again last night. No way it'd be me, even right before I realized I was trans, but not in a denial sort of way. Denial would have meant I thought about it consciously and ignored it. I never got that far in my thinking since I rationalized away my thoughts and feelings with machined precision. Everything was either something else or not something I thought about. Like how I was never horny as a teenager, like how I despised and would outright refuse to use the PE showers instead just going home (feel like that was probably dysphoria my whole life?), like how I never used urinals, like how I would always feel very uncomfortable naked preferring to get clothes on as fast as possible. It's all things I could rationalize away individually (I'm fat, I like being warm, just don't like seeing penises) or just ignore. And so I did for my whole life. But now, knowing what all of these things can and should feel like? It feels so obvious. It was impossible for me to know and I wish I had more trans knowledge as a kid. But yeah I was probably trans my whole life. Just really good at putting on that mask.

Ok BIG CW HERE: GRAPHIC MASTURBATION. Sorry, yeah, but it's very gendered and this is indeed a glimpse into my own brain and not, like I keep trying to write it as, some kind of strange story about myself.

OK? COOL. Keep reading.

Oh crap oh crap I'm sorry! I missed a day. Don't worry though, nothing important happened. I just cleaned up my apartment after the party, exercised, talked with some friends, and overall had mild gender experiences.

Today though, oh today was an interesting one. Not only did I get most of my ass shaved with the help of the trans girl I know, but I also finally got to try masturbation for the first time since I realized I was trans. It's, uhhh... Hmmm. Oh, I didn't try just jerking myself off. That thought disgusts me. It sounds revolting for me to try something like that. No, I tried to just rub the tip with my finger. This sounds like it'd be pleasurable and I know, from experience in a past life where I did exactly this thing and it feeling very, very good, that it should feel good. But it didn't feel anything like before. It felt weird, and strange. It really felt like I'd never done anything like this before, and it didn't feel like I really wanted to. It felt okay, it didn't make me feel awful. Maybe I'll get used to it with time. But right now I'm totally ok without it.

There's some more kinky stuff but we'll leave the clothes pegs out for a later entry. Let's just say that my nipples picked up the stimulation slack.

So after feeling so super good about myself yesterday I decided it was time to order a pizza. That was also because my appetite has been so shot since I realized that I badly need as many calories as I can stomach (not a lot) and pizza is a good way to do it. So I order the pizza, go down to the pizza place, about to pay for it, and they say “Pizza’s ready in a few minutes man” and oh crap did that catch me off guard. Almost forgot I wasn’t online anymore and I’m still just in the body of this ugly man. Gotta admit that it hurt a lot more than I’d like. Letting my guard down like that, while the euphoria feels are incredibly when you’re in the right company, the crash is that much harder for it.

Oh crap oh sheesh I forgot to wash my face yesterday night and apply moisturizer oh noooo brb sorry diary you’re getting put on hold. Oh ok I showered and while I was at it I shaved my arm and the euphoria is immense. I will shave my whole body today I have determined. At least it’s still winter and cold so I have a reason to not show my body ever so nobody will think of it. Except when I’m inside with just a tshirt on my birthday party this time next week. That’ll be fun.

I’m about to come out to the trans girl I dated around half a year ago. It’s pretty exciting but I’m glad I waited. She’s not very leftist instead being fairly centrist in her politics which does bother me a bit not going to lie but at she doesn’t have really shitty opinions herself. She’s just too ok with people who do have really shitty opinions. And that’s the reason why I didn’t tell her or ask her for advice before I cracked. I just wasn’t sure how she’d react to me coming out before being as sure of myself as I am now.

Things went so much better than expected. We had a great time talking about transitioning and my new life as a girl, what to expect, what my immediate next things should be, dysphoria, and so on. I mean it was great to talk about it but fuck being in meatspace with people while I still have this body. The dysphoria was so bad and I mostly just froze up from it and couldn’t talk much. Luckily she’s good at talking and so I didn’t have to. Now the reality of what being a girl will entail as I go through life actually is and well. I can’t say I want the creeps constantly hitting on me, the chasers, the loss of a lot of privilege, but thankfully it’s not a choice I have to make if I want those or not. It’s an unchangeable part of me that I have to simply accept. But all the good stuff? God am I ready for it.

Didn't think about it and accidentally peed standing up. Doubly didn't think about it because my penis wasn't cooperating and a few drops splashed on my pants. Normally this would be a “shit” moment but now it's that and “fuck if I just sat down this wouldn't have happened.” Oh hi, dysphoria. Hadn't seen you for a while today. Almost a whole hour without it even. That being said I don't mind my penis. Maybe this will change in the future but right now I'm ok with it being there even if I don't associate it with me much at all. If people talk about it it's very neutral to me and they can do it without me feeling dysphoric.

The socialising continues though where today I had a bit of downtime and just on my own asked my colleagues on the projects I knew well if they needed any help. Turns out they did and together we solved the problems they were having much faster and better than if they tried to do it themselves since one is a UX guy and the other is still quite new. It feels really good helping people and I've known that my whole life. I still have a strong memory of being a young kid and being good at ice skating. So I was skating around when I saw this girl who was shit at it and she really struggled to do anything. In an uncharacteristic moment for my previous 27 years of behaviour I went up to her and helped her. I showed her how to become a friend with the ice and not work against it but with it. I felt so deeply warm and pleasant inside after but things like that were quickly stamped out by expectations of toxic masculinity. Expectations that for around 1.5 years now I've been desperately trying to strip out of my mind. That stripping out was part of an ongoing process of me turning into a woke turbo leftist who was very much about fighting gender norms. Doing that long before realising I'm trans helped infinitely with not having hatred of myself or doubts about my new identity because, while 3 years prior I still had shitty ideas about trans people that would have destroyed me if I'd tried to transition back then, I didn't feel like I was any less valid and already had some baseline information on what being trans might feel like.

I am feeling so unbelievably powerful. Spending time with the trans girls just makes me realize more and more about how… much of a girl I am. I am binary, but, like, girl. I’m about to purge every last part of masculinity I find out of my system forever. Only keeping it in memory so I can put on my cis-face to work. You know, pretending like I don’t care about people's feelings. All of that dumb toxic masculine stuff that I’ve been trying to rip out anyway. I care so much now it’s actually stupid. How was your day? I can’t wait to find out! Seriously. Right now I’m feeling like it’s not a matter of pretending like I’m not broken, now I’m just a girl pretending to be masculine. I guess it was all a charade my whole life anyway what with the stupid parts of me that cared about people. I feel like this makes me so different from other trans people. I’m not depressed or have like really bad mental health issues. It pains me so much when I see all of these beautiful men and women have so much turmoil inside of them just because nature decided to fuck them, specifically, over. I am dysphoric as all hell and dropping my voice even by accident among my colleagues makes me violently cringe (Oops, can’t let them see that, gotta hide that!) but, like someone just told me, the dysphoria pushes me to transition faster. Which is good, even though it feels so bad. Can’t win them all, eh? I also feel stupidly euphoric. Every time I get validation, confirmation, or in any way get dominated get told how good I am my brain still freezes. Callback to entry #1 here but it doesn’t feel any less good. I’m a slut so needy now, too. If I feel it I will absolutely beg for attention and validation. I also sometimes zone out at work and catch myself about to drift off into subspace having to force myself out of it because I’m at work dammit it’s inappropriate. Just because I found a new mental toy doesn’t mean I can use it wherever I want like some kind of buffoon.

After what happened yesterday I woke up and was questioning if I was really a girl and trans or if I'm just mistaking other symptoms. But it made me think of my ex who would disassociate and I don't think telling her she was a guy would have helped much since she isn't trans.

I forgot to mention!! I got my hair dyed yesterday. A dark, shiny blue.

I really love the colour and having this hair makes me super happy. When I first saw it done I got really excited but then I immediately saw the rest of my face and it didn't feel as good anymore.

At work today my co-workers really like it! Even my boss was impressed. And that again made me feel happy but it also brought with it voice dysphoria. I just want to sound happy like a girl. Which means that today will just be spent alternating between the 2 emotions a lot. At least it's making me extra motivated to start voice training for real. I watched some introduction videos that introduced it like a science instead of an art (Link) and that really helps me a lot because when I can measure the success of something instead of relying on feeling I do much better at that task. It makes me know I will have the voice I dream of eventually. First time peeing sitting down today. It feels right. Also a good excuse to write my diary on company time.

It's now lunch and we're doing a tech lunch where us developers sit and watch a video on some web development related technology while eating. I went and made a call to my doctor clinic and asked them for what to do next which is my first official call to try and get help. It feels good and I hope it leads somewhere nice. Sit back down and I can't finish the food because my appetite just isn't there. I know why, because I'm still fat and I know I will look a lot better with less weight. I knew that before too but now I feel it very strongly inside me. Also I try to look at the video but I space out and start thinking about dresses and makeup. I'm so shy I don't know if I can go there alone and buy it yet but it makes me happy thinking about it now whereas before it just made me feel uncomfortable.

I'm also switching extremely quickly between feeling very powerful, like I'll be a cool as fuck girl nerd, and feeling dysphoric as hell because I look the way I do. But I'm still doing good socially and I'm very, very productive.

I left work and despite my earlier thoughts I haven't felt as good going home. Still feeling dysphoric but the music sounds so good and my online friends are so nice. Everything is great right now. I came home and even did chores willingly. Me and my parents are going to build some IKEA furniture tonight, the rest of all the stuff I bought hopefully. I did have to hold up the mirror while my dad measured me and seeing my full body like that made me feel weak and stupid. But I recovered from it fairly quickly at least. My parents saw my hair too, now, and they said they liked it. Not sure they were all that convinced though honestly but hey they don't need to be. My hair is for me and it makes me feel great. The only thing I like about my body right now. It's colorful, a bit on the darker side, and shiny, which is a perfect match for how I feel inside.

I am done with IKEA furniture (for today) and let me tell you it wasn’t great. I’m usually good with just assembling IKEA furniture but it was hard focusing on it. Partially because I am emotions but also partially because dysphoria hit me pretty hard when I was around my parents. After near every sentence I got that familiar pain inside me and had to try to not deal with it visibly.

I have parents. They’re great though, really. Both atheist and liberal and probably would be fine with me being trans as far as I know. But you see I’m not that easy and I’m very private usually. I don’t like telling people that close to me about stuff like this even though I’m sure it’s real. I guess my current goal that I’m waiting for isn’t to just be dysphoric but to have something I can do about it, a solution if you will, before I come out and talk about it. Basically I want to pop the titty pills first then I come out to my parents. And as an aside I am so fucking ready for the titty pills. My relationship with my parents is great. We’re on fantastic terms and they help me through so much still. They’re the only reason I’ve even gotten this far anyway and I love them forever. But god do they make me tired to be around. They always have. It was one of the reasons my childhood was so unbelievably stressful. (I’ll write about my childhood at some point for sure) My dad is cool and we’re on the same wavelength, although it’s still draining to be near him. But my mom, and I love her to death, just doesn’t mesh with me. So she’s extra tiring to be around and I hate going shopping with her. My sister is great and I’ve loved going shopping with her my whole life. She knows what she wants and doesn’t spend time just fucking around.

Anyway as I was saying it was overall a very dysphoric experience. Being around people but not enough people makes me acutely aware of how I look and how much hair I have.

I also thought about how I see myself in social situations. Before I cracked I was always… not very good at them. To say the least. Now, and I have no idea how this works, I just know what to say more easily. In fact it just comes to me as I’m talking. Probably a comfort thing? As in cracking made me less on edge and allows to me to just speak words in a natural conversational flow. It’s my best guess though and I have no idea what’s actually going on. Also I say thank you a lot more often and apologizing doesn’t feel wrong anymore either. It used to be that when I apologized I felt like I was backing down but now it just feels like the normal and reasonable thing to do.

I am at work and I don't know what to do with myself. I'm more social than ever, I want to interact with people rather than shy away and don't know what to say. I feel like I can talk, interact, have conversations. And my heart that was broken just 3 days earlier now feels like it's gotten bigger than before. There's this warm feeling throughout my chest that makes everything seem so nice and pleasant. Yeah, I don't see myself in the mirror anymore, I just see the shape of the girl I should be, but that's ok because I just need to work on me. And I know from a past life that if there's one thing I'm good at its working on myself.

Holy shit I'm a girl.

Holy shit I'M a GIRL.

I guess I have to talk about sex. I haven’t masturbated since Friday and I haven’t felt any need to either. I’ve never gone this long without masturbating in my whole life since I started doing it and honestly? I don’t miss it. Which I never, ever thought I’d say but there it is. I also don't want to Dom anyone at all now. I used to be very Dom with no sub tendencies but now it's completely reversed. In my defense even when I did Dom someone I always kind of thought they were having a better time of it than me. Further I like the looks of men far more than I ever have in my life. I was just settling in as bisexual before this happened with a femme bias but now I absolutely want a big hairy guy to hold me.

I spoke to some trans people very briefly about what happened and only had time to describe a few symptoms out of all of them. They included: I was very depressed; I don't recognize myself in the mirror anymore; and my appetite is nearly gone. They suggested those symptoms sounded like symptoms of disassociation. And yes in a vacuum I agree that those could be symptoms of something else and not necessarily trans. I told them more specifically how I felt, that I didn't recognize myself because I saw a girl there instead, and they backed down. They're good people and I hold nothing against them.

But it did make me think that maybe I was also disassociating at the Friday this all happened. And, of course, it did make me feel doubtful and shitty.