2012: end-of-year review

2012 has been a pretty amazing year. Every year is interesting and full of stuff that happened, but this one was special in a lot of ways. Barack Obama was elected for the second time, we actually won in popular votes on marriage equality for the first time ever, and a bunch of people were voted out of office after saying ignorant things about women and rape. Private Bradley Manning’s trial finally began, and I’m probably going to get dragged into that all over again. There was The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Paranormal Activity 4, and new music from The Birthday Massacre, Madeon, Ellie Goulding and Kesha. On the other hand, there was also a huge hurricane and a horrific amount of gun violence, but at least we managed to survive another apocalypse. Altogether, it’s been a hell of a year.

More personally, I have a yearly tradition of looking back and seeing how much I’ve improved myself, and in that respect, this has been one of the most significant years of my life in a while. I’ve always figured that if I look at myself a year ago and see that nothing has changed, that’s when I’ll be in real trouble. Fortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of a risk of that happening any time soon.

This was the year that I permanently moved to Florida, at least until Heather and I move somewhere else. I got my first apartment with her, and as time has gone by, I’ve become a little better at being a stepmom. I spoke at the Florida Secular Rally, which was my first time giving a speech ever, and people seemed to enjoy it.

But by far the biggest and most wide-ranging change of this year has been transitioning. I know that many of you have been watching where I’ve been headed for over four years now, and it’s probably not surprising that this is where I ended up. It certainly took me long enough, but I finally decided it was time to take this to the next level. After living as a woman for over a year, I came out to my family, most of whom didn’t suspect a thing. I even told my grandfather, despite everyone warning me not to, but it all turned out much better than I could have imagined. It was all absolutely terrifying, yet somehow I did it, and nobody has a problem with it.

I picked a new name and filed for a name change, which should be finalized after the new year. I found a really good therapist and a doctor, and I’ve been on hormones for more than 3 months now. I’d been putting it off for a while because I thought I didn’t need it, and then because I was worried about how it might change me, but I finally decided I at least had to see what it was like.

Make no mistake: the physical and mental effects of removing your testosterone and replacing it with estrogen are significant. And I discovered that this is exactly what was missing in my life. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been a tense and irritable person, and even the smallest parts of everyday life never really came easily to me. I assumed that being perpetually stressed was just how I am, and it was my problem to deal with, possibly with weed or something. But I was wrong.

This has improved me more than I ever expected. My body is changing to feel more comfortable than it did before – to put it bluntly, I have breasts now – and my overall mood has become so much calmer and happier. I can find joy in almost anything, instead of frustration. Emotionally, I can feel nuance instead of numbness, and I can finally cry when I feel like it. My life has gotten so much easier because of this one little thing – insofar as a second puberty is just a little thing.

The most incredible part is that if I hadn’t done this, I wouldn’t have known that my body and my mind had this much room for improvement. I thought things were as good as they get, I thought I could be okay with the way it was before – but then I found something that made it all even better. Life doesn’t suck anymore!

I know there’ll never be another year like this, but I do hope the coming year is just as transformative, enlightening, and all-around awesome. And I hope that at the end of it, I can look back and say that it’s surpassed even this one. Happy new year!

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2012: end-of-year review
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4 thoughts on “2012: end-of-year review

  1. 2

    Happy New Year. I tend to look back around thanksgiving/my birthday instead of the new year. It’s been a hell of a year for me too. I just hope one day that I can say “Life doesn’t suck anymore.” Thank you for giving me hope.

  2. 4

    Some really fantastic information, Glad I observed this. “Perfect valor is to behave, without witnesses, as one would act were all the world watching.” by La Rochefoucauld.

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