My dysphoria is being a dick this morning and my voice is coming out dreadfully mannish, so this is me fighting back the blues.

Thank you to everyone for the kind words on the instagram post for this image. My dysphoria these days has taken on a new form. It used to be that when the dysmorphia would flair up I would struggle to see myself in the mirror, all I could see was him, the old body. Now, however, there isn’t enough of him left to see, he’s gone (thank god).

So now what ends up happening is I feel invalid, like a sort of imposter syndrome. I see a woman in the mirror, but it’s not a real woman, it’s a facsimile of a woman, an approximation. I spend the entire day being tortured with feelings that I’m just a fake and that everyone can see it. I get surprised when I’m gendered correctly, and am always on edge just waiting for the other shoe to drop and have some transphobe start hurling slurs at me. I expect everyone to be staring at me like some kind of freak.

They don’t, of course, because this is all in my head, and I know it’s all in my head. I know that to everyone I simply look like the woman I am, no different from any other woman, but this form of depression is insidious. It’s a demon on your shoulder whispering doubts and anxieties. I’m finally starting to understand why many of my trans friends who are further along than I and completely cis passing always seem so uptight. Dysphoria doesn’t completely go away, it just gets more cruel.