I’ve been feeling very dysphoric lately. When I get like this, I just research the hell out of lower surgery even if it means reading the same things, watching the same videos, and seeing the same photos I’ve seen a hundred times before. Knowledge is comforting. And it reminds me that I will get there eventually, even if the wait is very long. One day at a time.

I don’t know how else to cope other than that and staying busy in ways that keep me distracted from my physical form.

The dysphoria, the discomfort I feel when I’m alone and no one is looking, when not even I am looking, is distressing and it disgusts me in very particular ways that I don’t quite know how to put into words.

When I’m around others, I feel like everyone can see those feelings. It feels as if I was covered in wounds bleeding through my clothes. Uncomfortable, gross, everyone can see it and I don’t want to be seen. I don’t want to get close to anyone. Who would in that condition? I just want to hide. But once I hide from the world there’s no hiding from myself. It’s just me, alone. It’s the dysphoria alone. And I can stay busy and distracted, but at the end of the day I can’t run away from it.

And that is without considering the additional sense of shame that comes from growing up in a society learning from a very young age that people like you are freaks who shouldn’t exist. But that’s a whole other topic.

It is what it is, I guess.