Dear Anita

Thank you so much for your advice. I think that reading articles and stories from other transgender men who have similar struggles helps me feel better about myself and understand my feelings. There are times when I feel lost in dysphoria and I need to work on relaxing the tension in my body because I can feel like the dysphoria is like ocean currents pulling me under and making it hard to focus on things. During those times, I find myself telling myself to just breathe and acknowledge the tension in my body and that it’s okay. I find that music helps me de-stress and sometimes I will listen to some songs to help me relieve the tension when it starts to become too straining. I have been working on trying energy circulating exercises like Qi Gong where I sttretch and imagine cleansing energy flowing through my body and relieving the tension which I find is helpful when the dysphoria is tough and I feel tightness in my chest muscles. The Qi Gong helps me circulate the energy so I am not always focusing on one part of my body but focusing on it as a whole which helps with dealing with the dysphoria. Since most of the dysphoria is concentrated on my chest and hips and wondering if they look masculine enough, I find that doing Qi Gong exercises helps me refocus my energy on my whole body and my breathing rather than on some specific parts and it helps me de-stress a bit. I think that the scientific research path that I am pursuing as a career choice has scientists work mostly in labs and hospitals so there is often good health insurance and I hope that when I start looking for job opportunities I can find employers who are LGBTQ friendly. The dysphoria will always be there and quite noticeable until I start transitioning and getting more of the physical traits of a guy that testosterone therapy will bring. Meanwhile, I think my main focus is to connect with other transgender people and help each other work on coping with their stresses and build more resources for understanding myself. I feel like my life’s purpose is to be myself and to feel alive within myself. Science helps me understand the world and I enjoy science’s idea that people are the energy from the Big Bang because that makes people made of the energy of the stars and I think that stars shine brighter in darkness so people can shine brighter in darkness as well. I like exploring how science can contribute to improving people’s health especially studying genetics because DNA structure and how it contains instructions for specific traits that makes people unique fascinates me. I feel like with my life’s path, I want to seek an understanding of who I am as a person. Science helps me explain things on a physical level and Buddhist wiccan meditation helps me work on building myself on a spiritual level. I don’t think I fit into societal expectations of gender roles and I think I am working on finding myself outside of society’s boxes because the boxes are very restricting on my creativity. But there is a part of me that wants society to see me as a guy because I feel comfortable as one and there are some things that I feel like I have to adopt as traits to be seen as masculine. But I don’t want to be restricted by society’s expectations of gender that I lose myself and that’s why I am working on expressing myself as a guy but not trying to make myself fit into a box because some of the pieces won’t fit and it is straining to try to fit into a box.  Mostly I like to wear my hair short because it makes me appear more masculine and it’s easier to maintain and I like wearing darker colors because it draws less attention to myself. I like to be out in nature thinking about connecting with nature and feeling like I belong. Just listening to the wind rustling the tree leaves and the birds singing makes me smile. Nature seems to be such a simple expression of creativity and I think that it resonates with my soul because I want to express myself simply and also be the person I want to be seen as.