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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
***. 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 *** 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!