On October 10, 2025, I celebrated one year of hormone replacement therapy. I can't remember what I ate, but I do remember I played some video games on the couch while my cat slept in my lap and I caught a shiny Pachirisu right before I went to bed.

I've reached the point where I take having estrogen as my primary sex hormone, as well as the ways in which I've changed since then, for granted. There's not necessarily any goal behind this post, except to more or less journal out my thoughts on these changes into a tiny piece of the internet.

The most remarkable part of running on the correct hormones are the near-immediate mental and emotional effects I experienced; I feel like things are correct, for lack of a better term, and I did not realize how bad my biochemical dysphoria was until I started estrogen. I find that it's both easier to cry, and that crying feels good in a way that it didn't pre-HRT, like I'm actually processing the emotions causing me to cry as they arise. I think my sense of smell is better, too? Although I can't tell if that's true or due to me not dissociating so much.

Because of this, I feel like I'm finally out of limbo and am actually alive, and my life now looks drastically different when compared to a year ago. In the past year, I have:

• Landed a new job with a decent raise on a much healthier team where my skills are valued. I'm still burned out and probably traumatized from my last one, however.
• Moved out of the suburban hellhole I was in and into a much more walkable neighborhood right across the street from a park.
• Lost…a lot of weight due to no longer needing to stress eat and getting into running again. Not really sure how much as I refuse to weigh myself.
• Started reading again! So far this year I've read 24 books and counting and it's been so much fun.
• Picked up crocheting after not doing so for years, both for myself and to make gifts for friends.
• Made a trans friend in my area.
• Set boundaries with and significantly reduced contact with my fascist parents.

A less fun effect that seems to be not terribly uncommon in trans people is in regards to dysphoria: when I stopped primarily relying on dissociation to get through each day, I started feeling my dysphoria more fully, as opposed to the more muted and beneath-the-surface dysphoria I was more comfortable with managing before. This is probably healthy since now I need to engage with it directly and actually do something about it, whether internal or external. My dysphoria pales in comparison to my euphoria though, so I think it's a fair trade.

When I started, I worried about having a time limit on my boymode, after which the physical changes of HRT would thrust me out of the closet before I was ready. In retrospect, that was a little irrational. While I am so, so, so happy with the physical effects and have visible breasts, clearer skin, more hair on my scalp, and some fat loss and redistribution which has changed the appearance of my face and body, I'm more or less the same person and regularly get gendered male unless I am presenting more feminine, in which case I am usually not gendered verbally (people seem nicer though?), although I've also learned that most cis people are fucking oblivious considering I regularly wear at least women's pants and feminine earrings to the office. Of course, one year is just barely the beginning of puberty, so we'll see what happens.

Starting GAHT is by far the best decision I have ever made in my life and the only regret I hold is not pulling the trigger on it earlier. I have known I am a woman my whole life, although for most of my life I did have the language or understanding to acknowledge myself as one (I remember repeatedly telling my girlfriend in college that "I am not a woman but I wish I could be one" LMAO), and later did not think that I could transition for one reason or another. I am so glad that last year I finally learned that I can just do things I want to do and be who I want to be and that I don't have to wait.