side note: after i got on blockers i kept a pretty consistent bi-weekly journal.

eleven years later, and i'm still learning new things about myself in both practice and in form: curvature i didn't have, new habits granted from regular affirmation of my transness. i've recently begun to actually dig into being in a larger trans community locally, and that's brought tons of solace and grace and comraderie too. the individualist sociocultural dynamic of living more north in the US left its trans spaces a little clique-oriented, and as a socially-atrophied trans lady, fitting into those spaces of trans people that have lived their entire lives in society was difficult but altogether okay. but moving to the south has taught me that trans people here collectivize and have a shared understanding of interconnectedness that is pretty amazing.

i guess some of this is a ramble about my surroundings (been on a weird kick of wanting to feel more grounded to the world under my feet than the one in my head), but i guess it also is an observation that environment has tons to do with how you respond to your hormonal treatment, and that no one roadmap is the only path on that route to transness.

expressivity* of speech rather than expressivity of gender. i tended to hang around other women, and that brought with it the comfort to express myself in form rather than just in intellectual acknowledgement that i was feminine (also hormones tend to reshape your hips more when blockers take effect so it wound up making it easier to express myself in fashion too). me and my bestie would regularly go thrifting because i had to rid myself of all the boymoding clothes in my closet loll

you understood correct! i even swapped cities and felt very isolated, but after being on blockers, i decided to reach out to a coworker who became my best friend in the whole world, i went out to places by myself to engage with the idea of feeling the agency to go out without anybody else (take yourself out on dates whatnot), i went to my best friend's apartment all the time to hang out. later on i went to parties and actually felt free to be myself while also limiting my expressivity (listening more than speaking).

unrelated to you asking @Tattie but having felt important to weigh in on the discussion, socialization for me came when i'd already atrophied from a very christian and insular neighborhood. that being said, after taking the hormone for some years, and getting on blockers a little later--blockers tended to give me a fixation on listening to other people rather than just the small voice in my head telling me how to feel about the external world. i'm not sure whether i'm constructing the idea of empathy, but there is some externality that comes with blockers?? i guess? part of it might have been related to the social atrophy, and that expulsion and consistent admonishment from nearly an entire neighborhood gave me a lot of social anxiety, which is why i think me reaching out to listen to people other than myself is an anomaly with my own interpersonal conflict. i attribute that to going on blockers because around the time that their affects began to impact my body was around the time i quieted myself to more or less take in more of the rest of the world, rather than the world i grew up in.