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Still
Fucking
Waiting
For
My
First
Fucking
Vial. 😭
do you know anyone locally who could give you an extra vial while you’re waiting?
I have literally no friends what so ever. I’ve been moving up and down the coast like a sexually confused cod. And haven’t really put down roots anywhere. On top of that, while the town I’m in is something of a regional hub. It’s still under 100000 inhabitants. Also the country I live in has the most analy retentive and annoyingly efficient customs officers in Europe. So I doubt people will be willing to part with their spare vials for someone they don’t know extremely well.
Girl I’m sure you’ve been through your options, but if you need numbers for other DIY sources you could try while you wait, DM me. Either way we’re all rooting for your delivery to arrive! Hope you’re doing okay.
Most DIY sources will not make it through Norwegian customs and all the ones based in Europe won’t even try.
:( that sucks. I don’t know anything about Norwegian customs. The private service I use just writes prescriptions for you so you can get them filled in your local pharmacy but obviously that can get costly. I’m willing your vial to your door with all my might.
I read somewhere that pharmacies here (I don’t think all of them but some) were refusing prescriptions from gender GP and imago.
Jeez. What is the background level of transphobia like there? Like the public discourse etc? I live on TERF island so i assumed things would be significantly better there.
yeah, it’s all about finding community - going to trans support groups, events hosted by LGBT+ centers, pride parades, etc.
then it’s a matter of cultivating those relationships, getting invited to and showing up at parties, making plans with people, etc.
In my experience once a group has formed people are more willing to share resources - I’ve at least witnessed people giving away free needles and syringes, for example. The local LGBT+ center also has free menstrual pads, a free closet, etc. and is a place where some material needs can be met.
I just assume you don’t have the $$$ for another vial, but it seems like that could be another path forward.
Also, if you have friends or family in another country with more lax customs officers, you could always mail the vial there and then travel to pick it up?
Just thinking out loud, but yeah - do anything you can, it’s important.
So the only countries near by are Sweden, Finland and Russia. One of those things is not like the others so we’re left with Finland and Sweden. If I don’t have the money for another vial (and it’s a fair assumption at the moment things are pretty tight) I definitely don’t have the possibility of flying down to Stockholm to fetch it.
As far as a social life goes, I don’t have one. And as far as I’m aware there isn’t such a thing as an LGBTQ+ centre (at least I’ve never heard of one) and the closest dedicated gay club is a couple of thousand km away. There are monthly events for trans people, but mostly at inconvenient times when you have young kids. Also an annoying fact of life in Norway is that the entire country’s social life is administered on Facebook. I would rather be alone forever than get a Facebook account.
This is the first vial I’ve ordered, so as long as it arrives at some point before summer it’s ok (infuriating but ok). I am not sure I’m going to get the effects I want from it, so I don’t want to go ordering a bunch from all the different providers and playing games with international shipping. The plan is that if it doesn’t make me feel better I won’t be ordering more anyway and if it does then I’ll pick up a larger quantity of raw estradiol enanthate and brew my own, because I can take back a lifetime supply in one trip. It’s just easier than trying to get the preprepared vials sent here. If I get good enough I might consider supplying Norway.
I don’t have any advice for you, but I just wanted to say I’m sorry for the situation you’re currently in - but I think it will improve.
In terms of homebrewing, I was wondering since you have expertise if you have resources you could point beginner homebrewers to, even just basics would be helpful. Esp. any kinds of videos demonstrating things like how to use a syringe filter, or how to sterilize a glove box, etc.
It would be nice if the DIY community had more put-together resources & community standards for homebrewing.
The plan is that if it doesn’t make me feel better I won’t be ordering more anyway
This hangs a lot on what may or may not be the most relevant factor for whether to take estrogen. You probably already have enough evidence that estrogen is a good idea, and while it’s still useful to have direct experiences and confirmation of this, it’s not like taking estrogen is a guaranteed immediate and obviously good thing for many of us - you may or may not see the changes you want in a timeline you want to see them, but I’m not sure it makes sense to discard taking estrogen on that basis.
There are girls I’ve talked to on Lemmy who started estrogen but because they didn’t have an immediately ground-shattering experience on it, they gave up taking it and went back to repressing. This was obviously not the best course of action from a clinical perspective and they still struggle with dysphoria and could have been on estrogen in the meantime and improving their life, but instead the misinterpreted their experience as confirmation they weren’t trans enough and went back to repressing. Even worse, the ester they took was enanthate, which can take over a month to really increase estrogen levels to the levels that valerate can achieve within days to weeks.
All this to say, I wanted to throw up a “warning” flag at the way you talk about trialing estrogen in such stark terms, and gently encourage you to consider taking a more relaxed and open approach to this - I especially struggled to feel normal until I had surgery that removed my testes, and that whole time I continued to suffer from what I assume was “biochemical dysphoria”. Sometimes it’s about making incremental changes in the right direction, and if we demand too much from our transition it can lead us to dark places.
I understand what you are saying, I understand that enanthate takes a while to achieve stable levels so my plan is to give it 2-3 months so I can see if its something that would help. My dysphoria is almost entirely biochemical so my thought is that my symptoms are either actually due to dysphoria in which case I should see some improvement in my mood after a few months or my symptoms are something entirely different in which case I would expect it to make me feel significantly worse after a few months. But I don’t want to go ordering multiple vials only to be stuck with them and noone to give them to, because as previously stated, I’m completely friendless at the moment.
As far as experience home-brewing I don’t have any yet, just a lot of general lab experience. I’ve skimmed the instructions on one of the DIY websites and it all seems pretty simple. If I end up actually going through with home-brewing I’ll make a step by step video and upload it somewhere. That information will become very important in the next few years. I certainly wouldn’t go selling vials unless I was extremely comfortable with the procedure and had third party testing and proper equipment (proper laminar flow fume cabinet, autoclave etc instead of oven extractor fan and instant pot).
Started going back to the gym, and its such utter bullshit how immediate the improvement in my mood was for 30 minutes of cardio.
My friend moved in!!! I’ve known her since new years eve and two days ago I went to her place in a van and packed her stuff up and went home to get new home
Pretty chill. On Monday the local carnival ended and I took some time to wind down from that on Tuesday. Recovery from bottom surgery is going great and I could party like normal. I went to one of my favourite regular events, a writer’s workshop. It’s really cool how by now people recognise me there and I always know multiple of the people who are there. I also wrote some pretty good stuff that session. Thursday I went to my favourite bar with a few friends, it’s a jazz bar that still has all the original interior from the 60s and they only play stuff from vinyl which is very cool. I drank a lot of wine there and noticed that my alcohol tolerance has gone up quite a bit. And then on Friday I watched the first episode of Twin Peaks with two friends and have been watching it for the last few days. I quite like it and will finish the first season tonight, I think. Next week I’ll have to take a train across the country to go to my first bottom surgery checkup so I want to take some time to curl up and be warm. :3
Oh and also I’ve been questioning my sexuality again and am trying to figure out if I’m really bisexual or just a lesbian.
Twin Peaks is my jam.
<cw: far-right transphobic harrassment>
Got surrounded, harrassed and threatened by a bunch of rabid zionists and fascists while supporting a peaceful pro-palestinian group in my city yesterday. They were carrying IDF flags, calling us terrorists and Jew hunters and on top of all their usual depravity, were being virulently transphobic, attempting to single out any of us who were gender non-conforming and loudly, repeatedly agressively misgendering us. The police stood and watched as they got in our faces and threatened us with violence. But if we’d have raised a hand in self defence they would have immedaitely beaten and arrested us. My comrades were brave, composed and unyielding, but it was a horrible experience. I’ve been part of enough anti-fascist action to develop a pretty thick skin but yesterday was fucking horrible.
<cw: UK NHS indifference>
Today i have been trying to sort out blood tests for my GAHT and running into the standard NHS “we’d rather you just die” approach to healthcare. I don’t have any transfem friends in my city to ask for advice from, but I’m gonna go to a social this week to see if I can meet some women who might be able to signpost me.
So not a great start to my week. But I will never let them crush me. I will fucking thrive out pure spite if I have to.
i just can’t believe how some peopke lack basic empathy, also thanks for your work
<3
I guess this won’t be on anyone’s radar who isn’t in Japan, but I saw the new “This Is I” on Netflix. I was pretty apprehensive going in, but it turned out to be IMHO a compassionate treatment of the subject matter.
It could be very triggering though, so be careful if you’re struggling with dysphoria or transphobia.
I moved into a bigger and nicer flat. With a friend together and a cat. Never thought I could get out of that horrible flat I was in for nearly 3 years now. Got some nice things for the flat, among others, a new blahaj! Gonna get into gardening again now that I have a balcony.
