I really enjoyed presenting female for the boat trip and London summer party, but have become significantly more reclusive over the past week. I think most of this comes from a reddit post I looked at which showed the progress of people who started hormones around the age of 30. Most of the photos filled me with a sense of dread, that I could become stuck as they are. This is a terrible thing for various reasons, the worst being the fact I am basically discriminating against my own kind, and that how I physically look is somehow more important to me than how I feel.

The latter I can only put down to not really understanding what I want hormones to change internally, only that I hope they reduce some of my general anxiety (and probably as a result make me less worried about looks), so I instead focus on the physical changes that I want. And my main focus physically when gauging anyone's beauty (including my own) is the face. So I end up only worried about how hormones will effect my face, which is largely determined by bone structure that I can't change without expensive and unnecessary surgery.

So I have been stressing out over whether I want to risk looking like an obvious transexual, or whether I would be happier just to go on being me as I am and express my urges through random cross-dressing now and then. I had hoped that when I eventually visit the gender identity clinic they would help me validate my choice, by diagnosing me and saying what I need, but from my conversations with a friend now on his 2nd appointment it would seem all they do is check you are of sound mind (enough support from friends/family, can financially support self, etc) to make the decision, and then they will write letters to take to a doctor who can prescribe stuff (hormones, laser hair removal, etc).

So I will need to sort this out myself, and like my friend said, the hormones can only make me more feminine. It's just a lot of stress that I am not really dealing with very well, since my current tactic is to ignore really sorting anything gender wise until I have my first clinic appointment. From what they told me, that is not going to work. The fact that work is somewhat manic at the moment isn't helping matters. But complaining about that seems petty when several of my friends are struggling to find/keep jobs at all, and I am actually fairly financially secure. I have noticed that I am sleeping less, drinking more coffee, and getting more spots. Which in turn makes me more easily stressed (particularly about appearance), and lower self-esteem/willpower, so I don't do the sensible things to fix the cycle (like get to bed early).

I don't think I need anything... I think I just need to stop blaming my problems on other things and deal with them like an adult. I am sure I will look back at this in future and laugh at how petty I was. I look forward to that day.