when things fall into place

As I was going to bed last night, I realized something.  I realized that I was finally, perceptably, different.  Different than I was before.  With over a million cells in our body dying and changing and being replaced everyday, it's surprising that we never realize that we ARE in fact different from the day before.  We've had different experiences, been exposed to different chemicals and energies, our own bodies have metabolized and produced different substances... we can't help but NOT be different.  But how long does it take for us to realize the change?  How long after we give up working out do we notice that we're getting 'soft' (for lack of a better explanation.)  How long after we stop poisoning ourselves (with drugs, cigarettes, alcohol...) can we notice how much cleaner our bodies feel?  How long after beginning testosterone did I start to feel like I wasn't a series of minute changes, but a new person altogether?  127 days.

For many of us to notice any change in our bodies, we must be cognizant of how we change in our responses to our environments.  But recognizing the initial problem with myself--my extreme, uncorrected dysphoria toward my body--was only minimally reflected in my day-to-day experiences.  I guess I shouldn't be surprised, then, that I was not out among friends or at work or doing anything in the community that prompted me to notice the change.  It was a mere 24 hours after taking my most recent testosterone shot that the chemicals were high in my blood (and I was fighting off an intense anger I had only felt once before since beginning hormones) that I happen to look in the mirror.  For a second, I didn't realize who this person was looking back at me.  I was washing my hands, and when I looked up, I was met by an expression full of anger, hurt, some insecurity, a lot of curiosity... and something else.  I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but another 24 hours later, I am beginning to think it was the look of someone suffering from their own self-imposed exile.  The face and the eyes looked like someone who desperately wanted a companion on his island, but could not bring himself to leave the island looking for that person.  The expression was an contradictory mix of loneliness and a general rejection of intimacy.  The person in the mirror seemed to hate himself for not knowing how to feel.

And while I washed my hands, I was definitely still that 'person', an 'it' by social standards as people referred to me using both male and female pronouns interchangeably... the person in the mirror was undeniably male.  And full of the male conflict.