nicole @nicole@myna.social

Speaking from experience, testosterone should be a controlled substance.

Ten years of meditation and reflection in a mountaintop temple should stand between people and power.

But also, on the eve of 2023, I find myself wondering if a global reduction in muscle mass and prettier collarbones all around might just be good medicine for us all. 😘

Who decides the answer to this question is probably more important than the answer itself. I’m pretty sure it’s me. 😇

But the first hand is the dominant one: when I see myself in the mirror, the new prominence of my collar bone, the gradual, gradual, too-gradual thinning of my neck, it makes me happy. I am happy to be reduced in this way under these circumstances.

But should I be? 🤓

I’m 17 months into my #transition, which (for me) means just as many months of hormone replacement therapy (#HRT). Every so often, I head into SF and lie down on a giant scanner bed, and have my body composition analyzed.

The most-profound change has been the loss of lean muscle mass. For the first sox months, muscle held steady; over the next six, ten pounds evaporated.

Right now, I’m losing more than a pound of muscle a month. 🎢

I have such mixed feelings!

On one hand: goodbye and good riddance. I’ve always been tall, broad-chested, and muscular, and I’ve always hated it. I well remember my friends encouraging me towards sports in high school—“you’re a beast!!”—and how much it fucking hurt when they did.

On the other hand: this rhymes with aging—an accelerated enfeeblement. For the first time in my adult life, I can be physically overpowered by nearly half of the species. This is humbling. It sponsors nightmares and late night pepper spray purchases on Amazon.

🥺 Okay, _fine_.
🥹 Cue the waterworks.

“This was how life went. A single moment seemed to extend forever, then suddenly you were snapped out of it. The forward motion of time stretched whatever rubbery glue-like substance had fixed you there until it failed catastrophically. You weren’t the person you were before you got trapped; you weren’t the person you were while you were trapped: the merciless thing about it, Liv discovered, was that you weren’t someone entirely different either.”

😭 #NovaSwingMadeMeCry

@TheSpaceshipper bravo 😂

@sparrowpost Oh gods, I just read up on his biography. So much I didn’t know. 🥺

@rooster Now there’s some feels. 🥹

@sparrowpost It is! I ordered the Penguin paperback, and I’m very much looking forward to its arrival.

I was starting to wonder where she’d wandered off to. 🤭

@andrewedstrom Love this.