There just came a point when I realized that not all cis boys like puberty or like everything that is happening to their bodies. They might be into some aspects of it, but less into others. But they don’t get to pick and choose, and over time they adjust and come to like, love, tolerate, deal with or even dial back some of those changes. None of that means that they aren’t actually men, and nobody ever thinks that a boy isn’t really a boy just because he isn’t loving being a hormonal, acne-covered, horny, sweaty mess who is sprouting hair on his toes or has that one weird long hair growing out of his shoulder…
Because before I realized this– in the many years when I was delaying HRT even though I could and should have been on it already– I would think things like, “Well, I want facial hair and a different facial structure and voice, but I don’t want to be hairy all over! That would be weird! What if I’m as hairy as my dad?!” And I took those thoughts to mean, Maybe I shouldn’t transition. Maybe HRT isn’t right for me. Or even, maybe I’m not really trans.
None of that was true. Take those thoughts and transpose them into a 11 year old cis boy’s head and they are perfectly normal.
What I actually found when I started testosterone was that:
1. Everything happens really fucking slowly anyway. You have so much time to adjust.
2. A lot of the things you were worried about won’t bother you at ALL (or you’ll love them.)
3. T isn’t a designer drug. You don’t get to pick and choose what you want or how it will look, unless you add in additional drugs/procedures/grooming to get it that way, but that’s OK. It’s not about achieving some designer body that is in your head, it’s about becoming the boy/man/masc/nonbinary person that your genetics have set out for you uniquely. And that’s actually really beautiful.
I don’t have the thick defined facial hair after four years, because that’s not what my genetics coded me for at this point in time. I do have a hairy stomach, which looks awesome and occasionally makes queer dudes drool. I don’t have a deep voice; I do have a nice facial structure; I do have a masculine hairline that may, in time, recede even more though I don’t want it to. All of this- is, for me, the whole package. It’s entering into real life, in the body. Sometimes when we are pre-HRT we really don’t know what that’s all about and we might feel apprehensive about that, but it’s really OK. It’s taking the whole package and learning and living and growing old.