Tell me I’ll be fine

I’m having one of those days when all I’d really want to do is curl up in a blanket and relax and be held. 

But I cannot do that because I have work to do, deadlines to meet, and no one here to hold me. 

I’m having one of those days where sadness and loneliness and tiredness seem to be infinite, all-encompassing. 

There are some objective reasons for some of my feelings: the first day of my period (damn those female hormones!); a slight sore-throat that hopefully isn’t the beginning of some illness; the buzzing hyperactivity we’ve had in the house for almost a week now, since the return of my host family, as they prepare the house to be sold and I thus have less space to relax and be comfortable here. 

But objectively there’s nothing really wrong: my plans for the next few months are pretty clear, I have a place to live and even a good job confirmed for the next couple years; I’m relatively healthy; I’m in pleasant company here most of the time; I have several new friends and acquaintances from my two main communities here, climbers and trans/non-binary persons, and I’m hanging out with these people very often, on average every-other day, which is far more than I ever had or did in California. 

And yet, my gender dysphoria has been through the roof these past few days and today it’s almost unbearable. In this moment it’s caused by my period and by my slightly less athletic/more feminine body due to the decrease in exercise lately because of injuries; but I can hardly keep it under control, hardly focus on what I need to get done for work. Old feelings from when I was much younger are resurfacing, when I didn’t want to look at my body, I didn’t want anybody to see it, I wanted to hide it, almost obliterate it, and I struggled with eating disorders gnawing at me every meal of the day. These feelings are horrible and it’s scary that they’re resurfacing like this — the other side of the coin of coming into & out with my trans non-binary gender identity, I guess. 

I wish someone close could hold me and tell me I’ll be fine, that they see the boy in me despite the female aspects of my body, that I’m loved truly as I am, that I’ll get my textbook done on time and I’ll do well on my postdoc. That the decisions I have made and am making recently are okay. That I’ll be fine. 

Tell me I’ll be fine.