How do teenagers get anything done at all???
How can they manage to get schoolwork done, maybe a side job, get chores done, and eventually graduate? How can they focus enough, for a long enough time, to get anything practical or sensible done?
Somehow, the memories of my own “first” puberty, my own female puberty as a teenager, are vague. In many ways, I guess, it was masked or subdued: it happened gradually and really not dramatically at all (from the physical/physiological viewpoint), quite gently, so I probably was able to get used to the changes almost subconsciously; moreover, it entailed the “normal” or “expected” changes as an AFAB, so I guess that made it easier to take so much for granted; on the other hand, my own family of origin hyper-responsibilized me for almost my entire life, often treating me like an adult or older than my actual age from a very young age, while sometimes instead treating me like a child for longer than appropriate, so at the end of the day I was hardly ever treated in the “age-appropriate way” by them; finally, and very importantly I think, I was going through a “standard” or “natural” or “normal” phase for my age (& body or external appearance) together with my peers, so I had the subconscious, natural, spontaneous support or, at least, acceptance of the world around me.
My only really distinct memories of disruptive puberty effects are from the summer of my junior-into-senior year & last high school year: probably late for a “biological female”, my sex drive awakened all of a sudden then and I can very distinctly remember several moments in which I really had trouble focusing on what I had to do because of my sex drive.
My “second” or “chosen” puberty now is often totally disrupting and distracting. There are so many moments when I can get hardly anything done or have to struggle enormously to get anything practical/sensible done because I’m so enraptured by the changes my body & mind are undergoing. I’m fascinated by the hairs growing on my body, really liking some of them while having mixed feelings about others, but nonetheless fascinated by the process. A lot of my attention and concentration are taken up by adjusting my voice — its pitch, the intonation, and other “gendering” details — very often even unintentionally. Plenty of my emotional and intellectual energy are taken up by getting used to the new perceptions I have of the world around me and of the new ways in which the world — people — around me perceive me, interact with me, behave with me, address me. And then, last but not least, there’s all the practical hassles with all the time and energy necessarily spent on paperwork, offices, doctors appointments, phone calls, etc.
Now I really get it, fully empathizing, why many of my students dropped out of college while “transitioning”.
I still don’t like, or identify with, the term “transitioning” for this experience I’m going through. For me it still feels like a further, even more authentic, step in my own growth and self-determination; it feels like “coming into myself” (rather than “coming out”); and like my second puberty, my chosen puberty, my “correct” puberty. But still, regardless of how we want to call or define this process and despite it being a consciously chosen process and in many ways a wonderful, beautiful, joyful process, it’s a hard process nonetheless: it’s difficult, it’s scary, it’s disruptive, it’s unconventional. And it’s happening at a time of (my) life when neither I nor the world around me are fully prepared for it — which makes it even more disruptive, unconventional, and in many ways lonely.
The Little Prince and the Fox 