The beginning of my transition

I should either be asleep (since I’m sick) or working on my dissertation. I am not a very sensible person, so I’ve decided to write a blog post instead.

It’s been a week and 2 days (3 days? It’s after midnight) since I got my very first shot of male hormones. This means I get my next one in a month. It was rather anti-climatic at the time, I’d been waiting for so long and been feeling so excited/anxious that by the time I finally got the shot, it was like I was expecting everything to change immediately.

It didn’t. In fact, I didn’t feel anything of note for several days. I got some weird flashes of energy and buzziness, but aside from that nothing.

Since then I have noticed some changes. Nothing much has happened physically. I look the same, and everything pretty much feels the same. I think I might have built up some extra muscle already, but I’m not sure. I’ve noticed that I smell a bit different, it was particularly obvious to begin with, but it’s either not as strong now, or I’ve gotten used to it. My appetite went through the roof, and it’s been a bit hard to keep it in check. I’m hoping that won’t last too long. And my skin is getting greasier and spottier, ugh!

As for my voice, I don’t think it’s noticeably deeper yet, but my throat has felt scratchy for a while now and I sound a bit like I have a cold.

The biggest changes that I have noticed have been mental more than physical. I get irritated quicker, and over sillier things. It’s actually quite difficult to deal with because it feels like I’ve gone back to my teen years, but at the same time I still have the maturity and wisdom that I have acquired through the years, so I KNOW I’m being unreasonable and annoying. Therefore I feel a mixture of irritation and guilt and I feel sometimes like I should just hide myself away for a while.

My boyfriend says I tease him more, but then, that might just be me getting more relaxed around him. :P

It’s hard to describe how I feel. I feel pretty good about things, and I’m honestly quite glad that it’s all happening so slowly. I feel a bit more dude-like, as silly as that sounds. I don’t think it’s my subconscious trying to be more manly because it thinks I should be, I don’t really care about being manly. I just feel more relaxed, and yet somehow more assertive. It’s all a little strange.

But then again, it’s only been 2 weeks (and 2-3 days!) and I will be slowly changing for months and even years. I’m happy about it and excited to deal with the future. I think I can handle being a bit irritated for a while.

Question is: can everyone else?

My name

For some time now I have been introducing myself to people as Þór Matthías. In the last few days I’ve been thinking about this name more and more and whether it is actually a name that I want to keep for the rest of my life.

I have decided that it is not. I like Þór, I’m quite used to being called Þór by now, but I want my full name to be a bit more…of a mouthful I guess. I’m not used to having a one syllable name and it feels weird. I’ve always kind of liked having a full name and then a shortened version (Halldóra-Dóra). I also have something of an attachment to the letter H, for some reason.

So I have decided to change Þór into Hafþór (Haf=ocean). I like the idea of people who don’t know me calling me Hafþór, but reserving Þór for those who know me better. It’s also just a fuller, more meaty name, I suppose.

The other part of this is that Matthías is a name I had chosen for myself several years ago. I wanted to keep it in order to connect these two periods in my life, but I have come to realise that it’s actually just reminding me of a time when I was very unhappy. I feel quite distant from it now and I’m uncomfortable with it. Hafþór Matthías is also just about too long.

I went through a list of names the other day and found many that I liked. I decided not to go too far into the weird (with Huginn or Draupnir, even though they are cool) and decided to go with Loki instead. It’s short, it’s not a very common name, it’s interesting and it’s in keeping with the Nordic theme. Also Hafþór Loki just sounds cool, it’s rolls off the tongue quite nicely.

Choosing a new name is very tricky. I want to feel close to it, like it’s mine. I want it to represent me and fit me. I like Hafþór because I come from an island surrounded by the ocean and I’m used to seeing it every day. Þór represents strength and toughness to me, which is something I need. It’s something to live up to. Loki is fun, it has a lot of mischief to it and a kind of stubbornness. It’s a name full of life; a stormy, mischievous, strong name. I like it.

Picking your own name like this is very difficult and a bit sad. I’m leaving behind a good name that I’ve identified with for a very long time. A lot of people around me have to get used to calling me by a new name, and in doing so they might find themselves seeing me differently as a result. It’s a strange experience, but one that I sort of enjoy having. I feel like it’s an opportunity to really find myself, but to reinvent myself at the same time. A chance to take control of my life and set things straight.

Things are all a bit up in the air right now and unstable. I’m in the process of changing and becoming something new, it’s going to take a while and everyone’s a little confused. It’s not going to be the one thing that fixes everything, but it’s something I need to do to find my right place. I am allowing myself to enjoy the journey as well, rather than focusing exclusively on the final result.

Besides, is there every really a final result in life? Each journey gives us the wisdom and knowledge we need to embark on another journey. We collect the necessary tools to enable us to evolve even further. That is the joy of life, this ever evolving adventure.

My trans experience

People tend to be rather ignorant when it comes to the issues of trans people. For the most part this ignorance is not deliberate or born of any hatred, trans people are simply not very visible in society and there is little to no discussion of us. This needs to change. We are real, and we need the world to acknowledge our existence and accept who we are.

My name is Þór Matthías Theódórsson and I am transgender. It took me a long time to get to the point where I was able to really accept this about myself, and feel strong enough to come out and share this with the people in my life. To be honest I had reached a point in my life where I felt that something needed to change, or I wouldn’t be able to live with myself much longer.

This process has been very difficult for me, because the image most people have of transgender people didn’t fit me at all. I haven’t been insisting that I’m a boy since I was a child. I didn’t fight against wearing skirts and dresses or playing with dolls. I did pretty much what was excepted of me and I didn’t question it much. I don’t feel like a “man trapped in a woman’s body”. This body is mine and I’ve lived in it for 28 years, I don’t hate it, it just doesn’t fit me very well.

It didn’t even occurr to me that I was trans until my early twenties. Looking back I can see that most of my life I was confused, I felt left out and I didn’t understand why people did what they did. The girls didn’t make sense to me, the boys didn’t either. I tried on all sorts of identities and styles and never felt comfortable or settled. It wasn’t until I was about 21 or 22 that I started realising that something wasn’t quite right. Maybe it wasn’t that I was just a failure as a human being, but that what was excepted of me simply wasn’t right for me. At first I thought maybe I was gay, I tried that on a bit, but it didn’t fit. I am much more attracted to men than women and I realised quickly that I definitely wasn’t a lesbian. I knew I wasn’t a straight woman, I knew I belonged somewhere in the LGBT community, I just wasn’t sure where.

Eventually I came to the realisation that things didn’t feel right because the way people saw me didn’t fit with who I was on the inside. I realised that while I was in fact attracted to men, I didn’t want to be with them as a woman, I wanted to be with them as a man. For the first time in my life something made sense.

I’d heard of trans women before. Men who wanted to be women, who had known since they were children, who were “trapped in the wrong body”, who had hormone therapy and surgery to be as feminine as possible, who wanted to be with men. But the trans experience is so much more varied than that. For a long time I hadn’t even realised that it could work in the other direction, that sometimes trans people were men who had been born female.

I tried to come out of the closet several years ago. I told my family, I bought some men’s clothing, I saw a psychiatrist. But I realised soon that I wasn’t ready, I didn’t understand myself and what I was doing well enough, and there wasn’t much of a support network to rely on. I crawled back into the closet and spent years trying to convince the world and myself that I was in fact a woman. I just skipped the whole dating game, it was too painful to navigate.

About a year ago I started allowing myself to look at this again. I started reading and getting in touch with people online. Finally I realised that there is no one way to be trans. I don’t have to be über-man. I don’t have to change my personality to fit into some kind of transgender mold. I could be trans…and still be me.

So here I am. My name is Þór Matthías Theódórsson and I am transgender. I am not very masculine, I never have been, I am in fact quite feminine. I still like nail polish and fancy earrings. I still have a weakness for bags. I still think high heals make my legs look hot. But I am not a woman. I don’t want to have breasts, I don’t want to have a woman’s voice, I don’t want to live my life as something I am not.

I am going to go through the process of transition, get hormore replacement therapy and the surgeries I feel I need to to be comfortable in my body. But I will still be the same person, with the same interests. I will still be silly, a bit girly, wear make up sometimes. But I will be a man.

Think about this for a second. A man who was born male, who is attracted to other men, who wears make up sometimes, who is very feminine, is still a man if he says he is. A woman can be very “butch”, never wear dresses or shave her legs or wear make up, but she is still a woman. I am a man, and just like every other man, I can be exactly the kind of man I want to be.