This year felt different… in a good way

It’s really hard to quantify these things, but I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say that this past year was the best year of my life.  A lot of great things happened, I got to travel a lot, I got married (as I’ve been mentioning in every single recent post, haha)!  And all those things are awesome.  But the reason this year was so good was because I felt so different.  I’d been struggling with some pretty crippling anxiety for like, forever.  And I’d made quite a bit of progress over the past 2 years in therapy, but basically, I had constructed much of my life in ways to insulate myself from the things that were anxiety provoking.  And no amount of therapy was going to help me strip that all away if I was still experiencing such unpleasant physiological reactions.  Then I started taking a low dose of testosterone on March 18th and POOF!  Anxiety dissipated into thin air, and I’ve just kinda been reveling in how good everything feels for the rest of this year.  I hope I get to keep reveling for years to come… We’ll see.  Here’s a couple of other things that were awesome:

– C and I went on vacation to Asheville, NC.  It was our first grown-up vacation ever, by which I mean we flew there, rented a car (I’d never done this before), used Airbnb to find lodging (we always go somewhere on vacation where we can stay with friends – don’t get me wrong, I love seeing friends, but this just felt so different.), and just did a lot of local things – restaurants, microbreweries, hiking, cultural arts center, etc.

– We went on a bunch of other smaller trips: to Toronto twice (we went to the Toronto Comics Arts Festival and to the Sister Spit Tour), to Philadelphia (Trans Health Conference!), to NYC (Brothers Quay exhibit at MOMA!), and I went on a solo trip to Worcester and Boston.

(Here I am at the Toronto Comics Arts Festival, making a ridiculous face – I’m in line, in the middle, the short guy.  I found this pic on the Fantagraphics website – er rather, a friend came across it and sent it to me, and Fantagraphics captioned it: “Then the magical Ulli Lust made her appearance. Leon Avelino of Secret Acres and The Beguiling’s Peter Birkmoe showed up but were sadly outdone by the BEST CON FACE EVER. Thank you, Toronto.”  I’m highly amused by this, haha.)

– Like I mentioned, I started using a low dose of testosterone in March.   Best.  Thing.  Ever.

– My supervisor and I started to actually get along at work.  We now work really well together (so far), whereas in the past, we have had some pretty major clashes.

– I read 26 books.  This number is way down from the past few years, but for prior to a few years ago, I wasn’t reading anything at all, so it’s still kinda a big deal for me!

– C and I got married and went on a fun weekend getaway!

– I met a new friend, a really introspective, really effeminate and handsome queer guy.

– I got a new bike, but did not really ride it nearly enough.

– I was in a really fun play and did a couple of drag shows.

– I started this blog!

There’s probably more, but that was pretty much what 2013 looked like for me.