I've been seeing "her" more and more lately. The "her" in the mirror. I used to see people talk about her on like, reddit and twitter, but I've long since stopped using those cesspools. I still think about those posts though, the posts of trans girls on E for a few months who post in a frenzy of excitement, saying how they say her in the mirror, and it's so wonderful, and it was so cute and uplifting to see... I see her about half the time I try these days, and get a rush of excitement, and the fleeting thought of "oh, maybe straight men will find me attractive some day!". The other half... I see a lonely, sad obviously trans girl peering at the mirror trying to see the face that she thinks could maybe pass one day if she's lucky.
It's not fun.
It's usually a whole process, in my experience, to see her. You undress, and stand in your tiny bathroom, surrounded by like 4 different mirrors that the previous owners installed for some reason, and look in the biggest one over the sink. You breathe in, and suck in your stomach to try and get that dip in under the ribs that makes you think "woman shape mmm" when you see it on yourself, and you crane your neck forward, trying to will the skin and flesh on your face to look "better" somehow. You tilt back and forth, seeing yourself as nothing more than an androgynous thing, flexing and posing stupidly in a mirror that isn't telling you what you want to hear.
Then, suddenly, there she is. She's beautiful, and in that moment, your face, your body, even your expression screams out "I am a woman, and no one could ever mistake otherwise".
Then she's gone, and you're stuck looking at... you. A weight falls on you, and you think "no one will ever want me, no straight man will want me to marry him..." Then you feel guilty for putting straight men on a pedestal. Straight men suck, why would you want to impress one? What's the alure? You're pretty sure you're T4T anyway, and you think you want a girlfriend at that. Are you really putting your value in the hands of someone else? In a man of all things? You hate men, or at least, you hate the men in your life. You like the idea of men though, if you could find one who would treat you right, like a real person, and not a slave or a punching bag or a "boob vending machine" as one potential date had said last night. You keep feeling shitty, because you can't find her anymore, and because you are sitting here worrying about an imaginary man and how he sees you. You decide to shower, you're already naked after all, and you're mostly done with cleaning the house. Well, you did some of the house. You're not really up to everything right now. The AC is broken, so you need to cool off either way.
You get in and start lathering up, letting the blade slide across your skin as you perform your ritual. You feel a sudden hotness and you look down to see a stream of rusty brown trickling from your boob to the floor. "Safety" razor my ass. You clean the blood off, and resist the urge to lick some off your fingers. You suddenly wonder why you were even shaving your boob in the first place, there's no hair there. You look over your whole body and find that there's barely any body hair, aside from your legs and a bit on your arms. How long have you been shaving head to toe unnecessarily? It was your ritual, something you did, and the same way a couple times a week, and you've done it for years and years. Is it really necessary anymore? Could you stop now, or would stopping ramp up your dysphoria? You don't know, so you wash off the foam and let the water take the blood away.
You wash, the stiff brush making pink and white lines on your skin as you try and focus on something else, something unrelated to your body. It doesn't work, you're in the shower, naked and exposed. No tight shapewear and flattering bras in here, just you and the body you want to kill. You see your tummy, and suck in until it's fully concave.
You know you're not actually fat, and if you were, you don't think you'd even care. Logically you know you look ok, you can see in the mirror, and you can see how clothes fit, but from your pov at the top of your neck, you just look... wrong. Your body looks bad from your angle, and no matter how many days you go without eating or how much you work out, you can't shake the feeling of wrongness you get when you look down.
You look up, and try to slip into a daydream while you finish washing, you're good at that, you do something called "maladaptive daydreaming" apparently, and it lets you get out of your body and away from your problems for a bit. You start to think about a good day, a fun day. You look great, you're confident, you have a smile on your face, and you're walking down a street lined with cute shops. Suddenly, out of one of them walks a man. A beautiful man, with a triangular chest- or maybe a slim one, and blue eyes- or maybe green? and a cool, smooth look- or, no, a bright disarming smile... You stop and realize you're just trying to create a man to impress, someone you can act out being beautiful to in your head.
You snap back to the shower. You need to get out, this can't be healthy, and your hands are getting wrinkly. You wrap your hair up in a microfiber and towel down. You hang up the towel, and open the door, letting the mirrors unfog. You sigh, and shake your hair out, it's dry enough anyway you suppose. You pick up your first of many face creams, and face the mirror, wiping away the rest of the fog. As you do, your heart skips a beat.
There she is.