To answer your question in way too much verbose and complicated detail because I'm in bed and lying on my side and feel like I have to write something or I'll go crazy, I've slowly been pulling myself back to good health. I've covered things in way too much detail (as is usual for me) with several public posts on this game's Patreon page, but the tl;dr of it is that my usually seasonal depression around my birthday because of terrible memories of one of them rolled right into me getting cat scratch fever, and then either after or at the same time, mononucleosis. Both came with incredibly levels of fatigue and memory issues (the entire month of November was a blur for me and on average I easily spent over 12 hours a day in bed). My mental sharpness has only returned within the last 4 or so weeks, but my energy levels are still incredibly low (and will continue to be for months since the fatigue symptoms of mono can linger for a long time). I've managed to get some work on the VN done over the last 3 weeks, but that has been complicated not just by my inconsistent energy levels (and therefore my focus and the just plain ability to get work done, the inability of which makes me feel stir-crazy and depressingly useless), but me starting progesterone.
I'm stuck taking feminizing HRT for a very complicated reason relating to a neurodegenerative disease I have, but my testosterone levels have risen back to half of what I had pre-HRT (which was ~1,300 ng/dL, and yes, that's really high for a cis man, and yes, I had health issues from that). My testosterone levels right now are right in the middle of the average for cis men, and as I understand it, those levels being so high has prevented that estrogen from getting absorbed properly and being a very low 53 pg/nL (a third of where someone almost two years into feminizing HRT should be). In a bitter dramatic irony, my neurological health has become highly dependent on my quantity of that female hormone, and hopefully this progesterone is going to cut that testosterone level down and then let my body absorb estrogen instead of letting it pass through me like it's doing now. I'm optimistic it'll work as my primary symptoms of my bad brain disease (involuntarily muscle contractions, vocal apraxia, and some degree of aphasia) have gotten noticeably milder since I started taking it a bit over 3 weeks ago, but I have to wait a full month for my hormone composition to stabilizing before testing my levels again for those results to be meaningful.
Progesterone, is, uh, certainly a female sex hormone. It's got a quasi-mythical reputation of being "horny bitch juice" + "boob growth juice"in transfem communities who (among other problems) treat feminizing HRT a little too close to a drug or part of a sexual lifestyle instead of a medicine prescribed for improving the psychiatric health of trans women. While it's been unexpectedly mild in both departments for me (but not too unexpectedly, as there are issue within tranfem communities I've been in the orbit of way treating mere hearsay of anecdotal evidence with feminizing HRT being taken as scientific fact), it's further dropped my energy levels (albeit not severely), made me ache all over (expected), and made my symptoms of what I can only call "pseudo-PMS" so much worse, particularly nausea, back pain, and hot flashes. In addition to that, it's been affecting my mood in ways I didn't know could happen and has often flooded me emotions I barely understand. I suppose it's sort of like a milder form of the stereotypical bitchiness associated with female puberty and "moon sickness," but made very complicated because I'm (unwillingly and chaotically) genderfluid between the gender binaries. I can tell you that it's a very interesting experience with someone who has a male gender identity half the time to start feel insanely strong maternal feelings and the bitchy moodiness from female hormones in what my best friend has aptly called "righteous indignation."
And finally, with all of that context aside, to precisely answer "how I feels today"... lol, idk. I'm on my male side right now and I really haven't figured out to properly articulate what it's like to be on this side of the binary coin since progesterone has gotten into the mix, but trying to ignore that very sizeable component affecting the range of emotions I am feeling right now, I feel:
- Tired, but that's baseline now between my brain health, illness, and stereotypical authorial caffeine addiction. 3/4 of a pot sometimes isn't even enough to keep me up for more than 6 hours, which is wild.
- Melancholic loneliness, because despite how extremely introverted I am as a person, I have been affected by living on my own after pretty much burning the bridge with my parents due to their years of abuse and my only real in-person human contact being my sister and brother-in-law. I know I need to go out more, but I had some really bad experiences with transfems a bit over a year ago, and I'm extremely wary of seeking out those social circles and putting myself in them again.
- Mild cabin fever (see above), but also leading into the below with...
- Mild paranoia, because I feel like one of those "shifts" of my gender is coming up and those can be very drastic in changing how I feel and can be pretty awful if I'm not prepared for them. I don't want to be genderfluid, but I am, and I've not just had to be vigilant against myself, but on guard for people who try to parasocially attach to me because I put so much of who I am in my writing and some people either treat that one-way flow of personal information as a right to get close to me or "fix" me.
That's bad enough, but I have actual fear of being around people who have historically been far more likely to deny the accuracy of this label I never asked for and substituting it with the one they want for me, as it's uniquely traumatic and devastating to my mental health for someone to carelessly comment that they think I'm merely a transgender woman in extreme denial, tell me my views on gender and all the shit trailing behind it doesn't matter because I'm not even transfem, half of who I am being subjected to blatant misandry and trans women making the fact that they used to assume they were who they were expected to be and might now be disgusted with masculinity in general due to their disgust of any of their own masculinity my problem, polycule drama, and people just being kind of creepy assholes who sexually harass me or throw shade at me because they see me as little more than a reluctant trans woman with "fantastic" HRT results it is their duty to feminize further, envy for the genderfluid person getting "assets" I don't want as I don't plan to ever socially transition and I'm reaching the danger zone of a chest size I can safely bind, or god knows what else I managed to be surprised and hurt by.
I have very, very heavy baggage in this area, as you can probably see, and even looking past my current sicknesses, and my bodily issues because being stuck on feminizing HRT is kind of a living nightmare for the guy side of me at time, I'm going to have to work through that and my social fears before I feel like I'm going to be comfortable truly trusting new people again. - Mild arousal, but honestly you don't need the TMI of that, especially after this wall of text.
- Moderate annoyance, because it's like my brain is trying to find something to be bothered by just to justify having this emotion, and I'm frustrated I can't find something to be frustrated about.
- Pained, because yeah there are some pretty big parts of my health that are in decay.
- TV static, as I am kind of extremely unwell mentally and even think I have very good reason to be that way given my health issues and lack of stability and am fully convinced what I go through would have killed most people several times over by now.
- Weary relief, because 2024 was not a good year for me and I'm just gonna be glad to see the calendar change.
- Impatient apprehension, as I'm an American and the unclothed wannabe emperor/mob boss is headed back to the White House, and even though I feel like I have my bases covered against the worst outcomes like a nationwide ban on prescribing hormones for transitioning, the economy blowing up, environmental and protective regulations getting neutered, and the rule of law further decaying (those just being the political issues I'm concerned with), I know a lot of my friends are worried, and I'm worried for them and about them.
- Hungry, as Adderall and coffee are gonna do the things they do to make me forget that I need to eat.
This was so, so much more than you asked for, and, uh, sorry for just kind of blasting you with it, but writing like this truly helps me organize the chaos and noise in my thoughts into concrete words, so... thank you for asking?
