It’s time for my biweekly whine about trying to self-inject. Expect to see this series continue every other week for the rest of my goddamn life.
So I go through a certain amount of psychological drama every damn time and I thought two things about this: 1. visually, there might be something interesting in there with art applications. 2. I’d have a lot of motivation to “be a man” and suck it up and just do it if the camera was running.
(Yes, I am indeed aware of how completely problematic “be a man” is. I have to emotionally abuse myself in order to force myself to stab myself. It’s problematic all the way around.)
In case you’re wondering, this actually turns out to be quite a poor plan. Not only are my hands kind of shaking, but I’m self conscious about it. Finally, despite knowing it’s usually a poor idea, I pushed the needle slowly into my leg. Because if you can’t force a blade quickly though your skin, doing it slowly is such a great idea. But I’ve done this all of 7 times before. Clearly, I know what I’m doing. I can tell, for example, that I seem to be deep enough because as I push down the plunger, nothing is leaking up around the needle.
No, that leaking will wait until I’ve pushed the plunger all the way down. Because if a little leaks while I’m injecting, it means the last day before my next shot, I’ll feel like shit, but on the other hand, I can just push down further and the rest goes where it belongs. Contrast this with everything looking fine until I remove the needle and all the T comes running out after it. It’s soaked through the bandaid I put on. It’s soaked through my trousers. Of course, it’s really hard to eyeball a greasy puddle of Cholesterol and guess how much less than 1 mL it is. Did any get in the right place at all? I’d guess about half came back out, but what do I know?
I’ve been procrastinating on calling a local doctor. I know I need to, because I run out of T in two weeks. But now I have extra motivation. Like, wtf now? Wait two weeks and hope not feel overly unhappily numb? Do it again right away and hope I don’t get way too much?
I hate needles. I hate doctors. I hate puberty. I hate acne. I hate psyching myself up to a shot. I hate psyching myself up to use a public loo. I hate not knowing any other trans folks where I live.
I mean, there are good things about transitioning. Many, many good things. I’m just not in that space right now.
And below . . . the final 4:20 of me trying to get myself to inject and finally doing it wrong. Hooray for the internet.