u/Tomatori

I have this thing I like to call my "Chip Test". The Chip Test revolves around exactly one specific item: Jay's Hot Stuff Potato Chips. For one reason or another, this has always been my favorite chip on the planet, something about them just tastes different in a way I don't feel about any other junk food. I could go through a bag all by myself if I wanted!

The problem is that I do. Immediately.

To my understanding, this brand in particular is more of a regional thing, so there isn't much variety in size; 99% of the time I've ever seen Jay's chips, they are in the huge 8oz bags.

I've tried several times to buy one and to try and moderate my ability to eat it. Measure out just a bit and close the bag, easy right? I do it for literally everything else. I'm goated at counting calories and weighing everything.

But every. single. time. I just obliterate the entire thing.

After like 4 months of not touching them I decided to grab one at the store. This time planning that I'd look for some cute reusable bags to split it into 100 calorie portions I could grab n go.

Welp I didn't buy shit and I tore through that bag and in my misery also did the same to some goldfish crackers 😔

I still cannot pass the chip test, but hopefully next time. Do you have anything you're fixated on like this?

It's me again, sorry for the long post!

I recently came out to my family, a lot of support, but also some expected casualties. Namely older brother (republican lunatic) and father (ultra misogynist). What broke my heart however, was hearing that my little brother (11) had been crying non-stop ever since being told.

I tried talking to him, the first thing he said was "Are you a girl?" I said yes, and I could hear him quietly sobbing. He said "No you're not...". I tried asking him why it was upsetting, but he couldn't speak. Eventually I tried to lighten the mood by asking if he'd seen how I look, to which he responded "I don't want to". I didn't know what to say, eventually my mom took the phone and said he couldn't talk because he was crying too much. I said okay and we hung up.

After a day of more coming-outs, it was 10:30 PM and I was about to take my makeup off and go to sleep. I see a text from my mom's number. "Can I call you?" My mom doesn't speak English, so I realize its my little brother. I tell him of course and he calls.

"Are you really a girl?" Yeah, I tell him. "...Why?" I realize by this time both my parents are asleep, this kid must have grabbed her phone and run off somewhere to call me.

I sigh and try to give the best simplified explanation I can for his age. I tell him that some people are just born different. Some people can be born with a body and a brain that grow in opposite directions. And as they grow up it makes them really sad, because they can't control it. That I never told anyone because I was afraid. After a long pause he says, "But [older brother] he said you're mentally ill" and I couldn't help but laugh. Of COURSE that's where this was coming from. I try to explain to him that our older brother watches some very hateful stuff that tells him people like me are evil, that he doesn't want to understand.

Eventually I ask him if he remembers how I was before I moved out. How miserable I always looked. How I never went out, never showered, just sat at my desk and ate and ate. I was always angry and couldn't even be bothered to shower regularly. When guests came over I wouldn't even get changed, just sat there in pajamas. I had no friends, nothing. He did remember, it was how he'd always seen me. I explained that I was like that because I couldn't be myself, I was so unhappy. I asked him if he remembered how I looked back then, if he wanted to see a picture of it. He said yes and I posted the one picture I have of me from before. 350 pounds, 3-day old beard shadow, and genuine loathing misery on my face. I looked like I would die within the year. He said I looked like Bart Simpson lol

I then asked him if he wanted to see what I look like now. He said yes, so I took a couple pics and sent. After a brief moment of silence I just hear "... WHAt? BRO THAT IS NOT YOU. THATS AI BRO THAT'S YOUR GIRLFRIEND STOP LYING". I take in the absurdity of the situation for a second before I start laughing and I tell him, no, that is me. He insists it's not. I ask if he wants me to write something on a sticky note so he sees. He says yes and to stand in front of my computer, since he knows what it looks like. I take it and send. "Brooooo that is AI come on that is a filter. Your hair doesn't even look like that". Ok well obviously you little sherlock, I have my wig on right now, but that is me. Do you want me to take it off? He says yeah so I take it off and send one without it. Now do you recognize me? "Bro that's so fakeee that's not you this is an AI filter". I try putting down my ponytail and sending that, still no dice. Eventually I'm just like oh my god do you want to go on a video call so you can see its me? He says yeah and I turn it on. Immediately he's laughing and giggling because by this point he knows its impossible to even deny it, though he still tries to continue playing along saying I'm AI.

I ask him if I still look like Bart Simpson, he says "No that aint no bart simpson, mister". I ask him if I look like a mister then. "No, that's a missy!" I say what about Lisa Simpson and he says yeah, I'm Lisa Simpson now (I don't think this kid has ever watched a single Simpsons episode).

Eventually he asks if I'm going to change my name and I say yeah. He then, more somberly asks me if I'm going to change my last name and I say ???? no??? Why would I? He responds with "i dunno". He then asks if I'm going to change my middle name. I blink into the camera a few times before telling him I have never had a middle name. He insists that I do. Huh? He says he has a middle name too. I ask what his alleged middle name is. "I don't know how to pronounce it." Oh lord. I ask him if he's talking about our second last name. I ask this little boy if he genuinely thought we all had the same middle name for some reason. He did.

I reiterate that no, I am not changing my middle or last name, just my first name, and I tell him to what. He dramatically begins roasting my name and saying its lame and I'm like ALRIGHT SMART GUY YOU DO BETTER and... This damn kid pulls out a list of names starting with the same letter and is just sitting there trying to workshop my name with me at like midnight. I'm laughing my ass off in disbelief. At one point he suggests Georgina or Grace and I'm like BUDDY. WE AREN'T EVEN WHITE.

I can't recall when in there it happened, but at some point after hearing about how miserable I had been before moving out he asked me "they why did you help me? why did you help me do my homework and stuff?" and I couldn't stop myself from breaking into tears immediately. I tried explaining that it was because I didn't want him to suffer just because I was suffering. I don't know if I managed to communicate it properly, I didn't expect to hear that from him and was blindsided.

We bonded a bit over me telling him how if he thought back he'd realize every time we played games together I played as the girl. Rayman Legends, Lego DC Villains, etc. He asked if that's why in RDR2 I always had the cowgirl. I said yep, that was my online character, it was me lol. He said he wanted to come visit me and ride bikes together, or that I should move back home.

The real kicker is that the next morning he went to my mom saying that he suddenly understood everything, that I was trans and I was born like that and I was a girl now, and he was trying to convince her to call my older brother because he'd totally understand 😭 Then an aunt messaged my mom and he responded with a damn chat GPT paragraph explaining what being trans and being transexual meant, in Spanish.

So now my two brothers of equal intelligence are my biggest hater and my biggest supporter respectively

I've noticed the uptick in posts and comments being immediately downvoted as soon as they're made, so I know how y'all obsessively watch this place. I've even gotten slurs dropped in a couple posts recently (dumb as hell, reddit instantly nuked their whole account) so clearly you have hot takes you're dying to share!

So defend them in my DMs. It should be easy, right? If you stand by your convictions it should be a simple ask :) Put your money where your mouth is!

It should go without saying but don't be stupid and try to argue in the comments. I said DMs for a reason, This place isn't for debates. The whole point of this is to take it elsewhere. You have questions and I have answers.

---

For context I made a post like this over a year ago and managed to start conversations with more than 20 people. Many died out after a few messages, but a surprising number stuck it out, and more than I was expecting actually said their mind was changed by the end. One even ended up making a post in the sub apologizing for past transphobia and recently congratulated me on coming out to family! So I thought it time for a round 2.

This is an update to my post from yesterday. Warning: I'm going to yap. A lot.

I got off work at 3, nervously started cleaning and doing chores while waiting. Folded all my clothes, cleaned every dish, made every item spotless. Eventually it was 6 PM and I wondered if she had forgotten or changed her mind after all. But then I got a text, she was asking me to refresh her on the address and let me know that my little brother was still playing with his friend so she would come alone and it would be just us two. For the next hour and a half I miraculously found more things to clean, sprayed the whole house down and eventually was just quietly sitting on my couch waiting until she arrived.

My family is Mexican and we originate from a very rural farming and ranching village, so to say we have very rigidly defined ideas of gender and a deep culture of machismo is an understatement. It's embedded into the fabric of our existence in every way, I've always been aware of it, I've always been afraid.

I always knew that no matter how the conversation went I would walk away with a regret one way or the other. Unfortunately that's the situation I built for myself.

So she arrived. And I told her. It took a few minutes of hesitation, but eventually I said I was trans. At first she thought it meant the same as being gay, but I explained the two were unrelated and the simple truth is that I had always wanted to live as a woman, to be a woman in every sense.

Ok, I'll stop building suspense now and say what actually happened.

---

She said that she would love me no matter what. Without skipping a beat she said that nothing could ever change the fact that she was my mother, that she would never turn away from me or abandon me.

Understandably she had a lot of questions. She wanted to understand how long I had known, and I told her that I've practically always known. It's always been there. Some of my earliest memories are of playing ToonTown at 6-8 years old and having my girl friends help me do a wardrobe glitch in order to have girl clothes on my character. I'd do it over and over. For Club Penguin I'd beg to buy the physical books just so I could get the permanent codes that gave you clothing you could use without membership, and I always redeemed the girl ones. I'd go out and play my totally awesome prank of being a girl on others, except my hilarious joke somehow never seemed to have a punchline or a reveal. In Poptropica there was an easter egg that randomized your character's appearance including gender, which caused the storepage to swap to showing the girl options. I'd spend all my coins on there, save my outfits, and then swap back to a guy so I could keep it hidden.

To my surprise she chimed in that she'd heard that people are born this way, it isn't a choice or something that happens suddenly. I really didn't expect her to have that framing in her mind, but I told her she was right.

She wanted to know how I'd kept it a secret so long, how she had never found out. I told her that she didn't know because I always hid myself out of fear. I'd make male characters solely for the purpose of using them as a coverup whenever someone came by. I'd draw myself as a girl. I'd intentionally hide away any indication of being anything other than a "normal" boy. In Mexico as a child, whenever my grandma would go out for errands, I would lock myself in her room and play dress-up as long as I could. One time I almost got caught, I only heard my aunt/uncle coming because they were talking out loud as they walked down the street outside my grandma's house. By the time they came inside, I had just managed to throw the last sock under the bed as they came around the door.

Hilariously the part she seemed to have the hardest time wrapping her head around me being bisexual. She asked if this meant I liked men but I told her I like both. I then had to clarify that no, this did not mean I wanted to be with a man AND a woman at the same time, I was just fine with either. She seemed utterly fascinated with this and thought it was like advanced level gay or something, like somehow just being attracted to the same gender was comprehensible but being attracted to both was something she had never even fathomed.

Most importantly she asked me why I didn't tell her sooner. I told her how being trans was one of the biggest reasons I went away, because I truly could not see a world where anyone in our family would accept me, including her. I used to daydream about saying something earlier, but I genuinely feared for my life. I had a reoccurring terror of the truth coming out somehow and then someone grabbing a knife while I slept and well. Yeah. Beyond that, I was certain that if not violence, I would be thrown out onto the streets and probably die on my own. So since about the age of 16 I started preparing myself mentally to be abandoned, tried my best to detach myself from everything because I knew I would lose it at any moment.

This is the part I'm referring to when I say I knew I would walk away with a regret one way or another. Because she said that she never would have allowed that. She said she never would have thrown me out of her home nor let anyone lay a hand on me. And it hurts a lot to wonder if that's true. To wonder how different my life would be if I could have come out as a child, how differently I could have grown up, all the pain and misery I could have avoided, how much I would be someone else today. It hurts more than I could put to words to imagine that I could be 15 years into my transition instead of 1.5 years. Did I sabotage my entire life out of fear?

Part of me wants to believe her, but a large part of me also believes that this is simply what she wants to believe would be the case. The reality is that she doesn't remember the kind of dynamic we had in childhood, the degree to which I was under her and my dad's thumb. I don't think she wants to recognize the bitter hatred that has always guided my dad, that I would be the number one outlet for that. It's nice to tell yourself that you would have been the model parent, but I don't know that if she were actually in that situation she would have done anything other than tell me that in her house its her rules before pushing me out at 18. I don't know, maybe that would have been better regardless. As I said, I find myself with a lot of regret today, and this was a fear I carried in the back of my mind for a while now. But I have no choice but to face the music now.

She said multiple times how she had always lamented not having a daughter, but that little had she known.

She said that she had often thought of who she'd leave all her jewelry heirlooms to when she got older, that she'd jokingly told my cousins that the best behaved one could have them since she never had a daughter, but now she could give them to me.

She said that God made me this way and she would love me no matter what.

She asked me if this was why I moved over an hour away, so far from home. I told her yes, it was my biggest motivation and I began living as myself immediately. She said I should come back home. She jokingly said that now she'd get some help with the cleaning at least. lol.

She asked me if I planned to get everything, if I planned to get boobs. I laughed and dramatically unzipped my baggy hoodie and threw it behind me to show my obvious chest under my strappy cami. She asked if they were implants or prosthetics, I told her no, home grown. She seemed quite surprised, touched, and asked how, before connecting the dots on my earlier mention of hormones.

She asked if I go out dressed up and I asked her if she wanted to see pictures. I pulled up my phone gallery and scrolled. She gasped and kept repeating that I was fully a woman, that I could have walked past her on the street and she would have never known. She said it multiple times, I never imagined I would hear that.

She again repeated that I should go back home, that I had no need to be out here alone, especially with my upcoming jaw surgery. I told her I couldn't do that, I couldn't just show up with how things were between my dad and I, especially after this. The topic gravitated to family members who were gay or lesbian, she talked about one in particular who had been kicked out when he told his father he was gay. He suffered greatly out on his own, but his mother suffered as well, eventually she fell ill. The father eventually regretted what he did and went out to find his son and apologized, asking him to come back home. Now that same son is the one they both depend on, he takes care of them every day. It's funny, I didn't remember his name but just the day prior I had been thinking about exactly him. I admired how even when we were children he had always been openly flamboyant while I had been too afraid and always kept my mask up. I hadn't known the suffering he was put through. She also mentioned an uncle who died of AIDs in the 80s.

This led me to asking my mom if she recalled the song titled El Gran Varon. She said no, but I told her she would instantly recognize it, I knew for a fact she'd heard this song thousands of times before, but she had probably never paid attention to the lyrics. Bizarrely it is a very popular song in Hispanic culture, but not many people realize what it is about because the groove goes too hard. Here is an English translation of the song I commented recently. This is my best attempt at keeping its original message in tact. The song is titled The Great Man, and is about a trans woman dying tragically alone after being abandoned by her family. Her father's name is Andres, which is in fact, my dad's name. She dies at 30 years of age, presumably from AIDs.

I played the song out loud for her, and within a minute or two we were both bawling our eyes out. Through sobs she told me that I didn't deserve to have felt this way for 20 years, to feel that my family would not accept me. That I didn't have to be alone.

She asked me if I was going to change my name, I told her I chose [my name] cuz there aren't many great options that kept the original G. Eventually I got the courage to ask her if they'd ever picked out a name in case I had been a girl. Turns out that my dad had always been very passionate that if they had a daughter she should have my mom's name, because its a really rare and beautiful name that no one else seems to have, and he didn't want it to die out.

She said I could be [her name]. Something in my brain short-circuited hearing this, I never imagined she would have even approached such a suggestion. I guess in my mind I presumed some base level of disgust would be present at the thought of being associated with me? But she seemed to mean it. I bashfully said that I wasn't sure if that would be a good idea given that I don't pass and having such a special name would make me stick out like a blistering thumb even more. But I still can't believe she said that.

I'm sure I'm forgetting a million other things, we talked for over two hours before she had to head back since it was 9:30 and took over an hour to get back home. I don't know if I've ever slept as peacefully as I did last night. We'll have to work on the name and the pronouns as it takes time to adjust, but for the first time in my life it feels like there might be enough time.

---

TL;DR: The music sounds kinda nice

After keeping my secret for the 27 years of my life, something in me just couldn't keep it up any longer. I stopped responding to any texts or calls and after 1.5 weeks it culminated in family calling a wellness check last night. I had to tell the officer that I was fine and to not tell anyone anything.

But when I received a voice mail from my mom sadly saying that she just wanted to know I was okay, it broke my heart and I knew I had to call her.

For the first time in over a decade or more I cried in the presence of a family member. As soon as she heard me she started crying too and begged me to explain what was going on, why I went so far away.

For 25 minutes I tried, but I just couldn't bring myself to say it over the phone. The most I could get across was that it had to do with who I was as a person and how I knew they'd abandon me when I said the truth. She said that she would never do that no matter what it was. I wish I could believe that. She said if I couldn't say it over the phone then she would be coming over today after work to talk in person.

I get off work in 4-5 hours. I don't know what to say, what to show, how to explain. But the day is here regardless. I've expected this my whole life but somehow I still wasn't prepared, isn't that funny?

An egg refers to someone unaware that they're trapped in the container. If you can see the shells, then you are already peeking out because it has shattered.

It is now just a question of when you'll start stepping out

I was at Aldi's last week on the way back home from Electrolysis. No makeup for obvious reasons so I was just trying to get in and out quickly.

When I got to the front this guy just immediately beamed a smile and said "Hello miss, how are you doing today?" I was a bit stunned for a second but eventually said I was doing good and asked him how he was doing. I slightly zoned out in the moment, putting down my items, so I didn't catch what he said next, but it ended on "beautiful" which confused me even more. Was that in reference to me?? Or maybe that was in response to me asking how he was doing? Wouldn't really make sense Idk...

Eventually I paid in my flustered state and once again he said "And would you like a receipt today, miss?" followed by a "have a great rest of your day!" as I walked off.

This was last Friday and still is making me happy :) I'm more than aware that I'm visibly trans, but something about the unabashed kindness has stuck with me. I doubt this will reach him but thank you for making my week

The age range being large isn't surprising on its own, different people start transition at different ages and that's fine. Most of us don't get to pick when we transition.

But I feel like there is a very strange 'folklore' surrounding the period when someone begins HRT, treating it like its somehow a reset of childhood that makes lots of questionable behavior permissible. The phrase second puberty comes up a lot, and yes, on paper we are indeed going through our second puberty, but I worry that too many implications get smuggled in with that.

I may be going through a second puberty, but I am still a grown ass adult responsible for my own actions, choices, and the way I carry myself. The amount of times I've seen someone say some weird shit only to click the profile and discover it is someone late in age and early into transition who spends all their free time telling other trans youth they're heckin adorbs is downright traumatizing.

>! Warning, disturbing: One time I noticed a newer user replying to just about every post with ultra-positive support messages, I kept seeing the same username over and over and I started to get suspicious. Eventually I clicked the account and bam. Right there, a self-post from someone in their late 50s about how turned on and 'wet' they were at the idea of getting to be amongst other trans people and a paragraph of fascination about changes happening to themselves on hrt. Another time there was some weird story about someone's neighbor totally wanting to fuck them, and I clicked the profile only to be blasted by a picture of their exhibitionist poop fetish. They were just blatantly posting erotic fanfic to trans subs and presumably getting off on the comments being supportive. !<

It makes it feel strange to engage in these spaces, like now I have to constantly be suspicious of what kind of people are actually interacting and whether they have the wherewithal to draw boundaries on what kinds of people they should be hanging around.

I dunno, maybe it's on me; you go looking for trouble and you're gonna find it, right? I guess I just wish there were better filtered spaces for age and for progression.

I have been struggling with making proper use of my time so I want to use something to time-block various parts of my day and see how much free time I have and try to plan ahead for the whole week, but I'm struggling with what tool to go with for this?

I just want a simple bunch of colored rectangles tbh 🙂

I'm ~1yr 7months into MtF HRT and while I'm definitely happier with the changes thus far, I think passing is still pretty far out of reach for me. I don't expect much more facial improvement and so I've been turning my focus to eventual FFS.

But even after a consult it feels very hand-wavey and I'm honestly pretty worried if I'd come out the other end passing. Is there any real way to know? I am still a year or two minimum away from being able to do it regardless, but I am worried because it feels like the consensus is "yeah, we'll try to fix you up but there's no way to know how it went til after"

(Sorry if this is better suited elsewhere, I tried to look but frankly all the project managing subs seem like absolute dogshit AI-trashbins, so I figured y'all have more experience with this stuff 🙂)

I've been having fun working on my personal project and breaking down all the work into bite-sized issues, but I keep running into this issue:

1. Make slightly chunky Issue A that has a few steps to completion

2. Eventually realize that the steps of A probably make more sense as sub-issues to individually work and track progress on

3. End up with issue A as parent, and issues B, C, D as children

4. Work B, C, D, and realize that A now doesn't actually have anything unique to it, it was technically done as soon as I closed D

5. Question what the point of having issue A at all was instead of just having B, C, and D

Am I overthinking this? Am I approaching this wrong? I've considered leaving some bit of work to A specifically, but in practice that just means treating issue A as secretly being issue D but without branching it off, which feels avoidant and dumb. Thoughts? Am I flattening the hierarchy too much by treating all of this as issues?

It's a small personal project so I've just been using a board on GitHub projects, but I'm open to alternative tools

Sorry for the meta post but I've been subbed here for a few years and I just keep seeing the same post pop up in my feed over and over

"No one is acknowledging my weight loss"

"Why hasn't anyone said good job?"

"It feels like no one is cheering me on, are they jealous?"

Etc etc.

It feels like somewhere along the way people have confused what the actual goal is. Your reward for weight loss is not the people around you cheering and clapping when you enter a room, it is not them going "oh my gosh how did you do it I could never", it is not being told how strong of will you must be.

The reward is not supposed to be praise nor increased social status.

The reward is supposed to be the fact that you are going to live a longer and happier life in a body that actually feels like it belongs to you. It's supposed to be the control you've gained over your own life trajectory and the freedom that comes with that. Your reward should be your body feeling better, not others telling you it looks better.

It's not like I don't understand where these feelings come from. After dedicating yourself to a grueling task that many can't even bring themselves to start, it's nice to hear someone actually acknowledge your efforts and affirm that the changes are real. I get that. But when the absence of external validation actively makes your life worse then it's gone beyond simple acknowledgement.

Your self worth cannot be determined by others, *especially* when you have no idea what the reason for their silence is. Believe it or not, there is an abundance of good reasons to not talk about someone's weight. The fact is people cannot know what has not been said; they do not know if your weight is a sensitive topic for you, they do not know how you will perceive a remark on their weight either. Many people do not want to be read as insensitive or like they're implying that they thought less of you before. People who do not live with you on a daily basis also have no idea if the weight loss is even intentional or if you have an illness.

I'll reiterate, *they are not mind readers*. Many people are going to trust that if YOU have not acknowledged the (lack of an) elephant in the room then you might have a damn good reason to do so. They are going to (quite reasonably) assume that if it was a topic open for discussion you would have dropped some hints or actually started the conversation yourself. They are in fact walking on eggshells until you clarify that the shells have been cleaned up.

I've had a family member cautiously say "you look kind of different" at a party, and when I ask how so with a straight face they squirm and say "...your hair is way longer". It wasn't until I responded with "yep, that and surely nothing else" with a huge smirk that they actually felt allowed to speak about it.

Don't do yourself the disservice of minimizing your incredible work by thinking it's lesser until someone else acknowledges it. Look inwards and examine why it only becomes real once someone else speaks it into existence

Just want to hear the experiences of others. I'm 1.5 yrs into HRT but its seeming like FFS won't be a possibility until another year or two. Trying to cope and live life in the mean time, and not see it as the thing that will magically make me start living. Easier said than done tho

I've realized this might be more common than I imagined and I wanted to hear everyone's take on why that is.

I go back and forth on it myself, when interacting in general subs it feels like a piece of info that no one else should really need, but at the same time I don't like the idea of making it feel like a dark secret I have to shove away.

It's been my self-assigned gimmick to make all my posts publicly visible and under the same account, so that's been my default, but I do wonder about changing that sometimes