On deepening dysphoria.

I just started a new job--working fast food, preferring cashier duty right now.  I'm good at it.  It's not been a bad job so far.  It's a place I like to eat at, my coworkers are great, and my boss is nice.  (The owner, I'm not sure about--I think he needs to get out of the kitchen, most of the time.)  The problem?  The first day I went in for training and got my uniform, I noticed one small nitpicky detail--the uniforms are stupidly gendered.  Barely, but still gendered.  The guys get baseball caps, the girls get visors.  From what I can tell, this is just so the girls can pull their ponytails through the tops of their visors and keep them off their necks.

I'd rather have a baseball cap, personally, but I'm not going to ask for one just now.  It's not that big a deal.

I left work early tonight because I was having dizzy spells and feeling faint.  I blamed this on the fact that it was hot in the store and we'd just had a huge post-church rush of people.  In reality, it was because I was about to have a panic attack.  But explaining that I was about to panic required explaining why, and the why is the part I can't really explain to anyone who doesn't know me.  I was about to have a panic attack because I was having an incredibly bad dysphoria attack.

I'm learning as I go along in all of this the things that will trigger my dysphoria.  Sometimes, I'll get little easy-to-deal-with bouts of it for no reason at all.  Lately, though, two things have been triggering major attacks of it.

One: roleplay is becoming a problem, since I'm playing a girly-girl.  It's no big around the roleplay group.  I'm out as genderqueer to all of them, so they know the clothes are just a costume, and they all comment on how weird it is to see me looking like a girl, which makes me feel more comfortable.  They understand.  But I get into costume in my dorm before heading across campus to the student center where we play, or over to the community center when we can get it, and what triggers my dysphoria is having to be seen in my costume by total strangers.  My friends have suggested that I pretend I'm in drag, as it might help.  Which it kind of does.  But the problem is that I know these other people are looking at me and thinking 'girl'.  No one would give a second thought to calling me "miss" or "ma'am" or "young lady" or "woman" when I'm in that costume.  I look like a girl.  Even when I'm dressed as a guy, I don't pass.  I'm not trying exceptionally hard to, but only once has anyone ever second-guessed my gender and called me "sir" instead, and that was because I was in a football jersey and being generally boyish.  That was an accident.  And then they tripped all over themselves apologising and correcting themselves, because I said something and my voice sounds like a deep girl's voice.  Point is, my costume triggers my dysphoria because I know I look like a girl, no questions asked, to any stranger I see.

The second thing that's been doing it lately is a little harder to get rid of.  My "lunar cycles".  I have pretty bad PMS as it is, which just compounds it, because I have terrible moodswings, painful cramps, fatigue, upset stomach, faint spells, the whole nine yards.  (I wouldn't be a bit surprised if I ended up diagnosed with PMDD.)  Problem is, I just started my cycle tonight, so I was sore and sick and feeling like I was going to pass out, and all of the people calling me "ma'am" while I was running the register was making it worse.  This has happened every month since the beginning of the year, and it gets worse every time.  Every month, the dysphoria gets a little worse and a little worse, because this is the ultimate marker of being female.  I can even handle not binding my chest all the time, and most of the time, I feel no need to.  But at least the option is there, and that's what makes it easier to deal with.  But this?  There's nothing I can do about it.  I can't afford birth control.  And my friends who are on BC tell me that insurance won't cover it, at least not most of it, even in medically necessary cases, such as preventing ovarian cancer.  If I could afford it, believe me, I'd be getting on one of the seasonal pills in a heartbeat.  It just seems like I'm stuck, because there's nothing I can do.

What's insane about this is that I don't feel like I'll ever choose to have SRS, and I'll probably never even go so far as a hysterectomy.  So I almost feel like I have no right complaining.  I almost feel like it would be easier if I were fully FtM, instead of this genderqueer-masculine mess that I am, because at least then I would have something to come out as, instead of feeling so lost and torn and unable to explain what I am inside.  But I know that's not true.  The truth is, I know exactly what I look like when I close my eyes.  I could explain the body I want to people, and I could explain who I want to be inside, but that doesn't explain what I am; it's like I have an idea, but no terms to convey it.  It's hard to come out when you're not even sure what you are.