Also, those feelings of wanting to be vulnerable with someone, even if it's just a close friend, have been hitting me really hard since transition. Like, I've been numb so many things up for so many years, and now I'm feeling so much, and I want to share that with someone. Loneliness hits much harder for me now, and I feel it often. I worry I'll never have someone like that, because I've never even had anybody I could be close with. I've been more distant with my friends than most people are, now that I think about it. Makes it really hard to establish any sort of new connection...

I'm going through this right now - I have been unearthing some stuff in therapy, discovering what it actually means to be ND and how much I was masking and how complicated things are for me under the surface, so even though I transitioned a while ago it feels like a rebirth for me too. I wish I had a formula I could share for easing that loneliness, but I decided that online people can be Potential Friends, too, and that made it easier, as well (I'm not as well spoken IRL lol).

Sometimes I wonder how many people out there really are like me fr fr, the kind of people I can talk to for hours at a time until it's late at night about one of 80 things we have in common. I'm a lot of things: trans, AuDHD (probably), newly vegan, too old for school, communist, demisexual (probably), non-binary, interested in hi-fi, old games, tech, some very specific kinds of music, programming, queer theory, and people and the ways they think... It should make it easier, but I'm not sure I'd get along with someone who wasn't most of these things with me, which makes it difficult. And being close friends with NTs seems right out for me, I'm probably not really even going to try that...

I wish I had a formula I could share for finding people, but it feels more like luck and chance... for instance, I met my partner at work years ago, after giving up on relationships entirely for a couple years... how would I have found him, otherwise? I have no idea...But I now know it is possible, not just to find romantic partners, but intense platonic ones as well. That's all I can really offer: it is possible.

I do have a moment with each new relationship (regardless of type) where I need to decide whether or not I really wanted to Try, you know? Like, I had to shut up all the parts in me, and say "yeah this could go badly and I could get hurt... but I want to try anyway." I think that was the hardest part. Being willing to be authentic and allowing myself to feel positive emotions in front of new people, despite all the hurt, ghosting, rejection, bullying, blatant transphobia, etc. in my past.