Tricky... I finally got my first NHS appointment the other week and have to wait up to 12 weeks for the second one with a psychologist where they will actually give a dysphoria or incongruence diagnosis and (hopefully) start me on my journey. It has been a long time coming, I'm scared and apprehensive - I have a lot of internalised hatred and denial I have to overcome and I need to work hard on actually accepting myself but at least it feels like there is actual movement now.

On one plus side I was chatting to my friend's wife the other day (I'm very much not out to anyone yet) about our mutual love of all things pumpkin spice (found a pumpkin spiced oat milk in the supermarket) and got sent a "#basicwhitegirl' meme in return which made me happier than she could ever know...

I desperately want to do a spa day and get properly pampered...

I was able to use covid as an excuse as there was a chance I was going to go back to work in the labs and the advice to workers was to be clean shaven if possible. I don't miss it one bit and after the first time I met somebody I knew they never commented on it again.