I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT) four years ago. 🍾 Last year, on my three-year anniversary, I wrote about how my thinking about myself had changed. That what I’ve been seeking all my life is not external; it’s internal.

That’s still true, but what else has changed?

Well, my finger and toenails, for one. My fingernails are so fragile now it’s almost comical. Or it would be if I hadn’t been nursing a split thumbnail for the past few months. It looks like the split may finally grow out in a few weeks, but I don’t want to jinx it. Every day these past three months, my thumbnail has hurt, and I’d like that to be over, please.

And my toenails—so weird. Not all of them, the big toenails. It’s like one day, they decided to grow at half the thickness they used to be. So I have this weird ridge where the old nails end and the new nails start. I’ve watched that ridge move toward the end of my toes for months. It will probably be another few months before I trim the old, thicker ones for the last time.

That sounds frivolous compared to the realization that what I’ve been seeking all my life is internal, but what can you do?

My acceptance of self continues to mature and permeate. That’s been such a fundamental change and revelation that I have to remember when life wasn’t like that. But I don’t like to dwell too much on how things used to be because things weren’t good. I wasn’t good, and I didn’t see a way out, a way to fix myself. Now I realize I wasn’t broken; I just wasn’t me.

I’m not perfect. I just wrote 150 words about my toenails, after all. But I don’t expect to be perfect. I expect to be good enough, and I know I am. And so are you!

If that were all I ever got from HRT (it isn’t: hello boobs!), it would be enough. I know I’ve been given a gift, and I don’t intend to waste it. I’m holding on, and no government or politicians can pry me loose.

WRITTEN BY A HUMAN