Best For:
Transgender & non-binary individuals navigating political anxiety, LGBTQ+ individuals grappling with the psychological isolation of queer anticipatory grief, advocates & allies seeking a deeper understanding of the internal pressures behind the headlines, skeptics & fence-sitters willing to engage with a honest & human perspective on medical autonomy, & readers of emotional journal entries.
The Vault:
- Anticipatory Grief: Understanding the unique, complex mourning process of experiencing the loss of one’s future or rights before they are actually taken away.
- Queer Anticipatory Surrender: Acknowledging the psychological trap of dismantling one’s own life as a preemptive defense against political threats.
- The Power of Consistency: Re-framing hormone therapy not just as a medical necessity, but as a deliberate, defiant act of daily existence.
- Reframing Rebellion: The realization that my “timeout” rebellion was actually self-sabotage rather than a strategic protest against the system.
- The Mirror Moment: Understanding the vital importance of having a trusted voice to challenge our internal narratives when we are too close to the fire to see the patterns.
- Identity Beyond Fear: The shift from chasing the image of manhood in 2016 to truly inhabiting & owning that identity in 2026.
Modern Reality- Queer Anticipatory Grief:
We are living through a period where the future feels like something being held hostage. For many of us, the weight of the current political climate has shifted from a background hum into a constant, suffocating pressure.
It is easy to look at the rights we have fought for and the lives we have built and decide, in a moment of pure, panicked self-preservation, that it is safer to dismantle them ourselves before anyone else can. I fell into that trap. I spent months performing a silent, voluntary medical de-transition. After i somehow convinced myself that giving up my autonomy on my own terms, meant that I was somehow beating the system.
This was a lie I told myself to cope with the reality of queer anticipatory grief. Followed by the story of how I let fear steal my consistency, the mirror moment that finally snapped me out of it, and why I am officially done sitting in the corner of my own self-imposed timeout.
The False Security of the Early Years:
In May of 2015, I began the medical transition through hormone replacement therapy. I had been in Las Vegas, living just shy of a full four weeks when I enter the office that would change my life forever. After all this was the whole reason I packed up and headed to live my life out west, at the ripe age of twenty-three.
This step would be the first one on a long path that would align my physical reality with the man I had always been. At that time, transition felt like watching the sunrise over a calm lake after a peaceful night at camp, or a breath of fresh air after choking down the words of your truth for two decades plus.
It was a period of frantic, beautiful change: a dismantling of the wrong pieces and a careful reconstruction of the right ones. Between 2015 and 2017, I navigated legal name and gender marker changes, followed by a double mastectomy in 2017, as well as this first step.
The Loud & Proud Trope:
I was and am loud about me, I always will be. My handles on digital platforms have ranged from things like AxtonFtMitch, daddyaxe, the_ax-ident, that_tranny_ax , and many others. These acted as a testament to a man who refused to hide, who could joke, and exist visibly as an example for others who were like him.
Back in the beginning of my medical journey, the political climate was a background hum.
It was there, sure, but it didn’t feel like an encroaching ceiling, or like the entire world we lived in was lit ablaze. I was operating under the assumption that the world, for all its flaws, would allow me the space to exist.
Young, naive, and still placing way too much faith in our government.
I was blinded by the excitement of becoming, and in that blindness, I failed to prepare for a world that might suddenly decide to stop letting me be.
2025 – The Shift from “What If” to “When”:
By 2025, the climate had curdled. The fear wasn’t hypothetical; it was tangible, systemic, and deeply malicious. Unlike the first political cycle I navigated, this one felt like it was aiming directly at the blueprint of my life.
There is a psychological trap that I think many of us are falling into: the trap of “anticipatory surrender.” I found myself looking at the rights I had fought for and concluding that they were already effectively revoked.
I gave weight to fear mongers on TikTok telling have the truths built on very stretched thin beds of lies. Even when I continued to tell myself, I’ll have to check this first, the feelings of suffocation still came with or without my fact check or consent.
I told myself, “They are going to take this from me, so I’ll take it from myself first.” I wanted to stay in control, even if that control meant self-destruction. I began hoarding vials and skipping doses, performing a quiet, personal medical de-transition on my own terms before a faceless authority could demand it of me.
The Rebellious Ego – Staying in “Timeout”:
I’ve used to be the kid who, when placed in timeout, would refuse to leave the corner long after my time was up. I had to be the one to decide when the punishment ended. When I stopped my hormones, I told myself I was “sticking it to the man,” just as I had done way back then.
I was wrong. I wasn’t protesting; I was punishing myself. My friends and loved ones tried to pull me back, tried to point out the logic, but I was too buried in my own narrative of “death before de-transition” to hear them, not even seeing I wasn’t holding up my end of the death before detransition narrative.
I had confused surrender with strategy. I was so terrified of the potential loss that I began to orchestrate the loss myself, losing the consistency, the balance, and the joy I had fought years to secure.
The Mirror Held Up – A Moment of Clarity:
The wall finally broke during a conversation with a trusted friend, who carries respect for me as I do them. I was venting about the physical consequences of my inconsistency: the return of “shark week” and the internal chaos that comes with hormone fluctuations.
I wanted sympathy; instead, I got a mirror. If I am being vulnerable and honest to myself and you I needed the mirror way more.
She asked me, “Why are you not taking your testosterone?” I gave her the same played out excuse I had been providing everyone over the last couple months longer than a year. “Are you giving it to him before he even proves he’s going to take it from you?”
That question stripped away every justification I had constructed. She reframed my “rebellion” as exactly what it was: a voluntary de-transition.
The realization was visceral. I had been waiting for the storm to take my roof off, so I decided to rip it off myself to save the trouble.
Reclamation – The Man I See Today:
I refuse to move my care into a system that I don’t trust, which is why I held onto and will continue to maintain an out-of-state, Pennsylvania provider rather than defaulting to local Ohio state options. Within two weeks of that conversation, I was back on track. Today marks my fourth consecutive week of doing my shots on Monday’s.
There is a fundamental difference between who I was in 2016 and who I am today. In 2016, I was a man looking into the mirror, hoping to see the person I knew I could be. I was chasing the beard, the image, the external markers of manhood.
Today, I don’t look for him anymore. I know him. I see him multiple times a day. I hear him speak.
Transition is no longer about the “what-ifs” or the political precarity of the moment. It is an act of defiance through consistency.
I am choosing to exist, and I am choosing to do it in the body I have earned, regardless of what the politicians in DC or the statehouse think. I am done sitting in the corner of my own “timeout.”
I am back. I am consistent. I am finally back on my own terms.
The Path Forward:
Reclaiming my medical autonomy was never just about a prescription or a weekly shot. It was about reclaiming the agency that fear tried to annex.
By holding onto my provider in Pennsylvania, I kept my care tethered to a system I trust, ensuring that my transition remains a private, personal pact rather than a political concession.
I have stopped looking for the man I was chasing in 2016 and have finally settled into the skin of the man I am right now. My goal moving forward is simple: to live with the same unapologetic visibility that defined my early years, but with a new, sturdier foundation. I am no longer interested in the “what-ifs” or the hypothetical threats of tomorrow. I am interested in the consistency of my Mondays, the reality of my growth, and the quiet, defiant act of existing in the world exactly as I am.
The storm may be outside, but I am no longer dismantling my own house to survive it. I am staying, I am steady, and I am finally, truly, back.
TLDR:
Political fear convinced me I was already losing my identity, so I started acting like the loss was real. I skipped testosterone doses, and called it staying in control.
What felt like preparation was actually anticipatory surrender, and I was dismantling my own stability. I started calling it rebellion, but it was really self-sabotage.
A trusted friend challenged my logic, and it took one question to brake my entire narrative. I got back on a consistent schedule, and my chaos started settling down.
Fear had been making my decisions, I took that power back, and the future will always be uncertain. I need to remember it is my commitment to myself that is not.
Join in the Convo:
What does your “Monday” look like? I’d love to hear about the small, consistent acts that help you reclaim your space and autonomy.
Or,
If you’ve ever found yourself caught in the trap of anticipatory surrender, how did you find your way back to your own steady ground?
Let’s talk in the comments below.
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United States 2026 Legislative Outlook for Transgender Individuals
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