Check out my interviews with Max Graves & Jonni Phillips on Nebula! Almost an hour of bonus stuff, where we talk about their art and get into some really interesting, personal territory.

https://go.nebula.tv/lilyalexandre

One of the things that scared me about transitioning was how little you hear from people after everything has settled, I wanted to know what to expect, turns out what happens after that is just… life

I transitioned in 2007. The president was still George w. Bush. If someone could have told me that I'd someday be pushing 40 and just living life as male I don't know if I'd have even been able to compute. I never stopped being trans but it's also just kind of "this thing that happened to me nearly 20 years ago." As of next year I'll have been living as male longer than I lived as female.

Life, it do go on. It do.

Felt such horrible deep regret when I did my first T shot. Thought exactly that sentiment, 'there's no turning back' (even though, obviously, with only one dose of T there absolutely is). until i lingered on it long enough and realized, I was more so feeling grief. Grief for the girl I couldn't have been and over all the effort and time I expended on trying that was worth nothing if I was really going to be a man now.
A year on T now and I don't grieve the girl I tried to be, I just love her and I'm glad I spent all that time with her.

YOU SUBTITLED THE WHOLE VIDEO!

I’m crying, my crops are thriving, the bread is cooling on the windowsill, and this video has subtitles.

Thank you, from all the people with auditory processing disorder, and people who need subtitles to understand things.

Thank you!!!

Hope you have a wonderful day!

I think this is why Lord of the Rings resonated with me so much. After Frodo destroys the ring, the story is over. There is nothing left for him to do in the world, the evil has been defeated, and there is no space for him in this narrative. If he had died back at Mount Doom, it would've been a satisfying conclusion. But he didn't die. That is why he leaves.

Trauma, particularly the one sustained for a long time, really feels like that. Like, the story is over. I survived, I won, the bad guy is dead, roll credits. Then, why does stuff keep happening? Why do I feel so bad about it? But then again, I am just 18 years old. Of course stuff is going to keep happening. Still, I feel like I've been trapped in a directionless limbo since 12. Like everything since then has been an epilogue, post game material, if you will. I had never heard anyone put it to words like you just had before, even if the context is a bit different. Either way this is an amazing video. Thank you for creating!

I sometimes get asked by coworkers, or family members, oh what will you do if you don't like yourself, what if you make a decision or do a surgery you regret, what if you're forty and realize you chose wrong, and I've learned that the answer is that I hope I'm empathetic towards myself.

when i was going under anesthesia for top surgery right before i passed out my surgeon said "NO TURNING BACK NOW" i wish i was making this up

I detransitioned four years ago and I fell into a lot of terf rhetoric. I'm better now, so much better. A lot of what you said rang true for me too and probably for many others. You believe the narrative that transition is death and not even detransition can bring you back and you swallow it hole. Because you can't be "fixed" the grief is endless. The anger never abates. There is no resolution.
Once I realized that narrative was hurting me so deeply I was finally able to get out from under it and acknowledge that transition was just one part of my life, it didn't define or kill me it was an event among many other events in my life. I don't like calling it a detransition anymore but it's the most recognizable thing to call it by.
It was a second transition. And it's okay if my narrative didn't go how I expected. I really liked this video, I'd never heard what I felt and experienced put so succinctly. The narrative was never real.

"what happens next, if I'm lucky, is nearly everything" once again, Lily has beautifully distilled something that I've been feeling about my own transition, and what it means to close that chapter, and open another

You know what really bothers me about right now is this feeling of "general malaise". People around me feel so TIRED, beaten-down, worn out, and it feels like nothing is going to get better. I really, really hope this will eventually start to reflect how my dad got through cancer. There was a point during his treatment where nothing was getting WORSE, but nothing was improving, either. I'd go to class, he'd be on the couch. I'd come home, he'd be on the couch. It was like he couldn't move on his own or do anything on his own, and I remember just putting my head down in class one day, taking off my glasses, covering up my face, and just silently sobbing or an hour straight. I sat at the front, and my professor was right in front of me the whole time, and at the end of class, he asked me if there was anything wrong (he's got a sarcasm streak a mile wide: I adore this man and we're still friends), so I told him the situation, and he said I didn't have to hand in my assignments on time if I felt like I couldn't. In the weeks following, he kind of took care of me emotionally, and he would let me vent to him when there was no one else to vent to. I couldn't in good conscience vent to my family, because they were going through the same thing as me, but he was safe because there was enough emotional distance from what was going on. I'm using this as an analogy, by the way: this really did happen, and dad's all good now, but we need to be one another's Dr. Jon. He couldn't make me happy, but he DID at least keep me, well, functional. I consider that hour-long cry the highest emotional moment for me throughout that whole year of awful: I cleaned my system out completely--best cry I've ever had, bar none--and I gained myself an ally and now a longtime friend.

I'm in the middle of detransitioning, but I don't think I really feel any regret. Binding was hurting my ribs, but it made me happy while I was doing it. Testosterone gave me acne beyond belief, but that passed with topical medication and accutane. I love my voice getting deeper, my hair thicker, facial hair and bottom growth.
In fact, the only part of my transition I ""regret"" is the social aspect. The people around me didn't understand and would never understand. Instead of the validation of being treated like a normal man, you instead are treated as a sensitive snowflake. All the privileges of being a woman I once experienced were gone, replaced with a scorn for being trans.
A lot of my childhood trauma sources in feeling like I don't fit in, a desperately chameleoning to assimilate to whichever group I was in. Being trans was perhaps the first time I felt I was being myself, until I realized I was chameleoning to be among men too.
I don't hate my body the way it is now. I still don't see myself as a woman. But I really could never be a man, even if I looked, acted and spoke like one, I felt on the outside then, too. I'm okay with being nonbinary inside. But outside, presenting back as a woman has made the rest of my life easy again. Getting loans, starting relationships, interacting with grandparents and cousins. I think maybe when im older ill transition again. But for now, this is what im doing.

I’m glad I tried E and had an opportunity to experiment with my gender. For years I repressed any femininity i had within myself and tried to overcompensate for my lack of feeling masculine enough. So naturally this all came to a head at some point and i had to seriously start questioning things. I was on E for about 6 months, but never really felt settled into my new identity. once the big changes started happening, I experienced really terrible dysphoria. I went off of it, and the only thing i have to show is some very minor breast growth that’s only really noticeable to me and to people i tell. i’ve been working out and that muscle growth has pretty much gotten rid of any semblance of breasts I could’ve had. I think the whole experience made my more sure in my identity as a nonbinary man, and gave me a much more intimate understanding of what gender dysphoria feels like, and the absolute necessity of providing safe and accessible gender affirming care. Starting estrogen was my own choice, and I accepted that when I started it. I don’t really regret it tbh

going through a transition "complication" myself rn and my world is crumbling, it feels wrong when the medicine I've worshipped for years for saving my life is biting back and causing problems

Really enjoyed this video, but I wasn't expecting it to start discussing Barber Westchester 26 minutes in- I'm in that movie! I voice the guy with the smaller guy on his head! So a bit of a world's colliding moment when I'm just here listening to my stories while I work, but always great to hear shout-outs for Jonni outside the indie animation bubble. Everyone should go check out her work!

Unrelated, but I also liked finding out nobody bought Graham's shitty book. Enjoyable time all round

Gal Gadot's singing Imagine starts at 13:58 and ends at 14:10 for those who want to skip.

I am having top surgery in three days, and it was a little intimindating to put on a video called "Transition Regret and the Fascism if Endings" but I knew you'd never let me down before, and you probably weren't about to start.

This is exactly what I needed. Hearing that it doesn't solve all of your problems is an oddly soothing perspective, while so much of me has been battling out "is this the beginning, middle, or end of my journey?" in the background of my mind.

Thank you.

You don't even need to have had been incarcerated to be treated like this.
Being unschooled by abusive parents doomes me to an almost identical fate.
I keep trying to reach out to doctors, social workers, and just anyone I can about my future.
But they all give me the same response.
It's my job to work to get myself a future.

Even if I'm exhausted and suffering from flashbacks and severe social anxiety on a daily basis.

Social media, which is my only source of communication, often just leaves me feeling more alone.
I never even had the chance to make frienships.


I have around 3 online friendships, along with my boyfriend who lives in Canada while I live in the UK.
And the friend I get along with the most, lives in Spain.

I have my sister, who is my only connection with other humans physically.

This reminds me so much of conversations transgender people were having online 20 years ago. I had elders telling me, "Just remember that transition isn't the end all be all. There is life after that, and you will have to figure out what to do with yourself after it's all done." It ended up taking me 15 freaking years to get there... which I suppose makes me lucky, because once I finally got surgery, the feeling at the top of the hill was one of "Yeah, this is nice. I deserve this," and "on with the financial plan and maybe some bucket list items." And also, when there have been weird feelings or concerns down there in that area, I feel like there's a big sense of simply being a woman in the healthcare system. That is, people are prone to not believe you about your sensations, but also "are these feeling valid?" It's all the same questions ciswomen I know deal with. In that sense, though this is a wonderfully ornate description of all of this from a contemporary perspective, these are also all the same things transgender people were thinking and feeling 20 years ago. Probably 40 years ago or 60 years ago (see Casa Susana). The erasure of our history and our connections with our trans elders tends to make us all grow up in these little bubbles, where "everyone is 20" is always the case. As a transwoman in her 40s, I can tell the younger folks, you're actually doing just fine. <3

Another part of Milo living a life with no blueprint is the fact that he technically never went to school, or at least stopped and when to “unschooling” by middle school. As someone who’s not a murder accomplice, but was forced to do homeschooling, it disconnects you from everyone else, which makes Milo’s situation even worse (also thank you for the webtoon rec just binged it lol)