Asher Collins 🏳️‍⚧️ | 🎙️: Translating ADHD

It is #TransAwarenessWeek and I am coming out! 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈 My name is Asher. I am a transgender man. My pronouns are he/him. Watch my coming out video: youtu.be/gUF7MeoenRM

The Translating ADHD podcast is back with Season 3 co-host @dustychipura!

Bar PM is an incredible, inclusive LGBTQ bar in STL. I cannot believe that one of the owners remains under arrest while these cops have still failed to give a plausible explanation as to how they smashed their car through the front of the building in the first place. #ACAB

A big hangup for me in getting my name changed legally is coming up with a middle name. I'd go without one entirely, but not having one can create bureaucracy issues... and that doesn't play well with #ADHD. So... suggest a middle name, please! Asher [???] Collins

People trying to read my gender gets funnier by the day. See also the flight attendant who was thanking people walking off the plane as ma'am or man looked at me... "Thank you... ma.. si... uh thanks." 🙃

My physiological responses to emotion have changed since starting HRT. I don't feel emotion in my body as strongly as I used to. I can't cry unless I am at peak frustration, and that type of cry does not feel like a release. Here's to learning emotional intelligence... again.

The fact that the early days of HRT and all of the emotional upheaval that comes with it is intersecting with absolute peak transphobia is... not great. Spent my therapy session yesterday wondering if I was going to spend the rest of my days feeling like everything is shit.

Me shopping for a CD player because if I'm going to be the same angsty nihilistic mess of negative emotion I was during my first puberty, I might as well dust off the corresponding soundtrack.

Tomorrow marks 8 weeks on HRT. Some thoughts: I expected my voice to start to sound different. I did not expect it to *feel* different coming out of my body. The horny is real and it's not fun horny, it's itch-you-can't-scratch horny. My first new body hair was on my elbow?

Let's not even talk about how I raise and soften my voice when talking to bartenders/doormen/strangers... Do women make themselves this small in public or did I just develop maladaptive behaviors in my overcompensating for not being one?

Ohey @dustychipura, I'm going to need to know if my voice is still profound sounding some amount of months or years from now when it settles.

My neurodivergent baby-trans ass sitting at this bar trying to figure out how one sits on a barstool in a way that is both comfortable and manly 💀💀💀

My state is trending for the wild combination of legal weed, the spy balloon, and the fact that we're leading the nation in anti-trans legislation. Go home Missouri, you're drunk.

The euphoria of my clients asking me if I feel well this week because my voice dropping makes it sound like I'm coming down with something.

I have an immensely healthy relationship with social media. I only use platforms that I feel enrich me in some way. I curate my feeds to keep them relevant and interesting and to avoid digital self harm. Yet I encounter transphobia *daily*. It's literally unavoidable.

If your stance on trans issues that impact cis people (sports, bathrooms) is "it's complicated"... ... you are valuing safety, comfort, and fairness for cis people while disregarding these things for trans people. It's almost like you see us as less than human, yeah?

Learning to take care of future me is one way I manage my #ADHD. I logged in today expecting my credit card to be massively overdue. Instead I found that I paid the whole thing off last month. Past me somehow *knew* a financial wall-of-awful was incoming. *WHEW*

Did you know that only 42% of Americans (up from 37% in 2017) personally know someone who is transgender? Keep that in mind if someone you know comes out as trans. Even if they are open to sharing (as I am), it is exhausting to be put in the role of the "trans friend".

🏳️‍⚧️😅

Who has an appointment with Planned Parenthood today to start HRT? THIS GUY, THAT'S WHO! 🎉🎉🎉

Day two in NYC: less dressed up but a fun day of meeting clients in person and catching up with old friends!