I don’t know your boss so I can’t know how she’s going to react - but if someone came out to me and told me their new name, I’d be glad they were able to trust me. And that’s a reaction I’ve gotten from other people before.

November is a trans woman and a podcaster. Despite seemingly not having done much voice training, she makes a living primarily by talking. Maybe you would find that comforting?

Also for what it’s worth, 3 months isn’t that long in terms of transitioning. If your voice bothers you, changing it will require patience, but it absolutely can be done.

Well you can keep your current ones and add the other kind; you’ll get there someday.

Some people accomplish this by purchasing a magic wand

Did you offer your boss your chosen name? If not, she might not have asked because she wants to respect your privacy.

Laser’s definitely worth it when possible. That’s something that makes a big difference in how it feels to look at your face.

Regarding voice, have you heard of November Kelly?

I’m glad someone else is enjoying When You Fell From Heaven; it scratches several itches for me. I don’t want to spoil anything but if you enjoy the whole first book, the second builds on it nicely, and in my opinion it might even be better than the first.

This still gets me sometimes. “Why am I crying? Oh right, estradiol.”

I kind of like it though.

Hell yeah, .22s are fun and I wish you luck with your improvements.

Fair enough. If you want to make them more effective, you can try going over the same small area multiple times in rapid succession.

What exactly did you want to accomplish with the IPL?

That would uh, be a bold project to undertake.

Having smooth legs is really nice.

Sadly the affordable IPL devices aren’t very powerful, so if you want permanent reduction you’re probably better off saving the money to put towards laser/electrolysis at a later date.

As for research, I started by doing searches like “laser hair removal [city]”. Do that for whatever cities are within a semi-reasonable travel distance for you, and make a list of prices for full face and neck, if that information is available (often you will have to call or schedule a consult in order to get a price quote, it’s a pain).

Well it might not take that many, it just does for some people. But you also don’t have to do them on a strict schedule. I don’t think anything bad happens if you take a break for a few months, so don’t worry about that too much.

Wow $30 would make it accessible to so many more people; that’s fantastic.

Is there anywhere else you could go for laser, or any sort of package deal if you pay for multiple sessions at once?

I am going to be the bearer of bad news here: it could easily be more like 16 sessions. I don’t know how much of it you have, but facial hair tends to be very resilient. 150 EUR/session sounds like a lot though - look for other laser locations.

I’ll be the first to admit this advice is less than tremendous. I’m not sure there’s anything that helpful I can say, really. But at least you don’t have to change anything right away.

I guess it all depends on when I get tits

If you dress right, you can make this much less obvious to the casual observer.

But how does that work if I’m not ready like literally. How?

How it works is that it sucks, unfortunately. Trans people are disproportionately impoverished, which I’m sure isn’t news.

I’m not saying you need to have any answers right now - just begin figuring out what all the questions are. You don’t need to have the money to move, but figure out how much you might need. You don’t need to get a degree tomorrow, but start thinking about what degree you might want to persue in the future. You see where I’m going with this.

It’s so easy for us to feel alone. I’m sorry you don’t have someone to help you through this in person.

I wish I could only take one day

Yeah fair enough, you definitely don’t need to be over it in a day. It’s ok to cry, and to still be sad afterwards.

Make note of all the problems you listed out in this post. See what you can do to solve, eliminate, improve, or mitigate each of them. Start doing those things. This will be a long process; try to allow yourself a certain amount of grace. If you know anyone in your target city, there is no shame in asking them for guidance.

If your family is going to kick you out or disown you for being trans, you don’t need to come out to them before they figure it out on their own (and most cis people are willing to ignore a lot more than you’d expect). But when that time comes, will all that’s keeping you in your current location be a part time job that doesn’t pay very much? Because if that’s it, it will probably be time for you to leave, whether you’re ready or not.