Shot Day - My Weekly Feminine Ritual
A screenshot of my Shot Day Playlist on Qobuz, linked below!
CW: Needles
🎵 ”dum dum da dum da dum dum… Let’s go girls!” 🎵
- Shania Twain, Man! I feel like a Woman
Shania Twain plays out of my PC speakers as Hannah and I ready the supplies for my weekly Estradiol shot - one syringe, 2 needles, a vial of girl juice, hand sanitizer, a band-aid, and a paper towel. The last important ingredient is the music playing in the background, my ‘shot day’ playlist, full of affirming and feminine music that makes me feel alive and grateful to be a woman.
I pull up my skirt while Hannah sprays the paper towel with hand sanitizer, it’s “Champagne Toast” scented and adds to the comforting and feminine vibe we’re going for. She wipes the vial of estradiol and the patch on my leg where we’ll be injecting this week. We alternate between the left and right thighs week by week, I haven’t lost track of which thigh we’re up to at all, it’s too important to me to forget. While she does that, I take the pink needle out of its packaging and screw it onto the syringe - this one is only for drawing estradiol out of the vial into the syringe, it would be wayyy too painful to inject with.
She shakes the vial and hands it to me with a smile, we both vibe and bop to the music throughout the process. This isn’t a medical procedure any more, it’s become a ritual between the two of us, a way for us to celebrate my womanhood and so she can take part in the act of my becoming. I draw the thick liquid up into the syringe, being sure that there are no air bubbles. I’ve learned that a tiny bit of air in the syringe is not as life-threatening as I was taught but the idea still squicks me out so I ensure that it’s all purged from the syringe, then I pull it out of the vial, pulling the plunger down to make sure all of the liquid in the needle tip is in the syringe before I remove the needle and put it into our makeshift sharps container - a plastic Folgers coffee can full of old needles, syringes, and old scented wax from our wax melter. I’ve been tempted to keep it once it’s full of sharp things and fill in all the gaps with multi-colored and scented wax, then cut away the plastic to reveal a bizarre coagulated timeline of the past years, like a geological core sample.
The song changes, Skin by Machinae Supremacy starts to play:
🎵 “Claw your flesh from off your bones
Face that fire on your own
Embrace the life you thought that you could never know
Can't erase the pain inside without a storm within
They left the lies like scars underneath your skin
The one you're hiding in, the one you're s'posed to live in “🎵
I switch the needle to the tiny blue needle, screwing it onto the syringe. For a while there, I had been given syringes that didn’t have a screw thread on the end for needles, removing the caps was fucking terrifying! The struggle to remove the cap from the needle while it was on the syringe was scary, luckily nothing ever went wrong. I’m very thankful to have the threaded syringes again. I remove the cap from the needle, tap the side of the syringe to get the remaining air to the top, push the plunger up until I can see a bead of estradiol on the tip of the needle and I get ready to inject.
When I asked Hannah if they wanted to be a part of my Shot Day ritual, they agreed but said they wouldn’t feel comfortable doing anything with the needles. So she does the prep work with the sanitizer, picks out the band-aid, and squeezes the section on my thigh where I inject while I do the injection myself. I read about doing this online, squeezing the section while injecting and then releasing once the needle is withdrawn helps prevent bleeding and any precious girl potion from leaking back out of my thigh.
The injection itself was scary for the first 2-3 Shot Days, but now it’s just a part of the routine and I barely feel the needle unless I manage to bullseye right on a nerve ending or vein. It slides into my leg and I start to push the plunger down slowly, watching the estradiol leave the syringe and enter my body, ready to keep working miracles. Once the plunger reaches the bottom of the syringe, I squeeze it down twice to ensure that I have as much of the estradiol in my leg as I can humanly manage - as if one molecule’s wastage would make any difference. I withdraw the needle from my leg and Hannah releases the squeeze, the estradiol stays put inside my body.
She unwraps the band-aid and applies it to the injection site. This one is blue with pink butterflies on it. She kisses the band-aid on my thigh and then we kiss each other. This concludes the ritual, I pull my skirt back down into place and smile widely to my wife, which doesn’t feel like enough for the love I’m feeling in this moment, so I stand and pull her into a big hug.
“I love being your wife” I say to her
“I love being wives with you” she replies and then kisses my neck.
In the background, the music changes to the ONE song on the playlist that is not affirming, nor feminine. It's there as a joke, it’s almost Rick-Roll adjacent in the reaction it gets out of us, yet it’s also extremely applicable and makes me laugh every time.
Lil Jon yells from the PC speakers… it’s Shots by LMFAO:
🎵 “Shots shots shots shots shots shots
Shots shots shots shots shots
Shots shots shots shots shots
EVERYBODY“ 🎵
The whole ritual makes me feel bulletproof and I get ready to talk to my lovely Thursday clients.
I’ve got a leg full of E and I’m ready to kick ass with it!
- Hazel Bloom 💜
Do you need support as a transgender or non-binary person?
Do you need help with transition related issues or everyday situations?
I’m here and I’m ready to help you thrive
