Neuroendocrinology and nonconformity

Sitting alone in my apartment for a year has provided lots of time to critically reflect upon the universe, the world, myself, and my life. This has been aided by my uptake of antidepressants shortly before lockdown began, which has inspired many new thoughts and points of view. The sharpened understanding of myself as a bag of chemicals that learned to think has led to, among other things, an increased interest in the historical sciences and how our reality came to be, as discussed elsewhere on this site. It has also led to a revisiting of my life experiences through different lenses. As well as of my medical history. Certainly that contributed to my writing in other sections of this page.

And it has also led to some reflection on my experiences with gender and the expression thereof. As you may imagine, serious neuroendocrine (that is, hormonal) dysfunction has some interplay there. More reflection is required before I write my thoughts in depth here.

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I return a few years later with apologies for having taken so long. It’s a nontrivial process to connect ‘how I understood things as I experienced them in real time’ with a better description based on a re-analysis of my life with a better understanding of what was actually going on. This is very broadly something I have had to spend much time on: Understanding myself better in light of my neuroendocrine tumor diagnosis and my subsequent study of science.