Vacation Time

Crosswell Tour Bus from Cincinnati. 

It’s vacation time again, so I will be missing in action for the next ten days or so, with no posts.

My wife Liz and I are heading to the Amelia Island area of Florida, and for what I understand, are taking the cold weather of Ohio with us.

Our big problem will be navigating the severe winter weather in the south in places such as Tennessee and Georgia in a big tour bus. In order to miss much of the bad weather (I hope) the departure time has already been moved up a day, since the storm is not supposed to hit Ohio Saturday afternoon or evening.

I cannot believe our bad luck with weather because last year around the same time we went on a tour to the Florida Keys and needed to drive through a mixture of snow and ice for part of the way down there. I thought at the time that surely the same thing would not happen again. Not only is it similar, but it is also almost identical as we are headed directly for another Arctic plunge in temperatures around here in Cincinnati along with a foot of possible snow.

One way or another, we are packed and ready to go on another adventure. At least this time, I don’t have to worry about something petty like using the right restroom when driving will be my biggest concern. At least, I don’t have to drive it. Plus, my flu and covid vaccines are current so I hope I don’t have a recurrence of me ending up in a Georgia hospital for three days with covid and having to have my daughter come down and pick us up.

As always, I will try to have a few pictures to share and hope to see you all again when I return because without you, none of this is possible. 

No One Way is the Correct Way

 

JJ Hart, Trans Ohio 
Conference. 

Yesterday, I referred again to my initial explorations in my mom’s clothes as the way I started my gender journey, and you may have done it too. Or some of you may have had a sister or two to borrow clothes from or even better get dressed up as a girl for Halloween in your past.

My point is that initially we follow very similar paths on our gender journeys without ever meeting up until later in life. Possibly at one of the cross dresser-transgender mixers which used to occur and still do in places such as Provincetown and Harrisburg Pennsylvania who host major events so you can experience living as your feminine self for an extended period of time. Plus, if you live near a city/metro area of any size, often there are LGBTQ groups who host support groups for novice cross dressers to attend which helps them understand a little more what they are up against with their gender issues. For example, Cincinnati, where I live has several gender support groups which cater to different ages in the community.

No matter how you reach out to seek relief from your closet, no one way is the right way to do it. For example, I would not recommend how I came out into the world as a transfeminine person to anyone. I took too many chances in sketchy gay venues as well as drinking way too much. I was caught in a situation where alcohol gave me too much courage while at the same time convinced me how good I looked. Both of which nearly got me into serious trouble a couple of times when I pushed the envelope too far by trying to go to redneck leaning venues. I was fortunate that I did not get physically harmed but I did not.

It was about that time when I began to notice how much more attention, I was getting from ciswomen than men. I think for the most part, the women were curious about what I was doing in their world, and I was harmless dressed the way I was. Slowly, I began to think I was on the right path after all when I started to enjoy myself.

For the longest time, I thought my next move into the lesbian culture was relatively rare when it came to the transgender community until I received another comment from “Bobbie W.” It turned out she was influenced by two lesbians when she was exploring the world too. Sadly, the difference in our paths came when her two friends moved away after school and Bobbie lost her contacts in the lesbian world. On the other hand, my difference was I never lost contact with their world and learned so much about the woman I could become. I became so serious with one of the lesbians I met, that I moved in with her and we got married. We have been together for over a decade now.

Another point I want to make with being accepted by the lesbian culture is you have to try to enter their world with a thick skin and prepare yourself for rejection. You also have to understand the layers of difference in their culture from “butches” to “femmes” and everything in between. Also be aware there are “Gold Star” lesbians who are completely against everything male versus the rest of the culture who had made it with a man in their past and had a very bad experience. One of my friends was a “Gold Star” and always held me at arm’s length while the others, including my wife Liz had children through previous soured relationships.

Maybe also, you think that since you went to all this trouble to be a transgender woman, why waste it on another woman and you want a man. Since I have had very little experience with men over the years, I am a bad one to ask. For the most part, men have steered clear of me, and I have steered clear of them. I did have a couple of dates years ago during my coming out years, but nothing ever came of them, and they were one night experience dates in very public venues where I felt safe. Other than a very rare circumstance, I have never met a trans woman who had a long-term relationship with a man, and I often wondered how scary it would be if he brought his trans girlfriend home to meet mom and the family for the holidays. Although I did it with Liz’s highly conservative dad and brother. (I was terrified).

These days, the possibility of establishing a long-term relationship exists on a broader spectrum than ever before. I know a couple of transgender women who met during their gender realignment surgeries five years ago and just celebrated their fifth anniversary, so anything is possible. Just because your path does not align with the other gender conflicted people around you, it does not make it right. As I said, the spectrum has grown bigger over the years with the advent of the internet influence and social media groups. Although I read recently the tide is starting to turn back to personal contacts and away from online dating which I was lucky with. After sorting through tons of trash and rejection my wife Liz contacted me and we have been together ever since.

Since we are all humans, we share in the vast spectrum of life we are living. Perhaps since we are transgender women and trans men, we have a broader spectrum to live with. These days we still have to deal with the unreasoning anti-LGBTQ political ads which are starting to appear. I saw one just this morning from Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie who was campaigning for a right-wing candidate when he said the candidate was not for transgender they and them but for us. I need to get prepared for the worst that is yet to come.

Try not to let it all drive you tightly back into your closet and keep in mind no way is the right way when you decide to come out and look around.

 

Staying Calm

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride

Many times, staying calm as you traverse your gender path is easier said than done. For example, take the early days of exploring your mom’s clothes to see what still fit and how well you thought it made you look in the mirror. Just the sight of your girlish self-brought a palpable change to your excitement level that you would never forget. Then the disappointment set in and your calm was shattered when you knew you had taken the last little bit of time you had to take off the makeup and clothes and return to the boring male world you were forced into.

At that point, as you grew up, it became evident that taking the time to cross dress as a girl anytime you could calm you down and made life easier…until the pressure built up and you could cross dress again. In my case, before long, to stay calm in my life, I needed the effort I put into looking like a girl. If I did not, all I would worry about was the next time I could apply makeup and a dress and look at myself in the mirror.

For some reason, when I was young, I thought age would temper my urge to be feminine. Then the internet came along (with social media sites) and I discovered there were others with like interests in femineity. I also learned new terms such as transgender which for the first time, I thought applied to me and the gender dysphoria I was suffering from. The whole on-line process took me out of the printed confines of “Virginia Prince” and her “Transvestia” publication and into a world I could communicate with. Suddenly, my calm was shattered again as I needed to sneak around my wife’s back on our computer to see what I could learn and wonder if I could ever achieve the attractive beauty of some of the cross-dressers I saw. I even discovered a contact relatively close to me that I was conversing with until my wife caught up with me and I needed to stop to retain the uneasy calm we had in the marriage.

As luck or destiny would have it, staying calm became increasingly complex for me. I had started to explore the world as a transfeminine person with some success. So much so that I could not keep my mind off what I was going to do next as a novice trans woman when I went out in public the next time. The pressure to balance a life in two genders was tremendous and the only time I ever remember being calm was when I was out living my new life as a woman. But again, the feeling of calm was fleeting as I had to hurry home and change back to no makeup and skirts to my male work-a-day world and at the same time hiding my true transgender self from my wife and most importantly myself. It took me years and years to understand the true basis to all my jittery problems, I was fighting a male gender the whole time I should have never been born into.

When I gradually began to understand what I was up against as a gender conflicted person, I turned to therapy as a solution. As with anything else in life, I suffered through bad therapists and benefitted from good ones. One of the good ones was the initial gender therapist I went to in Columbus, Ohio when I saw her name in an ad in a LGBTQ newspaper I was reading. The sad part was that in true male form I refused to listen to her advice when she told me there was nothing she could do with me wanting to be a woman and I would have to decide someday what decision I would make. If I had listened to and heeded her advice, I would have been able to build the calmness of choosing my dominant gender long before I did.

The next two therapists I tried were terrible and knew little about gender issues at all, so I kept searching for another good one which I found in all places like the Veterans Administration. She had a great basic knowledge of the LGBTQ community and was willing to help me through my Bi-Polar depression issues also. The luck of the draw, again went in my favor as she even helped me in the legal change documents, I needed to change my gender within the VA and out in the world. During this time, it was difficult to remain calm because of all the positive changes I was going through, and my life was so exciting.

When I really calmed down was when I was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. The HRT took off the remnants of my testosterone poisoned personality. Or I should say, took the edge off all my feelings of aggression and panic. Very quickly my whole world softened, and I could see a future again. It was a true calmness of existence that somehow, I had always craved but had no idea how to achieve it. Little did I know, I was on the right path the whole time and did not know it. Worse yet, my path led me to being addicted to stress in pressure packed jobs on top of my gender issues. I just did not know how to be calm and slow down and enjoy the present.

Our lives come at us quickly, so that is my excuse for living mine the way I did. Looking back, I do think I was able to use the basic building blocks of my male life to build a stable future as a transgender woman. I equate it to going back to school and getting credit for courses you already took. Life around you changes but certain basics always stay the same. The best advice I could have had for myself is you only have one life to live. Try to sit back and stay calm so you can enjoy it.

 

Her Way or the Highway

 

Image from Joshua Rondeau
on UnSplash. 

Very early on, it became evident to me that my feminine self was very demanding. Who knows, maybe she took after my mom who had to be strong in a very male dominated family.

Wherever it came from, I always felt a strong push from her to be let out into the world to live. Even so she would have to wait years and go through constant trials and tribulations to do it. The gender journey I was on proved to be much longer and challenging than either of her competing souls thought possible. Nearly a half a century of trying before I got it right.

To make matters worse, my male self never was one to give up easily and he fought every move intensely along the way. Making everything even worse was that he was fairly successful in carving out a life he never really wanted as a man. The more baggage he accumulated, the more difficult it became leaving it all behind in a male to female transition situation.

Even more stressful was the fear of the unknown which followed me everywhere. It started with the feelings of not knowing if I was a boy or a girl when I was growing up and continued onward from there. Seeking gender answers always took a lot of energy out of my life that I wished I could get back. Of course, that was impossible and I needed to learn to live with the way I was with my gender dysphoria until I hoped I could do something about it. What I did do was get out of my closet/mirror and began to see what the world would be like for a transgender woman like me. Would it be her way or the highway after all. Following a rough start with my public presentation, I lost nearly fifty pounds of weight and began to perfect my art of makeup. I put a tremendous amount of work into my feminine presentation, more than anything else I had ever done in my life.

As it turned out, all my effort was rewarded and my transfeminine self-began to emerge and live her life. The days of just going out to be alone in the world subsided as I was able to make new social contacts for the first time as a trans woman. For the first time in my life, the gender teeter-totter I was on began to favor my feminine side which proved to be a real problem for my male side who still was working fulltime in the world and bringing home a good income. I was actually ahead of my timetable in how I wanted to work out the gender issues in my life and increasingly it was becoming her way or the highway when it came to my life.

The pressure to change became enormous and wrecked my mental health leading me to alcohol abuse along with self-harm (suicide) attempts. I drove too fast and took too many chances hoping something would come along and put me out of my misery. Nothing ever did until I realized the answer was screaming at me all along. I should have never been born into the male world that I was and now would have to overcome the testosterone poisoned past I had lived to do something about it.

Her way became a real reality to me when my second wife passed away unexpectedly from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. I was so disappointed that she never did anything about her health until it was too late that I never properly grieved the loss of someone I had been married to for twenty-five years. Instead, I turned to the waiting arms of my feminine self for comfort in my times of severe despair and loneliness. She was all I had as I sleepwalked through my life, and her highway began to look better and better. My new timetable of a possible jump across the gender border dramatically increased when suddenly the greatest barrier to stopping my leap had been taken away.

Before I knew it, the new highway I had dreamed about living on was upon me and it was fast and smooth since I had worked through most all of the bumps and potholes earlier than I had experimented. For once, I was not frustrated with all the time it took me to make my final gender transition decision. I always compared the road I was on to the Autobahns I drove when I was in Germany which were always well maintained and built for high speed. I even had to be careful that I was not going too fast as I had to figure out who was left to talk about my authentic self. My daughter came first, which went exceedingly well and then my brother which went exceedingly bad. Then I moved on to what was left of the very few friends I had left or just began to not see them anymore as I built my new life.

I am very glad now that it was her way or the highway in my life. She kept telling me it was the way life should have always been and the brief moments of life I saw which were so fluid and natural were only the beginning. Maybe I had been too cautious for my own good when I tried to take the back roads towards becoming a full-fledged transgender woman, but it was the only way I knew. Hiding who I was started so early in life, I never saw my way out of it for so many years until it was too late. I was stuck in a habit I could not get out of. Until I woke up to the fact that her way or the highway was a realistic path my life should take. I have enjoyed the highway ever since.

I was more like my mom than she ever knew.

 

Setting New Traditions

 

JJ Hart bottom row, left. 
Girls Night Out Birthday Party. 

Establishing new traditions or routines can be difficult when you decide to finally live as the gender you were always meant to be.

In my case, the biggest moment of change was when my regular invitation to the family’s Thanksgiving feast was rejected by my brother and sister-in-law who did not have enough backbone to stand up to her rightwing Baptist family. The excuse I was given was, what would the kids think. I was fortunate that my dramatic change was by my daughter and my future wife Liz. Both of them invited me into their family gatherings with open arms and I ended up having an even better time than I would have had with my brother.

Other traditions I was invited into were girls’ nights out for various special occasions such as birthday parties. I cherished the chances I had to go behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen interact with each other when there are no men around. Sure, I was terrified to go at first but quickly calmed down and warmed up to the experience when almost all of the women there treated me as an equal. Surprisingly to me, I ran into no problems except for one woman who acted as if she was mad at the world anyway. Plus, my most important lessons were if you take men out of the picture, women are looser acting around themselves and the only real difference in the conversation is the lack of sports and job talk. The bulk of the conversation was built around family and spouses.

I took these new learning experiences with me and ran with them into my everyday life’s interactions with other women. I subtracted any talk of employment and my major interests (sports) unless I was asked about something specific. Which surprisingly I was not and my private life which I had not merged at that time, stayed mine. No one pried, and I did not offer. Which worked well for me.

As I slowly began to build on the experiences I mentioned, life became more fluid and natural to me, and I knew I was on the right path. I felt better after spending a night with the ciswomen than I ever did when I was busy posturing with other men. It just took me time to establish new traditions, and I came to expect the occasional invitation to join other women in their celebrations. I became my own woman, just from a different background than the rest of the group. As I learned so much, most of the women never knew how much they benefitted me by just allowing me into their lives. Including the lesbian experiences, I had which went such a long way towards shaping my future.

From the earliest days of going to diverse mixers in Columbus, Ohio and ending up leaving with a lesbian I talked to, all the way to attending lesbian mixers with Kim and Nikki in Dayton, Ohio years later, I again was able to learn so much about the sort of woman I wanted to be. As many of the transgender women around me were stressing about finding a man, I learned I did not need a man’s validation to be me. It really helped me to not needing to change my sexuality while I was building new traditions in my life. I had always appreciated the company of women around me and nothing changed.

If you are considering, or are building new ones, as you know it is a major deal and one that can take a while. My advice is fairly simple, pursue as many avenues as you can and be prepared for the occasional rejection you may receive. Especially from men who may perceive you only as some sort of fetish object. And of course, be safe and meet strangers in public places initially.

Sooner rather than later before you know it your new traditions will become established and second nature to you. That is when the woman who has always been a part of you can emerge and live the life she always imagined. Jumping the gender border may be something you were always destined to do but never dreamed you would have the chance to do it like I did. I needed to wait for decades as I experimented with my gender but finally the doors opened wide for me to find myself in a do or die situation. Either try a male to female transition which was always a female-to-female transition in my world or forget it and move on with my life at the advanced age of sixty. It would have been easier just to do what I always had done and live a life with one foot in each of the binary genders.

I took the hard way out and decided to pursue the next step in my transition (it was a big one) and seek a doctor’s approval to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. It was a huge step for me and one I did not take lightly. My body took to the new hormones like why did I take so long to do it? It fit right in with the rest of my life of waiting too long to do what was right. Establishing new traditions in a life I always should have known was just the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Merging your Past with your Future

 

Image from Sammy Swae 
on UnSplash. 

We speak a lot around here about merging your life’s past circumstances with the future of what you may be facing.

Depending upon the number of years you have spent living as your birth gender, you may have an incredible amount of baggage to bring with you from your past. Including the input of spouses, family, friends and jobs. What to bring with you to merge with your new lifestyle as a transgender woman or trans man is often an agonizing decision. One thing is for certain you can’t bring all of your past life with you. However, no matter how you may want to cut it, the basic building blocks of your life remain. Such as how your parents raised you. My parents raised me to be a contradiction from the beginning. I was expected to stand up for what I believed to be right, as long as it did not interfere with what they thought was right. So being a childhood cross dresser was being an individual in my mind but an embarrassment in theirs. So, I had no chance of winning my gender battles.

On the other hand, I was taught the difference between right and wrong but not enough that I could bring it with me when I needed to face the biggest battle of my life, what was I going to do about my unwanted male life. Deep down inside, I knew the right answer then just refused to face it.

For the longest time, I was guilty of putting ciswomen and girls up on some sort of a pedestal as I viewed their lives from the outside looking in. Basically, all I saw was they had the chance to wear the pretty clothes and be pursued by the men or boys in school. I so wanted to be the cheerleader on the sidelines rather than the defensive end I was on the football team. Without seeing all the work, it took to being a good cheerleader. In fact, I never saw any or all of the work needed to transition from being a female to being a woman which I found to be a huge difference. Females are born; women are socialized in the world which means not all women ever make it. If and when you are attacked by a TERF about how you were born, rest assured she has problems if all she could come up with was a so-called birthright.

Getting back to how you merge your past with your future, the first thing you have to remember is not to forget about your present. Your present is so important as you live a daily life, often between two powerful genders, male and female. Your present is often the time when you are working hard to see how your gender dreams will impact your life in the future and how much has it done for your past. In my case, all I had really learned about being in the world as a transgender woman was to apply makeup well enough, so I did not look like a clown in drag, and I learned to shop in thrift stores to find the right fashion to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. I knew nothing about putting my new improved feminine image into motion in the world.

Once I did get serious about looking around in my present-day world back then, I wondered how I was going to ever merge my past with my future. After I determined how badly I wanted to.

My main concern was how one sided my interests were. I was mainly a sports addict with the usual male preoccupation with my job. Most certainly, I would be sacrificing my job if I male to female transitioned but what about my sports hobbies? It was then I became very serious about looking around to notice who all was watching sports at the big venues I was in and I was pleasantly surprised that all those years, I had been missing the number of women who were involved. It turned out that unless I was trying to talk sports with a man, my baggage was safe with other ciswomen, and I was not out of place in my favorite team jersey. To make matters even better, when my wife Liz and I got together and began going to “Meetup” groups, I was able to go to writers’ circles to interact with a whole new set of people. I highly recommend groups such as that to expand your social horizons as a transgender woman or trans man.  The only negative experience I ever had was with a lesbian social group who refused to accept me because I was trans. Which was their loss, not mine.

Then I began to look at my future as just downsizing my life. I was leaving friends behind who did not accept me all the way to going from two wardrobes to one. As Liz once told me, it’s not often a human gets to stop a life and rebuild it, so don’t mess it up. With me, I was fortunate to have help in merging my past with my future. When I was with my new circle of women friends, I just had to learn what to needed to omit from my past which would inadvertently out me as a past male. I was able to talk about my family because I had a daughter, which was a good example, I just could not share birth stories. But in reality, I was in the room, just not doing any of the work.

Any way you cut it, when you do make the decision to cross the gender border, you will naturally have to leave part of your past behind. Just be careful, you do not leave any of the basic building blocks behind which make you the person you are. From there you can build a new and better you as your authentic self maybe you never thought you could be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No One Way is Correct

 

Image from Gabor Kaputi
on UnSplash. 

Even though we transgender women and trans men often follow similar gender paths to get to our goals or dreams, it is still true that one path (the one you are on) is the only correct one. Plus, don’t forget there are so many side trips to take such as surgeries and hormones to help us along.

For example, I read about and hear from other transgender women who have elected to undergo major and costly gender surgeries (like Amber) which they deeply feel they need to feel whole, while me, on the other hand have decided to steer clear of any surgeries. Mainly because they don’t define me as a trans woman. I know what my brain is telling me gender-wise and just don’t need the corresponding equipment between my legs to improve my overall being. Although let me say I understand why somebody else would and if I was younger, I might have considered the surgical route. It just took me too long to figure out who the true me was.

Other than surgeries, I took the same path as many of you. I experimented with my mom’s clothes and makeup since I did not have any sisters, all the way to service in the military from those of you who are approximately the same age as I am such as Bobbie W. who even served on her version of the American Forces Radio and Television service as I did, although she was in the Navy. It amazes me how small the world has become because of the internet that many of us did not have in our formative cross-dressing years. Besides Bobbie, over the years, it has amazed me how similar some of our paths have been and it would not have surprised me if we had not met along the way. Except if you were like me, you were desperately attempting to hide your true self from everyone else in the world.

Then there were the evenings when I did see another transgender woman in one of the venues, I was a regular in, other than Racquel who was a trans friend of mine. One in particular was at a TGIF Fridays I went to quite a bit. I watched this well-dressed large woman step up to the bar and order a red wine, then before I could even attempt to introduce myself, she was gone and I never saw her again. So, on that occasion, I did have my path crossed by another transfeminine person since I could not attach a label to her such as a very accomplished cross dresser. Outside of a few “women” I saw shopping in the grocery store over the years, I learned how rare our tribe really is.

One of the reasons we are so rare is that all of those still in the closet due to their gender issues have not had the chance to be out and be counted. Mainly because of all the male baggage they have fears of losing. It is terrifying to think of losing baggage such as spouses, family, friends and jobs to name a few of the bigger ones. At least it was for me as I went through life frustrated with the amount of male baggage I was accumulating.

Even though, when I started blogging years ago to pay forward and help others similar to me in the closet, it occurred to me my plan had backfired to an extent, and I became a role model to some of my readers. Some even wrote in and called me some sort of a hero to them which humbled me because I never set out to do anything like that as I was just trying to live my life the best I could. Writing about my life was Now adays I keep trying to say I am no hero but merely someone who was terrified to leave her closet and live in the world as I knew it. Certainly not a hero by any sense of the word.

Recently, another point that I have been trying to make is there is no right way to achieve leaving your closet and living an authentic feminine life. Sure, it takes a lot of work and effort to achieve doing something the greatest majority of humans have never considered trying. Especially when we live in a negative atmosphere where a certain melon felon and his political party are trying to demonize us. Hopefully, that all will stop happening when the population finally tires of us and seizes the opportunity to vote on the real issues. Which makes it so important that even if you are in your closet, you vote your true conscience this coming midterm. So much for my political rant which is urging you all to get on the right gender path and stay there through the elections and beyond.

In the meantime, always hope for the best when you are out as your authentic transgender self. Your confidence will keep many of the middle of the road haters and bigots away because humans are like sharks, they sense blood in the water. How you get there is determined by many factors, but the main one is you can only gain confidence by going out into the world in your heels and doing it. Other than that, a disarming smile will take you a long way too. Keep in mind that most people don’t care about you, they are only concerned about themselves, and you will be ok.

As you do it, don’t worry about making the big mistake and you will be much freer to be you. You are on the right gender path because you are on it. Sure, it will have many curves and roadblocks but sometimes all of them make the journey much more worth it.

 

 

You being You or Playing up Being Different as a Transgender Woman

JJ Hart

At first glance, the statement of what makes you, you, seems like an easy one to answer. Especially if you are not transgender. Because you are in the majority and not perceived as being different.

For cisgender women or men, lives are set up to be lived in a certain pattern from birth till death. Using a baseball reference, life throws you a real curve ball when you are trans. Because you are different and often pay the price. The sad part is, for the longest time, we have such a hard time explaining to others our gender issues when we don’t understand them ourselves. In my case, it took me years to come to the conclusion I was not a man cross dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross dressing as a man, and I was not stuck with some sort of a weak excuse such as I was a woman stuck in a man’s body.

I grew up in a semi-dysfunctional family which valued being different. Until it infringed on what mom and dad thought was right. So having their oldest son want to be their daughter would never have been accepted. Or that was way too different for them to understand. I basically went on with my life knowing I was different and not knowing the information I needed to know if anyone else felt the same way.

Before I knew it, I was on the path to male privilege if I just did my best to earn it. The only problem was, I did not want to be on it. It was as if some invisible force was keeping me there against my will. Sometimes, it was easier not to expend my energy fighting my gender issues than to actually begin to leave my mirror and seek out attention in the world. It was only then did I begin to learn if my transgender dreams could ever become a reality or would forever remain a dream until I die. I just knew, both of my parents had lived relatively long lives so I should have time enough to do what I wanted.

In the meantime, I did what was expected of me. Such as reproducing an offspring daughter, earning two college degrees and serving my country in the military. I was not different than many of the other men around me, and life was a blur during this time. The worst part was, I was still not coming any closer to learning if I had any possibility of living my transgender dreams other than the occasional Halloween party. I was still paranoid that others around me would learn of my gender difference and often I would wake up in the morning wondering if I was a man or a woman. Which certainly set my day off on the wrong foot and I am not even adding in the vivid dreams I was having when I was a pretty woman. It would often take me hours to fully return to the disappointing relationship I had with my life as a man.

All the relationship did was continue to cement my unwanted claim of being a semi-successful man. I often wonder what I could have accomplished if I could have given my male self the full attention he sometimes deserved. Not the partial attention he received when I was inwardly thinking of what my life would be like if I could live it as a transfeminine person. It was as if something was telling me to put the brakes on acquiring any extra baggage as a man that I would have to get rid of when and if I was able to transition from male to female. It turned out, the learning curve I went through as a male helped me anyhow as a transwoman, because I was a stronger person. Which really came in handy on those lonely nights when I was out trying to be myself and not the self that made me different.

It was not until I made my gender differences an accepted part of me did I begin to experience success with finding new friends in the world. Since I could not deny what I was, why not utilize me to make me more attractive and I don’t mean in the physical sense. I was like other cisgender women who may not be the most attractive woman in the room but there was something about them which set them apart with their inner glow. I knew if I could harness my inner glow, I could go much farther in life and dispel for good that there was any dreaming left for me to do.

Literally without thinking about it I had crossed the line and transitioned again. I had went from being a serious cross dresser all the way to being a transgender woman and then to being just me. I had spent all the time around the cisgender women that I knew for them to accept me as an equal behind the gender curtain and I did not have to feel any different any longer. I did not have to seek out a mirror to reinforce in my mind who I was. I had sorted my male baggage and kept what I wanted and discarded the rest, so I was ready for my next big challenge which was being approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. When my body took to them so naturally, I was able to take another big step towards doing away with what made me different from other ciswomen around me. In fact, I wondered what hormones some of the mean women I knew were on. They must have had an overdose of testosterone somehow in their diet.

While it is often difficult to emphasize the differences which make you different as a transgender woman or trans man in today's world, your differences can still be a positive influence when someone gets to know the real you.

 

  

Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

I spent most of my life in the gender lost and found department.

It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What was lost was now found.

Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was lost in a life I did not want.

Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma. But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were holding me back.

What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from there.

The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.

As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person, not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.

The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.

Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of being a transgender person.

Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.