More Walls

As we get ever closer to my workshop at the Trans Ohio Symposium, the impetus to "fill in" my topics gets stronger.

Thanks to you Cyrsti's Condo readers, I am settling in on the walls we have to climb over to successfully negotiate a Mtf gender transition (and trans guys too). The first wall I described was cross dressing. As soon as we feel secure enough in the mirror, many times, our thoughts turn to going out in the public's eye.

The second wall we face, is what happens to us when we do it. Much of the excitement we felt looking into the mirror and seeing a girl look back, has a tendency to turn into utter fear as we go out. I know when I first started to live a feminine life, I would look for any semblance of a mirror to reassure myself. Slowly but surely, I became relatively comfortable walking around as a feminine cross dresser.

Then, a little at a time, a voice was telling me, something was still wrong. I was tired of just feeling like I was a guy walking around cross dressed as a woman, I wanted to live more like a woman. At that point, the  real fear of loosing what was left of my masculinity set in. Did I really want to keep going down the road I was on. All of a sudden, labeling myself as a transgender woman was very scary.

As we have discussed though, fear is a powerful motivator and I sat out to do the best I could to co-mingle with cis women and see if I was accepted. This wall was as tough to climb as any previous walls because I had to communicate with the public and often the same ones. It was during this time period I settled on yet a new name and one wig, so I could look the same.

As I made it to the top of this wall, I could look around and see the world as a more feminine person. Most importantly, after the fear subsided, I found I felt really natural. Plus the more natural I felt, the more people around me were beginning to feel it too.

It was about this time, tragedy struck my life and ironically opened the doors wide to consider the next wall. Living my life full time as a trans woman and sacrificing all of my male privilege.