Opening Your Eyes

 

Image from Jesper Brouwers
on UnSplash.

I found I needed to be careful as I tried to negotiate a difficult gender path to transgender womanhood. 

Most likely, my eyes were open for the first time when I explored my mom's wardrobe for clothes and makeup I could try and see myself in the family's full length hallway mirror. When I saw myself, my eyes somehow were opened, and I knew I could never go back. Being a so-called normal boy was not going to cut it. 

From my humble beginnings, a small fire within me grew to a point where I knew I could never turn back from at least trying to set feminine goals and living up to them. The problem was, I had no workbook to rely on when the going got rough. I had no girls sleep overs to go to, or a mom to council me on my appearance. It came down to my relying on the mirror to tell me everything I needed to know about my femininized life, and it turned out the mirror could easily lie to me. It would tell me I was pretty, when in fact, I looked like a clown.

Following being rudely rejected by the public, my eyes were finally opened to the fact I needed to make changes in what I was doing if I was ever to survive. Soon I was haunting every nearby thrift store I could find for just the right feminine wardrobe items to add to my closet. It took a while, but I began to turn the corner and began to work my public presentation to a point where I could blend in with the cisgender women around me. My only real problem came when I did not have the finances to purchase the rare item, I thought I needed in the worst way. An example I still remember was a full-length wool powder blue coat I found at a discount coat store. It was in my size, went with my blond wig and I desperately wanted it. Long story short, no matter how many times I went back to the store and admired myself in the mirror, there was simply no way I could buy it. The main problem outside of affording it, was where would I hide it from my wife when I got it home. I needed to give up and move on to a cheaper alternative to keep out the Ohio cold. 

My eyes were really opened when I was allowed behind a rather formidable feminine curtain which women use to protect themselves from men. First of all, I needed to earn my way into their inclusive club by proving I was much more than a casual observer of women and most of all, not another drag queen. Step by step as I earned my way into a new and exciting gender world, I knew I was making the right move away from a male life. Mainly because I felt so natural in my experiences I was having. I cannot say my life was easy back in those days because I was stuck between two genders but on the other hand, each time I reached a new point of success, then I could not ever turn back. Again, because I was feeling I was headed in the right direction. 

Another problem I had during my journey was making sure my vision was correct. It was easy to have 20/20 vision when I was looking at myself in the mirror, but much harder when I was having a conversation with a strange woman. I was burnt many times when my vision of what was going to happen was blurred. 

Each time my eyes were opened, deep down I knew I could never go back. 

Wishes were not Enough

 

Image from Delphina Iacub on UnSplash.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about the amount of time I spent wishing I was a girl as I went about attempting to live a male life.

As I pointed out yesterday, I finally arrived at a point where every spare second, I was becoming dedicated to my pursuit of becoming a girl. Which included watching the girls around me closely at school. I was desperately jealous of their fashion and lifestyle. 

As I became older, in order to survive in the world, I put less time wishing I was feminine and adding more time into actually doing it. Which meant of course I needed to unlock the door to my gender closet and try to enter the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. Back in those days, I took a lot of rejection, as I thought I looked like a clown in drag. Stubbornly, I persisted until I could find the right mixture of makeup skill, fashion and wigs. Once I did, my life across a new and exciting gender border became much more satisfying and fun. So much so, I was fooled into thinking my feminized wishes were coming true. 

It was about that time when I hit a gender wall as I found out what my wife was telling me all along, I had a long way to go on my path to transgender womanhood past just looking like a woman. I needed to quit wishing and find out what she was talking about. 

The more I explored the world as a trans woman, the more the world opened to me as gender curtains were pulled back. Of course, I knew cisgender women had their own world to exist in but I did not know how strong and in-depth that world was. For the longest time, my head was spinning as I tried my best to absorb the daily lessons I was learning. Primarily about communication and co-existence with other women on their playing field. Certainly, wishes were not enough when it came to surviving in a woman's world. I found I drew the curiosity of other women who wondered what I was doing in their world, and I had to be better than the average ciswoman just to get by. 

It was about this time; I decided to take a shortcut in my external femininized appearance and research doctors to see if I was healthy enough to begin gender affirming hormones (or HRT). I was, and the hormones almost immediately went about making changes such as softening my skin and producing breasts. All of which helped me to help my presentation skills. Especially, since I did not have any male pattern baldness and quickly was able to grow my own hair out and go wigless. 

I found by this time, wishes did not have to be enough, and I could move up my final transition timeline. Finally, my long-awaited dream could become a reality, and I could put my hated male clothes away forever. Perhaps the best part was, I never wished for him to return.

A Destination or a Journey?

JJ Hart

 Early on when I was stuck in my dark gender closet, I viewed myself on a way to a destination, not much different than a vacation from my male self. 

Then, when I began to experience more "vacations" than I could handle, I began to notice I was on more of a journey than I thought. Looking back, I was missing all of the signs I was much more than a part time crossdresser, pursuing a harmless hobby. The difference always was I wanted to do more than look like a girl, I wanted to be a girl. Needless to say, I spent many hours of my spare time wondering what my true problem was. Time, I wished I could have back. 

Instead of getting any of the time back, I invested it in my femininized appearance in the mirror, and I still thought I was on some sort of a mysterious journey no one else knew anything about. It would be years before I was able to attend transvestite mixers to meet other likeminded people who I thought were on the same path as I. Imagine my shock when I found out I had waited so long to find out I did not fit in well with almost all of the others who were attending the mixer. Somehow, I just still felt different. Probably because most of the attendees viewed themselves as men in dresses and my views of my gender self were just beginning to form and they were so much deeper than thinking I was a man in a dress. 

It was about this time, I realized I was on more of a journey when I began to know transsexual women who were making the ultimate gender step in their life, gender realignment surgery to be exact. I was very intrigued by the idea and deep down I wondered if that was the journey I was headed on. The problem was I was stuck where I was in my male life and was not prepared like my friends were to make such a serious move. To be sure, gender surgery would certainly be a journey for me as I had quite the complex male life I was living and to be truthful, on occasion, I did enjoy the white male privilege I had earned. 

All I ended up doing on my journey was screwing up my mental health. Simply, the stress of juggling two of the binary genders became too much and I was very self-destructive. It was then I knew, my gender path was so much more than just a destination and I really needed to step up my game if I was going to survive. It was decision time. Either I went forward as a transgender woman or retreated back into my male world. 

The deciding factor was I felt so natural as a trans woman, so I did not stop my journey until I made it to a point where I could save my mental health and even my life. Certainly, even though I had reached many destinations along the way, my life turned out to be a gender journey which at times was touch and go. I ended up not going and stayed the course to my own form of transgender womanhood and was a better person for it. 

The Ultimate Confirmation

 

Image from George Pagan III 
on UnSplash.

My ultimate confirmation in life came when I arrived at a point when I knew without a doubt, I needed to live out the remainder of my life as a transgender woman.

My journey took me to the age of sixty when I finally put my male clothes away and live my dream. Along the way of writing the blog, I have received many interesting comments. Many concerning why I took so long and equating my time as a very serious cross dresser as somehow meaning I was never actually transgender at all. The best all time comment I received was, I was just another old guy on hormones. The comment came so long ago, I do not even remember how I responded.

I can make many excuses as to why it took me so long to transition completely such as I had a wife, I dearly loved who was against it, and a job I worked years to get which paid me well. While those are the given reasons, my ultimate confirmation came from the fact, I just did not have the confidence in myself to do it. For years, I was still being laughed at any time I went out in the world as my femininized self. Before I became very serious about my presentation and lost nearly fifty pounds off my masculine frame and began to take better care of my skin so I could wear less makeup. At that point, the laughter stopped, and I began to acquire the all-important confidence I needed to live my new transgender womanhood. 

Without confidence, I had nothing and little by little, I began to acquire it by doing trips into the world which took me away from the easy malls and clothing stores I was accepted in for my money, to the restaurants which presented me with whole new challenges to overcome such as having to communicate with servers and bartenders one on one. I even went as far as to stop going to the gay bars I thought were safe and going back to the big sports bars I was used to going to as a man. At that point, my ultimate confirmation was establishing myself as a regular at a couple of key venues where I was even given restroom privileges. Obviously, my confidence skyrocketed to a point where it never had been before. I could not wait to do more and more. 

Even with my newfound confidence, a fulltime life as a transgender woman eluded me. There still were huge life questions such as what would I do to support myself, all the way to how I would tell my friends and family. It was about this time in my life when destiny stepped in and answered nearly all my problems. In the space of a couple tragic years, my wife passed away, along with nearly all of my close friends. Leaving me all alone to guide my life in any direction I wanted to. The direction it took me was straight to gender affirming hormones which the Veterans Administration health care system was just starting to prescribe. Since I already was a VA health member, I went through the approval steps and was approved for the HRT program. 

My male self was stubborn about letting to but even he could not fight the ultimate confirmation he was facing. He should have never been in my life to start with and once he got there and established himself, he was difficult to remove. 

Gender Mandates

 When I was born, I did not have a choice of which gender I was supposed to be, my birth gender was male and there were to be no questions asked. 

In other words, I was mandated to enter a male world which I came to totally dislike and rebel against. Similar to many of you, I first had an idea something was wrong with my perceptions of my gender at a very early age when I went exploring in my mom's clothes. My first glimpses of myself in the full-length family mirror were memorable and electric. I knew right then, I needed to figure out a way to do more. 

The problem was, in my very male dominated family, I was mandated to go in only one gender direction and follow the male path. Afterall, if I made it, I was offered the promise of white male privileges. On the other hand, if I was caught cross dressing at all, I was surely on my way to see a therapist and perhaps be thrown into the dreaded conversion therapy. My answer was simple; I needed to continue in my underground cross-dressing ways and hope I did not get caught.  My major problem was my slightly younger brother who I was always stuck being with. Somehow, I did manage to do more and slightly lessen my mandate. When I did, I found I could enjoy my femininized self even more than I ever had before.

Of course, the most male mandate I faced was being drafted into the United States military during the Vietnam War. Since women were excluded from the draft, it was an exclusively male experience. I still resent having to face my time in the service when women did not, but I served my time for three years and was honorably discharged. I suppose too, my time in the Army disguised the true me to the outside world, since my friends and my dad already had served their country. It was mandated to be my turn if I wanted it or not. 

Slowly but surely, over the years, my mandate changed from male to female. I went very slowly to insure I would have less and less mishaps on my gender path. Each step I took gave me the confidence to take another. Of course, at some point, my mandates would collide. When they did, my mental health struggled, and I was fortunate (after several tries) to find a qualified therapist who helped me separate my bi-polar condition with my gender issues.

My largest feminine mandate came when I started gender affirming hormones. I knew almost immediately I had made the right decision. All the changes the hormones made to my body felt so natural. Inside and out, the changes were so dramatic, I think my body was always waiting for them. 

As mandates go, I would be remiss if I did not mention the gender privileges which go with the mandate.  Since I have spent quite a bit of time up close with male and female gender privileges, I know a little about both sides. As with most things, male privilege is more upfront and direct, while female privilege is more layered and indirect. 

One way, or another, mandates are a serious part of life and are difficult to control. Plus, they are so hard to deny.  

Happy Easter

 

Image from Austin Tate on UnSplash.

When I was growing up, one of the moments I will always remember were the Easter celebrations I was forced to attend.

Primarily when I was stuffed into a suit and tie and had to watch all the girls in their pretty dresses and wondered how it would be to enjoy such a supposed pleasant experience. I say pleasant because my wife Liz has told me how it was to be scolded when she played with the boys on Easter and ended up getting her new white tights dirty. I told her I so much wanted to wear white tights at Easter but could not, so the grass was not always greener on the other side of the gender border.  

Since our family was not very religious, Easter was one of the few times the family attended church services which made it even harder to accept. Accept I did and had to internalize my thoughts in a very dominated male family. Little did I know, it was just the beginning of a life of internalization I would be facing due to my deep gender issues. To fight the idea, I was transgender I did my best to cross dress it away until I could take it no longer, bought my own white tights and moved on into bright feminine fashion. Slowly but surely, I reimagined myself and begin to change my own narrative into a pleasant transgender womanhood. Then it seemed cisgender women everywhere around me moved away from dresses and hose altogether. 

Now on Easter, the closest I come to any sort of an observance is when I am able to attend the afternoon Passover Sedar at my daughters in laws who are Jewish. On occasion too, I attend Wiccan circles with Liz and identify as a Buddhist, when pushed to do so, on some sort of form I need to fill out. I loved the Buddhist religion from my experiences with it when I was in Thailand in the Army.

Ironically, now when I am free to do so, I don't attend any organized religious Easter services at all. So, I do not wear or even own a symbolic pair of white tights at all. 

For those of you who do celebrate Easter and love to dress up in your prettiest clothing, have a great day and enjoy your present gender tense.  You can even see if many other cisgender women break the current fashion trend by wearing a dress at all...with white tights.

Karma?

 

JJ Hart with Liz on left and daughter
on right.

Last night, my wife Liz, her son and I went out to eat at our favorite restaurant. 

We have been to the venue many times without any of the staff misgendering me. Spoiler alert. My record of not being misgendered would go out the window last night. Per norm, the venue was busy, and no one paid me any attention as we were led to our seat. So, outside of a few screaming kids, I was feeling pretty good about my experience. For the evening, I chose my new Jimmy Buffet "Margaritaville" T shirt I bought in Key West and paired it with my favorite leggings. After a close shave and a foundation coat with lip stick, I was ready to go and enjoy a margarita. 

As I said, I was feeling relaxed until we ordered, and here it came out of nowhere, the dreaded "S" word. You guessed it, the waiter called me sir. I was devasted and shocked at being called sir for the first time there ever. Then I began to wonder what went wrong, then I remembered a couple things I did wrong which could have contributed to being misgendered. The one obvious one was how I was presenting myself. Maybe the Buffett T-shirt I was wearing was a little too casual and I had not prepared my arms for a bare excursion into the world. Normally, I still need to shave my arms which I did not. So, my preparation laziness cost me.

The next point is where karma came into play. Today, we were supposed to go north to Dayton, Ohio for a Passover Seder reception at my daughter's mother-in-law. Sadly, severe storms are forecast for today in the area, so we decided not to make the rather lengthy trip. When I emailed my daughter to tell her the bad news, I asked how my trans grandchild who uses the "they and them" pronouns was doing and did they still have a job waiting for them this fall after they are done walking the Appalachian Trail. It turns out, they reached the two-hundred-mile point. 

Now what did I do wrong? As I was emailing my daughter, I thought I was being careful on which pronouns to use. Along the way (dammit) I slipped up and used the forbidden "her" word and ignorantly sent the message before I checked the entire message. Of course, then it was too late, and the message was sent. 

Now I feel as if karma got even with me later that evening when the waiter misgendered me. In the future I will have to be better, and I should be the last one in the family who should mess up their pronouns. When I do, karma should come around and slap me. 

One way or another, I need to do better where my presentation is concerned, and most certainly do better with my grandchild's pronouns. And, by the way, they still have a job as a civilian with the US Navy nuclear program in Maine. The gender haters in the orange felon's administration have not discovered them yet and I hope they never will. 

In the meantime, I am a firm believer in good karma and will work harder to make sure I pay my life forward the best I can to pay it forward to help others and not screw up my grandchild's pronoun's.  

Forever Dancing

 

Image from Alexa Posteraro
on UnSplash.

During my long gender journey, I often thought there were times when I had finished my trip and made it to my goal of transgender womanhood.

It was during those occasions when life laughed at me and said I better begin dancing once again. As always, I was a terrible dancer and needed to try harder than the average woman to succeed. If I did not, I knew I would never make it.

Earlier in my journey, I thought I was doing enough dancing to get myself by and then hit a solid gender wall when I failed. Any gender euphoria was very brief and fleeting as I went out in public as a novice transgender woman for the first time. On too many occasions, I needed to hurry home in tears after being laughed at (or worse) by the public. Fortunately, I was somehow able to pick myself up and get back to dancing the best I could in my gender game. At whatever cost I needed to do, my first priority was to improve my overall femininized presentation. 

I started by losing weight. In fact, I shed nearly fifty pounds which enabled me to better fit into a wider and more fashionable style of women's clothing than I ever had before. From there, I began to work more diligently on my skin. So, I could wear less makeup. Then I added better wigs to my dance list and finally began to notice a difference in how I was perceived in the world as a transgender woman. By that time, I thought I was ready to dance but I was far from it. All I had really done was carefully craft a feminine image which I needed to put into motion. 

As I continued to enter the world as a transgender woman, many times, the world pushed back at me. I had problems with how I moved and how I communicated with the public before I could ultimately relax and really learn to dance. As I tried and tried to improve myself, most of the push back came from my second wife and my old male self. Both of whom had stakes in my success or failure in my new world. I have written often of the times when my wife rightfully said I made a terrible woman. Mainly because I was still putting my woman together and was making mistakes. At that point, I did not have the lived experiences as a trans woman to do better and anytime she caught me out of our agreement to explore the world, all hell would break lose. Afterall, she understood more than I did how she was losing my male self to another woman. Who happened to be me.

Once I broke through and decided transgender womanhood was the only dance for me, I began to do better. Physically, I never made it to being a better dancer, but mentally I did. Primarily because I needed to survive in the feminine world or sandbox, I chose. By nature, I found cisgender women operate on a whole different level than men. Which I already knew of course but not to the point of survival I found myself in the midst of. To oversimplify, men came at me from at the most two angles, and women from many more. I was ambushed by several passive aggressive women on many occasions before I learned to protect myself from perceived lesser threats. 

To this day, I am still dancing. Primarily because it is what it takes to be a transgender woman in todays' world. Plus, I would be remiss if I did not mention the small group of women friends, I had who were instrumental in helping me with my dancing lessons.   

Transgender Dreams

 

Image from Alex Azabache 
on UnSplash.

My last question from my transgender grandchild for my yearlong book of questions I am putting together went something like this: If I had it all to do over again, what would I tell my twenty-year-old self about life.

First of all, before I answer, the questions come from a site called "Story Worth", and at the end of a year, they put all the weekly questions together to form a book on your life. It was a gift from my daughter. I am more than three-quarters through it already with a chance to add more questions for a small amount of extra money.

Now, back to my twenty-year-old self. First of all, at that time, I was consumed by two issues. Being drafted into the military along with a strong desire to be a woman. Conflicting problems to be certain which I was having a very difficult time dealing with. In the tried and true if I had known then what I know now, I would not have spent so much time worrying about basic training and beyond. I learned as I went through basic, that after I got into shape, it was just a team building experience with military realities built in. I made it through much easier than I thought I would and then prepared myself to serve out the remainder of my three-year enlistment. To be honest, I did not join the Army because I wanted to, or I thought it would make me anymore of a man. I was drafted into the service because of the Vietnam War. 

If anything, my gender issues became stronger when I was away in the military, as I constantly day-dreamed any spare moment I had about when I would become a civilian again and be able to pursue my dream of being a woman. It was all I had to get me by. 

Little did I know at the age of twenty, how complex and difficult my gender journey would take me throughout my life. To put it into perspective, the Army only took three years away from me, while deciding to finally come out as a transgender woman, took me forty more. I am sure my twenty years old would have asked why it took me so long to face the reality of who I really was and quit making excuses. I kidded myself for years thinking I was strong and would have to admit to my twenty-year-old, I simply wasn't. 

I would also have to tell my young self to not be afraid to dream because without dreams to achieve, often we arrive nowhere. I would have never made it to my goal of transgender womanhood unless I dreamed of it all those years and took steps to finally make it. Regardless of all the self-destructive behavior I put myself through. You only have one life to live and should try to do the best you can to preserve it. 

I was fortunate to have lived long enough to see my life come full circle from that confused twenty-year-old I was. When I did, I was able to achieve transgender dreams I never thought possible.  Of course, none of us know our ultimate destinies, the least we can do is accomplish goals which lead us in the right direction.

If you are in your closet, thinking you are trapped like I was, just do your best to look for the opportunities you may have to escape. Later on in life, it all may come back to help you with your transgender dreams.