Stop The Noise

 

Image from Markus Kammermann
on UnSplash

Transgender women and transgender men often have quite a bit of external noise to deal with in our lives. Mainly the noise coming from family about following our gender paths to transitioning. 

In my case, I did my best to shield myself from any noise coming from my family over my desire to be feminine. I hid my small stash of women’s clothes I collected the best I could in our house growing up and even had a backup collection I put away in plastic trash bags in an old hollowed out tree in the woods next to my house. I guess I did a good job because to my knowledge I was never discovered and forced into impromptu visits to a psychiatrist. 

Another problem I had was that most of my noise was coming from a very loud internal source. It kept telling me that I was living the wrong life as a male and I could do nothing about it at that time. Frustration grew as I looked for various other outlets for my noise. At first participating in sports worked. I was not the best athlete around, but at least my involvement helped keep the bullies away and made my life a little more secure. As I said, the problem was that I never excelled in sports or anything else that mattered. The noise was telling me that the only thing I wanted to be really good at was being a girl. Which presented another problem. How could I ever express my gender needs when telling anyone would certainly result in blowing up the life that I had known. So my life went on, as I headed for my college time and then a stint in the Army. Which certainly went against all my gender desires. 

Just when I started to be brave enough to buy a nice wig for myself and sneak out of the house and into the world, Army basic infantry training came along and put all my desires to be a woman on hold. My three years in the military were far from spectacular as I had followed the same old path in my life I had always followed. I did the best I could to survive until hopefully, something better came along. It all worked for a while because of the structured life I was forced into in the military and the noise was just moved to the back of my head constantly because there was nothing I could do about it until I was honorably discharged. When I was, my life went right back to where I had left it and I could resume my cross-dressing ways in front of the mirror. 

The only difference was that for the first time in my life, just before I was discharged, for some reason I decided to tell three of my closest friends that my Halloween “costume” was not a onetime deal and that I liked to dress in women's clothes as much as I could. Thank goodness, no one I told told anyone else so my secret was still safe until I tried to come out to my mom when I got out of the Army. She brutally rejected me, and I was sent back to all the noise I was experiencing before. The topic was never brought up between us again. The only understanding “friend” that I had was the mirror. 

At this point (for once) my noise out did the relief I was experiencing from cross dressing in front of the mirror and I resumed getting out of the house and into the world to see how I fit into it as a transfeminine person. The going was rough for a while until I got my high heeled shoes firmly planted on the ground and I started to blend in harmlessly with the world of ciswomen around me. I discovered that the vast majority of the world was wrapped up in themselves and did not care about me at all which brought the number of people I needed to pass way down and lessened the panic noises in my head. 

Then I needed to be more selective in the voices I was listening to. I needed to tune out the rare hater (TERF) gatekeeper I ran into who resisted me being in her world and concentrated on the ones who did. The women that did want me there were my teachers in what femininity truly meant to them and were willing to share. From my background, I was always attracted to strong ciswomen, and I was just following on the same path as I gained ground. I cannot stress enough about how positive the feminine gender changes in my head were suddenly being accepted and how much better my life was. For the first time in my life without all of the transgender burden I was carrying around, I could actually see happiness in my future. 

Before happiness could ever be around, I needed to follow my voices again on my male to female feminization path and get it done. That was when I needed to start backfilling my old male life and refill my past with my new feminine life. I am referring to the legal name changes and new ID’s I needed to smooth out my entrance to the world. As well as the HRT gender affirming hormones I needed to make it all so much easier. Until all of this happened, I think I was nearly tone deaf because of a lifetime worth of constant noise around me. 

As I said, once I was able to sort the noise and see the bright future I always should have had if I was not forced into the male box I never asked for. In my case, destiny stepped in and opened gender doors for me I never knew I had. Whatever I decided to call it, the best part was happiness did set in when the noise went away. 

I hope you did not have to put up with your own brand of noise. Thanks for reading along about mine. Comments are always appreciated! 

No Learning Experience is a Waste of Time

 

Image from Christian Lue
on UnSplash.

Now that Halloween has come and gone, I am sure that some of you took advantage of the freedom of the season to express your feminine side. Maybe to the public for the first time. 

For you first timers, congratulations on taking the first tentative steps out of your gender closet. For the rest of you, you ended up like me and gained Halloween experiences as a trans woman you will never forget. I vividly remember the night that three friends and I attended a midnight showing of the “Phantom of the Opera” on Halloween one year in the newly restored “Ohio Theatre” in Columbus, Ohio. I was proud of my “costume” which was a mini dress, blond wig, shaved legs and high heels to set it all off. I was prepared to pay the price for fashion with my heels until I had to walk a distance to the theatre from the closest parking spot we could find. As I tried to daintily find my way down the sidewalk, it was not long until my feet were protesting and I was looking for a place to sit down. That was not happening and I just had to ignore the pain and chalk it up to another experience.

When I began to break away from just going out into the public eye and testing myself as a novice cross dresser or trans woman, I needed to get ready for many more experiences, some good, some bad. From both, I tried to keep in mind how difficult it was going to be to attempt to cross the gender border and live out my dream and I tried to always learn from the experiences I was going through. Since I had very few to none natural feminine characteristics to start from, I knew my journey to possible success as a transfeminine person would be a long one and hopefully soon, all the tears from the rejection I was feeling would soon be forgotten. Sadly, that was not the case and some of my early dealings with the world have left many serious memories with me. Until I got to the point of dealing with them as just another experience I would have to go through to get to my goal. 

I was there, mainly because I was always on the outside, looking in when it came to being around the ciswomen in my world. Because I was excluded from the exclusive girls’ club, I could never see all of the complex dealings in the world a woman has to go through just to be successful. Including dealing with huge male egos which I was guilty of having. I just tried to transfer mine to my feminine side by obsessing the best I could about being an attractive woman. It became an all or nothing obsession which consumed me to a point where it was all I lived for and I am not proud of the experience. I wonder now, why my second wife stayed with me at all, but she did. 

As I always write about, it was not until I broke the self-imposed bonds, I had put myself under, did I begin to really understand the life I was pursuing. And figure out if I really wanted to do it because there was so much at stake. Everything I worked so hard at would need to be thrown in a giant trash can as I started all over again as a trans woman. No experience was a bad experience really came into play when I left the gay venues I was frequenting and started to try to socialize on an equal footing with the ciswomen in my world who would gather after work in a TGIF Fridays I went to as a man. When I was going there as a man, I always fantasized how it would be if I could do it as a woman and when I did, I was in heaven as well as being scared to death that I would be "discovered" and told to leave. Which thankfully never happened and I needed to step up my wardrobe options to keep blending in with the women around me.

It was not until then did the women around me begin to reach out to me when they saw that I was all alone and I began to build up a small circle of friends who turned out to be lesbians who were destined to teach me more than I ever imagined about the world and how to deal with it as an independent woman. The first thing I needed to do I discovered was to take the important step of validating who I was as a person. To take all the experiences I had accumulated and learn from them. By this time, most of the bad experiences had faded away, giving me the confidence to be myself for the first time in my life. When my validation was secure, I could move on and cross the gender border the way I wanted to. 

One thing was certain; I needed to keep being a keen observer of the genders around me if I was to continue to be successful.  Quickly I found, I was kicked out of the men' s club for good as they left me alone for the most part. Which was the direction I wanted to go anyhow because I had never felt comfortable around men and what they demanded from me to be successful in my life. For once, I felt comfortable in my life which added to the fact I had always felt so natural that I was doing the right thing when I was pursuing a feminine life. 

Finally, I bought into the idea that I was a unique human with a lot to offer to the world if they would accept me. To arrive at the point where I was, I needed to take all the good and bad experiences of my gender journey and combine them to succeed. When they did, I knew I had made it to my goal against all obstacles, and I was living my dream.

Thank you all very much for joining me and as always, I hope your experiences turn out to be positive ones. Comments are always appreciated.

Happy Halloween !!!

JJ Hart with Tom on left. 

 Once again, the national holiday for cross dressers has rolled around. It is our chance to show off our feminine finest to the world without the fear of destroying everything we had tried to build up in our male lives. In many ways, for some of us, it is time to walk that thin line of appearing too convincing as a woman and raising suspicion of how we were able to go all the way and shave our legs for one night, or have the skill to apply our own makeup. 

Over the past month, I have presented the various Halloween parties I attended which really helped me to understand if I could ever live my dream as a transgender woman. I was fortunate in that I was able to be free enough to take the Halloween opportunity as far as I could and run with it. My wives at the time all knew about me being a cross dresser, so my skill at putting together a complete feminine “costume” did not surprise them and they stayed out of my way for the most part.

The only problem I had with Halloween was that it only came once a year and I needed to find other outlets for my desires during the regular boring parts of the year. When I needed to escape the part of my life I wanted less and less to do with. 

Sadly, after I transitioned and crossed the gender border into the feminine world, my interest in Halloween began to fade. It was as if it had served its purpose and it was time for me to move on with my life. The exceptions were the Greater Cincinnati Witches Balls that my future wife Liz and I attended every year. In its early stages, the Ball was held in a vintage mansion which at one point in time went under a renovation which included an attached ballroom with a balcony which was perfect for the vendors who set up to try to sell their wares. In other rooms, there were belly dancers and various other entertainers. It was quite the event. 

In the early years, the only mistake I made was the footwear I chose for the party. I found out quickly that no matter how good my high heels made my legs look in the mini-skirt I was wearing, my feet just did not agree with me wearing them and the pain led me to places I could sit down and kick off my shoes for a couple of minutes. I learned my lesson in the later years when we went to the party.  I  wore comfortable flats which made it easier to walk the short distance to our close-by hotel room we had so neither of us had to worry about drinking and driving. 

Liz and I became so attached to the workings of the Witches Ball that in later years we even became volunteers through the circle of spiritual friends that Liz had been a member of for years and they accepted me also. The image I provided with this post shows me helping out at the circle’s promotional table with another volunteer who has since passed away. It was nearly the end of any more Halloween activities I could be involved in as my mobility issues worsened. In the meantime, I was left with all the pleasant memories of Halloween past.

I Hit the Kid Lottery

 

Liz on left JJ Hart with Daughter
on right. 

One person I don’t mention enough is my daughter who is my only child. The easiest thing I can say about her is that somehow, I won the kid lottery when she was born. 

To begin with, when my daughter came along, I was very much an out of control, alcoholic wreck of a person. Desperately running from my gender dysphoric problems. Very quickly, I needed to settle down and at the least figure out a way to pay for her birth on the close to minimum wage job I was working at a small local radio station. So, you could say, she worked her magic on me before she was even born. Since back in those days, it was more difficult to determine the sex of your baby ahead of birth, my wife and I decided to be surprised when she arrived in the world and more than anything else we wanted a healthy baby.

Not only were we blessed with a healthy baby, I became what I treasured most…a girl dad. I was secretly overjoyed that I would have the chance to be around another feminine person in my life and if I ever had to come out to her as my authentic self, it would be easier to do with a girl than a boy. 

As she grew up to college age, her mom and I were divorced and my daughter ended up growing up in a village who adored her but more importantly shaped her into a very diverse person. Which would obviously come back to help me later with her. The only drawbacks to her diversity came from my mom who wanted to control where she went to school which I would not allow. 

Jumping ahead to when I finally came out of my closet and announced to the world that I was transgender, my kid was chosen as being the first to know. I was very nervous on the morning that I chose to tell her the news, and I was frightened at her possible response. It turned out she was disappointed but not in the way I thought. It was not in the fact she was essentially losing her father figure but on the other hand, why was she the last to know. Then I had to tell her she was the first to know I was transgender. Not a cross dresser such as her mom and stepmom knew that I was. It was a huge difference, and she started to calm down and to my amazement began to make plans to help me along with my transition across the gender border. I knew right then I had won the kid lottery and all the effort I put into raising her for this moment had paid off. 

The first suggestion that she made was asking if she needed to come shopping with me. Which I politely declined since I was able to fill out my wardrobe nicely by then since I was a serious cross dresser for so long. The second suggestion she made scared me to death. She volunteered to treat me on my upcoming birthday to a hair color and styling at her upscale beauty salon and spa. Like I said, the whole idea frightened me but I did take her up on the offer and in a couple of weeks, there I was in the salon nervously walking down a line of ciswomen getting their hair done. After the nerves wore off, I discovered my day was the gift of a lifetime and I understood then what the drawing card was for all women everywhere. In fact, I joked about not needing to take my Estradiol dose that day because the estrogen in the air was so thick I could cut it. On my way out, I set up my next appointment without the help of my daughter. 

Her influence on me did not end at the salon as she worked with me setting up a new legal name which would work easily for her three young children and made it clear she wanted me in their lives. It turned out, I was in a humorous way when my middle grandson ended up in a fourth-grade class taught by one of the cities’ best known out drag queens. My grandson came home one day and proudly announced to my daughter that his teacher and I were just alike, and my kid had to explain the differences between a drag queen and a transgender woman to her fourth grader. It turned out to be the first of many conversations she would have with her kids about diversity in the genders when her oldest daughter came home suggesting she liked girls more than boys. That was the daughter who graduated as a nuclear engineer from Ohio State and then transitioned.  It turned transgender women and transgender men run in the family. 

Later on, it turned out my daughter and son-in-law stepped up in a big way when I needed them again after the breakup between my only sibling and I when I came out to him as transgender. It was around Thanksgiving and he revoked his invitation to me to come enjoy the family. Back then my future wife Liz and I were just getting serious, and it looked like I was going to have no family to visit on the holiday like I was used to. Liz and my daughter stepped up in a big way and invited me to their family’s holiday get together. It meant the world to me.

It proved to me once again that somehow, someone was looking after me and I had won the kid lottery. I even was asked to speak and participate in my grandchildren’s Bar-Mitzvahs when she converted to Judaism. Again, I was scared to death to get up in front of a bunch of strangers I did not know except for a couple of women I knew from before I transitioned and even went along on a girl’s night out trip to a drag show with my daughter. 

Whatever the outcome of my life now, my daughter was certainly a gift which kept on giving. 

As always, thanks for joining in with my thoughts. Any comments are always appreciated!

Transitioning Was Nothing but a Circle

 Over the years, I was able to go through several major transitions other than the obvious ones. 

Similar to many of you, I started by going through my mom’s clothes looking for the rare ones I could wear. Then I extended my explorations into her makeup and used her electric razor to shave the unwanted hair off of my legs. I did not know it then, but all my work to be feminine was just the start of a lifetime full of change. At that time, I thought that my change would be limited to the clothes and makeup until a little thought kept sneaking in that I was still missing something in my life. Finally, I discovered the missing link was the fact I wanted to do more than look like the girl, I wanted to be the girl. 

Since I was in complete denial from the world around me, I needed to work hard to hide my feminine supplies I had worked so hard to accumulate. My newspaper route with the pittance I received as an allowance did not go too far when I had the courage to sneak out and buy my own panty hose and makeup. Just by starting to buy my own feminine articles was some sort of a transition because it was the first time I was able to stand up and support myself as a feminine person. No matter how much courage it took me to do it. Plus when I ran my own hose, it was on me to replace them.

As I grew up, life became more complicated along with my gender dysphoria which had grown from a simple look in the mirror in the morning to a full-fledged urge to do more with my cross-dressing urges. Sooner than later, the urge to break out of my dark lonely gender closet would overcome me and I would have to address my needs to be a woman in the world. I was very naive and did not have a complete idea of what that meant but my voice was telling me it was time to try for the next transition in my life. 

Before I tried, I needed to take stock of what I had to work with and have some sort of an idea of where I was going to try to go. At first, I threw caution to the wind and started to just park my car near closed shops in a shopping center where I lived. Which turned out to be no challenge at all. Then I stepped up my cross-dressing game and decided I would go to one of the nearby major indoor malls around me and see if I could make it as a novice. The answer was a resounding no and I was sent back home several times in tears after being laughed at. I would have to work harder to make my new transition work or give it up all together. 

By this time in my life, I was tired of giving up on the things in life I really wanted, so I was in no mood to give up my biggest dream of all which was living a life as a transfeminine person. Even though I had such a long way to go to get there. I never counted on so many transitions which were both physical and mental. The external feminine person I was building had to be the best I could do and then combine my image with my mental strength that was telling me I was doing the right thing. On occasion too, the transition was all mental when all of a sudden I began to think of myself as more of a woman of my own making than a serious cross-dresser at all. At that point, I began to relax and enjoy my time around ciswomen more as an insider and not as a cis man looking to join the girls’ club. 

As all of this was happening, on my own personal homefront gender war was breaking out. As what was left of my male self and my second wife were fighting me over transitioning any farther into my dream world. At the same time I was dreaming of changing my legal gender markers to female from the hated male and starting HRT gender affirming hormones, my wife and male self stepped up their war against me. In a tragic and unexpected way, I won the battle when my second wife unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack, leaving me all alone to do what I wanted. 

It turned out, all the groundwork I had set up on all the previous transitions I had gone through came back to help me. My Veterans Administration therapist came through with all the paperwork I needed to start the ball rolling for me to change my legal name to a more proper one which came from generational family names rather than feminine idols I had encountered in the past. Then I used my new name to get a new driver's license back then in Ohio which is not allowed today. Thanks to backwards Republican lawmakers which leads me to being able to change my birth certificate which is nearly impossible to do. For the same reason. 

Perhaps, most importantly, I was able to accomplish all of this at the same time my social life was picking up as a transgender woman. I was able to establish myself as a regular in straight bars outside of the gay venues I used to go to where I was treated as just another drag queen. It all worked together to provide me with another major transition in my life. A chance to live as I always should have been. 

Ironically, all these changes and transitions I went through just took me back to me and made me have regrets about the process I should not have had. I did not ask to be born into the restrictive male box I was born into and needed to quit being a victim to eventually get myself out of it. I feel good.

Thanks for reading along with my trip back to being myself! Comments are always appreciated.

JJ Hart on my way. 

Getting Creative as a Trans Woman

 

Image from Brooke Cagle
on Unsplash. 

When I began my male to female femininization process, I needed to look around and take note of what I had to work with.

It did not take long for my notes to come back. I had very few feminine traits to begin with as I started my long gender journey. Which meant I was going to have to be very creative if I was ever going to make it to my goal of possibly living fulltime as a transgender woman. To begin with, I needed to find some way to disguise my testosterone poisoned body to present the best I could in the public’s eye.

By beginning to look around and closely watching all the shapes and sizes of the ciswomen I was observing, I slowly began to see the various women who were around me and what they did to improve their appearance. Naturally, I started to copy all of them which gave me hope that I could someday present well enough to blend in comfortably with the public to get by. At the time, finances were another hurdle I needed to face when I went out to shop for a new feminine wardrobe. Since I really did not know what I was doing in the world of fashion from styles to sizes, it did not make any sense for me to shop at any of the high-end women’s clothing stores until I had a better sense of what I was doing. So, I got creative and began to be a regular shopper in several of the big thrift stores near where I lived.

In the stores, I had the freedom to shop as long as I wanted for just the perfect addition to my wardrobe. Better yet, if I did not like it when I got it home, I did not have to worry about returning it because I did not spend much on the item anyway. When I began to gain the confidence to do it, I even began to use the thrift store dressing rooms to try on a special wardrobe item that I had picked out. Life was getting better.

Then I found that better did not mean I was reaching the end or even the middle of my creative feminine journey. Sure, I was able to blend in better with the public as a trans woman, but I was not getting anywhere as I tried to communicate with those ciswomen who wanted to communicate with me. I was woefully unprepared as somehow, I thought the world would not want to talk to me, and I needed to catch up. To do it, I started by trying to mimic the tone of the woman trying to talk to me. I did not have to worry about very many men because they avoided me completely. It gave me the freedom to concentrate on one aspect of my gender journey and that was the communication lines I needed to form with women if I was ever going to be successful and conquer the major hurdle I faced.

Quickly, it became evident to me that I could not conquer the communication problem I was having talking to women alone. I was not creative enough to recognize the true differences between cismen and women when they talk, so I sought out professional help. Ironically, the help I got came through the Veterans Administration and my therapist who recommended me to the speech therapy department. I was then set up appointments with a gender speech counselor who promptly sent me on the right path. She spent sessions with me going over the way women talk different than men and use different words in a totally different way. I had no idea before the sessions I took of the nuances the genders use when they communicate. Before long I was able to build the confidence I needed to go forth on my own. Better equipped to face the world as a transfeminine person.

As I was building the blocks I needed to be successful in my transition across the gender border, I still needed to be receptive to change and be creative when it happened. For the longest time, I needed to still remember which gender I was operating on what particular day. Which even came down to how I interacted with my employees after I went through feminine speech therapy. Was I talking to them like the old male self I used to be, or the new female self I was becoming. Gender concentration was a must if I was ever going to survive the new world I was in.

I think the worst part came when I was in the final stages of my border crossing to the female side. I was in the last part of my male side saying no to the entire move as well as me having my own misgivings about giving up all the white male privileges I had gained over the years. Finally, I needed to sit down with myself and get creative on making lists of what was good and what was bad about what I was thinking about doing with my life. The final drawing card came when I pulled the ace of hearts which told me how natural I felt when I was in my unique world of womanhood. I decided there would be no more of the self that never should have been. I was stuck in a male box from birth, and I had spent fifty plus years being creative enough to find a way out.

Giving into my feminine side was the best move I ever made, and my inner self rejoiced that I had finally made the right decision as I went back to the thrift stores. This time to return all the male clothes I did not need anymore. Sure, it felt strange every morning to figure out what I had to wear as a woman but I made it happen when my future wife Liz asked me what kind of a woman, I was when it came to fashion, a girly-girl or a “tom-boy”. It turned out, I was more of a “tom-boy” as I came to love the simplicity of my leggings and jeans. It turned out the entire rebuilding process I was going through as a transgender woman was just the fun part after all those years of suffering. The best part was that I never had to second guess myself anymore. I made my decision and never looked back.

Thank you all very much for reading along and I hope you have the concentration to see you through your transition. Any comments are appreciated.

 

The Waiting Game

 

Image from Levi Mear Clancy
on UnSplash

As transgender women and transgender men, we often play the waiting game in life. In my case, I played the game frequently as I could not wait for the next time I could cross-dress and could put on makeup.

 

Early on in life I was naïve and thought that eventually I would grow out of my desire to be a girl if I just waited long enough. Of course, that never happened and I grew into a more established cross-dressing life, all the way to being a proud transgender woman. Often, I was very frustrated when I had to wait in my gender journey to clear obstacles in my path such as three years in the Army, the raising of my family and other things too numerous to mention.

 

There was also frustration when I had to learn what I was doing as I tried to cross the gender border. It was not as easy as just putting on a dress which fit me and applying skillful makeup. It took an extreme amount of time away from my unapproving family, a younger brother and an extreme amount of practice to do it right. None of the process was as easy as I had imagined but for the first time in my life, I was dedicated to doing something right and that was coming as close as I could to becoming a pretty girl. Adding to my increasing problems was that I had no choice but to go through male puberty with all the unwanted masculine qualities I received but had not asked for.

 

It seemed, the older I became the waiting game for me increased completely with it. I was still trying to carve out time to cross-dress in my closet which in itself was becoming increasingly frustrating. The time was upon me to leave my closet for the first time and see if I could make it in the world as a feminine person. Somehow, I gathered the courage to go out and then was completely rejected by the public. All my failures combined to send me back to my gender closet and return to my waiting game. Finally, I reached a point where I could wait no longer and kept trying the world until I got it right and I was blending in with the world at large where I was going. When I did, my paranoia about going out decreased and my confidence increased as I began to relax and enjoy myself.

 

As all of this was happening, it was becoming increasingly evident that a tour of duty in the military was going to be in my future. To attempt to stay out of combat in the Vietnam War, I decided to enlist for three long years, and avoid the draft. My problem was at that time in my life, three years seemed like an eternity. Especially away from my dresses and makeup. As well as the new long blond wig I managed to purchase for a girlfriend I had in college who hated the wig, so I managed to get it back. A dream came true for me until I had to leave it behind for three long years until I could get back home and wear it again.

 

When I served my three years and was back in the civilian world, I again was naïve and thought most of my waiting game was behind me. In fact, it was just getting started when the Halloween parties I went to as a woman, showed me that I could possibly live my dream of a transfeminine person after all. I just had to find the hidden keys to unlock my future which was not going to be easy as I thought it was going to be as I delved further into what I would have to do to survive and thrive in a world made up by ciswomen. As much as I had studied the world of women around me, I was not ready to go behind the gender curtain and be admitted into the girls’ club. A woman’s life was much more complex than I ever imagined and the first fact that I learned was why cismen and women do not understand each other. In order to make it into the girls’ sandbox, the first thing I needed to do was understand the new form of communication I was challenged to learn. It was true that men were from Mars and women were from Venus and initially, I felt I was on the Moon. The ultimate gender traveler.

 

The positive part of my life at that time was, my waiting game was speeding up, and I was learning new lessons on where I should be in the world nightly when I went out to socialize with my new ciswomen friends. Without them knowing it, I set back and let all of them be my feminine teachers as I tried to round off what was left of my old male life. Even still, I was impatient about how my life was going and wanted to know what was around the next blind curve on my gender path. I had waited long enough with the time I had spent by myself trying to learn a new life which included a whole new gender language.

 

Before I made the final decision to end my waiting game and jump into the girls ‘club I needed to pause and look back and see if I was making the right decision with my life. Since I was giving up almost all the male privileges, I had worked so hard to gain. I finally got so frustrated with myself that I had to do something about it. I was tired of worrying every moment of the day about what I was going to do. One night I said enough was enough and it was time to begin HRT gender affirming hormones and leave my past behind.

 

I will never think that the waiting game I played was a good thing, but it turned out I had to play out the cards that I had. We are all different which makes us human and interesting as trans folk. We just must get the remainder of the world to accept us. The fact remains the world does not take the time to understand us. So do not expect it. What you can expect is a fair break from the world as you follow your path. That way your waiting game may be a little easier.

 

Thanks for listening to my waiting game I was playing. Any comments are appreciated.

 

 

 

Denial will Eat You Up

 

Image from Annie Spratt 
on UnSplash.

Over the years, turmoil from my gender dysphoria just tried to destroy me. Much of it came from the confusion I felt early in life as I tried to figure out if I was a boy or a girl and could I ever escape the gender box I was born into.

Perhaps the worst part of my inner gender feelings came from not knowing if what I was doing in front of the mirror was really doing me any good or was just a stop-gap measure to get me by to the next time I could cross-dress as a girl. Were my limited mirror experiences all that I would find to get me closer to my lifetime goal of being a transfeminine person. On my own terms. What no one told the young me was that the rules of my life would dramatically change. No one told me then that I would take three years of my life to serve in the military and then go through many years of therapy for a manic-depressive disorder. I was just a confused kid.

As I matured and went through the unwanted terrors of male puberty, I started to feel the pressure for the first time to fight back my gender dysphoria and do the so called “right thing” and just relax in the gender box which was given to me. Somehow, along the way, I had learned the powerful/destructive male response to some problems called internalization. I learned it from my dad as he never showed much emotion at all except when he was angry with us. Most certainly not the ideal environment for a gender dysphoric child to grow up in. There was no way I felt comfortable in going to my dad and telling him I wanted to be his daughter. So, the years went by with me internalizing all I felt the best I could. 

It was not until many years later when I was honorably discharged from the Army did, that I began to feel the increasing depression which was gaining on me. I knew something was not right and I sought out my first therapist for help. From him I learned one of basic truths of therapy, you only get out of it what you put into it. I got absolutely nowhere with my first therapist when I mentioned my cross-dressing and my growing depression which was beginning to seriously threaten my life I was building as a man. He finally prescribed some medications for me which made me feel worse and sent me on my way. I did not know what I thought would happen except nothing which did and my depression over my life began to build to the point I was not happy unless I was out in the world testing out how I felt as a novice cross-dresser.

Regardless of how negative my experience was with my first therapist; I set up other appointments to see another therapist who advertised gender therapy to try to save my rapidly dissolving marriage I was with my second wife. It was with her that I discovered another two truths about myself and the world of therapy. The first was that I was much more comfortable talking to another woman about my feminine desires than a man and for therapy to do me any good, I would have to listen to what I was told. For example, I completely ignored her when she told me there was nothing, she could do about me wanting to be a woman.

On the positive side, we talked about the major depressing lapses I was having in my life and how I spent days when I did not want to get out of bed. She diagnosed me with a form of Bi-Polar depression and prescribed me medication I take to this day which helps stabilize the chemicals in my brain which caused my extreme depression. On the negative side, I was left on my own facing my own battle about who I really was when I looked in the mirror. I was still years away from solving the major question of my life. Sadly, I was wasting valuable time in my life making the decision I always knew was true. I was always a woman pretending to be a man the best way I knew.

The best idea I had was to go out into the world and see if I could make it in a universe ran by and for ciswomen. A world which operated on a separate plane than cismen. I will always be thankful and amazed at the number of ciswomen who welcomed my arrival into their world and showed me the way behind the gender curtain. Where I always wanted to be in my life as part of the girls’ club. It was only then that doing my extreme gender turmoil begin to subside and I could relax and even be happy when I was out in the world as my feminine authentic self.

At that point, I needed to pause and reassess where a life of living a lie had taken me. All I did know was the HRT gender affirming hormones I was prescribed by my Veterans Administration therapist were miracle workers for me. I have spent time mentioning the external changes such as a softening of the skin, longer hair and bigger breasts which came along faster than I even hoped for on my femininization timetable. But I spend less time mentioning the internal changes such as emotions which came about quickly too when I found out how it was to cry. It was as if my body was syncing up with my external woman in the world by saying what took you so long.

As I said, the hormones forced me to play my feminine hand and with help of my circle of women friends, it was time to permanently leave my old male past behind. Sure, not all he had done was bad, but still there was enough negative to want me to leave him in my past and forget about all the gender turmoil behind me. 

I know I get comments all the time from those of you who have not had the chance to free yourself from the chains of your closet. I hope you have the chance soon to escape into the true world you always deserve.

Thanks for reading along, commenting is always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Starting All Over Again as a Trans Woman

JJ Hart

With all the environmental global warming disasters we have going on in the world today, there are many people forced to start their lives over. My heartfelt sympathy goes out to all of you who have lost a significant part of your lives to weather-related incidents.

On the other hand, transgender women and transgender men have a head start on most people because we have become skilled in stopping our lives and starting all over again. In my case, I put it off until my mid fifties to start all over again and leave my male past behind me. The only thing I really did was build up too much male baggage I had to figure out what to do with.

I had a long-term marriage to a wife who was completely against any thoughts of me transitioning into a woman, a small but secure family, a vintage brick house I was restoring and a good job to consider losing. Unlike a weather related “hand of god” experience, I was bringing down the demise of my male life completely on my own. Without the help of anyone else. So, it would be my burden to carry around if anything went wrong with me crossing the gender border and following an extreme male to female femininization program which would eventually include HRT gender affirming hormones.

The only thing I did know was I was off to a good start as I slowly refined my makeup and clothing arts as a very serious cross-dresser who always had the suspicion that more than cross-dressing was in my future. Being more than a cross-dresser was like dangling a carrot in front of a horse to get it to move, I just had to have the confidence to tear down what I built and start all over. Any setbacks I encountered when I went out in public for the first time would always destroy the frail confidence, I had built up in myself over time and sent me back to my closet to try to figure out what I was doing wrong. How hard could it be?

I found out over my early years that “it” could be very hard as I struggled to get out of my closet and into the world. For the most part, it seemed I had bitten off more than I could chew when I began to get close to the gender border and had to think of all the white male privileges I would have to give up if my urge to transition did not change. Not only did it not change, but it also strengthened into a powerful force that I thought of every spare moment of the day and even some nights when I dreamed. It was always extra punishment when I had to wake up from being an attractive woman and go back to my boring and unwanted male world. Still, I had no alternative but to keep pushing towards a transfeminine goal I never knew if I could reach.

To my surprise, I went through other major and minor transitions as I made my way from cross-dresser to the transgender terminology. As I became more skilled at blending in with the world of ciswomen around me, mentally I slowly shifted back to my old thoughts that I wanted to be more than a man who looked like a woman. I wanted to feel as close as I could to feeling like I belonged behind the gender curtain and be allowed into the girls’ club full-time. All my surprises led me to a place where I could finally flourish as a trans woman. If I could decide what I was willing to give up getting there. When the time came to decide, would I be willing to push all my chips into the middle of the table and decide to go all the way, or once again, slink back again to my closet. Or I could relate my life to being one big “Monopoly” game where I was always ready to take another chance and buy another feminine property.

I know all of this sounds like sort of a word salad fantasy until reality set in for me. In my haste to seek out the meaning of a feminine existence for me, I had started to build up the basics I would need to keep building a new and exciting life I never thought I could get to. But there I was having to decide what I was going to try to keep of my old male life as I tore it all down and built a new one. I was very one dimensional in my life with my hobbies and interests so in that sense, I did not have much to get rid of. The one interest I hoped I could keep was my interest in sports and always figured it might help me if I was ever involved with a man but never dreamed my former male life in sports could mesh so well with the ciswomen I met.

Before I knew it, I was joining woman-friends in sports bars drinking beer and debating our favorite teams. I saved one piece of male baggage but at the same time, others had to go. As I write about often, I lost my unapproving wife and several male friends to death in a short period of time. When they left me, I realized how difficult it was for me to make true male friends. As I started to transition more, I began to understand why. Down deep, I was never interacting with other men as a man but rather as the trans woman I truly was. All of the pieces of the puzzle of my life were finally starting to come together, and I was seeing the big picture of what my denial of myself had cost me over all those years. I came away thinking how I could miss something that was that simple.

One thing was for sure, thanks to the HRT hormones and the relationship I was building with my future wife Liz, nothing was standing in my way on my gender path. Liz was the opposite of my second wife and told me she had never seen anything but female in me anyhow. I certainly was not one to argue and gave away all my male clothes to charity so I could help all those thrift stores which had helped me in the past.

I was more than ready to start all over again.

Thank you so much for taking your time to join me in my gender travels. Any comments are always appreciated.