A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mayur Gala

Once I stopped being a victim thinking I was the only male in the world who wanted to be feminine, I quit being so negative about my life as a whole. That is when I started to enjoy wearing my mom’s clothes and experimenting with her makeup. All I really knew was that the process of cross dressing took away the problems I was experiencing in everyday male life to the point of even relaxing me. The only real issue I had was when the next time was I could find the privacy to do it.

I even went to the point (in warm weather) of stashing a small collection of clothes and makeup in a hollowed-out tree in a woods next to our house. I was in my own world and enjoyed the privacy I had to feel the clothes and dreaming that I was one of the attractive girls I saw at school and envied very much. At that time, I did not understand how I would take on a lifetime of work to pursue my labor of love.

The first task I needed to accomplish was when I was financially able to do it, was shop for and acquire a whole new set of clothes so I could present better in a world of ciswomen I needed to compete with in many ways. The first task I needed to complete was to slim down my male body as much as I could so I could fit into more stylish clothes I was suddenly finding in all the thrift stores I was shopping at. I liked the stores for two main reasons, the first of which was price of the items displayed and secondly, I never had any problems using the changing rooms to see if the items I was looking at actually fit. Plus, the challenge of doing so much shopping was something I loved. The only problem was where I was going to store away all my fashion treasures from the prying eyes of my wife who would wonder where they came from. Fortunately, we had a huge old house with plenty of places I could store my clothes.

After I began to dramatically improve my worldly presentation and use the public as my mirror, I found myself in a position where I could blend in with the public. To test myself, I even did tricks such as wearing sunglasses where I could see the eyes of the public when they could not see mine. That way, I could tell if they were staring at me or not and I was overjoyed to learn I had passed the test, and the public was ignoring me. From there I could widen my horizons on where I was attempting to go as a novice transgender woman. I was in love!

My love ironically did not last long because very soon, I discovered the public actually wanted to interact with me. Suddenly, I needed to work on a presentable voice so I could attempt to basically communicate mainly with other women since men did not want to have anything to do with me since I left the men’s club, I used to be part of. The fact remained; I did not miss male interaction at all. It was something I never had in my male life either as I always preferred the company of women. Surprisingly to me, as I transitioned, I was having no problem gaining feminine company. Probably because ciswomen for the most part were curious about what I was doing in their world. Plus, the women did not carry the paranoia about their sexuality that men had, they were not scared of me. Finally, I was showing the ultimate honesty about who I was which many women appreciated. For any number of those reasons, I loved the interactions I was having and being able to learn more from them about being a woman than ever before.

The fact I was loving my life at this point as a transfeminine person led me to realize that for the first time, my life was headed in the right direction. I felt so natural and even happy when I followed my gender path to a point where I was allowed behind the gender curtain to see if I really wanted to give up all my male privileges and keep moving forward to my ultimate goal of starting gender affirming hormones or HRT. If I could be approved by a doctor to do it. As I always say, I was approved and the changes were magical and I was in love again.

Before you begin to think my love revolved just around me and not another human being, my future wife Liz came into my life over a decade ago and changed everything. I was in my sixties and was thinking about spending the rest of my life alone when Liz and I met on an online dating site. We got along and she turned out to be the final push I needed to leave the male world behind. She was the missing link I needed to turn my transgender life around, and I love her very much.

It feels good to say that I love someone else more than I love myself or my gender transition for the first time in my life. According to my second wife who died many years ago. It would be interesting to see now what she would have thought about the feminine person I have become.

My final point is it is said you must love yourself before you can truly love someone else. Maybe I needed to learn my true self as a transgender woman before I could love someone else. It certainly took me long enough to love myself, a lifetime for me which spanned over half a century. Once I realized my path was a long labor of love, I learned the hard way I needed to be patient. Which was difficult for me, but I made it through and learned from my labor of love.

 

 

 

 

Gender Lost and Found

 

Image from Ewoud Van Der
Brandon on UnSplash. 

On occasion, I think you must hit rock bottom in your male life before you can begin to build a new feminine one. I equate it to my own transgender lost and found in my life. Before I get into what I found when I started my path to my dreams, I decided I had to have a basic knowledge of where I wanted to go.

Seeing as how I was born into the pre-internet times when information came in magazines arriving in the mail, I was stuck in the “Transvestia” world of Virginia Prince if I wanted any information at all about transvestites or cross dressers, as Virginia called us and oh yes, we had to be heterosexual to join. Through it all, I was intrigued by the pictures of attractive men dressed as women, as well as the entire world of mixers you could go to. If you happened to live close enough to one to go which I did. Ironically, the mixers I attended did not do me much good because the only mixing which happened involved my brain when it was all over. Often, I left more confused about where I wanted to be with my gender struggles than when I started.

None of my searching was helping much and my attitude about myself was sinking to an all-time low. I felt lost and forsaken in my life and felt sorry for myself because I was the one who wanted to do away with being male and assume a feminine existence. It took me a while, but I finally backed off from being a victim and my ideas of whom I really was started to improve. I had hit rock bottom and was beginning to improve, which helped primarily my fragile mental health. My goal was to close my transgender lost and found department for good.

Sadly, I was a little ahead of my time to closing my department because I still had so much more to learn about existing and competing in a world run by ciswomen. With or without men. I labored under the impression if I could present well enough as a woman with my makeup and fashion, that would be all I needed to do to enter the world as a trans woman. I totally ignored all the layers of life a female needs to go through to be socialized into a full-fledged woman and I was painfully aware not all females make the transition. And even more aware of the path I would have to take to make my own transition because I had even farther to go to make it to my goal. I needed to be even better than the average ciswoman to be able to be accepted in the world and be allowed behind the “sacred” gender curtain which women used to provide a layer of protection from men.

On my path to going behind the gender curtain, I had at least one big stop sign I needed to work my way around. It was proving how badly I wanted to give up all my male privileges and start all over again. I just did not magically appear in the ciswoman’s world asking for admittance without paying my dues. My transgender lost department was closed as a man, and I found I had done the right thing by pursuing a feminine life. My only problem was that I was impatient about the road I was going down and constantly I wanted more. Before I knew it, I was even getting ahead of myself in the plan I had set up for my grand gender transition. Here I was busily carving out a new feminine life where no one knew me as a man while at the same time I still had a loving wife, family and good job to deal with because I knew I could lose them all when I found my transgender self completely.

My problem also was, I was filling out my gender workbook faster than I ever imagined I could and my plans were coming into focus. No longer did I have just dreams of the possibility of transition into a feminine world, I had the reality of doing it. My lost and found was gone from my male side and he had finally begun to see the reality of his situation and gave in to the feminine side of life which was taking over for better or for worse.

It was at that point in my life when I pursued my ultimate dream of pursuing HRT or gender affirming hormones as the next step in my transition to being a transfeminine person. I went to a doctor for a physical and was approved to start a minimum dosage of the precious new hormones I was taking. Almost immediately, my body began to feel the changes as if it had always been meant for them to happen. The changes always take a whole blog post to describe, but to put it simply, my internal changes such as my new emotions would fill a book. The external changes became quickly obvious too, as my hair grew along with my breasts and my skin began to soften along with the angles of my face. I can only describe the changes as amazing and magical as they made living as a man impossible to me anymore. I had to close my male life and never look back.

I can not oversimplify it enough about all the stress and work I put into to close my transgender lost and found for good. To be sure, it was a labor of love to do it, and I would have never had it any other way. If Indeed I had another choice anyhow. Once I determined I never really did, I could relax and get rid of my guilt about doing away with all the male privilege I had worked so hard to earn. In the end though, it was worth the struggle.

 

 

Transgender Day of Visibility

 

JJ Hart doing trans outreach work. 

Transgender Day of Visibility was yesterday, and I did not post because I was out most of the day being visible.  Which was a change for me.

In the morning, I had several low impact visits to venues I feel secure in, so I did not feel any undo stress in going.  My first visit was to my local Veteran’s Administration Clinic to have my annual hearing check.  Even if my wife Liz perhaps may disagree, my hearing stayed the same and my next appointment was set for two years from now. From the VA, my next stop was at our bank where I needed to pick up a certified check. I was surprised when the bank was relatively busy and I needed to wait. Which is a problem with my mobility issues. Two very nice women helped me out by directing me to a chair saying they would guard my place in line if anyone else came in and tried to cut ahead of me. From there, it was clear sailing because the teller I went to was young and did her job very well and I was out the door before I knew it and there was no reason for anyone to question my gender. I was just a woman running errands as me. The best possible response I could have to my day of Transgender Visibility.

I knew my next stop would be easy because I was going to our favorite coffee shop to pick up a late breakfast and coffee of course. Over the space of time I have been going there, I have never had any problems with any of the staff concerning who I really was. The staff is always immersed in what they are doing to be concerned about me and even had a LGBTQ flag on their wall for a while when they had a decidedly non-binary manager in charge which was good to see.

My third and final interaction for the day came with a young woman who was a bath consultant at a company we were considering putting in a new walk-in shower to replace a dangerous (for me) old bathtub we had enough of. While we were in the small talk get acquainted part of the process, she asked what I did with my time since I was retired. I said, mainly I write a blog, and I am writing a book for my family to read after I am gone on my life. She was interested in what I blogged about. Then I broke my own rule, outed myself and said I write mainly about what goes on in a transgender person’s life. Of course, I needed to say I was transgender and today happened to be the Trans Day of Visibility, so here I was. Since the consultant was young and wanted to sell us something she did not react negatively to the idea I was transgender and married to Liz.

I came away from my own limited day of visibility hopefully thinking I had done my own small part to further the cause of transgender women everywhere to contradict all the negative publicity we get from the politicians. It is important to show the world we are just people like they are attempting to live our lives with no problems. Sadly, with my mobility problems, I cannot be as active as I once was in the community and go to public events like I used to.

Plus, more and more at the age of seventy-six, I am actively becoming me finally in life. It was like going through another major transition. I went from me being a cross dresser to accepting myself as a transgender woman, and now I am completing the circle and going back to me again. Only this time, with a big difference. I am the feminine being I was always meant to be. I was just fortunate to live long enough to live my circle. And celebrate another Transgender Day of Visibility.  And, if you are in the process of thinking of escaping your closet and having your own day. Celebrate those who are leading the way for you! Plus, on a positive note, the younger generations seem to be blinder to gender bias than the older ones, so all is not lost for the future you. Then, you can be involved with your own day of visibility and feel good about yourself.

 

 

Was I being Selfish?

 

Image from UnSplash and
Brooke Balentine.

When I was a maturing cross-dresser, one of my wives made it a prime point of her argument against my cross-dressing at the time saying that I was just being selfish. The problem I had with her saying that was deep down, I knew it was true. Mainly because I was spending all my spare time thinking about or doing my cross-dressing activities. I felt guilty, but there was little I could do about it as I wanted to be feminine so bad. So, I went on with my daily activities ignoring the best I could what she said.

Sadly, my selfish problem only became worse the farther along I traveled up my gender path. I simply wanted more from my life than what I was getting and I was pursuing it. I thought to hell with the risk I was doing to my male world and life as I knew it if my secret was discovered as it almost was several times. Like when I almost ran head on into my wife’s boss going to a big box store in a small Ohio town we lived in at the time. I did not think he recognized me, but he did bring up seeing a a particularly “big” woman the other day when he left work to pick up supplies at a party we were attending at his house one weekend. Of course, I could not let on it was me he was talking about, but my wife knew and questioned me about it later. I don’t think she ever believed my denials, but life went on until I made it to the next level of being selfish.

When I was out in the world as a successful transfeminine person, just doing it a little bit was just not enough. Success bred success, and if I could not for some reason make it out into the world again, I grew angry and bitter with life and tried to take it out on the world around me. By doing so, I even almost lost jobs because of my attitude. Having a sullen selfish attitude got to be so bad, I even sought out gender therapy to help me from one of the few therapists in Ohio at the time who dealt with it. It turned out to be that she could not work miracles with my gender issues, but she did with my attitude which was influenced by being diagnosed with a Bi-Polar depression disorder. Following a few experiments with medication, I found one that worked and my life became better. Except for I did not magically quit my feminine ideas and remained on my selfish path to see if I could ever live my dream of going full-time in life.

What made matters even more frustrating was, even with all the mental energy which was going into my transgender issues my male self was still able to advance in his life too. Making it harder for me to think about moving along with my plans and even being selfish about them at all. Through it all, my guilt was building about why I was even cursed with being transgender at all. This was before I finally began to understand my gender problems were not a curse at all.

In the meantime, my wife and I were clashing every time she caught me being selfish and leaving the house as my feminine trans woman self. One time she was even mad enough to tell me why I wasn’t man enough to be a woman. If I was smart at the time, I would have listened to her advice. I should have faced my true self and started making plans for my ultimate male to female femininization project. I just was not ready for several reasons such I loved my wife very much and the life we had built together.

By now, you have probably noticed a theme here. I kept shooting myself in the foot by being supremely selfish when I set out to build a new life when I already had a perfectly good one with a loyal wife, good job and loving family. All of which helped to describe why I felt so much stress and tension during this portion of my life. All the therapy and medications in the world could not help me until I had the courage to face up to my true self as she looked at me in the mirror. She had been there all along, and I thought I needed to apply makeup to bring her out (which I did for the public) but one on one, she was very real to me. She appreciated all the outwardly things any ciswoman needs to survive but inwardly, she just needed to be recognized for the person she had the potential to become.

Ultimately, I outlived my second wife (and many family members and friends) which freed me up to not feel any selfishness at all about what I was doing with my femininization. I was just busy preparing my world for the truth I had so deeply known. I should have never been a male at all and was just a woman cross dressing as a man. Needless to say, it was an enlightening experience coming out of my gender shell and having the opportunity to live my feminine truth. Just having the chance to compete in a world of ciswomen on their level was an intimidating yet exciting experience which my true self was up to. After living life hidden away all so many years against her will. As with most all transgender women and transgender men, it is a major project to bring ourselves into the world and unfortunately, we must be selfish to do it. The good thing is, once we go through the selfish part of our lives, we have the potential to be good, loving partners. If we are destined to find that special someone to love.

Life dictates it is nothing but a circle, and we have to take the good with the bad. Selfish or not.

 

 

 

 

 

The Winds of Gender Change

 

Image from Taylor Flowe
on UnSplash. 

Per normal, we have had a very windy spring here in southwestern Ohio USA. For some reason, I have never associated spring with my gender changes like I have during the fall season. I remember vividly the fall evenings I spent driving around feeling melancholy about the fact that I was stuck in my old unwanted male life. Seemingly, forever. Maybe it was because of the trees losing their leaves which set the fall off from the spring. I just knew it was happening.

Fall was especially bad when I was on a six-month delay to go to the Army basic training at FT. Knox, Kentucky. It marked the time for me that I knew I would have three years away from my gender cross-dressing activities which kept me sane at the time. I was afraid of going to basic infantry training as well as losing my ties to my feminine self for the next three years. The only reality to me was that I had no choice but let the winds of change take me away to a new uncertain future.

When I was in the service, my theme song began to be “Call Me the Breeze” by Lynard Skynyrd because of all the moving I was doing from the US to Thailand, to Germany, I was truly able to feel the wind thanks to the efforts of Uncle Sam and his military. I did it so well that I was even offered a promotion if I stayed in an extra year, which I turned down. Instead, I got out and resumed my civilian life at a small radio station I worked at before the winds of gender change got the best of me, and I started to follow my instincts and began to explore the world as a transgender woman. Which was becoming increasingly evident to me was where I fit in in the gender spectrum.

In the beginning, all I had was Halloween parties to express my femininity and even there, I was not doing a good job of doing it. I was stuck trying to do a trashy look when in fact, my inner woman was pushing for a more realistic approach such as being a professional ciswoman. What did happen was, I got the basics of what it would take if I ever threw caution to the wind and went across the gender border from male to female. It was at those parties that I found that all of a sudden, the other women wanted to talk to me while the men left me alone which would be a theme for my life as I transitioned.

Once I left all the Halloween parties behind me, I started to attend small diverse LGBTQ mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. When I did, it was as if there was one of those huge Hollywood movie fans at my back pushing me forward. From lesbians to transsexuals, all were there so I could judge where I would be if I moved forward in the world. Due to the fact that I was still solidly married and had a very good job, I needed to shut the fan off, or at least put it on a slow speed so I could catch my breath and figure it all out because of the gender complexity it all presented. Did I want to give up my life of male privilege to be a trans woman, at that point in time I was undecided.

It turned out, indecision was my worst enemy as I entered the world to explore it as a transfeminine person. Most of my ventures were ill-advised attempts to be accepted in gay venues in Dayton, Ohio where I was barely welcomed and when I was, it was because they thought I was another drag queen. Which was far from the truth. It was not until the winds of change blew me through the doors of the same sports venues I enjoyed as a man did my world began to turn around for the best. To my amazement, I earned my acceptance in those places easier than the gay bars I was going to, or the lesbian bars which were closing due to lack of business. Before I knew it, I was treated like a regular. Even with the restroom privileges I needed so badly.

I was flying high until the winds of change dictated a change and I crashed to earth when everyone dear to me began to pass away in a two year period. Including my wife of twenty-five years. I was in shock and so lonely I drank too much and took unnecessary chances with my life as the winds of change continued to blow strongly. Every time I thought the winds were receding, they would pick up again threatening to blow me off my high heeled shoes.

I was fortunate when I saw the name of a doctor who would check me out and then prescribe HRT or gender affirming hormones and I took immediate advantage to do something I had wanted to do for a very long time. Sync up my inner person with an exterior which was feminized. Even with the minimum dosage I had to begin with, I could feel and immediate change in several areas such as with my emotions and breast growth. When I began to see myself as a different femininized person in the morning mirror, I was becoming more and more excited over the winds of change which were pushing me ahead into a new exciting world.  

The only part of my being who was not surprised by all the changes was my feminine self who had been hidden away all those years with no way to express herself as when she was in the Army. If patience is a virtue; she had it all as my male self-put on a tremendous fight to maintain what he had earned as far as privileges went. Fortunately, the winds were blowing in the right direction, and she won the ultimate battle for my life. I discovered that without her, I would not have had a life worth living.

 

 

Wishing and Hoping never Made it For Me.

 

Image from Abbot
on UnSplash.

Sadly, just wishing and hoping that we can make it to our feminine dreams just won’t get us there.

Since most of us started our gender journeys with very little natural external characteristics of the gender we want to become, it makes our struggle even more difficult. Even more so when you consider how far trans women like me had to go to hide my true self so I would not be bullied by the men around me. I played sports such as football and worked on cars to hide the fact I did not really want to follow a male path.

In the deep, dark recesses of my closet I spent my time wishing and hoping time would come along to magically change me. We all know how that worked. It did not and I grew more frustrated as I spent my meager leisure time wistfully cross-dressing in front of the mirror at home in the long hallway we had. After the initial success I felt from looking at my imagined self as a pretty girl, I knew it was just not enough. Looking back, I was going through the early stages of being transgender without having any of the terminology to go with it. In the meantime, I needed to keep my public charade alive of making the world think I was male.

Then, along came the shock of puberty with all its unwanted physical changes such as size of body and bone structure. I was helpless as all the changes took place and I was depressed that I was moving farther away from the feminine person I always wanted to be. All I could do was wish and dream for change which never worked. I finally had to do something about it, the pressure on me was intense. The little trips to the mailbox when I was dressed as a girl just were not enough anymore, I could no longer just exist on that little interaction with the world as I introduced my true self.

Early on, once I grew older and found a place of my own, I did venture out into shopping malls and often the experience was brutal. No matter how good the mirror at home was telling me I looked, the public quickly told me something else. Too many times I had to come home early crying because of being laughed at by groups of teenagers I attempted to dodge but couldn't. Fortunately, something deep down inside me kept telling me to keep trying to get better with my make-up and fashion and maybe then I could present well enough to get by in front of the mirror and the public both. The brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced were the indication I needed to know there was indeed more and I was on the right path after all.

Once I did discover I was on the right path, then I needed to stay on it and try to navigate all the blind curves, potholes, and stop signs I encountered. Initially, I was naïve and was not prepared for everything I was about to face. I thought I had a fairly good idea of what was behind the gender curtain with the ciswomen I would have to coexist with, but I did not. All of what I was seeing was the pretty clothes and passive aggressive nature without seeing all of what went into it later as I actually made my way into the world. I really misjudged how complex and layered a woman’s life could be if I decided to follow along.

At first, I thought I needed some woman to show me the way but again was so wrong when I tried. By the time I did, I actually had a better knowledge of makeup than she did, so basically, the whole experience was wasted, and I knew I would have to go up my path on my own if I was going to be successful as a transgender woman. Then, I had to figure out what being a trans woman meant to me. As in my earliest days in front of the cross-dressing mirror, I knew I wanted so much more, and I knew it would involve my evolution into a unique woman of my own. As with any other human born female, I knew they needed to be socialized into being a woman and so did I. It just was because my path to womanhood came from a different way than most women but that should not exclude me. Once I felt secure with feeling this way, I freed myself to more completely live my truth in the world with people who accepted me

Surprisingly, I had fewer problems than I anticipated when my trans friend Raquel told me I passed out of sheer will power, that became the story of my life. I was not trying to “fool” anyone into thinking I was the most attractive woman in the room. I was simply announcing my truth to the world, and they could take it or leave it. No more wishing and hoping for me, if someone did not like or approve of me, that was their problem not mine as I paid my dues to be where I was.

As I look back at all the wishes and dreams I had when I hoped to somehow live my dream as a transfeminine person, I know I wasted a lot of my time which I could never get back. Once I did get my late start and began to make up for lost time, I did begin to learn what I needed to survive in the girls’ sandbox once I was allowed in it to play. Once I did, I resolved to never look back and enjoy what I helped to create. A woman with an unique background allowing her to arrive at where she wanted to be.

Before I wrap this post up, I would like to thank Sara E for writing in and commenting. She is in a similar position as most of us went through. A married man, working through her feminine side.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to read my writings and comment!

 

 

Pulling Your Gender Band-Aid Off

 

Image from Possessed Photography
on UnSplash. 

I am sure you have encountered a time when you just had to pull a band-aid off quickly from a tender area of your body. Even worse, maybe the band-aid was in a spot where your unwanted male hair was thick, and it hurt.

After I began to realize what was going on in
my life with my gender issues, my time to remove my lifetime band-aid was coming closer to being done. I could put it off no longer once I started to get out into the world as a transgender woman and begin to live. Sure, I was scared, but my whole new life felt so real and natural to me that I just had to keep moving forward.

What helped me gather the courage to finally rip the band-aide off was that I was becoming quite successful in carving out a new feminine life were no one knew or cared about the old male me. Even with the protests of my second wife and my male self, it just seemed possible that someday I could live my dream of being a fulltime transfeminine person. On the negative side, I knew I had a lot of work to do to be able to even think I could ever rip the band-aid off and move on with my life the way I always thought it should be. Courage was always my problem, along with the possibility of causing loved ones around me pain if I made such a perceived selfish move.

Until I arrived at the point of self-preservation, I did think it was selfish the way I was living. After all, I was spending every spare moment when I was not working either living as a woman or planning the next time I was going to do it. I was completely obsessed with making the next move up my gender path and could not wait to fill out the next chapter of my gender workbook. The problem was, ignoring my path was causing me damage to my mental health all the way to me trying self-harm to myself with a suicide attempt when I thought all was lost. Until I finally regained control of myself before I did more harm. When I did, my life began to go  full circle and the future seemed brighter. If you find yourself looking down at that dark tunnel of self-harm, please remember what might be true today, may not be true tomorrow and there might are people to help you on various hotlines. Especially if you are a veteran and have Veterans Administration health care.

I am sorry I digressed from my original topic of pulling off your band-aid into suicide, but it just so happened to me that suicide helped me to make the final decision to take the gender jump from a male to female life. Was there room for me after all behind the gender curtain I so desperately wanted to explore because I felt I belonged there. If I did not make the jump (or attempt to), what reason did I have to keep living, kept sneaking into my subconscious thoughts. At the same time, I wondered what was going on under the wound I was carrying around as I tried to live a successful male life. My habit of living half and half in both genders was just not working for me. I had always heard that if takes three repetitions in a row to form a habit, so what I was doing was completely wrong when I needed to go back to my unwanted male gender after spending three days as a trans woman leading my best life.

My life finally got to the point that even I could not ignore the ignorance of how I was choosing to live. I needed to face the truth of living the male life I had since birth was false and I needed to move on to a brighter future away from all the male influences I lived under. The band-aide which had become such an integral part of my life had to go away. No matter how much pain it might cause. I was fortunate in a way because I had most of the people in my life who had mattered to me, including most of my family. When I came out to my remaining blood family, my daughter wholeheartedly accepted me and my only brother rejected me. So, I earned a fifty-fifty split when the band-aid came off.

The next big problem was averted when I was able to take an early retirement, so I would not have to worry about working a new job as my trans woman self. I supported myself by selling collectables and with my Social Security.

I guess you can say, taking the hard way out and waiting as long as I did transition worked for me. Even though I had to go through enough anguish along the way to wonder why I did it. I was doomed to life of opposites. Gender being the main one, and honesty being the second one. If I had dealt with the second one first, maybe I would have saved myself a portion of the problems which were presented to me. Certainly, emerging into the world at an early stage would have not necessarily been ideal either, but if I had just pulled the band-aid off and did it, I would have had the opportunity to build a new life earlier. Probably in a new job and with a new family because my blood family would not have accepted me.

At least, if I had done it then, I would have had more years to adjust to the radical changes I would have to go through and figure out away to do it. One way or another, we can not go back in life, so we have to live with the consequences of what we have done or haven’t. Who can say which time would have been easier to join the public as a transgender woman, twenty years ago when I was seriously exploring ways to do it, or now with all the anti-transgender rhetoric which is going on as politicians use us as a scapegoat.

I guess we are doomed as transgender women and transgender men to have a giant band-aid to pull off one way or another. In my case, I should have just pulled it off and got on with my life.

 

 

Trans Girl on the High Gender Board

 

Image from Navy Medicine
on UnSplash.

I remember completely when I was a kid, intensely afraid of heights, and my mom made me jump off the high diving board at the swimming pool we were at. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I still don’t know till this day how she convinced me to do it. But she did. I am sure she thought that once I did it, I could do it again, which I never did.

Perhaps, by this time, you are thinking what does this have to do with being transgender but of course I can connect the lines as always. Fast forward to the days when I was first gathering all the courage, I could muster to leave the house and attempt to explore the world as a woman. To do it, I needed to jump off that high diving board again and again. Plus, I would have to raise the diving board even higher every time I tried it.

As I did, I discovered little pockets of cross-dressing acceptance I could exist in. Such as the women’s clothing stores where almost everyone was nice to me. It took me awhile to realize the clerks who waited on me were not being nice just because I was another woman, they were being nice because I had money to spend. To them, my gender was not trans, it was green. Even though I took acceptance and built on it to other potentially mellow venues in malls such as bookstores and coffee shops. I was successful in them and was able to build my confidence from there and move up to a higher diving board and jump off. No matter how scared I was, I needed to force myself to climb and jump.

The next comfort zone I forced my way out of was by forcing myself to stop for lunch to see if I would be accepted. For the most part I was, because again, my money was green and I smiled and tipped well. The magic ingredients it turned out to be accepted into a challenging new feminine world. Or so I thought until I kept on climbing. It turned out the climbing part was the easiest. Once I arrived where I thought I wanted to be. I added “thought” in because once I made it to a higher board, the jumping part really scared me. Mainly because I was leaving so much behind me, along with all the male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. Such as fighting back when someone made fun of me for the way I looked. When it happened, the only recourse I had was to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board and try to determine what I was doing wrong.

Before long, my drawing board became quite littered with fashion mistakes I had made. Going through my cross-dressing adolescence was quite painful because I was a thirty-year-old male trying to do it before I learned otherwise. I was exhausting myself climbing up the high dive and then down when I discovered there was no water in the pool. Finally, I learned the hard way to cross-dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me because they ran the pool I wanted admission to.

It turned out that the pool was much farther down than I thought it was, and I had too much time to think about what I was trying to do before I hit the water. I had not made the time to build up the feminine muscle memory I would need to allow me admission to the world as a transgender woman. It did me no good at all if I vaguely looked like a woman if I could not move or communicate like a transfeminine person.

At that point, jumping off the high board became very real to me. I was rapidly coming to the point of decision about what I would do with my life. By this time, I was in my fifties and was beginning to carve out a respectable life as a trans woman. My new world knew what I was and did not care. About my present, or more importantly, my past as a man. I was able to bring what baggage I wanted from my male life without any interference. It made all the difference in the world to me when I needed support from wherever I could get it in the worst way.

As I lost my fear of the high dive, I began to consider other transgender alternatives such as taking advantage of therapy and HRT through the Veteran’s Administration health care system which I was already a part of. I wondered then what my mom would have thought (she had long since passed away), about teaching me to take the long and difficult path to the high board would come back to help me so much later in life. Especially when she was the one who was dead set about me coming out to her after the Army when I tried. Karma came back to help me when I needed it the most. I could jump off the highest diving board I could just to prove I could.

Of course, the final high board I jumped off was the one which saw me do away with all my male clothes and live life as a fulltime transgender woman. In reality, I was never a stylish swimmer or diver, but at least I made it to the point where I could make it in a woman’s world. A world which would prove to be much more complex and difficult for me to succeed in than I ever thought possible. Probably, because, for the most part (except for a few friends) I was filling out my gender workbook as I went along. Preparing myself for when I could achieve the ultimate goal, my lifetime dreams of living as a woman to the best of my ability.

At the least, I was happy I gathered enough courage to go ever higher on my gender diving board and more importantly jump.

 

 

 

It was Always in my Way

JJ Hart on Left, wife Liz on Right.

Every time I turned around, my gender issues were always in my way. When I was younger and my life was simpler, the issues manifested themselves mainly around the sports I was trying to play. Since I was never good enough to win consistently, I usually had to head home to my makeup, mirror and skirts to feel better. One way or another, I always was soothed by looking at my feminine self in the mirror.

Of course, with age came complexity in life which included a military disruption of three years during the Vietnam War. My Army training very much was in the way of expressing any of my feminine qualities. Drill sergeants frowned upon any miniskirts or lipstick during basic training. So, I needed to resort to deeply hiding my secrets away, not unlike what I had done my entire life. I kept thinking against hope that someday I would be the pretty girl in the new car I was saving up for. I did get the new car, but being the pretty girl was very much up for debate and something I was always trying to achieve.

To remove the obstacles, I faced to living the transgender dreams I had, I needed to do a lot of living I discovered. Life was never going to be as easy as just looking the part of a ciswoman. If I truly wanted to go through all the living to earn the title, I needed to get out of my shell and into the world as a novice trans woman. Sadly, as I followed my gender path, there was always something emerging to get in my way. Such as a wife, family, friends and job which I did not want to risk losing. It seemed the better I did as a man, the more I had to lose.

All along, I thought the gender curtain would be more of a gentle barrier to cross to see how the feminine half of the population lived without men. I was not prepared for all I needed to go through to earn my way to having female privileges to replace the male ones I was losing. To begin with, I was painfully shy and insecure about talking to any other woman at all. Plus, as I learned all the different forms of communication women use, adding them into my world was a challenge. Such as having to stay in the present when someone talked to me and not try to anticipate what they were going to say. I discovered it was much easier to anticipate what a man was going to say from all my years as living as one, than a woman with non-verbal (eye to eye) communication skills. Not to mention, a ciswoman’s passive aggressive behavior which I misjudged several times before I adjusted to the new world I was in.

When I was able to get communication out of my way, I could move on to other obstacles in my way. I was still having problems with putting together a complete convincing picture as a transfeminine person. I had not practiced enough to feel natural in my world of makeup and high heels to feel natural and relax. Every time I was able to relax and enjoy myself as a transgender woman, I would do something to give myself away. It was not until I quit thinking I was fooling anyone into thinking I was a ciswoman did I do better. Mainly because I was just being me. At this point, I needed to overcome another major hurdle I had when I was a man. I never thought, or was raised to think, I was ever good enough to excel in the world and if I could never make it as a man how could I ever make it as a trans woman. It was a major boulder to move from my path.

It took a while, but I did build the self-esteem as a woman that I never had as a man. I did it slowly with the explorations I took into the world. I was able to build the all-important confidence I needed slowly but surely with the help of a totally new set of friends and acquaintances I built up who had no knowledge at all of my former life as a man. As my wife Liz told me, very few people ever have the chance to start over again, so make the best of it and I was able to. Soon enough, I was as comfortable in my tennis shoes as I was in my high heeled boots, and I was able to build upon nothing being in my way as I built my female privilege.

I knew then, I had made the right choice to follow my dreams into a trans woman world because I felt so natural. The light at the end of the tunnel was not the train as it beckoned me into a new world. It turned out, the main thing that was in my way all along was myself. Once I got me out of the way and for once was truthful with myself, I was able to move forward with a mental clarity I had never known before.

It was certainly worth the struggle to make sure my second chance in life was worth it. Sure, my gender issues were a major hurdle to move but it was no big surprise when I considered how deep gender runs in all humans. In many senses, discovering the true nature of me made life that much more interesting.