In the Woods

 Recently here in Cyrsti's Condo, I posted about "Growing Up Trans"  and received a couple comments about my habit of hiding a feminine stash in an old hollowed out tree I knew of in the woods next to our house. 

One comment came from Jenny on WordPress and the other here from Connie: 

Connie

" Your hiding place in the woods made me think of a line from the old blues song: "I'd rather drink muddy water and sleep out in a hollow log."

The things we go through to find some relief and happiness sound utterly ridiculous, sometimes. In retrospect, I find some of my exploits to be humorous, even though I was very serious at the time I was carrying out my little deceptions. What I find so sad now, though, is that I had become as addicted and drawn to the deception as I was to the resulting euphoria I found in expressing my feminine-self. I'm not saying that "transgender" is an addiction, but I thought that of it that way for much of my life. After all, what I was "doing" exhibited most of the signs of an addiction:

*Spending the majority of your time engaging in the behavior, thinking
about or arranging to engage in the behavior, or recovering from the
effects.

*Becoming dependent on the behavior as a way to cope with emotions and
to “feel normal.”

*Continuing despite physical and/or mental harm.

*Having trouble cutting back despite wanting to stop.

*Neglecting work, school, or family to engage in the behavior more often.


*Experiencing symptoms of withdrawal (for example, depression or
irritability) when trying to stop.

*Minimizing or hiding the extent of the problem.

Of course, in my youth, I had no outside resource for learning what these symptoms were, let alone the yet-to-be-named "transgender." My own guilt and shame were my only references, which had the effect of a vicious circle of dysphoria and euphoria.

Now that I know better, and that my gender identity and expression go far beyond mere behavior, I live with the reality that it is who I am (and was, though unaware) far more than what I do (or did).

If you listen to the aforementioned song, and think of yourself as both the woman and the man, you might imagine why it rings for me. To have drunk muddy water and slept in a hollow log would have been easy, in comparison to what I actually did, in order to have kept that woman (me) from disappearing from my life.:

Along the way, I too considered my cross dressing to be more of an addiction more than anything else. Until I began to journey more and more out into a feminine world. The more natural I felt as an out transgender woman, the better I felt about making the full time gender transformation. 

Thanks for the comment!