Staring into a Blank Screen

 Over the years here in Cyrsti's Condo I have written about my battles with the mirror. Very early in the process of cross dressing I was positively in love with my girlish image. 

Later on though, as I started to journey out in public as a feminine person, I learned the hard way how the mirror can lie. 

This morning as I caught myself staring into into a television screen which wasn't on, it jogged my memory all the way back to my past days of learning with the mirror. Slowly but so unsurely I was learning to blend and to dress for other women, not men. My problem was I went overboard dressing to accentuate my so called positives. I listened to all the women who told me I had great legs and went too far with mini skirts and heels. The results were predictable and sometimes even clownish. 

Ironically, at the same time, I had nice clothes too. The night when I first decided to go out and blend in with professional women getting off of work in an upscale venue went as well as could have been expected when I calmed down and started to breathe. For the occasion I chose a black pantsuit, flats and straight blonde wig. For once the mirror gave me all the right signals. 

As the years passed on, I learned I too had a better chance of passing as a transgender woman if I was wary of what the mirror was showing me. Along the way I began to treat it as a blank television screen. Never giving it too much worth. 

I still go through wildly fluctuating gender dysphoric mood swings when I look into the mirror. Sometimes I see too much male, other times I see female. I have learned (again the hard way) the answer lies somewhere between the two binary genders. On those days, I am satisfied to live as an androgynous person. Hormone replacement therapy has given me that much.

For now I am slowly learning to exist with the television off and spend more time with my writing and other pursuits. As far as the mirror goes, I have a meetup to go to with Liz tonight, so I will have to revisit myself along with my old friend.

Sometimes I think I have come a long way from the confused boy dressed as a girl in the mirror over fifty years ago. Other times, he is still with me.