Digging a Hole

Photo from Karin Klosterman
on Unspash

 As I entered my second gender transition from cross dresser to transgender woman I considered it as sliding down a very slippery gender slope. For years I was paranoid about how I would negotiate a landing. Or, how would the world and people close to me accept the reality of my gender transition. 

Little did I know my paranoia would be wasted because of friends and most of my family accepted me with no problems. 

The hole I dug happened before all of that. As I attempted more and more to explore the world as a transgender woman, I became increasingly brave in how I was attempting to accomplish my goal. An example was how I was able to leave the house cross dressed so many times. Seemingly without exposure. I did most of it from an 1860's vintage brick house we were restoring. Since at one time in it's past it was a boarding house, it had several doors I could use to sneak out. Many times in the very beginning I was able to go out and walk around the block. Before I moved up to being brave enough to take the car and drive around  knowing full well I was risking a huge fight or even a divorce if my wife ever found out.

Still I worked hard to dig my gender hole deeper. I went as far as saving all the spare change I could find to augment my ever growing stash of clothing and makeup which I was able to hide in a spot she (my wife) never went. At one point of time I needed so much room I needed to expand to another rarely used closet in the house. If my wife who already knew I was a cross dresser ever caught on to my extra buying habits, she never let me know.

As I went deeper, it was increasingly difficult for me to turn back and try to find my way out. The problem was too, I felt so natural, I did not want to turn back. It was around this time I decided to bring out the big digging equipment and seek out more life as a transgender woman. Mainly to see if I could. The short answer was I found I could and positively loved it. The problem I still had at the time was my wife was dead set against it and I couldn't live as a woman and stay with her. 

In a fairly short period of time the issue resolved itself when she unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of 50. I was heartbroken but I saw my gender door open wide. With just a little more digging I could start hormone replacement therapy and seriously further along my feminine transition. I thought the whole hormonal process would be mainly a physical one but I was very mistaken when the internal changes occurred too. Which I will save for another blog post on HRT.

As I look back at the entire process of digging a gender hole, I know now I wasn't sliding down a slippery slope to living as my authentic self,  in reality I was climbing up a hill I never asked for to a life I always wanted.

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