It's a Marathon

 Perhaps you have heard the saying "It's a marathon, not a race." The saying really applies to transgender women and trans men. Recently on social media I have seen several posts from novice cross dressers or transgender women or more or less put on a dress and began to proclaim they were a woman. I was a little more than slightly amused until they started to threaten self harm. To which I replied be patient, your gender journey is a marathon not a race to see if you can be prettier than the next person with the heavily doctored and filtered pictures on social media. 

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the Jessie Hart
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Having gone through a long life time living with my own brand of gender dysphoria, I realize by some I am criticized for waiting so long to transition myself. But on the other hand, I took myself through very specific steps which happened to sometimes take a little longer than I thought the journey would or should take. As a matter of fact, there were a number of years when I didn't think I could reach my goal of living a feminine life at all. Along the way also destiny played a part in my hanging on to cross dressing as a man while my feminine soul was screaming to be released into the world. Had I not went into the military against my will, I would never had met the woman who birthed my only child. A very supportive daughter with a transgender child of her own. In addition, the military sent me around the world to two other continents to expand my social horizons. All in all my three years in the Army turned out to be time well spent.

When in reality, I have never been a long distance runner, something deep down within me was telling me to keep moving ahead with my transgender goals. Suddenly I realized I was going to have to transition more than once. There was the time I finally decided I needed to move away from being a cross dresser. I had had enough of trying to look like a woman and wanted to see if I could live as one also. This move led to all sorts of terrifying yet satisfying adventures in the real world as I sought to blend in and even play as an equal in the girl's sandbox. Following what I thought was a semi successful transition to being a transgender woman, the need to begin hormone replacement therapy set in. About that time during my marathon, the only real roadblock to transitioning came from my second wife. When she unexpectedly and tragically passed away at the age of fifty from a massive heart attack, my path to transitioning was suddenly wide open. I started HRT which began to feminize my male exterior and forced my hand in telling what family and friends I had left my deep dark gender secret. Another serious transgender transition had started. 

I even had it easier in my marathon because I didn't have to attempt to change my sexuality around when I found women friends to socialize with almost immediately. Men never seemed to trust me so I took advantage of the fact women seemed to. I ended up having a great time hanging out with and learning from my small group of cis women friends. 

Perhaps the biggest mountain I didn't have to climb in my marathon was I never desired any major surgeries desired by other transgender women. In other words I didn't need facial feminization surgery or even genital realignment surgery to allow me to feel more feminine. My gender was definitely between my ears. At this point it is important to me to say this is just my marathon and I feel each others transition is as different as they are. Plus I am quite envious of the younger transgender population who have understanding parents and wonderful medical care to begin their own marathons. Even with those advantages there will still be many challenges ahead as they face their lives.

It is indeed a gender marathon we run and no matter how you live it, you have to be strong to survive.