My Own Worst Enemy

Image Courtesy Hisu Lee
on UnSplash

I don't know exactly why but during my gender transition from a dark and lonely closet, I was my own worst enemy. What I mean is everytime I made a considerable stride towards my goal of learning if I could really live a feminine life, somehow I would make a mistake in my presentation (or something) which would want to make me head back towards my closet. I even purged most all of my women's clothes, wigs and makeup several times. A "purge" is a term used by cross dressers and/or transvestites when they throw out or giveaway all their precious belongings and reassure themselves they would never journey to the woman side of life again.

In my case, I think I was mostly on the positive side when it came to purges. Or, as I remember, I received more gifts from transvestite friends than I threw away. In particular, one time I was gifted with a very nice set of silicone breast forms which I desperately needed. Especially if you remember the time my ill fated attempt at creating breasts from water balloons failed spectacularly in a venue I was a regular in. I just couldn't convince anyone I was pregnant and my water broke when it happened. 

Sadly, the water balloon instance was not the only time I attempted something I knew deep down was not the smartest thing to do.  Another example was when I had this short platinum blond wig which the mirror told me I looked great in but then discovered too late the wig was not long enough to cover my dark hair which showed in the back. Stunts like that, including poor fashion choices, led me to many set backs as time and time again I was my own worst enemy. Perhaps it was my own male self helping to set me up for failure. He in no way wanted me to succeed as a woman. For the longest time I was frustrated with the smallest of examples of how I was struggling to present convincingly as a woman. It seemed that once I conquered the artform of makeup, hair and clothes, I would destroy my feminine image with still walking like a guy or worse yet, talking like one.

Again and again I was my own worse enemy in my MtF gender transition. Even though I never really enjoyed the struggle to live a male life I went through, the privileges I had gained through hard work were difficult to just let go. The whole give and take gender process between the two main binary genders was very stressful to endure and affected my entire mental health at the time. I was attempting to live approximately three days as a woman and three plus as a man as well as still maintain my well paying male job. As I said, it was an exhausting process trying to remember which gender I was attempting to live in on which day and my lifestyle led me to a very serious suicide attempt. Finally I needed to accept my male self was just throwing any sort of obstacle he could just to hang on as long as he could. On the other hand, everytime I was successful in living my dream life as a transgender woman it felt so natural and I did not want to go back to part time living as a man.

Once I did make the final determination to leave what was left of my old male self behind, it felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. My mental health improved along with my life and I could live again.