What I Intended to Be

Image from Jen Theodore
on UnSplash

Early on in my life, I was all in on pretending to be someone I thought I was not. (a girl) I was reinforced by all the lonely times I spent in front of an admiring mirror which was telling me I looked wonderful as a girl. All along, the mirror was just reinforcing what I was pretending to be. Feminine (or what I perceived it to be) dominated my free time thinking.  I wrote "what I perceived femininity to be" because as life went by and I acquired more experience cross dressing and/or being a transvestite. I was so protected back in those days, I didn't even have the time or access to really consider what either term meant. In either case, I discovered both were just labels anyhow.

The whole gender process I went through ended up taking me nearly a half a century to go through which sounds intimidating. The trip also was very laden with various ups and downs which I revisit frequently. I do it in the hope others who are considering such a venture can learn from my successes or failures. Similar to everything else in life, we have to learn from our failures and move on until we can finally experience the successes. I experienced more failures than successes before I finally  learned to present as well as I could as a woman in public. When I did, I needed to settle on one look and build my new self from it. 

From there I was able to move away from any thinking I was moving away from pretending and moving increasingly towards a life to be lived as it was intended to be. The main reason was the process felt so natural. Even though for the most part I was terrified to give up my old male life. Each step I took as a novice transgender woman proved I was on the right gender path. On the path I was able to carve out my own safe places to go to. I started out in gay venues. In which I quickly rejected for several reasons. The main one was I did not want to be mistaken for or treated as a drag queen. From that point I started to go to a few upscale bar/tavern venues similar to what I was used to managing in my restaurant days. I had one main positive going for me in that I knew the venues were primary revenue driven. And, if I did not cause any trouble and tipped well, I could survive if I did the best I could to dress to blend. I became a regular bar fly and was able to build from there. 

Again, the more I quit pretending to be a woman and started to believe I was one...transgender or not, the better I did. The new world I was in provided me many challenges to move forward into a feminine world I had only dreamed of. The whole process led me to quit pretending all together I was ever a male in the world and onward into a dream world of being a woman on my own terms. Sure I faced the haters who said I could never be a woman because I could never bear children to which I replied what about the cis women who for whatever reason can't have children either. For the most part, I never heard from them again.

As it turned out, life started all over for me once I made it to my early sixties and I was able to start all over and live my life as it was always intended to do.