A Free Spirit

 

Image from Ivana Cajina 
on UnSplash

As I was making my gender journey to living as a full time transgender woman, I often tried to pass myself off as being a free spirited person. 

Often that carried a maybe I would go even as far as dressing up as a woman on occasion. Especially during all of my Halloween adventures, this came in handy. It also was successful when I tried all the drinking that I did. Being free spirited just led to being the instigator when it came to inviting a group of friends together for a good time. It basically all started because of my family used to get together for big parties which of course included quantities of alcohol. So the entire process seemed to be natural to me since I was raised with it. 

Another factor to consider was being a free spirit and being able to drink more than the next guy somehow made me more of a man than he was. This worked because I couldn't out compete most other guys in athletics of other competitive activities. If all else failed I could try to out drink them. Deep down inside I hope I would try to outrun all my gender issues and live what I considered at the time a more "normal" life. Needless to say the process didn't work except serving to keep me deeper in my gender closet.

Being a free spirit with the cis-women friends I had was a whole different process. In my endless search to discover what a cis-woman's life was really all about, I think I became more friends than lovers with most of the women I became serious with which were very few since I always had in the back of my mind someday I would have to sell out all my male past and leave everyone I had ever known behind. During that time, anyone who attempted the complete gender change process was expected to leave totally the life they had lived behind, move and start all over. Somehow, I never wanted to do all of that as I had established a male life which I actually liked part of.

Of course, being a free spirit caused other issues also. As I mentioned, never being able to become close to many other human beings (male or female) was on occasion frustrating and disappointing.  All in all, I can count the number of true male friends I had on one hand when they tragically all started to pass away in a two year span of my life. I have had people question me how easy or difficult my gender transition was when I finally decided to do it. It wasn't difficult at all because most of my family(parents) and close friends had passed on. I guess you could say I waited them all out and I was the last person standing. So I was able to move on.

My feminine inner self who waited all those years for her chance to live did maintain a portion of my overall free spirit. Sadly now, my body is paying the price for all those years of attempting to be the best at everything I did. My back betrays me everytime I move too much or change directions too quickly. Maybe since I have passed my seventy fourth birthday, I am asking too much but I am trying to walk more to stay active. In my own way, I want to maintain being a free spirit for as long as I live.