Making the Difficult Easier

Image from the
Jessie Hart archives.

I spent years and years admiring every aspect of how women and the girls around me conducted their lives. I was dazzled by how they moved and interacted with the world. 

On so many levels, I wished I could be just like them but for so many reasons I could not. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't shake the shackles of my pre-ordained male existence In order to survive in a male world, I needed to copy and succeed at being a guy. All of made the dramatic gender transition I was about to make later in life that much more difficult. 

As I moved from a cross dressing mirror into the real world, I discovered the feminine gender had so many other layers to their life's than I ever imagined. So much more than merely looking like a woman which turned out to be the way I could slightly open my closet door to the world. When I worked my way past the first layer of cis-gender women I faced in clothing stores and malls, then the hard work started. 

All of a sudden, I found myself in a position where I needed to communicate with the public as a novice transgender woman. In the past, my second wife had told me repeatedly in no uncertain terms I did not know anything about truly being a woman even though I was becoming fairly competent on looking like one. She was right and I didn't understand it. 

One vicious argument comes to mind from when we lived in the New York  City metro area and happened the day after I went to a transvestite mixer. What happened was, I needed to show my identification card showing I was really a male to even get in. For the next couple of days, I was on a massive ego trip which led to a big fight with my wife. It led to her comment I still vividly remember when she said I made a "terrible" woman. I could not believe she could say it after I had almost been refused admission to a cross dresser party for looking too much like a woman. When I told her my problem with what she said, she promptly told me, she wasn't referring to my appearance. From then on, I was determined to find out what she meant. It was difficult to do because my wife did not particularly care for my feminine side, so I was on my own.

It was only easier when years later I was able to break out of my old male bonds and be able to finally play in the girls sandbox. Along the way, I had learned the power of non-verbal communication between women as well as surviving the effects of passive aggression when I had to guard my back from smiling faces. When I did, my mental health improved along with my self confidence as a transgender woman. I came to realize (with help from my friends) while I could never be a cis-gender woman, I could be a proud transgender person. I achieved my womanhood through a different path but I made it. My presence in the group just made it more diverse and nobody questioned me about my past.  

In order to do it, I needed to reverse years and years of male life. Moving like a woman needed to become my primary goal since I was never going back. Also very difficult was how I was speaking to the world. I did my best to mimic the women around me and even took vocal lessons for awhile. Eventually all the work came together and I became confident in my abilities to survive in the feminine life I had always dreamed of.