Growing into the Problem

Image from Karla Hernandez 
on UnSplash.

 Back in the day when I was growing up as a young gender dysphoric person, I felt I had been able to hide my femininization efforts from the rest of the family.

For years and years, I lived under the impression I was successful. After all, I was doing my best to compete in all the basics I needed to fit with a demanding, unwanted male world. I was born into an extended male dominated family, so there was considerable pressure to conform as one of the oldest sons of three competitive uncles. 

Along the way, my main goal was to properly hide my small but growing collection of feminine clothes and makeup. I used every cent of my allowance money plus money I earned from delivering the local newspaper to rural neighbors. I thought I was successful because I was never confronted by primarily my Mom about what was going on with me. Remember also, this all occurred during the late 1950's and early 60's. Information on gender issues was for the most part non existent and was considered to be a mental illness which was even worse. 

I think now, if indeed I was ever "discovered" as a truthful cross dresser, my Mom who essentially took on the major role of raising my brother and I, just decided I would just grow out of it. Plus, she may have thought I had some sort of fetish for woman's clothes rather than the deeper issue of wanting to be a girl. It could be described as kicking the rock or can down the road just hoping it would go away.

Instead of going away for me, I grew into the problem but it took me years of wasted time and effort to take advantage of my gender growth spurts. I say "spurts" because of the time I took fighting my transgender issues at all. Keep in mind too, I am referring to at over a half century of my life. Quite a bit of time to consider mistakes and successes when it came to accepting and then growing into my considerable gender dysphoria. For me, gender dysphoria could be described as looking in the mirror one day and seeing a feminine face then the next seeing a masculine one. The whole process just destroyed my fragile mental health. At the point, I sought out therapy to help me. Which provided me with various amounts of relief. 

I had one male therapist who told me to ignore the problem, all the way to a gender therapist who told me the truth. I needed to learn to live with being transgender because it wasn't going away. Easier said than done for me because I was too stubborn to listen to the advice I was paying for. 

True gender growth for me didn't really begin until I started to escape my dark closet and began to explore the feminine world. Of major importance was the fact I finally outgrew what I call my cross dressing fashion adolescence. In other words, I stopped trying to dress as a teenager who was able to wear revealing or even sexy fashions. On the other hand, I just looked ridiculous or even trashy. Once I learned to dress for my age and body style, my presentation as a novice transgender woman improved and my new public life improved dramatically. I was growing into my so-called gender problem. I grew so fast, plus with the help of others, I discovered I didn't have a problem at all. 

Once I grew into my "problem" I discovered a wonderful world I had only dreamed of. I was even able to bring a substantial amount of my old male life with me and carefully weave it into a new existence previously dominated by my old male self but then taken over by my new feminine one. She quickly proved to me, she knew what she wanted in life and had learned from all those years of  rejection. She was like I told you so. 

Now I am not sure all the time and effort I took to grow into the problem was worth it. Many times I wish I wasn't so stubborn and had taken the time to listen to my feminine reality and just went ahead and transitioned into a transgender world.  

As always, thank you for following along with all my experiences here on the blog! I appreciate your time!