Staring Down the Transgender Cliff

Image from Jimmy Conover
on UnSplash

 As I transitioned from my very active male self into an accomplished transgender woman, there were many times I found myself staring down a cliff on my gender path.

The more I walked on and was successful, the more scared I became. The cliff I was looking at, increasingly appeared to be steeper and riskier than I ever imagined when I first put on a dress and makeup so many years before. After all, I was risking so much such as a spouse, family and a job to name just a few. To add more pressure, I was becoming increasingly more and more successful in my choice of occupations. I had worked years to arrive at where I was and now I was risking it all to try to be a successful out transgender woman. By successful, I mean I was able to increasingly move about in society as I carved out a new life.

Mixed in with all the life changing experiences I was going through were many failures as I would sneak up to the cliff and look over. The entire process was scaring me more and more and threatened pushing me back into the gender closet I had worked so hard to leave for all of those years. 

Finally, I could take it no longer and began to gather the courage to take a leap of faith as I approached jumping off my personal cliff into a risky world I thought I knew something about. Before I did, I tried to come up with a survival plan when I jumped into the sometime snake pit which was the feminine world. I needed to learn the basics of the indirect passive aggression. Slowly but surely I learned to fasten my seatbelt and learned to ready myself to jump. I had conquered so much on my journey and it was time to quit staring down the gender cliff. 

Ironically, the women friends I had made like Liz and Kim helped me to a soft landing. They taught me what it would take to for me to become a transgender woman on my own terms. More importantly, all the fears I felt concerning my fear of gender heights proved they were like new gender guardian angels to me. Certainly, I found there were transphobes who would never like me but on the other hand, I found most people just didn't care. I was left alone to make a soft landing around my friends and enjoy my new life. 

I have always tried to be a proponent of the idea that something you are proposing to do will not be as bad as you think it will be or as good as you think it will. The same happened to me with I took the chance and gave up my male life and undertook the biggest adventure of my life. 

The soft landing off of the cliff coincided with my softer life as a transgender woman. When I did land, I wondered what took me so long. My excuse was I was afraid of heights, when in reality, I was just afraid of losing what was left of the white male privilege's I enjoyed. But it turned out, I could not have my gender cake and eat it too. It became too much pressure to attempt to live part time as a trans woman and a man. 

I closed my eyes, hoped for the best and jumped. It did not matter how intimidating the cliff seemed to be, the steep gender cliff proved to be the least of my problems.