I Was Led Kicking and Screaming

 

Summer Image. JJ Hart

One good question I receive a lot is why it took me so long to finally accept I was a transgender woman and move on. 

The answer is I was literally led kicking and screaming towards my gender dreams of accepting my feminine self. I know it seems like a contradiction in terms, but it is true. Looking back, there were two things I can attribute my problems to. The first one was my male self-put up a real fight every time his territory was encroached on. He always seemed to come up with good reasons why I should not consider going any farther into my increasingly natural feeling feminine world. When I was feeling more and more secure with my decision to live as a transgender woman, a good time as a male would come along and challenge my thought pattern. It was like he was saying, I told you so and I could continue living as a weekend or part-time crossdresser, more or less as a hobby. While other men my age golfed, I wore women's clothes in the secrecy of my house.

Deep down, I knew that would never be the final solution. I knew it from the first days I looked at myself in the mirror cross dressed knowing in a couple of days I would have to do it again because merely dressing in women's clothes just wasn't enough.

The second major problem I had was my twenty-five-year marriage to my second wife. Through all the ups and downs of living together that long, I dearly loved her. Plus, I am always careful to say she knew of my cross dressing before we became married and accepted it. It wasn't until I began to embrace the idea, I was transgender did she begin to put up serious resistance to her ever living with another woman which she equated me with if I started gender affirming hormones. The whole process led to the most shameful period of my life when I began to cheat on my wife, with myself. What I mean was, I would lie to my wife about where I would be and what I would be doing as a man when in truth, I was out testing the public as my new authentic self. I was led kicking and screaming into a new exciting world mainly because it felt so natural to me. 

For once in my life, I began to feel the possibility I could find happiness and just maybe my gender issues were the problem all along. When I reached that point, I ultimately knew deep down what decision I would have to make. It would be selfish of me to give up on our marriage just because I wanted to live as a woman. Ultimately, my decision was made for me when my wife unexpectedly died from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. Following my tragedy, I decided my resistance to entering transgender womanhood was behind me and the time was now or never to accept my ultimate gender destiny. Start HRT and begin the process to give away all my male clothes, along with all vestiges of his old life.

From then on, my male self was finished.  I went on to find a whole new circle of friends who in turn taught me a deeper meaning of what it meant to be me. There was certainly no more kicking and screaming from my old male self as he had given up to the feminine master of my soul and universe. She had won the battle and never looked back.