What is the End Game?

 

JJ Hart, Woman in Red.

Wow! My journey was a long one to transgender womanhood where I always thought I should be. Nearly fifty years from being a part-time cross dresser to fulltime transgender woman. 

The problem was getting there, because the end game scared me so much. I was in my own gender quicksand and could not seem to get out. I had no dashing cowboy riding up to rescue the damsel in distress. I was on my own. So, I persisted through countless days in front of the mirror or combing through thrift stores searching for just the correct fashion statement.

The more I learned about my feminine self, the more I realized how strong she was and how I needed to protect our relationship. The more I did, the more I began to see the end game could be in sight, if I wanted it bad enough. I knew the possible pain of giving up family, friends, spouses and employment to see the end game in person. The problem was, I was gaining more and more experience in my feminine life and every time I did, I did not want to go back to my unwanted, boring male self but I did. Over and over again until it wrecked my mental health and almost cost me my life. 

Still, I kept my eye on the goals I had set which brought me ever closer to my end game of living life as a transgender woman. Along the path I had set for myself, I still had very real doubts if I could do it. I also found out quickly, just daydreaming my life away about being a woman or cross dressing in front of the mirror was not working anymore. I needed to get out in the public's eye and live to be certain I could do it all if I needed to. 

Spoiler alert, I needed to learn all I could to survive in the very competitive world of women. I thought men were bad, but women brought a whole new intensity of competitiveness to their world with other women. In order to survive in the girls' sandbox, I needed to bring a whole level of intensity myself to keep up because on occasion there was quite a bit of kicking and scratching going on behind my back. Once I adjusted to the new world I was in, I was OK after all the scratches on my back healed. Plus, I always kept in the back of my mind, I needed to be better than the average cisgender woman to survive. Mainly because I had so much more catching up to do and I never wanted to get discovered presenting the least bit as masculine. If I ever did and slipped back into old habits, I would have to work so much harder to regain my place in the world as a trans woman.

As I did, I found I naturally was fitting into my authentic life, I found myself at a crossroads of gender. Most importantly, at the crossroads I could see what my end game was. Since I was increasingly thriving in my transgender womanhood, I saw no reason to go back. When I did, a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders and life was livable again. 

I had found my end game was achievable and when I did, all things were possible.