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| JJ Hart |
Living my truth as a novice transgender woman proved to be more than I bargained for.
Like many of you, I started innocently enough as I rummaged
through my mom’s clothes for anything I thought would fit me. Too soon, I found
I had fallen in love with the feel of feminine clothes such as undergarments
and panty hose. The biggest problem I quickly encountered was the buzz I felt
when I cross dressed in front of the mirror just did not last. In the space of
a couple days, I yearned to repeat the process of doing my best to look like a
girl, repeatedly. I did not know it then, but my mind was attempting to tell me
I was transgender and not a cross dresser. In those days, the transgender word
was years away from being used or understood.
When I finally reached the age to go out on my own, the mirror
remained my best friend. All the way to the point of going places where I could
enjoy seeing my transfeminine reflection. I would even go to the big home improvement
stores to check out their mirror selection when in fact, I was checking me out
and reinforcing my feminine image in my mind. Finally, even my simple search
for gender acceptance proved to be too much to take on a regular basis. I
needed the public to be my reflection which mattered the most. Or I began to
interact with more clerks and servers on a one-on-one basis to see their
reactions. The more I explored, the more confident I became, and life became so
much easier. In fact, too easy.
The first main discovery I made was the fact that women were
much more interested in me than men. It did not matter, if the woman was a
clerk, a server or a stranger off the street, they all seemed to share a
curiosity of why I was in their world. Many times, there was too much curiosity
going around on both sides, I was as curious about them as they were about me. It
was about this time when I began to really live my truth as a transgender
woman. I always reasoned too, more than a few strangers were drawn to me for
that precise reason. They knew I was living my truth. Certainly, there
were haters and bigots along the way, but not enough to slow me down. I ended
up learning to stay clear of them very effectively.
Confidence was always my key as I learned to live my truth.
I knew I was transgender and anyone who paid close attention at all to me, knew
I was also. With that out of the way, we could get down to real life and very
soon the typical stranger realized I was not the normal cross-dresser they saw
on television on one of the many talk shows. I was real and not evil in any
way. It worked with other women I encountered and almost never did with any men.
So, I was satisfied with my results. I was kicked out of the men’s club and
that was the way I wanted it. I guess you could say I was in some sort of a new
layered gender reality as I tried to live my new truth.
I would be remiss if I did not bring up how intensely
difficult all of this was to the progress of my mental health therapy. Per
norm, my therapist said it best when she told me there was nothing, she could
do about my wanting to be transfeminine. If I wanted to enough, I would
make the sacrifice to do it. All my visits were pointless until I faced my own
gender reality. My excuse continued to be, leaving my male life with all the
comforts of the privilege I had built up was very risky, so I continued to put
it off until it was almost too late and I tried suicide as a solution.
Naturally, the attempt did not work, because I am here
writing attempting to help others with similar gender issues as mine. I learned
I wanted to live and needed to make the right choice with my life to do it. I
was stubborn and waited until the age of sixty to make the change from living a
partial male life to a full time female one. All the lessons I absorbed along
my long gender journey came back to help me in my final decision. I still
remember vividly, when I sat alone and decided to donate all my male clothes to
thrift stores and give up my male life forever. A tremendous weight immediately
came off my shoulders and I knew I had made the right decision.
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