Off or On the Transgender Highway

 

Image from David Valentine
on UnSplash. 

When I seriously pursued my male to female life as a transgender woman, along the way I was fooled into thinking I was on a smooth fast interstate highway.

What happened was I was stuck on slow-moving two-lane gender roads and going nowhere for years. Plus, I needed to keep an eye out for potholes bumps and sharp curves. Too many times, I led myself down dead-end streets when I transitioned. The entire process just slowed me down and I lost decades in the process. Then I discovered one of the main problems I had was my old male self was exercising too much influence on my life. My main example I always use were the ill-advised fashion choices I was making when I tried teen girl outfits in my thirty-year-old testosterone poisoned body. I was guilty of not looking around and noticing what other women my age were wearing or what I could wear to disguise the defects I inherited with my body. Even though I was always going to be a big woman, there were plenty of other women my size to blend in with in public. While I am not a huge proponent of age women’s fashion, I am a proponent of looking good and not shocking the world.

One way or another, as I was able to put most of the fashion mistakes behind me, I was able to speed up a little and enjoy the new small gender towns and cities I always wanted to visit as a woman when I was a man. There were to be no more miserable vacations when all I thought about was when I could cross-dress again in front of the mirror. I was far beyond that point. I had developed the confidence I needed as a transfeminine person to take the next two-lane highway ahead and see where the journey took me. More than anything else, the mini trips taught me I could not go to sleep on my gender journey as I was risking my life as I knew it at the time.

In many ways, I was used to the pressure of discovery all along since it had started when I was so young. I just ended up accepting the pressure as a way of life for me if I was ever going to achieve my dream of living as a transgender woman. It all started with the threat of a psychiatrist visit when I was quite young, all the way to losing my family and job if I was discovered later in life.

Perhaps the biggest mistake I made on my road was trying to internalize the entire process and going through the infamous ill-advised purges of everything feminine I owned. It turned out to be one of the dead-end roads I was facing when I found I could not purge my deepest feelings of wanting to be a woman. In no time at all, I was back on the road and ready to try to get on the gender interstate. Many times, I was guilty of taking the wrong exit and having to go back to start all over again when I made the wrong choice of a venue and tried out a red neck, rightwing venue when I should not have. One time, I even had the cops called on me when I visited one venue, I was not familiar with.

After being told to leave, I quietly did and regained my composure up the street at a place where I knew I would be accepted and got back on the road. Once my transgender life began to speed up, I was able to stay on the interstate gender highway thanks to a lot of help from my cisgender friends who taught me more than they ever knew about discovering myself as a trans woman. More than anything else, they propelled me forward towards my dreams. They validated me to a point where I did not have to hide myself anymore on a bunch of dark deserted two-lane roads and stay on the well-lit interstates. I mention them a lot because without them, I could still be hiding my true transgender self away in my dark closet.

It took me so long to transition, I wore out a couple of vehicles along the way, but I finally did it. Regardless of the naysayers who said I was not trans enough to make it, or I passed as a woman out of sheer willpower. I accepted my life for what is was finally at the age of sixty and did what I should have done years earlier. Stood up for myself and started gender affirming hormones (HRT) which was like getting a new sports car to drive on the gender interstate. Again, I was able to leave a lot of negative people behind and live the dream I always wanted to live, as a transgender woman.