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| Transfeminine person from the Baliente Agency on UnSplash. |
As I was initially venturing out of my gender closet for the
first time, my daughter quite literally put me in over my head when she gifted
me a visit to her up-scale hair salon she was a regular at. I will never forget
the complete panic I went through as I had to walk a line of at least ten women
in chairs getting their hair done as I made it to my stylist I was meeting for
the first time. I needed to calm down and look around until I began to realize
what women know about getting their hair styled. It is a gender affirming
experience and there was enough estrogen in the room to help my minimal
Estradiol dosage along. As my panic subsided, I began not to care what the
other women thought of me, and I relaxed.
It turned out, my first trip to the hair salon was just the
beginning of a lifetime full of panic filled experiences. Many of which were
brought about by my own ignorance. Such as the night my daughter invited me
along to join her women friends in Dayton, Ohio at a well-known drag show. The
only problem was, I couldn’t let on I was her parent to several of the other
women because my daughter did not know how they would react. No pressure,
right? I did manage to talk only when I was talked to and enjoy the show from a
well-known drag troupe which had raised well over a million dollars to AIDS
research. By the end of the evening, I was confident I had done nothing to
embarrass my daughter, which was my goal, and I calmed down.
Later on, as I branched out on my own, I found myself in
plenty of embarrassing situations I brought about on my own. I went through
ill-advised times when my water balloon breast forms exploded on their own and
I needed to head quickly to the bathroom to try to repair the damage. Luckily,
no one else seemed to notice the mess I made before I was able to pay my tab
and leave. From then on, I made sure I purchased silicone breast forms and did
away with the ill-fated balloons forever, so I did not have to worry at a time
when I had so much else going on. I was busy trying to make the transition from
male to transgender woman, so any unwanted disasters were not welcome.
Such as the time I pulled a very public slip and fall when I
was wearing my new high heeled boots, I was so proud of. I learned fashion
needed to take a back seat for me when the weather was bad. The only good thing
I can say about the panic I was experiencing was it was teaching me valuable
lessons. I learned when I entered a venue, all eyes were not on me, and I was
OK to simply stand up straight and find my seat unless there was a hostess present.
The moral to my story is I had to be resilient and not collapse
when feminine panic set in and I was completely out of my old environment as a
man. All my previous escape mechanisms were stripped away, and I needed to form
new ones. I even learned to use fear as a motivator when I began to change my
mindset that I was a cross dresser to I was a transgender woman. I felt if I
could make it through another major change in my life during my second
transition, I could make it through anything, and my confidence began to soar. Also,
I found I began to put my biggest fear behind me, and I could look another
woman in the eye and communicate one on one. For once, I was free to completely
explore the world as a new transfeminine person.
I used all my learning experiences as a trans woman wisely
(including the mistakes) to calm my panic and move forward towards my
impossible dream. As my mistakes began to fade into my past, so did my panic which
helped me to be more efficient in the public’s eye. Having a clear head in a new
world is so important to moving ahead. And maybe more importantly, deciding
where I wanted to go as a transgender woman.
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