How Much Discipline do you Need

 

Image from Brett Jordan
on UnSplash.

One thing I learned the hard way in my transgender travels from male to female was that it took an intense level of discipline to do it. In fact, cross-dressing as a girl was the first thing I ever did in my life which took a large amount of discipline. School was easy enough and sports were something I always tried at but never excelled at.

Growing up, I was always under pressure from my parents to finish any projects that I started and do them right. That is when the struggle began. I have written fairly extensively about how I struggled with the makeup arts when I first discovered all the makeup samples my mom had stashed in a drawer beside her sink in the bathroom. Using the samples meant I would have less chance of discovery when and if she discovered someone was in her makeup.

The only parallel I always use was how I tried miserably to paint all the plastic model cars I put together. My cars never seemed to come out as well as my friends and I really did not want my makeup to be the same failure as my attempt at modeling cars was. For the first time in my life, I developed the discipline to do something about wearing makeup and I set out to become better at it. Which included being able to purchase the right supplies with the meager amount of money I had to work with. I was under a lot of pressure when I did my own shopping for feminine accessories, so I needed to make sure I did not make a mistake and buy something which made me look like a clown in drag going to the circus.

Little did I know, developing discipline in my feminine pursuits was just the beginning of a lifetime search for a transgender future. Every time I turned around, I faced a new challenge, it seemed like I first went out in the world of ciswomen. Where I needed to be better to just survive. A prime example was early in my life as a novice transgender woman, I had a difficult time of getting out of the mirror and putting a complete feminine image together for the world to see. It seemed as if every time I thought my makeup and fashion looked good, my movements and voice were totally off, and I would ruin the whole image. I just had to develop the discipline to do it all and complete myself as a transfeminine person.

Experience was the only way it happened. The more I went out into the world, the more I learned about if I could ever achieve my trans woman dreams. It was very important to me to explore all my options before I made such a huge and important decision in my life. Before long, I was sneaking out of the house every spare moment I had to live the new life I was carving out as a transgender woman. The problem was, the whole experience was terrifying while at the same time, it felt so natural. Further confusing me on which way I should go with my gender issues.

One way or another, I was developing the discipline to conduct myself in the world of women with my own set of standards. I learned to dress and makeup myself to blend in where I was going and more importantly how to communicate with others around me when I got there. It took tons of discipline to do it. Especially when I was making the mistake of trying to live in both binary genders at once. I needed to force myself to make sure I was projecting the right gender at the right time mainly when I was at my job as a successful man. I can’t tell you how many times customers tripped up and called me “mam” when I was going about my male business. Secretly I was pleased but could not show it. The bigger problem I always mentioned was that the gender ping-pong I was playing took a tremendous toll on my mental health. Switching back and forth was terrible.

The only positive was that I developed more discipline than I had ever had before. When I was a man, I knew I was temporarily holding on to a lifestyle I no longer cared about and when I was a woman, I totally had bought into where I wanted to go with the rest of my life. The only thing left to do was to seal the deal and do it. And learn the fine little nuances ciswomen know how to exist in their world. Like figuring out who the alpha female is and going after her approval. Through it all, I was building layer upon layer of confidence in myself. Which I would need later when the dark period of being extremely lonely set in. The intimidating thought of finding anyone remotely able to partner with again looked very dim until all of a sudden it was not. That is when I found my current wife Liz over a decade ago and she made a believer out of my self again and I could drop all my personal defenses to ever loving someone again.

It turned out that all the work I put into disciplining myself into being a totally different person worked out for the best. I emerged from my work with a newfound lease on life as the transgender woman I had always dreamed of becoming. I proved my parents wrong. I could take on a project and see it through successfully. Just not the one they had chosen for me. I tried once to come out to my mom and was rejected and never to my dad, so I doubt they would have ever approved of what I did. Even though what I did was save my own life by shattering my gender shell.

It took a lifetime worth of work to improve my feminine discipline. Mainly because I was blindly entering a world of ciswomen I knew nothing about as my gender workbook was blank when I started. After making up for lost time, I fairly quickly caught up and entered the world as myself.