Living in the Real World

 

Image from Jacqueline Mungala
on UnSplash.

Living in the real world became a challenge to me as I transitioned from a male existence to a feminine world. The main problem I had was figuring out what was right and what was wrong as I followed my path through many blind curves and stop signs.

One thing I never thought of completely was how different my life would be if I had ever had the chance to live as a fulltime transgender woman. Sure, I was not totally naïve and thought my world would basically involve pretty clothes and being chased by boys. When I finally was allowed behind the gender curtain, I discovered how complex and layered lives ciswomen really live. Very quickly, trying to live in the real world as a novice struggling trans woman got me in over my head. I would be remiss if I did not bring up how I tried to present myself. I thought trying to look like a sexy teen girl was the way to go, and fortunately my time in that cross-dressing phase of my life went away quickly. Often with brutal consequences of being laughed out of any venue I was trying to visit.

In other words, I put what my male self was telling me about presenting as a woman in the real world behind me and started to look around to what I needed to do to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The challenge was not only did I have to be as good as the next woman, I needed to be better to survive in the real world I found myself in. With success, I brought confidence I could do more.

The next problem I faced was what was I going to do about my deteriorating (already fragile) mental health. As luck would have it, I was assigned a qualified therapist within the Veterans Administration who knew what she was doing and was able to separate my Bi-polar disorder from my gender dysphoria issues. She provided me with permission to begin HRT which is something I had always wanted and made the real world more livable for a transfeminine person like me.

At the same time, I was trying to take every spare moment away from work to explore different venues as a trans woman. I was attempting to accomplish trying out (as much as possible) everything I would have to go through if I ever followed my dream into womanhood. What was a ciswoman’s life really like and how was it different than what I had already lived as a man. I was entering the scariest yet most exciting time of my life as for the most part I was successful when I went out. The biggest issue which eluded me, was being able to communicate effectively with the world of women I encountered. Learning all the nuances of non-verbal communication women use was the biggest challenge for me. For the first time in my life, I needed to really listen to what was being said to me and watch the other woman’s eyes at the same time to see if I could catch a clue of what she really meant.

Through this portion of my life, I had a powerful motivation to succeed as a woman in the real world. My second wife of twenty-five years had unexpectedly passed away to leave me completely alone with my gender issues. I had no spouse to worry about how to tell my truth about wanting to be a woman. Yet another terrifying yet exciting time of my life. What was I going to do about my newfound freedom. Since you are reading this post, you know what I decided to do. I started making plans to finally make the leap off the gender cliff I had thought of for some time and throw caution to the wind for the remainder of my life. I figured why not because my confidence was at an all-time high with my small circle of friends I had built up. Along with factoring in all the time and effort I put in exploring the real-world ciswomen live in because for once, I had earned my way (or forced my way) behind the so called “sacred” gender curtain.

Once I had made it to this point, after another stop sign on my transgender path, I found I still had more learning to do to really be ready to live in the real world. That is where my ciswomen (lesbian) friends came in which is a subject of another blog post. I will say, they taught me how to be validated as myself in the real world. It was another main transition to go from thinking I was a transgender woman to knowing I was just me. Which took me from cross-dresser to trans woman, back to a secure me during my lifetime. A long, often brutal journey which had a happy ending. I learned the person I had been running from much of my life was not such a bad person after all.

Maybe, most importantly, I discovered the one aspect of my life I never thought I could experience and that was having the ability to be happy. I never had a chance to learn it from my family, and I spent so much time trying to deny myself any satisfaction I could have had from a successful career as a man, there was no time to ever be happy. It turned out that when I turned the corner back to just being the true me, I allowed happiness to be part of my existence.

I had survived all the lessons I had learned as I followed my path to a brighter, more authentic gender future. Living in the real world was not such a bad thing after all. My only regret is that it took me so long (all the way till sixty) to have the courage to face my truth so I could live as I truly was.