 |
| Image from Brooke Ballentine on UnSplash. |
Chance versus choice for a transgender woman or transgender man can cover a wide spectrum of activities.
Chance included all the times in my life when I risked the
very future of my male existence to attempt to live in the world as a new cross-dresser
or trans woman, before the term was even invented. Choice included all the
times I threw caution to the wind and took on the new world I was experiencing
anyway. Deep down, I took the chances because I knew sooner or later, it would
be the right thing to do and I could live full time as a transfeminine person.
Even still, it was never easy for me to take all the
opportunities I had gained from simply practicing the artform of making myself
up to be a convincing enough woman that I could blend in with most of the
world. I found a large percentage of the population were in their own universe
and did not care about mine anyhow. Then there was the number of people who
were curious about me and wanted to know more about why I was switching gender
clubs from male to female. Finally, there were the hateful bigots I tried to
stay away from who for some reason saw me as some sort of threat to them. The more chances I was taking, the easier it
became for me to survive.
At this point, to make myself very clear, it literally took
me decades to arrive at the point where I had a choice to be myself as I was
very slow in deciding if I was making the right decisions in my life. As a parttime
cross-dresser, I was basically providing myself with stop-gap measures to
relieve myself of the pressures of living a male life I never should be living.
I was stuck in the middle with me, and it was not a pleasant place to be. All
that got me by were the brief moments of gender euphoria when I was able to
navigate the world as a trans woman. But the biggest problem came when I began
to experience my own form of impostor syndrome.
I was still enough of a man, operating successfully in a
male world to not want to give it up, yet I was becoming enough of my own woman
to keep moving forward. It put me in a bad place when I went to invites to girls’
nights out and in the middle of the evening suddenly felt as if I did not
belong. In a relatively short period of time, I was able to work my way around
the dreaded syndrome and relax and enjoy myself. I had as much of a right to
accept the invitation as the next woman at the table as we enjoyed our combined
femininity. The entire experience was so different than anything I had
experienced at all the men’s parties I had ever been to that I could not wait for
the next invitation to come in my direction.
When I was able to overcome my imposter syndrome, I was able
to take advantage of having more choices while taking fewer chances. Most of
the time, it came from knowing the venues I was going to and knowing ahead of
time I would be accepted. Sure, I needed to take chances and choose new non-gay
places to go but I desperately wanted to go to venues which reflected my tastes.
My wants were simple, I wanted to drink draft beer, watch sports, use the women’s
room when I needed to and be left alone. Which I found out that I could in
several places, so I had a choice of where I wanted to go. I was living large
as a trans woman with choices for the first time in my life.
As chance versus choice began to fade in my life, the
choices began to take on extra meaning. I still had what was left of my male
life to deal with and he was hanging on for dear life and fighting on to the
end. He was tougher to give up because when he went, so did all my old white
male privileges out the door with him. No job, no wife and possibly no family
awaited my decision on which way I was going to live. Naturally, all the
pressure wrecked what was left of my fragile mental health until destiny set in
for me and overcame my chance versus choice idea altogether.
In a dark five-year period, I lost all but one of my closest
friends to death including my wife who was the major drawback to my male to
female gender transition. At the same time, I came out to my only child
(daughter) who became my closest ally until my wife Liz came along. Add
that to the Veteran’s Administration health care system announcing that they
would start the process of administering gender affirming hormones or HRT to
veterans who qualified and I did, so I was made an offer I could not refuse and
began the process of closing out my male life completely. Destiny could not
have made my path any clearer if it tried and I needed to seize the opportunity
while I still could. Because I was near the age of sixty at the time. I needed
to make my decision to live as a transfeminine person and not look back or
forever try to live as the gender juggler I was. Which I could do no longer. I needed to take the right way out and choose
the one I should have always chosen.
I think all humans, trans or not face the chance versus
choice decisions in their life, but it seems we transgender women and transgender
men face more deeper challenges than most others. We risk our jobs, our families,
our marriages and even our lives to live our truths, and few emerge from the
process unscathed. Best wishes on you making it up your gender path the best
you can. There can be brighter days ahead out of your dark, lonely gender
closet.
No comments:
Post a Comment