More Serious Stop Signs

 

Image from Steve Lieman
on UnSplash.

“Tia” wrote in yesterday and commented on my recent “Stop Sign” post. She wanted further insight into what my biggest stop signs were and how did I get through them.

First, thanks for the insightful comment, Tia and here are the answers as I remember them now.

By far, my biggest stop sign was put directly in my path by my second wife. As I was stuck between the rock and the hard place with her because of the transition I was slowly making from cross-dresser to transgender woman and my wife. Rightfully so, my wife pointed out I was breaking the marriage covenant we had and she did not want to be married to another woman. The last thing I want to do here is make her the bad person in all this gender turmoil because she knew and accepted my cross-dressing before we got married.

She even went as far as attending the social activities I went to in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio and supported my efforts to leave the house to explore the world as a transfeminine person for the first time by backing me with money for motel rooms to get ready in. The only real stop sign I had was to agree to never leave the house dressed as me. Was it enough for me? No. I blew right through the stop signs and started to throw caution to the wind and go out into the world like the authentic me. Regardless of the heavily populated area of town, we lived in.

I kept on doing this until I was caught time and time again by my second wife and could not lie my way out of me breaking our agreement. I resorted to even going to therapy for help which never actually came. Mainly because I was not doing anything wrong in my struggle to just be the inner female I always thought I was. I even had a therapist I respected totally tell me that and I just ignored her. Thinking I could balance my gender issues and fight on to maintain the status quo. By ignoring the stop signs I was facing, I was just making my life worse and not helping our relationship in the long term which I will get back to later. Because, as it turned out, there would not be a long term relationship anyhow.

In the meantime, as I became more serious about the possibility of living out my life as a transgender woman, I began to see other stop signs ahead. They were major signs too such as how I would support myself in the world without my wife and perhaps the rest of my family. Obstacles which face nearly all transgender women and transgender men as we attempt to cross the gender border and live out our lives as normal everyday citizens. It is difficult to end one life, pick up the pieces and start over again. Something I wish all the transphobes who try to attack us would try to understand but that is a whole other topic.

Pure destiny helped me to negotiate the other major stop signs I faced with the attitude that if others could complete a male to female transition, why couldn’t I. Life became a circle for me as I went through the darkest period of my existence before I was able to pay my dues and take advantage of the new world I was in. The most tragic part was losing my wife to a major heart attack. I never ever thought she would ever die before me with the stressful lifestyle I was leading but I did, which led me to wonder what I would do about the biggest stop sign of all in my life. In the new darkness as I searched for my new path which had existed so long. All I needed to do was remove the stop sign and continue to live.

I also found I needed to do a quick look into who was important to me in my life and who I could afford to lose if I crossed the gender border. In my darkness I guessed my daughter who would support me and my only brother would not. Which was exactly what happened. It has been over a decade since I have talked with my brother, and my daughter has become one of my biggest supporters. My parents had long since passed on so I did not have to worry about coming out to either of them. Even though I did try to come out to my mom years ago and was rejected. I took that stop sign down and forgot about it.

It seemed, once I got used to taking down my gender stop signs the easier it got. Although that was not necessarily the case. Destiny stepped in again and provided me with an age excuse when it came to how I was going to support myself. I was fortunate to have worked a good job with a good wage which helped my Social Security retirement payments. I turned out if I was able to sell the collectables my wife and I had collected over the years, I could retire and support myself. Which saved me having to look for a job as a new transgender woman.

Of lesser importance was when the Veterans Administration started to provide care for gender conflicted veterans such as me. I jumped at the chance for lower cost HRT meds and the mental care to get them. The mental care provided me with a qualified therapist who helped me with the legal documents that assisted changing my legal gender markers within the VA and the public sector.

Perhaps removing the biggest stop sign of all that remained was discovering a loving relationship which I could cherish for the rest of my life. That person of course was my wife Liz who discovered me on an online dating site. I was always a social person and had resigned myself to a life of being alone before I met Liz and we are still going strong over fifteen years later.

I hope all of this answers the questions Tia and all of you may have had about my transgender stop signs and how I handled them. Some stopped me for years while others I simply rolled through or ignored altogether but one way or another I made it. As always, all of your comments are appreciated!