 |
| Image from Ksenia Berjoz on UnSplash. |
In the male world I did not want to be in, I had a difficult time responding to pressure except where I worked where oddly enough, I thrived.
I suppose the gender pressure I was under started very early
in life when I needed to struggle mightily to even find the private time to
even try to be the pretty girl I wanted to be in front of the mirror. From my
early cross-dressing years, instead of growing away from feeling the pressure I
was feeling, I grew into it. On one side, I had the fond thoughts of gender
euphoria dominating every spare moment that I had and on the other side I had
the reality of having to compete in a world I never wanted to be in. Football
was a prime example of me trying to overachieve and ended up breaking two bones
doing it before I just quit.
Moving forward to the time when I left my closet and started
to discover the world as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the
pressure was on more than ever before to succeed as neither of my egos were
taking getting laughed at by the public well. My feelings hurt, and the pressure
as I said was building to do something about it.
The first thing I knew I could do was go on a diet which
quickly slimmed my body so I could find and wear more fashionable clothing and
started to take care of my skin better everyday after I shaved. All of this
helped me to feel better about myself, and I kept on trying to perfect my
makeup techniques to improve my public presentation. With all of this, it still
took me quite a while to build my fragile confidence to a point where I could
go out in public again.
Then I found myself in a spot where pressure was coming at
me from different angles. On the days I thought my makeup and clothes were at
their peak of success, the pressure would set in about how I was moving as a
transfeminine person in the world. I needed to concentrate on two things, not
moving like a linebacker in drag and making sure I put a pleasant look on my
face. Replacing the male scowl I had perfected for so long. If I was enjoying
my new life, I would have to make sure I showed it to the world.
As I did all of that, my inner pressure began to change once
again as I began to free myself from the drag atmosphere of the gay venues I
was going to (where I was considered as just another queen) and into the
straight world I was used to where I could at least have a fighting chance of
being treated as another woman in the world where the ciswomen ruled the scene
I wanted to be accepted into. For the most part, I discovered that most ciswomen
did not notice me, or if they were, they were just curious why I was trying to
play with the girls’ club and leaving the universe of men.
At that point, I nearly panicked from all the pressure I was
under as I desperately tried to maintain what was left of my male life which
included my wife and job and at the same time try to allow my feminine
transgender side to flourish also. My main reason to panic came when I needed
to learn immediately how to communicate one on one with other women. To relieve
the pressure, I went all out and even took feminine vocal lessons and I had to
focus for the first time in my life on really listening to what someone else
was telling me because I found that ciswomen were the masters at non-verbal or passive
aggressive communication and used both methods to by pass the men around them.
Which was the main reason men said they could not understand women. The women had
set it up that way.
I did maintain that life as long as I could before the pressure
increased again until the forms of relieving it, I was using, just did not work
any longer. On top of that, I was becoming more and more self-destructive, and
I kept putting my life in danger. Fortunately, before anything severely
happened to me because of the pressure I was feeling nothing severe happened to
me and I began to build a new exciting life out of the ashes of the male life I
used to live. I took what I could from him and added it to my new transfeminine
life I was beginning to carve out for myself.
Magically then, much of the pressure I was feeling about my
male to female femininization started to drain off me. I can’t take all of the
credit because I fell into the open arms of so many ciswomen who had problems of
their own and took the time and effort to help me with mine. All their efforts
reinforced why I wanted to be allowed behind the gender curtain to start with.
After the pressure was released, it was like the sun came
out to me on a cloudy day, I can’t say how much weight was lifted from my
shoulders when I finally saw the sunlight and decided to put my male self in my
past and begin HRT or gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s supervision.
I can’t say before then I had any knowledge at all how to
live a life without experiencing gender pressure. As I matured into a confident
transgender woman, I finally realized I did not have to live that way, and I
had the built the confidence to change it.
Certainly, living under pressure is no fun, and I would not wish
it on anyone. Also, I know everyday humans have stress in their life, but I am biased,
but I think transgender women and transgender men have more than their fair
share to deal with. How we are able to handle it can define our lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment