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| Image from Brett Jordan on UnSplash, |
It took me a while to understand that facing the major truth in my life was not possible early on for me.
As I cross-dressed in front of the mirror in my early years,
I could not believe it would be a part of my permanent existence. Even though,
it was screaming at me that it was. I learned quite early, just looking like a
pretty girl (or so I thought) for just a quick moment in time never held up and
very soon I would be wondering what it would be like to live among the girls
around me as one of them. In other words, I did not know I was much more than a
casual cross-dresser attracted to feminine makeup and clothes, I was so much
more. Later I would learn I was a transgender woman when the term began to be popularized.
Even when I realized, for the first time in my life, I had
found a term which described me, I did not totally accept it. My truth still
evaded my consciousness. I was afraid to
face it and lose all the male privilege I had built up. All along, I resisted building up those
benefits, but then again took them when they were offered. Which deep down made
me feel like some sort of a gender hypocrite. Regardless of my guilt, I needed
to work my way through my gender issues all alone and I had no gender workbook
to follow. No all-nighters with girls my age to learn what it meant to play
with the essentials of makeup and clothes all the way to learning the
foundation of what it would take to build me into a mature transfeminine woman
someday. If I worked hard enough on my goal.
I was frustrated even more when I got the tiniest bit of gender
euphoria when I was able to go out in the world for the first time as a trans
woman and do my own clothes shopping in women’s clothing stores. Even to the
point of being emboldened enough to use the changing rooms to make sure my
selections fit me as well as could be expected before my weight-loss program. Increasing
my shopping confidence was the fact that the clerks did not really care about
my gender as much as they did about my money. Another truth I needed to learn
the hard way and not be so naïve.
The deeper I got into the world of cisgender women, the more
I wanted to stay. As my time behind the gender curtain was beginning to feel so
much more natural every time I did it. Sometimes, the whole process felt so
good, I almost panicked because I did not know if I was ready yet to give up all
my male existence. I had too much vested in him to just give him away, so I
continued to explore my new world as a transgender woman.
My bottom line at that time was again what was I going to do
about an unapproving spouse who was still my best friend and major problems about
what I was going to do about finding work as a new trans woman. I was intimidated
and forced to deny my gender truth for many more years. I tried all sorts of
ways to do it. I tried everything from therapy, to trying to drink it away, to
trying to outrun my truths by changing jobs and moving my family many times. Of
course, none of it worked and still I refused to face the facts that were
staring me down in the mirror every morning that I was not meant to be a man at
all. It was like life was playing a cruel prank on me because on occasion I
could still be a success in a male life without really wanting to. It seemed
that every time I did enjoy myself as a man, my woman self would come along and
do him one better.
Finally, I had reached the point of no return and just had
to begin the series of moves I would have to make to put my male behind me forever.
Tragically, my wife passed away leaving me alone to do whatever I wanted, and I
was old enough to retire early and sell collectibles online to scrape up enough
money to survive, so destiny all of a sudden was opening doors for me to live
my inner gender truth. And to make matters even better, I even gained approval
from a doctor to start on HRT, or gender affirming hormones that I had always
dreamed of taking. The changes I went through under the new hormones proved to
be miraculous for me. As all the external and internal emotional changes took
effect were worth the wait. Even though I waited until I was sixty to start
them.
Perhaps the HRT hormonal shift was the final straw in me
having to face the biggest truth of my life. I was a woman pretending to be a man
all along.
Truth was always hard to face for me as I did my best to run
from it or just ignore it…it never went away proving my transgender womanhood
was the only way could go if I wanted to respect myself in the end. Plus, the
end of my life was not getting further away at my age. If I was going to act,
it was a now or never situation.
One night when I was out to be hopefully left alone in one
of my favorite venues to watch sports and drink beer, the blinding realization
that my male life was over came to me. The only future for me could be feminine
if I was going to be able to live my truth. It was when all the disastrous
gender wars I had lived with over the years came to an end and I all sudden, was on
the right path.
Most importantly, I had worked hard to know it was the right
one.
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