When A Good Day was in the Details

 

Image from Ali Hassan
on UnSplash

I remember vividly the frustration I felt when I tried to connect all the dots I needed to connect to make blending into the world as a feminine person a reality. A good day was when I was able to recognize the details and improve my overall feminine presentation.

It was because I had so much new to remember when I finally summoned the courage to leave the mirror and get out into the world. The mirror was kind to me and often would not tell me when I was looking like a circus clown in drag. It took being out in the public’s eye to do that for me, unfortunately. When the stares and laughter caught up to me in the initial stages of being out of my shell, I had to scurry home to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board to go over all the details I was trying to put together if I ever was going to make it as a novice transfeminine person.

It seemed when I arrived at the point where I did a reasonably good job of applying my makeup, then I would make some huge mistake with how I was moving and mess up the feminine image I was trying to portray. One example that comes to mind was when I was in a mall blissfully minding my own business as a woman when one of my heels stuck in a crack in the sidewalk and I almost fell. After I determined that no one else noticed my embarrassing move, I gathered myself back up and resumed my journey. A lot wiser for the experience which I am sure that many ciswomen have gone through. It was just that the overall gender learning experience at times seemed to be so cruel and frustrating.

Overall, it took me submitting to practice, practice, practice to make it to just an entry level where I did not look like a linebacker in a dress when I moved in a new, scary world. Of course, I knew ciswomen move very differently than cismen, but to copy it was not going to be easy for me. It also seemed all eyes were upon me as a transgender woman which was and was not the case. As I found out if I could just do the basics, most people would be in their own worlds and not notice me at all. That is, if I did not give them anything out of the ordinary to look at which initially I was quite bad at. Why? Because I tried dressing as a teen girl, which was a major mistake as I was trying to disguise my thirty-year-old testosterone poisoned body.  It did not take me long to get laughed out of doing it and settled into a more reasonable look which was able to blend in with the ciswomen around me.

At that point, a good day was when I was able to put my overall appearance together with the way I moved as I began to put the ideal mirror image I always had into motion. I began to try my hand by going to well attended events such as urban festivals in downtown Dayton, Ohio. When I went, I always wore my best sunglasses so I could look to see if other people were paying attention to me and I knew I had made significant strides towards living my dream and I was ecstatic. For once it seemed, everything was coming together for me in my life until I hit two major roadblocks. My second wife and my male self-sensed the potential of losing their lives with me as they knew them.

It was all good for awhile as I was able to maintain the delicate gender balance I was trying to live until the portion of my life, I came to call my own dark ages when I lost my wife and three of my closest male friends to death. Naturally, I was knocked for a loop and did not know which way was up for a while. As an experiment I even tried to date ciswomen again as a man, but it did not work since I did not want to start to explain all over again to another woman my gender issues. Finally, I resorted to taking myself out to an outdoor concert in a Dayton suburb because my daughter gave me two tickets to see “Joe Cocker”. The woman I was going to take essentially stood me up a week before the concert which gave me time to consider taking myself. Which is what I did as I went in a black sleeveless top, black flowing silky pants and sparkly silver sandals. No one gave me a second look as I nervously played with my long dark-haired wig and I enjoyed myself immensely.

I knew right then, I was on the right path because I felt so natural in my new world as I was connecting all the right dots and my feminine power was in the details. Until I hit my next big roadblock. Just how was my new transfeminine person going to do her most difficult task of all, which was being able to communicate with the world around me. A world which I had to put all the way up there with my initial feminine problems such as makeup, hair and movement as my most difficult task to take on. Here I was in this big, highly nuanced new world I was in with very few tools to help me.

At first, I resorted to mimicking the tone of the other ciswoman who was trying to talk to me. Which worked well enough to get me by with short, simple conversations with clerks and salespeople but fell miserably short when someone really wanted to communicate with me. That’s when I knew I needed to seek out professional help about feminine vocal patterns which helped me to learn the basics of being able to not necessarily sound like a woman when I was talking but still say the right things a woman would say. a huge detail I needed to communicate in the new world I was in,

I was fortunate when I survived my dark ages and the onslaught of my male self-trying to survive that I was still able to move forward. I began each day with good feelings for once concerning how I felt about my gender dysphoria in my life. No matter what the mirror was telling me in the morning, deep down I had connected all the dots and attended to all my gender details, so I knew who I was.

It made all the difference in the world as it took me so long to do it.

Thanks as always for reading along. I hope you can find and overcome all the gender details and connect your dots along the way. Comments are always welcome!