 |
| Image from Sasun Bughdarian on UnSplash. |
Putting myself out there in public was probably the hardest thing I ever have done in my life.
Most of the time I was in a high-risk-high reward situation
as I tried and failed miserably at presenting myself in public as a novice
transgender woman. I kept on working until I put myself into the low risk-high
reward category when I finally was able to pass reasonably in the world I
discovered was run by ciswomen if I ever wanted to succeed. I was so far away
from the world of cross-dressing/transgender parties and socials I kept going
to, I was learning so much more every time I did it. I was on thin ice on my
gender path and I knew it. I just hoped the ice would hold my weight. Even
though I was on a crash diet to be able to purchase more fashionable clothes
and look better. It was questionable.
All along, I knew there was no way I could go halfway and
make it to my dream of living fulltime as a transfeminine person. Trying to
live a life stuck between two genders was no way for a person to live and when
I did, the gap between the two genders was too much to overcome. My mental
health suffered and I was very self-destructive and had to do something about
it. The last thing I wanted to happen was that my gender dysphoria would doom my
life as I knew it.
In the meantime, I did the only thing I knew how to do which
was continuing to hide my cross-dressing from the world behind a wall of male
macho intentions. Again, it was so hard to hide my truth that much later in
life I was surprised that no one had guessed my dirty little secret when I
finally cracked my gender egg and made it out of my closet for good. Another
problem happened as I had to keep building a successful male life, I never
wanted, I knew some day soon I would have to tear it all down and start all
over again. Internalizing and putting that day off, just hurt me more as I
continued to put myself out in the public’s eye.
By doing so, my risk situations leveled out to a point where
they almost balanced each other. I was in the ultimate high-risk situation of
losing essentially my whole life but at the same time conquering the higher
risk of being able to carve out a new and exciting feminine life from scratch. It
seemed to me that every corner I went around on my new path had different obstacles
to take on as I was intimidated by the complexities of the ciswoman’s world I
so badly wanted to live in. As I left the male world I wanted nothing to do
with, it seemed nothing was easy to do as I had to learn everything I could quickly
if I ever wanted to survive. The worst part of it was, I wanted just to keep
running back to the privilege of the male life I had given up but just could
not.
So, I kept putting myself out there to make a lot of bad
mistakes on the way to my own form of womanhood. Like ruining hours of prep
time getting ready to go out, only to discover I was moving like a linebacker
in drag when I did it. Or the time when I had everything down when I went out
and promptly got my heel stuck in a sidewalk crack and almost fell down. I made
it to the point of being so paranoid about going out, I kept on wondering if I
would ever be able to put my feminine self in motion for the world. Even though
it was difficult to do, I kept forcing myself back out and getting better in my
overall presentation. Making it less of a high risk that I could do it. Since I
had already been laughed out of venues in the past, what was the worst that could
happen to me.
Ironically, my path took me another direction right into the
worse than could happen experience when I was almost molested by two men when I
was alone on a dark city street and I was lucky to get out of it by giving them
my last five dollar bill. It was too close for comfort for me, and I almost
learned the hard way what ciswomen are raised to know about the dangers of
toxic men. I started to always plan to ask for a transgender man friend to walk
me to my car after that. I know I mention that experience a lot but it is my
way of always warning you that when you go behind the gender curtain and
transition, you lose your male privilege of personal security so be careful when
you go out because it is certainly a different world for a trans woman.
For years, I kind of just drifted along in the female world
learning what I could to increase my knowledge until I learned too much and
found I could never go back to the male life I had before. Almost all the risk
on not doing it suddenly became extremely shallow to me as the why’s I should
not transition started to fade. I had put so much time and effort into my
womanhood, what I was waiting for.
I had even survived the worst moments of my male life when almost
everyone around me passed away, leaving me tragically lonely and sad. The only
bright light I had to fall back on was the knowledge that my strong feminine
self was always there for me and it would be extremely low risk to reach out
and ask for her help. Even to the point of helping me find a new social circle
to hang out with.
I stepped out of my dark closet again and was fortunate to
find a small circle of diverse friends I could socialize with and even grow
into my new HRT hormonal changes with. I stepped out of my social box and utilized
the so-called straight venues I was already a regular in, along with a
transgender woman friend of mine and against all odds found new friends who all
happened to be lesbians. From there, I even took the risk of going online to
the trashy dating sites and tried my hand at attracting someone else. At that
point, what did I have to lose. After a very low-risk, high gain deal, my
future wife of over fourteen years contacted me. We clicked and have been together
ever since, so I am still enjoying the results of my low risk move. But I must
stress, none of that success would have been possible without my determination to
put myself out there and try.
Certainly, I failed quite a bit, but from failure came learning
and I made it thank goodness.
As always! Thanks for reading along and all of your
comments are welcome.
No comments:
Post a Comment