How Did I Get Here

 

Image from Colton Sturgeon 
on UnSplash.

Often, I sit back and wonder how I ever arrived here as a fulltime transgender woman. Then, the reality of my life comes around and shows me the power of my dreams so long ago.

Some of my dreams I realized and some I did not, which is probably similar to any person’s life. I am biased, but I think a trans woman’s, or transgender man’s life is sufficiently different from most of the population to be mentioned. I think that very few boys' most prominent dream of what they wanted to be when they grew up was NOT a woman. Mine was. Even though I was into sports completely, I did not have any dreams of advancing into upper-level competition when all I wanted was to be one of the pretty cheerleaders on the sidelines. 

I wanted to be a girl so bad with their pretty dresses and long hair, I even dreamed about being a girl in my dreams and was extremely disappointed when I had to go back to my old boring male life. I just hoped that someday I could find my way out of the closet I had built for myself. On the other hand, I thought just maybe I would outgrow my gender dysphoria when in fact, what happened was I grew into it. As the years began to fly by, my skill at makeup and dressing myself in feminine clothes became better with time. 

What did not become better with time was me being able to sneak out of the house and away from the mirror which lied to me about my appearance and head out into the public’s eye. When I was out in my new high heels trying my best to look natural everywhere I went, I kept asking myself how I got here and why would I want to leave all the male privileges I earned along the way behind me. Mainly the natural defense that most men have simply because they are males in the world. If I was harassed for being my new transfeminine self, what would I do? Luckily the worst harassment I ever received was being laughed at early on and later having the police called on me for using the women’s restroom. I simply retreated quickly to my cross-dressing drawing board to become better as a novice trans woman and the female cop who answered my call just told me to go on my way. No harm to either except to my frail feminine ego. 

I keep writing about my failures in life because as humans we all have them and when we do,we need to pick ourselves back up and learn from them. When I faced my biggest obstacles, I needed to understand in the worst way that I really wanted to be in the new exciting yet scary life I was in, but how much was I going to give up continuing it. Building parallel successful binary gender lives was not the long term way to go. In the end, one had to go. 

The best I could do then was stay out in the world of ciswomen and see if I could make it on my own. It meant attempting to experience the good and the bad of a woman’s life to see if I could earn my way across the gender border into my own version of transgender womanhood. During this time, I did the best I could to establish myself as a totally new person, which meant leaving any vestiges of my male life behind to total strangers. There was no time for me to consider how I got there when I was interacting with the public. Again, I was fortunate in that most of the world was accepting to me and my problems were rare. 

I found myself at a point where I never thought I could be and that was being able to live a quality life across the gender border and being able to be shown the way behind the magical gender curtain I always wanted. Once I got there, my final answer was no surprise. I never wanted to go back to my old male life. Then it was up to me to figure out what to do about all the leftover male baggage I had accumulated over the years. 

As I was figuring all this out, it never occurred to me to consider how I got to such a different point in my life. Afterall, how many other humans have the chance to live such a unique life seeing the world from both sides of the main binary genders. It was not until then did I begin to enjoy where I was in life and the challenge of building a new one. Taking a life down and building a new one is certainly not for a weak person and not becoming a victim when you are down is a key to success to figuring out how you got here. 

Even today, as I prepare for a big dinner out with spiritual friends tonight and I am putting together an outfit, it still feels slightly different for me. For the dinner, we are supposed to bring an object or picture from a departed loved one and I chose the picture I recently found of my dad in 1951 with his dog. Since I have long since made peace with my mom who I tried to come out to when I got out of the Army, I never did try to come out to dad. Looking back, maybe I tried the wrong person, and I blame myself for never giving him the chance to know his daughter. Now this is as close as I can come to letting him know how I got here. Maybe too, since I have had the chance to live my transgender dream as long as I have, I would have been in a better place to explain it to dad. His death took that away from me sadly.

I hope you are on the path to discovering your place in the world. Thanks for experiencing mine. Comments are always appreciated!