A Want...or a Need

JJ Hart Discovering her Needs
I am in the first row on the left.

When a want turns into a need, sometimes you can feel it. Other times, not so much as if it sneaks up on you from behind.

As I began to wear dresses and makeup as a young boy, for the most part, it was because I wanted to do it. Cross-dressing just relieved the pressure of my unwanted everyday male world. It did not take me long to figure out my want was much more than just a casual appreciation of women’s fashion and makeup.  I did not know it then (and the term had not yet been widely used) that I was transgender more than a cross-dresser. I could not feel the change because I did not have the gender knowledge to do it.

Life began to change for me when I started to cross-dress for the thrill of it and attend Halloween parties. The parties ended up teaching me the basics of being a woman in public around people I knew, and I wanted to take it a step further by not having to wait another year to try again to get out of my dark closet and into the world. That is when my story turned out to be dark as I was not met with many positives by the public as a novice trans woman, cross-dresser or whatever you would like to label me as. To too many people, I was simply a man in a dress and clown makeup. I learned the hard way to get back to my drawing board and work harder on my feminine craft to find out if I was ever going to be able to succeed at all at my dream.

I also learned that if I was ever going to find success on my gender path, I was never just going to make it by just thinking it was just a want. It had to become a deep-seated need. I went back and dieted, worked on my skin and did everything I could to improve my testosterone poisoned body. All it really taught me was how much deeper I needed to travel along my gender path to make it at all and I needed to do it very badly. As the pounds melted off, I was able to find more stylish feminine wardrobe items to fill out my fashion needs and dress for success to blend in with the rest of the ciswoman crowd. Who I learned the hard way, were the people who ran the world I was attempting to be a part of. Or I could go casual if I needed to and a more polished business look when I needed to upscale my appearance. Fashion-wise I was learning that looking the best I could and blending in with the public at the same time was a definite need not some sort of a frivolous want just to justify something I wanted.

The more I tested the world as a transfeminine person, the more I needed to do to help myself along in the learning process of just belonging in the world I always should have been a part of to begin with. It was a real chore just to put the mirror image I thought I had perfected into the public and into motion to see how it worked. For the most part, I was improving to the point where I needed to start trying to communicate with the world as a more complete trans woman. As I always point out, the communication challenge to me was immense because I had always been a lazy communicator in my life. By that I mean, I had never really had to listen closely to what another man was telling me. I knew instinctively how to respond to another man but was clueless when it came to woman to woman talk. Which I always had known was different but how different I did not know until I was made aware of it. For example, for the first time ever in my life I needed to really stop and listen to whomever was talking to me. Were they trying to point out danger to me or just being friendly as a ciswoman who was curious of me or a toxic man who just viewed me as some sort of a fetish object.

Quite possibly, the communication aspect of my male to female femininization need passed my desire to be as attractive as I could as a transgender woman in the world. Instead of just wishing and wanting to be accepted as an equal by the other ciswomen I met, I needed to make it a priority. I even swallowed my pride and took female vocal lessons to make the process easier. It was difficult, but I think I gained enough confidence to help with my overall presentation and life.

I was helped too when the pressure to succeed was relieved here and there by the new success I was having in the world carving out a new life which on one hand to be terrifying and on the other feeling so natural like I was coming home to the self I always should have been.

I found I did not discover all my true self until I could step away from me for a minute to look at how far my gender path had taken me. After years of experimenting and trying different things, I finally achieved my need to be allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox and I was not disappointed with what I found there. Even though I had to put up with the occasional hater or TERF who wanted me out, but the majority of women made me feel welcome in their world and that was all that mattered to me.

The sandbox provided me with firm lessons and reassurance in what I was trying to accomplish in life. The want I always felt was always a hidden need which took me years to realize was my true problem in life to solve.

I hope you can realize your true wants and needs on your gender path also and life becomes easier for you if you are searching like I always was.

 

 

 

  

It's a Lonely World

 

Image from Jarle Johnasen
on UnSplash.

It is a lonely world for many transgender women and transgender men as we journey along our dark gender paths.

As I always point out, like so many of you, I got a late start on filling out my gender workbook on how I was even going to begin a transfeminine life. Before the word was even invented. I was not invited to any overnight stays with the girls I admired so much to take advantage of early make-up tips and even feminine peer pressure on the clothes I was wearing to do a better job of looking the best I could in front of the mirror. Ironically, I was probably ahead of most girls age-wise when I started wearing makeup and shaving my legs, but I did not know that because I was not allowed behind the gender curtain to play in the girls’ sandbox.  

Looking back, I thought for a while there was always a chance I was going through some sort of a phase and I just could not be the only boy in the world with a strong desire to be a woman someday.

To make matters worse, I was always exceedingly shy back in those days which made me an introvert, and I had a tendency to not trust others. That would manifest itself much later in life when I had a very difficult time making close friends. Especially with other men. Who I thought would never understand my deepest darkest secret which by then I knew was no innocent phase in life I was going through. Not surprisingly after a while, I lost most of my shyness around ciswomen and enjoyed my time with them even more. Even though my true motives were never revealed that I just wanted to be like them in the worst way possible and I was just trying to see what it took to live their lives.

Even though I was still married to a couple of very different women through this portion of my life who knew of my cross-dressing desires and did the best I could to surround myself with other women, deep down inside I was still lonely. It never occurred to me why and what I could do about it for years. I just never realized for the longest time that I was living much of my life completely backwards. I was never meant to be a man and was forced into it by a cruel twist of fate I could do nothing about. Being a woman trying to live as a man put a terrific strain on me and caused me to constantly dwell on what I was doing wrong to feel so lonely.

When I finally made it out of my gender closet and into the world, my loneliness amazingly began to go away when I started to interact with other women. While men shunned me, ciswomen were curious why I was in their world. When they found out I was not some sort of fraud and a honest human being, it was OK to talk on a shallow level. Which was fine with me because I was so lonely after my second wife unexpectedly passed away. Her death taught me to never take anything for granted again and I set out to live more deeply as the transgender woman I was becoming. Just breaking down the gender barriers I was doing was never enough to get behind the gender curtain. I needed to do more.

Primarily, I needed to learn all over again how to talk to people. Mainly women but also men. Women I found came at me from all different directions and practiced a lot of nonverbal communication. I needed to practice the art of passive aggressiveness also when I found a smiling woman was not necessarily a friendly one. Until I proved to be up to the gender communication challenge, life became very interesting. Perhaps you have noticed that for the most part I left men out because for the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me, because with most of the men I did encounter, all I did was soothe their ego. Payback I guess from all the time I spent in the male world.

By this time in my life, I was looking at being sixty directly in the eye and could see very few avenues available to me to combat the extreme loneliness I felt at the time and had just figured I would have to spend the rest of my life by myself. As someone once said, the darkest hour is always right before the dawn and that is what happened to me. I already had my casual lesbian friends who met with me several times a week to watch sports and drink beer until my current wife came along online of all places and we cemented a wonderful relationship. Firat of all, Liz made me a believer in myself again. A confidence I had always had as a man but never as a trans woman.

Unbelievably, destiny had worked its magic, and I found someone to love in the world again and we lived close enough to make a romance work. As long as we are together (over twelve years now), we will not have to experience any lonely days in a cold world ever again.

For those of you who want to know more about how I did it was the only way I made it out was putting myself out there in that same cold world. I had to battle my fears by going out in big straight sports bars and becoming a regular. And, beat all the long odds to find a romantic partner on an online dating site. My big break came in the sports bars when a bartender I knew as a regular set me up with her single lesbian mother who I am friends with to this day. My moral to the story was I needed to put myself out there before I could reap the benefits, but I know the world has changed and you have to be careful.

One way or another, we transgender women and trans men live in a potentially very lonely world which is a shame because we have so much more to offer than the average human because we have seen so much in our lives.

Thanks for reading along and contributing with claps and comments! Hopefully I can come up with something meaningful to you.

 

It's Your World to Live In

 

Image from Gabriel Silverio
on UnSplash. 

When it comes down to it, it is your life to live and no one else’s. But life comes in the way.

The problem is often for transgender women and transgender men, it is easier said than done to live our own lives. Especially for those of us who had to wait until later in life to go after our dreams of transitioning into a feminine world. Perhaps, you were like I was and called selfish for my one-sided obsession about even seeing if my male to female dreams could ever become a reality. My second wife was fond of telling me my cross dressing should not be all about me.

The longer I pursued life on my new transfeminine gender path, I realized she was right. In order for me to move ahead in a world which felt so natural to me, I had to be selfish. It was the only way I could make the difficult decision to take a leap of faith and try to jump the gender border.

Back in those days, the only thing I could hang my pantyhose on were the annual Halloween parties I was going to dressed in my feminine finest. During these early parties, I learned a few of the basics I would need to survive as a trans woman later in life. Such as how visibly trained the human animal is to the genders, and if I was to go to the feminine side, everyone (male and female) would be noticing me. My new visible role in the world took some time and effort to get used to, but I did finally do it when I learned to dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me. It was my life to live, and I was coming closer and closer to deciding how I wanted to live it.

Before I did, I discovered I still had a whole lot of living to do before I made my decision. The problem was my male life on occasion was not that bad. Which gave me false hope that I could save it. All it did, as I juggled two genders at once, was to make my life a mental health hell as I struggled to maintain any sort of life I wanted. On one side, I had the increasingly financially successful male self-making it harder to give up all that he had earned and the male privileges which came with it. Struggling with my feminine side which felt she was in a more natural position to thrive. The end result was whatever decision I made just had to be the right one. With so much at stake in my life, I needed to go back to being very selfish with myself to make it.

In the meantime, I went into a heavy experimentation period of my life as a novice transgender woman. My goal was to try to live every moment that I could discover what a ciswoman has to go through in her life. So, I could tell if I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to be more than the “pretty, pretty princess” that my second wife always called me when she was trying to make fun of my femininity to learn what she was really talking about. It was a struggle, but eventually I did by setting up my own version of a transgender bucket list of things to do. What did a ciswoman know that I did not became my main goal in life when I shed my male clothes and went out in the world as a trans woman. Overall, my plan worked well for me except the times I tried too hard and ended up in redneck bars where a single woman should have not been to begin with.

I did so much, I wore out my bucket list of obvious things to do and began to examine the difference between male and female privilege in society. Losing my male privilege brought about no real surprises such as having my intelligence challenged and learning to be more careful with my personal safety. While the main feminine privilege I felt was the freedom to be myself in the world and went way past just having doors opened for me by men. Needless to say, I was in love with the whole path I was on as a transfeminine person and could not wait to get back to it anytime I had to leave and go back to my increasingly unwanted male life.  I was stubborn but then again, I slowly realized I could never go back to the life I had lived before. No matter how successful it was.

As I reached the age of sixty, I could put it off no longer no matter how stubborn my male self-had become. When my second wife passed away from a massive heart attack, he was left with no allies in my life to fight with and was done. I had paid my cross-dressing dues by doing the best I could with what I had to work with appearance wise and had gone out of my way to experiment with how ciswomen live by putting myself in actual situations in life which I could expect to happen. After all of that, I just needed the final push off my gender cliff, and land in a world of my own choosing. Without a perpetual balancing act.

In other words, I guess you could say I went too far in paying my own dues during the approximately fifty years it took me to lead a life to discover who I always was. I decided long ago tt was too late to cry over what I did or did not do and to look forward to the time I have left in the world. At the least, I found living a life on both sides of the binary gender border was as scary as it was interesting. How many other humans get to experience what a transgender women or transgender man gets to see in one lifetime.

Sure, we experience our ups and downs but so does everyone else and we can have such an interesting path to claim a life which was always meant to be ours.

HEY YOU! Thanks for joining me in my journey and commenting or clapping for my posts. You make it all so worthwhile.

 

On a Gender Vacation without a Passport

 

JJ Hart

I saw on the news this morning that shortly after the Fourth of July holiday is the busiest time to travel during the year. It got me to thinking about my own major vacations when I shed my male self and began my life as a transfeminine person.

Mainly, I remember the times when I just needed a passport to go past my natural fears, put my cross-dressing past behind me and step into the world of a transgender woman. That invisible passport was difficult for me to come by since I needed to overcome my fragile confidence to step out of my gender shadows to get it. It was difficult because my earliest days of going public as a trans woman were often brutal when the public got ahold of me and I was laughed at routinely. It literally took me years of work in my cross-dressing workbook to get to the point where I could go out into the world and make a good effort to blend in. When I did, I began to earn my vacation away from my male self.

The more vacations away from him that I had, the more I began to appreciate the new world of ciswomen I was allowed into. As rock and roll idol “Billy Idol” was singing, the more I did, I wanted “More, More, More.” (Rebel Yell, 1984) Early on, I was naive and did not realize what I was getting myself into and partially thought my need for a gender passport would eventually burn itself out and go away. But of course, the need to have a passport just burned brighter in my soul. It seemed because of the need for femininity increasingly felt so natural to me.

It turned out at that time, when I was out in the world as a trans woman, either I was getting it very right or very wrong. Mainly because I did not know what I was doing such as how to move the best I could as a woman or how I communicated with other women at the time. Because they were overwhelmingly the only people who were interested in talking to me at all as nearly all men shunned me. I was amazed at how many women in their own unique way wanted to see my gender passport and let me in behind the gender curtain.

It all led me to finally legally change my name with the help of my daughter. We came up with a family name which honored one of my grandparents and my mom too. Who never supported her new daughter, but I forgave her and took her first name as my new middle name anyhow. As a plus, my new initials were easy for my three young grandkids to remember me by, so the name was well accepted by all.

Since I had my new permanent name in place, I could start building a new permanent feminine persona every time I went out to try to carve out a new life as a trans woman. As I was carving, sometimes I hit very hard granite and had to stop and start over until I could find the sandstone softer rock and keep moving towards my gender goal of living fulltime as a transfeminine person. As I carved, I needed to make certain I was always on the outlook for cave-ins which could cause havoc with my male life. Which was still very much in the picture. Because he still controlled most of my life the public saw as well as life with my second wife (who wanted no part of losing a transgender spouse) and a very good job I had at that time too.

As life moved on for me, I discovered brief moments of gender euphoria which kept me going through the dark days of my male to female femininization. Such as when I was able to leave the gay bar venues which I felt uncomfortable in and set out to be accepted in straight sports bars which I knew so well as a man. I was in my gender heaven when I worked my way into regular status in several of the venues I coveted. Once I was accepted by the staff, I could be accepted by their customers also and I thought I had it made. Sadly, by that time the one lesbian bar I used to go to and was accepted in closed its doors and that outlet for me was over.

These days, the closet thing that I have (so far) to an actual passport is my drivers license which has a “F” for female on it and my relocated copies of my name change documents I recently went with my wife Liz on the three-hour round-trip journey to my hometown to pick up. With all the turmoil caused by the idiots in Washington DC it seems in the future I may need a real passport to vote. So, I am getting ready for that if I need one.

Other than that, I am satisfied with the lifetime of progress I have made by having a suitable passport which allows me to live a public life mainly with the acceptance and help of the ciswomen around me. I was able to ignore the occasional hater like the pharmacist long ago when I started HRT who insisted in a crowded pharmacy in screaming loudly did, I know what the Estradiol medications would do to me. Not that she cared, but I promptly took my business elsewhere. It was no business of hers to judge me anyhow and try to out me to the world.

The passport I earned allowed me to open fantastic gender doors that I never thought I could do and the one I need to get will allow me to vote I am afraid here in backwards Ohio. I am not planning to ever travel outside of the country again in my life, so I won’t need a passport for that. Just the one I have already earned the hard way along my gender path.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you who take the time to read along with my writing! It always means so much when you take the time to read and comment.

 

 

 

 

 

Dreaming in "3-G"

 

Image from Amin RK
on UnSplash.

Dreaming in “3-G” seems to be coming natural for me these days.

Somehow, I have skipped the old two gender dreams I was having and replaced them with a more complex series of dreams I can remember in the morning when I wake up. I call them three gender dreams.  It’s kind of like going from black and white movies back in the day to full color masterpieces.

Here is an example. Recently I was having a dream that I was a guy but later became a woman complete with a new bag of lipstick. I wondered at the time how the lipstick got there but I had no answer as the dream moved on. Also, I have noticed recently that my dreams have been shifting out of my old male world and into my relatively new feminine world. I suppose I was expecting miracles when I thought fifteen years of fulltime transgender life could replace sixty years in the male world. In my subconscious.  

All my gender dreams can be traced back to my earliest days of life when I had vivid dreams of being a pretty girl and being very disappointed when I woke up in the same body every morning. But as I remember, my dreams were all in “2-G” and involved me in one of the two main binary genders, male or female.

I find it interesting that some transgender women or transgender men who I happen to talk about concerning their dreams say they are always their authentic gender self when they dream. When I have always been a mixture. I suppose that it is another complexity of what trans folk go through. The only constant in all my “2-G” or “3-G” dreams I have had over the years is that from most of them I was having a positive experience that I wanted to continue. Such as in my early years when all I really wanted to do was present well enough to make it in public as a transfeminine person. Who could blend in with ciswomen everywhere and not cause any extra attention.

What confused me was when I was starting to successfully lead a trans woman’s life, why it didn’t it follow me more into my dream world. I took what I could get and kept moving on with my own male to female femininization program. Dreams were just an integral part of keeping my gender sanity along the way. They helped with dispersing all the pressure in life I was feeling from juggling two genders. Plus, I have considered too that the anti-depressant and anxiety medications I am on may contribute to the vivid dreams I have been having.

I also find it strange when I have a “3-G” rare negative dream. I would have thought that with all the success I finally had on my gender path, I would not have an ugly dream about someone pulling off my wig in public. Especially since I have not had to wear a wig in almost a decade and never had anyone try to pull mine off when I did. It is my own version of a nightmare-cross dresser style.

At the least, when the “3-G” dreams don’t turn ugly, they are cheap entertainment and I wonder how I got here. When I do, the answer always comes back loud and clear that I made it to the place in life where I always should have been. And my dreams just are a reflection of that.

Maybe too, my dreams are finally transitioning to my current feminine self. Which is currently making the transition to just being the me I needed to be. “2-G” or “3-G” dreams should not matter anymore as they are just a needed respite from the real world we transgender individuals must put up with.

No matter where your dreams lead to, I hope they find you in a good place in this sometimes-negative world we live in today. We need all we can get to lead a quality life away from all the gender haters and bigots and a little daydream of how your future could be can never hurt anyone.

This is just a little shorter post than you are used to seeing from me today as I have to get mentally prepared for my Veterans Administration assigned psychiatrist virtual visit. I thought it would be a fun time to write about the effect dreams of all kinds have on our lives as trans people.

Good night!

 

 

 

 

Just Feeling Good Being Me

 

Image from Mathilda Khoo
on UnSplash.

Just feeling good being me took me years to learn. In fact, I needed to go through three male to female transitions to get there. 

First, I needed to go through all my cross-dressing years and feel the angst of how I looked above everything else. In fact, when I go back and read some of my very early blog posts, all I basically mentioned was my presentation as a woman and not how I felt as one. It probably was because I did not feel transfeminine at all at that point in my life. Or, in other words, I had not matured yet in my journey to transgender womanhood.

I wonder if I had known what a long and winding route, I ended up taking, if I would have still attempted it years later. But it turned out, life had a different path for me than nearly all the other people I knew. Since I was deprived of having any input on where I wanted to go with my gender struggles, I was left on my own to find my way. Many times, the only clues that I got came from the dreams I was having that I was actually a pretty girl and was very disappointed when I still woke up in my male life. I was not feeling good at that point until I could make it back to my makeup and dresses to cross-dress in front of the mirror. That was all well and good, except the time feeling good, or gender euphoria I learned it was called, did not last very long.

Somehow, the good feelings took over regardless and I pursued a feminine life even harder. It did not matter that the more I tried to do to transform myself into a pretty girl could result in disaster if I was ever discovered. I don’t know how I never was, except mom maybe knew and just did not want to bring it up thinking I would outgrow it. It turns out the only thing I outgrew was her clothes and I had to be resourceful to find fashion items that I could add to my wardrobe and wear. Like one day in junior high school, I found a discarded stretchy elastic skirt that fit me, and I brought it home with me and cherished it for years to come. I was fortunate in finding me a pair of girls’ shoes in my size at the store where I had first gone shopping with my own money for makeup. I could even afford them along with being able to buy a new pair of panty hose. To come up with the money, I worked a rural newspaper route and put the money I earned together with money I earned from doing chores around the house. I was on a mission to succeed feeling good as me, as a girl.

The mission was due to be paused as military duty came my way during the Vietnam War as I ended up serving three years in the Army. My new task was to put my cross-dressing life on a back burner as I went away to serve. Even though I was bitter at the time since I was drafted by the government to do something I was totally against, I got a lot of good from it as I traveled the world (covering three continents in three years) and learning powerful lessons about life. Army basic training in particular taught me what I could do to survive on a temporary basis without a skirt and makeup to fall back on.

Even on those long-forced marches I was on, during a not so mild Ft. Knox winter, I learned to always look ahead and not behind me. I used the lesson on the days when I encountered a gender hater or TERF (cis woman gender gatekeeper) who wanted to berate me because I knew I could outlast them. The TERF just couldn’t grasp that I was not there to threaten their femininity, I was there to be me and live mine.

After all that learning experience, I still had a long way to go to feel good about being me. As I always say, I was similar to most other men in not understanding what really goes into a ciswomen’s life. It did not matter that I had spent my life admiring women from afar, I was still a novice at trying to go behind the gender curtain to truly understand a woman’s life. And I would not come close to feeling better about the gender disconnect in my life until I did.

I left the world of gay venues and started to enjoy my new life in either one of the very few lesbian bars which were still open at the time, or one of the big straight sports bars I was used to going to as a man. All I knew was I was being accepted as the transgender woman I always wanted to be as a regular in those venues and I loved putting my old male self completely in my past. The new strangers did not know anything about him and the positives and negatives about his life, and I wanted to keep it that way. Until I found a few friends I could trust. At that point only could I begin to fill out my life’s story to them. While at the same time never alluding to the fact that I ever lived a male life at all.

I was a little slow, but my life came full circle from being a part-time cross-dresser to a transgender woman, back to just being who I was always meant to be (me) and I could feel good about who I was for the first time in my life.

Earlier in this post when I was mentioning my military experience, I wanted to take the time to thank Dana and Bobbie for their input on my Fourth of July post. They were both in the Navy and Bobbie in particular is very active in the state of Michigan pushing equal rights for the LGBTQIA+ community. I know too there are other trans vets who follow along and I appreciate you too! All of you who just read and or comment are always deeply appreciated. Trans vet or not.

 

 

 

I Could Never Take my Trans Life for Granted

 

Image from Jeffrey Clayton
on UnSplash.

I learned early on in my life to take nothing for granted.

Especially when I was experimenting with my mom’s clothes and makeup. I needed to use every instinct I had to not get caught cross dressing as a girl. Which I tried to do as much as I could, so I had to never take it for granted I would never get discovered and sent off to see a psychiatrist. My paranoia ran deep back then of my parents sending me to a stranger who would tell me I was mentally ill. Which deep down, I knew I wasn’t. I just wanted to be like the girls around me.

My parents, from the “greatest generation” of the WWII and Great Depression years of our country’s history always made sure I took nothing for granted also. If I got B’s on my report card, where were the A’s I should have been getting. Was how I was raised. The only other real aspect of my life they thought they had to worry about was my interest in sports of all kinds. I was never the athlete my brother was so I was left on my own to do what I could athletically in the small rural school I went to. Even when I did manage to make the football team, I couldn't keep my mind on practice when all I wanted to do was be a cheerleader in their fancy short skirts and be admired by all the boys in school. I admired them too, just because of how badly I wanted to be just like them, and I never took it for granted that I couldn’t. It just frustrated me when I never did.

The years went by; in a hurry it seemed and even I was able to improve my feminine femininization to the point where I wanted to get out of the mirror in my closet and try out the world.

It was a good thing that again I should take nothing for granted that I would have no problems when I went out for the first time. Even though the mirror at home told me I made my male testosterone poisoned self into an attractive woman, why was I getting laughed at by mainly teen aged girls in public. I was stubborn though and kept going back to my cross-dressing drawing board to make any attempt possible to improve my appearance. What I finally learned was I needed to quit dressing the way my old male self was telling me to do and start dressing to blend in with the world of ciswomen around me. To do so, I reversed my fashion course from wearing clothes for teen girls when I was in my thirties and start concentrating on doing my thrift shopping to develop a more realistic fashion approach. That helped me overcome my thick male body with big shoulders that I had been cursed with by male puberty.

I had a dreaded inverted T body shape with broad shoulders, no hips and narrow legs to deal with. I took nothing for granted and set out to attack my fashion problems with better fashion choices. Since I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I went to, I built up from there while at the same time, keeping my legs not being a total focus to my look. As I built up from my legs and I wore Demin skirts often, I used foam pads under my panty hose which gave me the illusion of having hips. With my size, breasts were always a problem because I always wanted to be proportioned correctly and have the right wiggle to them. But not too big and look like a clown in drag. I struggled to find what I wanted until a cross-dressing friend of mine gifted me a set of silicone breast forms when he purged his extensive collection of cross-dressing materials. Then I could finish hiding my broad shoulders with longer straight hair wigs which fell loosely over my body.

Speaking of my body, you may have noticed I did not mention anything about restrictive shapewear. I always disliked the feel of being restricted in any way other than panty hose and padding, so I took the diet approach to losing my male stomach and did not have to worry so much about all the potential problems which might happen when I used the women’s room, do my business, wash my hands, smile sweetly and move on.

The one major accessory I was still lacking was confidence that I could present effectively as a transfeminine person in a world where ciswomen ran the show. In my mind, I was still the frightened cross-dresser leaving my closet and mirror for the first time and getting laughed at by the public. Out of sheer willpower I kept on taking nothing for granted until my life as a transgender woman became realized and I began to feel better and enjoy myself in the new, exciting feminine world I was in.

My ultimate goal was to someday have my own “padding” or curves thanks to HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was fortunate that in my later years in life when my testosterone was on the decline anyway (at the age of sixty) I received a doctor’s approval to start the hormonal program and all the changes which happened. Over the years, I was able to develop my own breasts, hips and soft skin as I have never taken the hormones for granted because I know not everyone has the health to do it.

I even went through the efforts of getting approved by the Veterans Administration health care system (which I was a member of) to get approved again for my hormones and take nothing for granted. I guess in many ways, the paranoia of the kid looking at himself in a dress in a mirror all those decades ago never left me. Deep down I still fear for those younger than me in the system having to put up with all the extreme transphobia in the world today.

We can never take anything for granted when our basic lives we value so much are at stake. Be safe out there.

 

 

 

It Is the Fourth of July and are We Better Off?

 

Image from Ben Maher
on UnSplash.

It’s the Fourth of July and a time to celebrate the first two hundred fifty years of the United States.

I don’t want to be negative, but I am wondering what there is to celebrate if you are a transgender woman or transgender man. Making my point was the recent crooked Supreme Court decision which rejected helping trans athletes around the country by denying the request and sending it back to the states where they know the heavily gerrymandered Republican legislatures will keep rejecting our rights. Here in my native Ohio, the ruling was the kiss of death for the very few transgender athletes who could have benefitted from it.

Then there is the ongoing dilemma of what to do about our rapidly decaying dementia ridden convict/traitor in the White House he is trying to destroy. What will he try to do next is the problem when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole.

As I always say, his effects cause harm to current out and visible transgender people as well as potential future harm to those of you in the closet who are seeking a way out. The most immediate way out is to NOT stay home and get out and vote for your freedom in November. You may desperately need those rights when you decide it is time to come out of the closet.

It is a difficult road we have chosen to live and holidays such as the Fourth of July spotlight the good and the bad that our country has chosen to do over the years such as take away the native American lands and build some of the new country on the backs of slavery. Certainly nothing to be proud of.

It all brings back remembrances of the T-shirt I wore to several Pride celebrations so long ago which said: I am a transgender veteran who fought for your rights to take away mine.

I just hope that none of the bleak scene I have painted is not too far gone to repair and my Social Security benefits continue to be there when I need them, and my transgender grandchild will be able to still work towards a bright future that they have.

I have every hope in the world that the old dinosaurs will fade away and a new generation can come along and right the ship before it is too late.

Finally, I am sorry I cannot come up with a more positive post on such an important day in our country’s history. But it would be dishonest of me to break my tradition of writing from the heart as the basis of doing this at all.

In the meantime, I still proudly display the flag I served in the past and hope for a better future.

 

 

 

Staying in Rhythm as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart gaining my rhythm with women.
I ma in first row on left.

 

It took me years to get into rhythm as a new transgender woman when I no longer considered myself a weekend cross-dresser.

The main problem I had was I needed to go back and forth between my male life and the feminine life I was trying desperately to learn. My wife and I had come to an uneasy truce about my increasing need to explore the world of ciswomen. She thought it was fair that I took three days out of my week to cross-dress and would even see that I had the money to go to a motel to complete my male to female femininization. Anything but me leaving the house dressed as me.

As you can tell, that was more than a fair deal but not a deal I could keep. Every time I was getting used to the makeup, clothes and movements of being a woman, I had to have it all taken away with a jolt of reality when I had to go back fulltime into my unwanted male world. Before long, I grew tired of the truce and having my gender rhythm destroyed and started to leave the house as me any time I wanted. As with most good times, my brief on an off life as a transgender woman was threatened with ending as my second wife discovered me time after time, I had excuses for being dis-honest and jeopardizing the good marriage I had but deep down I had no choice if I wanted to keep my feminine rhythm going.

Through all the good times and bad times with my second wife, I was learning what it would take for me to express my femininity and it was all me who drove us to our breaking point. More than once when I tried things such as gender therapy to curb my desires to be a woman. The only time that therapy helped me was when I was diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person which said a lot to me. Mainly it explained why I was spending days at a time not wanting to get out of bed and others when I thought I could conquer the world and it had nothing to do with being transgender. After trying several medications, I did not tolerate well, I found some that I could, and they keep my moods stable to this day. I was able to work my depression issues into my life and build them into the rhythm so I could live a good life.

Even with all the success I was having on my depression medications, I still had to face the problems I had switching back and forth between the two main binary genders. Most of the time on a daily basis. As I would rush home from work, pull off my shirt and tie and be the woman I always wanted to be until my wife came home. I was able to juggle my genders and make some sort of a life with all of this until the untimely passing of my wife from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. Even though we never saw eye to eye on my transfeminine desires, I still loved her deeply and our marriage made it to the twenty-five-year mark.

Naturally, the whole tragic deal sent me into a tailspin, and I had to figure out what to do about my all of a sudden very lonely life. Was I going to go back to try to establish a male life with another ciswoman or get rid of my male life altogether and start all over as a transgender woman.

By this time in my life, I did not want to try another relationship with a ciswoman I would have to lie to, so the answer was clear. Take all the time and effort I had put into building my new rhythm as a trans woman and head for a new life. All the time and effort I put into presenting as well as I could as a woman, as well as communicating well as one too came back to help me. Confidence as well as an extreme amount of destiny opened doors for me that I never thought possible would happen. As my third wife Liz told me very few people ever have the opportunity to stop their lives, learn from their mistakes, and start over again. Don’t screw it up.

I took the insight I received from my time as a man observing how ciswomen live around them and tried to mold that into a new life. Because I fell into the arms of loving women during my male to female transition, I did not have to worry about such rhythms such as my sexuality ever becoming an issue. I had always desired women sexually as a woman myself, and nothing had to change. Add in my passion for history and sports and I hit the trifecta of being exactly in the place I wanted to be. Through it all, I could not believe it was all finally happening to me after all the years of sneaking around and struggling with my gender.

Better yet, I had reached the point where if I looked like a woman, walked like a woman and communicated as a woman, then I was a woman. Even though I did not gain my status the same way most women do. Their gender rhythm came naturally while I needed to work to find mine was the only difference.

Even though I was a slow learner when it came to learning to finally live how I was always meant to live, I was a survivor which was all that mattered and when I learned my feminine rhythm I never had to let it go.

As always, thanks so very much for reading along with my exploits in exploring the transgender world. Any comments you might have are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Best Advice I Never Got

 

Image from Frame Harriak
on UnSplash. 

The best advice I never got came from no one.

There was no one there to tell me anything about what I was doing when I was doing my best just to be feminine. No one to tell me my skirts were way too short and tight and my makeup looked like I just left a circus clown drag show. And better yet, no one to tell me I was heading along a gender path which would ultimately ruin my life if I kept it up.

The only person who was screaming in my ear initially as I cross dressed in front of the mirror was my male self-telling me to hurry up and get done before I risked discovery and the end to the world as I knew it. This was the time too when my feminine side was lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl. Maybe I could see some of my femininity in my pre-male puberty years but quickly faded with my bodily changes.

As life progressed as it always does, I witnessed the battle of my voices as once again my male side was telling me to stop cross-dressing and never do it again and my feminine side saying keep on trying and things will get better. Even though it was difficult to listen to the best advice I never got I kept deciding to pursue my feminine side and see what would happen,

At that time, I was stuck in a series of Halloween parties where I could dress as myself and not fear reprisal. Plus, I could judge how I was doing with what I wanted to wear and with how far I had come with my makeup skills or lack of them. I was aware that I was at risk for stirring up potential risks of being discovered when someone would ask who shaved my legs and applied my makeup. I just said I shaved my own legs and did not mention who did my makeup because my second wife did not wear any. I was normally Ok because it would take another ciswoman to question my makeup because if a man did, I would figure he may be part of my femininization club. I learned so much from the Halloween parties I went to that not going to them dressed as myself was the best advice I never got.

I think it is ironic that that almost everyone has advice for everyone else except when it comes to transgender women and transgender men. It seems, our situation is so unique that the only advice someone can come up with is just not do it. They have no understanding of what we are going through, and it is so much deeper than just wearing clothes of the opposite gender. Maybe that is why I never got any advice from anyone except one of my self-proclaimed gender therapists who told me there was nothing she could do about me wanting to be a woman. Like a dummy, I ignored the only good advice I could have received at the time.

It wasn’t until I started reading certain on-line computer sites did, I really encounter advice as transgender “Nazi’s” as we called them. Who continually did battle with many cross dressers, who received little or no respect from the transsexuals as they were called then. Being the cynic that I am, I enjoyed quite a few of the comments as the gender battles raged on. Seemingly, respect from some on the site was only gained by how many gender surgeries you had gone through. Why I needed to wait to receive advice I did not want from an internet site which should have been welcoming to all but wasn’t.

By the time I hit my experimental stage to judge where I should be in the world as a man or a trans woman. I was not in much of a mood for much advice, and it was the best advice I could ever get. I was very much on my own in the world as a new transfeminine person and loving it. If someone had told me to stop what I was doing, I would have said hell no as I was having the time of my life.

I think other ciswomen sensed my confidence in who I was and mostly just interacted with me out of curiosity and at the same time, without knowing it showed me the way behind the gender curtain. I needed their help to achieve my dream, and not much advice. As the curtain parted and I learned what I needed to exist in a world I had only dreamed of, the best advice I got was none because I did not seek it out.

I cannot say I did not need advice when it came to making my final gender decisions. Primarily the day when my future wife Liz saw me mentally struggling again with my gender issues and flat out told me she had never seen any male in me. Go ahead and transition into a feminine world. In all fairness, I heard the same thing from my second wife years before but could not figure out how to do it. This time I could do it and received a doctor’s approval for HRT gender affirming hormones and major changes to by external and internal body was underway.

It turned out to be the best advice I ever got. Especially when my stubborn self-listened and decided to change my life for good. To the place it should have always been. Making my way in a world of ciswomen. Now I want the time back that I lost, but it is too late. I will just have to take my own advice and make the best life I can with the time I have left.

Thanks to you all who read along with all my experiences. Hopefully they will help you with yours and of course I will offer my own advice from all that I learned when you comment. Without all of you, none of what I do would be meaningful to me.

 

 

 

The Consequences of Giving Up

 

Image from fast glass fx 
on UnSplash.

When I considered “purging” (getting rid of all my feminine makeup and clothing) the consequences felt like a double-edged sword.

For a few days, the pressure around gender lifted, and I had one less major worry. But before long, the familiar desire to live as a girl returned to my everyday life. I realized that cross-dressing—and perhaps something beyond it—would not be easy for me to give up. Even in that short time, I had learned a great deal and understood how far I still had to go before reaching my dream of living full time as a transgender woman. I was not even sure whether I could make it happen.

Then there were the brief moments of gender euphoria. The time I spent hiding from my brother and family was enough to keep me going until male puberty—and what felt like testosterone poisoning set in. I was unhappy that my body was becoming more angular while the girls around me were developing curves, but there was nothing I could do to stop it.

Even as those changes continued, I could not face the consequences of giving up. I learned to take what I could get until I was old enough to leave the mirror and closet behind and explore the world. What happened next was brutal. I discovered that the mirror had been lying to me when it suggested I looked like an attractive woman. If that were true, why was I laughed at so often when I tried to go to ordinary places, such as nearby shopping malls? Eventually, my frustration pushed me to look around and notice how most of the cisgender women I saw were dressed. Even if it meant adopting the casual styles I dreaded, I knew I needed to do it to blend in and be accepted.

The more acceptance I gained, the harder it became to return to my old life and face the thought of giving up on my dream. For the first time, I even felt excited about where my future might lead. I just had the glimmer of hope that I might be able to make it to the transfeminine life I always wanted to lead.

At that point, my male life began to creep in with a vengeance. He was becoming very successful with a small family and good job and the risk of giving it all up loomed large over everything I did. Not a day went by when I didn’t consider the consequences of what I was doing. I always say, I wish I could get back just a fraction of the time I wasted worrying about how I would be living my life if I was a woman. What would become of me if I jumped off my gender cliff for good.

What I decided to do was experiment in the world as a trans woman. My second wife called me a “terrible woman” because I had never paid any dues that ciswomen pay, and all I was concerned about was my appearance. I knew deep down she was right but I still at that point did not know how to fix the problem by paying my dues as a novice feminine person in the world. It was like if you are applying for a job, the employer says you don’t have enough experience but will not give you the job so you can get it.  I am sure my wife was right about my feminine knowledge, but I was having an impossible time getting behind the gender curtain to learn more.

As I slowly got behind the gender curtain, the consequences of giving up almost completely went away. Why would I abandon all the effort I put into being a complex transgender woman and throw it all away during a time when I was finally being successful. For a change, I was the one making sense in a gender situation which very few understood.  No longer could I be accused of being a terrible woman as I matured into my new self when I was allowed into women’s only spaces. Sure, I was still making mistakes, but they were getting smaller and smaller as time went on.

The mistakes I usually made came from when I miscalculated how complex a ciswoman’s life really was and how far I needed to go to be allowed to fit in. To eliminate all my mistakes, I needed to give up all the negative consequences of a male to female gender transition and just make the plunge. Fortunately for me, the water was not that cold, and I jumped into the deep end of the gender pool. Plus, I can never forget the soft feminine gender hands which helped me to survive the impact into the water.

I know many of are thinking seriously of making your own gender plunge and what would be the consequences of possibly losing everything you hold dear in the world. I know advice is easy to give, but the turning point for me always was how natural I felt as a transfeminine person. Something kept telling me I was born the way I ended up. And with some effort, I made it to where I always needed (not wanted) to be. Hopefully, that is a starting point for you too and the consequences of giving up become too much to consider.

If you are further along, I am sure you recognize the consequences of never giving up and somedays even being perceived as being selfish. As I was when I was headed all out to fully transition into a transgender woman, all I could think of how fast I could make it to my goal. So, I am guilty as charged. It is probably the reason my second wife called me a terrible woman. In all fairness to me, I did mature out of it and found my way into a better world.

All the purges in the world did not work for me and I put up with all the consequences I lived through. I am not a gambler, but in this instance, I played the odds and won.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Was Afraid of the Truth

 

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.

 

 

Dealing with Stress as a Transgender Woman

 

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.