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| JJ Hart |
As I grew into myself, I learned the truth. Change was coming if I liked it or not.
Change was one of the reasons I loved the fall season so
much. As the weather cooled off and football came on, I could go through my
feminine wardrobe and see what I could keep and what had to be discarded. Plus,
I can’t forget Halloween which of course is the cross dressers’ national
holiday in October.
Sadly, as the leaves began to change and fall from the trees,
the whole time was bittersweet for me. The worst fall I could remember was when
I was on a six-month delay to join the Army and I was working at a small radio
station in Bowling Green, Ohio. If you are not familiar with that part of
northwest Ohio, it is very flat to the point that any hills are manmade. One
night, I was just driving around feeling sorry for myself as I looked ahead to
Army basic training and I was so sad as the leaves blew in front of me. If I
could have cried, I would have, but tears were nearly impossible for me in my
male pre-HRT days. Similar to everything else in those days, I internalized my
feelings and tried to move on as deep down I knew change had to happen.
During that time, I almost outed myself to my roommates in
the apartment I was staying in until I left for basic. On one trip home, I
brought back one of my favorite outfits along with a wig and makeup to Bowling
Green. One day when I left, I assumed I had hidden my belongings well enough to
not be discovered but I was wrong, and one night when I was preparing to surprise
a male visitor to the apartment, after I went to work of shaving my legs and
face, I checked for my clothes, and they were gone. I certainly thought, for a
while change was coming then it was not. No one said a word to me and very
soon, I was off to play soldier anyway so nothing else mattered.
Back in those Vietnam War days, basic training was an
intense team building experience when a few drill sergeants needed to try to
get a bunch of raw recruits ready for possible combat. During this time, the
only way I could keep my girl self-alive was to bury her deeply in my subconscious
mind, So, when we were on long forced marches around Ft. Knox, I made sure I
thought about the well-being of my girl and the changes we would go through
after my military service was finished.
Looking back at the three years I served; the time now seems
like a blur and when I was discharged, I came really close to making a big
change then by picking my future wife up at the airport cross dressed as my transfeminine
self. I even went as far as hinting as such when I wrote her a letter. (Remember
those?) Again, my male self-won out and I decided not to, and my big change had
to go back to coming again. I did not have the courage yet to face my gender
truth and took the easy way out and went back to accepting all the male privileges
I had earned.
It was not until I became a parent and had reached my thirties
did change to me become a real priority. I will always remember my thirtieth birthday
being my hardest because I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with my
life. Sure, I had employment and financial issues to be aware of but again the underlying
big elephant in the room was what changes would have to happen with my gender. I
knew it was never going to be easy to present well as a woman, and I needed to
work extra hard to earn whatever passing grades I could achieve in the public’s
eye. Once I made the mental changes to proceed, much of my work became cosmetic
in nature.
I was able to move the elephant aside and set about learning
what it would take me to really live life as a transgender woman and not just
be the “Pretty, pretty princess” my second wife called me. As change set in, I
learned very few trans women or women at all live the life of a princess and I
had a lot of work to do to put my male life behind me.
The last major change I put myself through was the hormonal
one when I started gender affirming hormones. The HRT allowed me to sync up my
external and internal selves and live a more productive life as a transfeminine
person.
