Are you Worthy, or an Impostor

 

Image from Strechath Gupta 
on UnSplash

As a transgender woman or a transgender man do you ever think you are worthy of all the contortions you put yourself through to arrive at your dream goal. What gives you the right to challenge one of a human’s most sacred basics, the gender you were supposedly born with.

To make matters worse, you have the orange felon in Washington (and his followers) oversimplifying any idea of a gender spectrum saying there are just men and women. When we know there is no such thing because we live it every day. Many of us (including me) wondered for the longest time if we are worth the time to try to handle such a inner spirit which was called a dual spirit by quite a few ancient cultures before the white Puritans got ahold of our society. Forget about being held up to be honored for our knowledge of the world, we became scorned. But that is not the subject of this post, I want to try to talk about us.

The first time when I truly faced the problem of being worthy enough to think of myself as a transgender woman was when I started to attend regular girl’s night out functions and still felt as if I was some sort of an outsider. Or, I had a strong case of impostor syndrome setting in. It took me awhile to get used to where I was behind the gender curtain, feel like I deserved to be there as much as the next woman and relaxed and started to enjoy myself. As I write about often, at this point in my life I had my second wife and male self-fighting me as hard as they could to keep me male and hurt my chances of ever achieving my dream of living as a complete transfeminine person. Without the guilt I felt and had no impostor syndrome.

What kept me going through all the resistance I was feeling was the whole femininization process felt so natural. Even with the day my wife could had left me behind in the small Cleveland, Ohio tavern venue we were visiting as two women before we went to a transgender-cross dresser social mixer. What happened was, we were sitting at the bar enjoying a drink when a good-looking man on a Harley motorcycle pulled up outside, came in and sat next to my wife and started a conversation. For the first time in my life, I felt powerless to do anything about what I was about to go through if the man offered my wife a ride on his Harley. In addition, my wife played her hand for all it was worth before she decided to not go with him leaving me behind. With no male privileges to protect me. I was taught quite the lesson about female-to-female competition when it came to men and would I ever be worthy enough to compete. Don’t be fooled into thinking that women don’t compete as much as men. They do, just on a different level of intensity at different times.

It literally took me years to accomplish what I wanted to, but I did feel I had the confidence to stand up for myself as a trans woman. In other words, I finally had been able to put the total package together on my trip out of the mirror and into the world. It felt good until I found I was not there yet and was not worthy of feeling secure in calling myself a proud transgender woman. I wanted to be more; I just wanted to be worthy of just being the me I always dreamed I could be. I wanted to be able to compete the next time my wife encountered a man she was attracted to for his attention on an equal footing. Sadly, I never could before she passed away.

To be worthy for me, also took the work of several friends I always mention who taught me so much about being a woman in the world. Primarily in the area of dealing with me. Being lesbians, they taught me I did not need a man’s attention to validate my being in the world. And I was no worse for wear after leaving the men’s club for good and greener pastures with feminine privileges such as the basic freedom to see the world like me. Being allowed to express my emotions when I needed to be a prime example.

Are you worthy can only be answered by you. I know from reading the comments I get, many of you are taking the cautious exploration methods that I took on the path to my gender goals. The method I took was certainly much slower than just tearing the bandage off saying to the world, here I am. Sometimes I wondered what that would have been like when I considered trying it as early as when I was discharged from the Army. Before I had the chance to start building any sort of male life at all. Naturally, the world was much different back in the 1970’s, early 80’s when I was discharged so I will never know what my life would have been like. All I do know was my initial exploration into coming out to my mom were dismal failures and I probably would have been disowned by my family.

Also, it is never too late to think of yourself as being worthy of going behind the other gender curtain. Male to female or female to male, it doesn’t matter. The trip is amazingly the same according to readers such as “Alex” who is a female to male transgender man. The only stable idea is the longer you wait, the more likely you are to build up more gender baggage which you will have to decide what to do with. Who knows, maybe you can find others around you who enjoy the same hobbies and interests that you do. Which is what happened to me.

The only way you can know if you feel worthy is to try.

 

 

 

 

 

The First Time

 

Image from Jon Tyson 
on UnSplash.

Like most of you, as I look back at an increasingly long life, I tend to remember many firsts I accomplished.

Of course, my gender dealings are among the top things I remember along with the first time I had sex with a girl, all the way to the first time I drove a car. I also vividly remember the first prom date I went on and how amazed I was when on the first night of basic training in the Army how many of the men around me were crying. I may have felt like crying too because the military was taking away my makeup, dresses, and wigs but I would be damned if I would cry in public about it.

Through it all, I learned the hard way to wait out the hard times and try to look ahead and not behind me for a better future. The first time I remember it happened was when we were on a long-forced march during the wintertime at Ft. Knox, Kentucky. I was feeling sorry for myself until I looked back and looked at how far I had come. From it I learned a lifetime lesson I could fall back on when I was feeling down. Which was often when I could not have any way to express myself as a feminine person by cross-dressing.

I had no idea when I resumed my civilian life after the Army how much I would have changed when I had the freedom to explore who I was. Even to the point of trying to come out to my mom. I was naïve and thought that even though I was accepted when I came out to anyone for the first time about being a transvestite (as we were called back then) while I was still in the Army, my mom would accept me also. I was wrong and all she offered was a trip to a psychiatrist rather than any understanding. So, my first time coming out to any of my family was a complete failure and the subject was never brought up again. I went back into my gender closet and slammed the door shut again. The only redeeming value I had was my closet was big enough to have a mirror to lie to me about my cross-dressing future when I needed it.

The first time I made a major step into the world as a future transgender woman was when I started to go to Halloween parties where I could express my true self. After a rocky beginning, I settled into a professional woman’s “costume” which brought me acceptance and gave me hope that possibly I could make it to make dream of living fulltime as a transfeminine person if I looked ahead and learned from my experiences.

From those humble Halloween beginnings, I began to explore a number of other firsts on my gender path. I figured if strangers were mistaking me for a woman at the parties I was going to, I would not have to wait another year to do it again and started to visit venues such as clothing stores in big malls as well as safe places such as coffee shops and bookstores. When that worked for me, I expanded my gender outreach into more challenging venues such as restaurants where I needed to interact with more people.

As I began to enjoy my time as a novice trans woman more and more, the problems of how much male baggage I still had began to cause a strain with my mental health which was already fragile. All my male life, I had tried to fight a losing battle to get rid of any possible positive male belongings that I had by moving all around to different jobs and being very self-destructive. Like runaway trains on the same track, the successes I could not wish away were coming at me from the male and female side. I could not shake the fact I had a very successful marriage, a good daughter and great job I had worked hard for so easily as I had imagined. It was the first time in my life I felt bad about being successful.

At the same time all of this was happening, I realized I was transitioning again as my transwoman self. It happened when I grew tired (again) of thinking of myself as a man who was just cross-dressing as a woman into more of a woman myself. It seemed I was facing firsts every week when I snuck out of the house to be myself. I was terrified and excited at the same time with the way my life was unfolding. I had never planned on how my life was turning out, even though I hoped that it would. I never dreamed I could carve out a new life as a transgender woman as quickly as I did.

Now I could look back on all the other first times I could remember as being important and add my series of transitions as a male to female feminized person with them. My first stable communications with other women one on one immediately come to mind as firsts. It was because I was allowed behind the gender curtain in a way I never was when I was acting to be a man. Plus, I can never leave out the impact HRT or gender affirming hormones had on my life. All of a sudden, my inside feelings and external images began to sync up, and my world softened on the hormones. Making many of my previous firsts in life seem minor in comparison. Who cares about marching at Ft. Knox when I could feel so good about myself. Truthfully though, one first led to another and made my life much fuller as I look back on it.

I never realized all the firsts were just a sign of where destiny was leading me in my life and I should have paid more attention when all I wanted to do as a kid was to be a woman when I grew up. I was always a go with the flow as a person, and the flow took me eventually exactly where I wanted to go as a transgender woman…with a lot of help from my friends.

 

 

 

Playing on the Girl's Team

 

Image from Fa Barbosa
on UnSplash.

I am fond of calling my initiation into the world of ciswomen as being allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox. But recently, I have seen it described as playing on the girls’ team. When it comes right down to it, it doesn’t matter what you call it when you have essentially given up life as you know it to transition into the feminine world.

When I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, of course there were many new things I needed to learn because I was seeking admittance to a new and complex, layered feminine existence. For the longest time as I was learning what life really was like for ciswomen, I took the easy way out by thinking all I needed to do was look the part. This is when my second wife began to mock me by calling me the “Pretty, Pretty Princess.” She was right as my presentation was advancing quickly forward and I had ego trips when women at transgender socials I went to on Long Island, New York mistook me for a real woman and wanted to see a male identification before they would let me in.

Even though I was extremely flattered when they asked for my ID, deep down I knew my wife was right and all I was trying to be was a princess. That was when I tried to begin studying the lives of women around me to discover the deeper meaning of being allowed to play on the girls’ team. Which I knew my wife would never help me with. She was busy with bigger issues such as the possibility of losing her husband to another woman which was me.

Initially, the shock of playing on a different gender team came from losing all of my male privilege such as using my size to bluster my way through life. All of a sudden, my size which I took for granted became a problem for me to disguise with the best fashion choices I could. All I knew for certain was I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I attended as a woman, so I tried to build my style from there. All the way to putting together my own tennis outfit even though I had never played a game in my life. Eventually, I needed to back off from showing too much leg and getting kicked off the girls’ team for not blending in and attracting too much attention to myself.

It took a while, but finally I began to realize what feminine privilege was all about and it was so much more than just having men open doors for me. Privildge to me meant I could appreciate the world around me so much more deeply. I had many more avenues to explore in the world once I escaped the restrictive bonds of living in my old unwanted male world. Other women freely interacted with me once I was firmly accepted on the girls’ team and once I learned the rules of engagement and communication, I was able to have so much more enjoyment in my life. Most importantly, I knew I never wanted to go back no matter how many stop signs I faced on my gender path.

Sadly, my second wife passed away before she could see the maturation of her princess into a fully-fledged transfeminine person. Looking back, I don’t think we could have ever stayed married but hopefully we could have remained friends while I continued to fill out my gender workbook. I finally learned I did not have to rely on her assistance to gain admission to the girls’ team because she had given all she could to help me. As with any other female, I needed to find my own way to womanhood. And even though I was not born as a psychical female, I surely thought like one and fought to be one my entire life.

As a novice on the girls’ team, I needed to earn my way also which included many bumps and bruises along the way when I learned I was much more than a cross-dresser who liked to wear women’s clothes, the mental process I went through was much more complex and tougher. To quote an old popular “Kenny Rodgers” song, I had to know when to hold them, know when to fold them and know when to run when I was dealing exclusively with other women.

Fortunately, my newfound acceptance on the girls’ team meant I needed to do very little running. No one came up to me and tried to pull my wig off in public, and for the most part I had to just deal with silence, stares and glares when I encountered a woman who for some reason wanted to hate me. There was one in particular who was also invited to the girls’ nights outs I was invited to who had a problem with me being there. I was able to ignore her for the most part or try to kill her with kindness. Finally, it occurred to me that her problem may not have anything to do with me, it may have been with the world. Maybe she resented the fact that I was happy, and she was miserable.

The more I was allowed to play on the girls’ team, the more I learned from them on the nuances of the new life I so badly wanted to live. Along the way, I never imagined learning so much in such a short amount of time. I also never thought feminine privilege could mean that much to me after I left all my male privilege behind. Especially when the effects of HRT softened my world and improved all my senses,

Whatever you want to call it, playing on the girls’ team or playing in the girls’ sandbox never mattered to me. The most important part was that I made it and rarely got any sand thrown in my face as the princess grew up.

 

We Must Be Better

 

Image from Ecaterina 
on UnSplash

Yesterday I wrote a very short post about going to the doctor with my wife Liz. During the post, I put quite a bit of emphasis on what I was wearing, just to look casual. Following the post, I received a comment from “Dana” exploring her own feelings about presenting in the world convincingly as an older transgender woman. She said (and I paraphrase) we older trans women must be better than the average ciswoman to survive in the world.

Of course, I agreed and took it a step further. Young and old, in no matter what we do, transgender women and transgender men must be better than their cis counterparts in everything they do.

It all started with me when I began to seriously get out of the mirror as a novice crossdresser and into the world. One of the first things I needed to do was upgrade my very limited fashion wardrobe. I found out the hard way; I was too heavy to attempt to find fashionable clothes for larger women like me. Immediately, I went on a diet which melted off nearly fifty pounds of weight. Which made all the difference in the world for my shopping confidence when I haunted the thrift stores for the best clothing bargains I could afford on my still limited budget.

At the same time, I concentrated on taking care of my skin by using cleansers and moisturizers every morning after I shaved. My skin did improve and I could use less makeup for a better overall effect. Through it all, I considered it a labor of love if I was ever going to present better in the world as a trans woman and not be mocked.

Finally, I did make it to a point where I could blend in with the ciswomen around me after learning many brutal lessons which sent me quickly home in tears. I found out the hard way I had to be better, just to be average and blend in with the world which was seemingly out to get me. Probably the main thing I had going for me was how dedicated I was to be staying on the gender path I was following. I always knew it was going to be rough but not as tough as it was turning out. I had a lot of dues yet to pay if I was ever going to make it to my dream of living as a transfeminine person. I thought I knew a significant amount of how women live but I had no idea of the complexity of life I was facing. Which was exactly what my second wife was trying to tell me every time she sensed me drifting away from being a cross-dresser towards starting HRT and living as a transgender woman.

What she did not tell me was, in order for me to make it, not only would I have to be average as the new person I was exploring being, I needed to be better. I was fortunate and stuck to my ideas of exploring the world around me as a trans woman mainly because I little voice in my head kept telling me I was doing the right thing because I felt so natural when I was living it. I emerged from this time in my life with a few scars from the experiences I was going through which healed quickly as I moved on to better things.

In essence, I found I could be better and carve out a new feminine life from scratch. A place where no one knew anything about my old male life and my present seemed to be more positive than my past ever was. In my way though I still had the usual male baggage problems such as an unapproving spouse (whom I did not blame), a family, and a very good job I knew I was going to lose if I did what I knew deep down I would have to do. Jump the male to female gender borders and finally live where I wanted to live from the beginning.

At the same time, I found the more complex my life became as a trans woman, the better I needed to become to protect it. On the girl’s nights out, I was invited to for example, it was key that I never went into my past very far and outed my deeply rooted male past. The example included the time I spent with my lesbian friends who would have not enjoyed any stories I had of my male past if I ever let my guard down and just blurred relevant details of my past. My willpower kept me going until I never thought about my past at all, except that it was a bad dream.

If you are on the fence considering coming out into the world as yourself, just remember to build yourself up to the point where you are the better person as a transgender woman. Perhaps then, you will have reached a place you were never able to find in your old unwanted male life. And key to the whole process is when you are feeling natural as your feminine self. By then, you will know that you have made it to a good place on your gender path. But if you decide not to go any farther, that is OK too. It is your life to live to its fullest, and your journeys into the feminine gender will have taught you so much about the need to be better.

I get asked all the time how I knew about my gender issues, and the simple answer is I always knew and refused to do anything significant about it. I was stuck in my male box from birth, and he was a powerful influence on me until I knew once and for all the only future for me was as a trans woman. Somehow, I just knew the truth about myself and quit fighting it. It was all for the better.

 

 

What Kind of Man was I?

 

Image from Christian Lue
on UnSplash.

I had a good question on one of the blogging platforms I write for the other day. The person asked a simple but relevant question about what kind of a man I was before I went down the strenuous male to female femininization I chose for my life.

Here is how I replied: Thanks for the question. In my former male life, I did the best I could to be successful and hide my true self from the world. Early on, I played football and worked on cars to essentially build a wall to keep the teenaged bullies away. From there, I went off to college and earned my first degree, a bachelor’s in history before I was swept off into the Army during the Vietnam years.

After the Army which I was honorably discharged from after three years away from being able to express my feminine self, I ended up jumping back into my cross-dressing ways and eventually getting married for the first time and fathering a daughter. Once again, I was doing my best to do the all the right things to make the world think I was a “normal” male which of course I always struggled with.

From there, I jumped out of the radio business and into the tavern venue world when a friend of mine and I bought a small neighborhood bar where we lived. My dad described it best by saying it had two doors, so the flies did not have to stop when they went through the bar. He always had away with words. At any rate, the bar did not make it long, but my ownership of the building did. Initially I did not want the responsibility of property ownership but was talked into it by my dad. I think at the time, I did not want the extra pressure of owning anything I would have to get rid of as extra baggage if I decided to make the jump from one gender border to another.

I stayed in my male mode and managed to turn the failed bar into a successful pizzeria until I was drinking too much and lost it too. I was trying to over medicate myself as I ran from my depression and anxiety issues, along with the major problem I had which was of course I wanted to be a woman more than anything else. During this time also, I managed to sneak in another degree, an associates in business, from a local college to take advantage of my veterans’ benefits.

By this time, you can see the theme of my life was not a good one. Anything successful I did, I managed to destroy because of my gender issues. I even lost our house I bought off the GI bill.

Ironically, my life began to turn around when I met the first of the two most influential women in my life. The woman I met worked at a radio station I worked for after I was discharged from the Army and was trying to run the pizzeria successfully. I was literally swept off my feet and ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying the second woman. By the way, both women knew of my cross-dressing desires before we were married. It turned out I was man enough to stay married to her for twenty-five years before she suddenly passed away, wrecking my life for several years before I could rebuild it.

During the twenty-five years I went through with my second wife, I began to really learn I was not the man I used to be as I felt myself transitioning again from cross-dresser to transgender woman. In the meantime, I had thrown my old baggage caution to the side and had built a successful career for myself in the restaurant industry. By the time she passed on, I had built was too much spousal support, family, friends and jobs to casually risk it all and transition. Although it was always my dream to do so. Being the man I was meant I would have to give up the positions I held with civic organizations in town too. I felt flattered to be a part but at the same time never felt really at home there.

After I had given up any hope of ever finding anyone else to be with the rest of my life, I met my future wife Liz, and she was instrumental in pushing me into pursuing HRT by telling me she had never seen any male in me to start with. Her gentle push was all I needed to give away all my male clothes and stop the charade I was living life as a man.

I guess you could say that although I tried hard to be a successful man, I kept trying to destroy any success I had. It took a series of good women to show me the way to where I should have been all along, living my dream of being a transfeminine person fulltime.

My first wife went with the flow and did not seem to care what I did, my second wife approved of my cross-dressing but totally disapproved of HRT and any idea I was transgender, and my third wife totally helped me along. Out of the manhood I never wanted. The only woman left to mention was my internal one who (not so patiently) had to wait for her turn to do more than survive as she needed to thrive for a change.

I hope this answers the question of what kind of man I was before a jumped out of the man’s club and into the girl’s sandbox. I led a complex life of failure and success as a man but never felt as if I was doing the right thing. I was fortunate when good people came along to save me from my self-destructive self. Without them, I doubt if I could have ever made it to the place, I am today.

Thanks for the question! I appreciate any response I get from all of you plus any claps and subscriptions you send my way.

 

 

 

 

 

New Therapy Visit

 

JJ Hart with "Brutus" Buckeye
at Columbus, Ohio. 

As promised in a recent post, I am passing along the results of my new psychiatrist visit this morning.

First of all, I needed to run the waiting room gauntlet after I got checked in. The woman checking me in was very nice and I had no problems with my pronouns which was different from the past. After that, I needed to walk past the rest of the waiting room men waiting for their appointments. When I did, I received the usual number of stares and glares I normally get, so I was not upset over anything new.

Very quickly, my new therapist came out to greet me. I was relieved when he turned out to be a younger man as I have found to be more accepting of gender situations such as transgender women and trans men.

As we started to go through my past, I was surprised at all the information the Veteran’s Administration mental health system acquired on me during my previous appointment. All I needed to do was fill in the many blanks he asked me. Immediately, I tested him by telling him my former fulltime psychiatrist separated my transgender issues with my struggles with depression and anxiety. He agreed with me that the issues I have are separate and should be treated separately. Furthermore, coming out in the world and expressing myself as a transgender woman fulltime had helped me express that side of my personality, the help never resolved my other issues.

Other issues we covered in-depth were my suicide and self-harm attempts. It was decided my medications were working and we should stay on the course for the most part. Those were the difficult issues we talked about and others we finished up with included my childhood and military service.

This appointment marked the next to the last move from all my care from the Dayton, Ohio VA hospital to the Cincinnati VA. All I have left to do is my endocrinology doctor services from Dayton to Cincinnati which could be the most difficult move of all. My next appointment is coming up early in May and I need a refill on my Estradiol prescription. With the current situation in Washington, I do have a constant paranoia that my HRT hormones can be cut off at anytime by the VA under direct supervision of the orange war criminal. I think what I am going to do now is go ahead and get my refill then try to transfer my needs down here and close out my need to deal with Dayton at all. As a point of reference, Dayton VA is in close proximity to where I used to live before I moved the nearly one hundred miles to move in with my wife Liz.

From there, my appointment was over and my next visit was up as a virtual appointment in three months. I finished the early morning off by stopping at our favorite coffee shop, drive through and picking up coffee and a breakfast sandwich. I am happy to say the shop’s LGBTQ flag is still up on the wall and the young man at the window probably was gay and very friendly to me. All the better for me and the perfect ending to a great morning.

Just a short post to check in on my progress with my VA mental health care which has overall been a very positive experience over the years. When I started many years ago, I had to educate everyone about what a transgender woman was all about. These days, they know and I don’t have to.

Fortunately, I did not have to explain myself this morning and I look forward to my next appointment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My Gender Woes were Always Pending

 

Image by Samual Regan Asante
on Unsplash. 

From the earliest days of my life, my gender always seemed to be “pending” as the bank likes to call my most recent on-line deposit.

In my cross-dressing days, when I could afford it, I jumped daily into different wigs, clothes and makeup styles. I was desperate to find the next best thing which would help my feminine presentation along and I was always waiting for the public to acknowledge me. Positive or not, I was always pending their approval in my life.

Along the way, I did get better with my looks and became better at blending in with the ciswomen in the society around me. But I never lost my desire for approval. It became key to my survival as a novice transgender woman, long before I discovered there would be so much more if I ever wanted to slip behind the gender curtain and live my dream life. By then, I was lapsing back into my brainwashed family idea that nothing was ever good enough which carried over to my male to female femininization activities. My confidence was so low, and fragile that the smallest negative comment would send me back to my cross-dressing drawing board as I wondered if I would ever make it.

At that time, I survived in my world by listening to a little voice in my head which was telling me all this turmoil was pending if I just stayed on my path. To do so meant negotiating many blind curves, bumps, and stop signs along the way. Before I knew it, my path was littered with failed fashion choices, wigs and drag style makeup. I needed to choose wisely what I would need to keep before I attempted to move on.

One of the most dramatic pending issues I had was when I made the jump from gay to straight venues. When I did it, I had no idea if I could, so I had to gather the confidence to do it. I needed to be better at blending my style so I would fit in but not too flamboyant to attract unneeded attention as a single woman by herself in a bar. I became very good at using my cell phone as a prop to act like I was saving a seat in the venue for a friend. Among other things I was doing to present and blend in as a transgender woman. I was not concerned so much about being read as trans but was concerned about not being a distraction. Even though I became successful and was able to become a regular at a couple venues, my relaxation was always pending as I needed to stay on guard for any crazy reactions to my being there at all.

The whole process helped me to heighten my senses to where ciswomen normally operate on a daily basis. Since I was primarily dealing women in my new life, it was key that I was able to read my gender cues correctly because the cues were coming from a different angle than they ever were when I was a man. Women primarily were curious what I was doing in their world and was I projecting an honest view of myself. When I passed their tests, I was allowed in to play in their sandbox. There was room for me after all and my dreams of living in a feminine world suddenly became so much more feasible. Something which was always pending before I was able to get out into the world and experiment as a transfeminine person.

The problem became; I was forced to remain pending in my life at a time of extreme gender discovery from me. As the world of ciswomen were exploring me, I was exploring them and learning tons of information on what I would have to do if I ever chose the final male to female transition. In other words, I was able to turn their curiosity around to satisfy my own.

Finally, I arrived at the point of no return when I had done enough experimentation as a novice trans woman to know where I wanted to go to live my dream and I knew I could if I played my cards right. I knew in many ways, this final transition I was planning on making would be the most difficult to do. I would have to try to wrap my male life up the best I could. Which involved deciding what baggage I wanted to bring with me following nearly a half of century of living.  As far as family went, I was down to only two who were still living and I knew I really wanted my daughter to accept me, which she did and my brother who I figured would be a problem and he was. He rejected me and we ended up going our own separate ways over a decade ago.

I knew too, I would have to find another way to financially support myself because my employers never would. For once, age came to my rescue as I was close to being able to take an early social security retirement and augment it by selling the numerous amounts of collectables my second wife and I had collected over the years. With the two sources of income, I calculated I could not have to work another job as I transitioned.

With those two major potential problems behind me, I had very little pending to stop me from moving ahead to the hormonal world of HRT which proved to be immensely satisfying and something I should have done years before. Rather than making the process another pending idea I wanted to try.

By now, you probably know the rest of the story. I am seventy-six and the remainder of my life is shorter than what I have previously lived. Even though I am immobile, I am fortunate to still get around and have someone who loves me. I just hope good health is not pending and I can live peacefully with myself. Which at times during my life has been an issue, including my mental health. I am meeting with my new therapist this week and will have more to share later.

 

What is THAT Sound?

 

Image from Jason Rosewell
on UnSplash. 

What’s that faint noise I hear far in the distance? It took me awhile to figure it out, but it was the sound of my feminine self-yearning to be set free to live. Very early on, I thought she would go away as I aged but the opposite turned out to be true. She grew stronger as the years of my life progressed.

That is when I started to realize just looking at my cross-dressed self in the mirror was just not going to be enough. I wanted more of the feminine life I had experienced. What I was experiencing was the idea of I had much more than a casual interest in women’s clothes and makeup. I was more into how they lived. The term transgender had not even been invented yet, so I had nothing to compare my feelings with. I did not think I was transsexual like Christine Jorgensen, but I was certainly different from other cross dressers I was seeing in my well-worn copies of “Tapestry” and “Transvestia” magazines. When all of that happened, the sound kept getting louder and something larger was wrong with me and it took me years to realize what was wrong with me was not what the sound was telling me.

I went on fighting myself searching for the truth I was looking for when it was right in front of me if I chose to see it. I ignored the advice of my handpicked gender therapist (one of the few I could find back in those days) who told me she could do nothing about me wanting to be a woman but could do something about my manic depression. Which I always had thought was something to do with my gender dysphoria. She told me it wasn’t and helped me by prescribing medications to help me in everyday life. At the time, it turned out, I was ready for help with my depression but not ready to face the facts about my gender future. I was used to loud sound from my days as a radio DJ and I was stubborn enough to want to hang on to a dual gendered life.

At the same time all of this was happening, I was beginning to explore the world as a novice transgender woman and learning every time I went out what the sound I was hearing really meant. I had life all backwards with my struggles to live a male life and the sound was telling me increasingly I was destined to be a woman all along. Not in the mold of having extensive major gender operations but doing it on my own schedule as I marched to my own drummer. Yet another sound which was growing in volume. Before I did though, I needed to undertake an extensive program of more exploration. I desperately did not want to make the move across the gender border at some point and find out I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My spouse, family and job meant so much to me, giving them up for no real reason scared me beyond belief.

Every time I began to have doubts about my upcoming gender decisions, my drumming sound grew louder as I felt more alive and natural when I was allowed behind the gender curtain with cisgender women. The work I was doing to prove myself to the world finally was paying off, for the most part. When I suffered a setback, I had the confidence and experience as a trans woman to do the right thing and move forward in my new life as I followed the sound of gender success. During this time, even though it is a blur to me now, I still remember that it all was not pleasant as I went through the turmoil of deciding which way I was going to turn next.

I know what you are thinking, what was she doing even thinking about turning her back on the gender future she had worked so hard to build. But I did as my male self stubbornly tried to drown out the sound my feminine life was making. Perhaps desperately would be a better term because of all the male privilege he had built up. He was desperate to hold off any more change.

Finally, the sound of change became deafening to the point where it could not be ignored anymore. I was not getting any younger and my transgender transition clock was ticking, loudly. As I had a huge heart to heart talk to myself, I came up with the decision to seek a doctor’s approval for HRT or gender affirming hormones as a natural progression of my feminine progress. In addition, I decided the hormones (if my body responded positively to them) would be the point of no return. I would have to come up with a different way to support myself financially, plus gather the courage to tell what was left of my family the truth about myself. As it turned out, the hormones began to feminize me faster than I ever thought possible and soon it became increasingly difficult to hide my protruding breasts, longer hair and softer skin than ever before. Long story short, my daughter accepted me and my brother rejected me as I revealed my life to them so I had the best of all worlds with the support of my daughter.

Ironically, one of the changes I went through was I had a greater, deeper appreciation of sound and music as a transfeminine person. I had gone full circle in my life understanding what that sound was and better, yet what it meant to me.

I always loved being right when it mattered most, and it did when I relaxed and listened to the sound of my gender spirit. I should give all the credit where credit is due…to the little sound inside of me who said keep trying when the going gets rough. Through the good times and the bad times, she was always there to help me survive.

 

Facing my Deepest Fears

 

Image from Tonik on Unsplash. 

Over the decades I have found that my gender desires have produced the biggest fears and anxiety I have ever felt.

Prime examples came from the times I was first testing the world as a transgender woman. The number of occasions I needed to sit in my car making endless tries at adjusting my hair and makeup until I felt everything was right to attempt going into whatever venue I was going to. You would think from the number of times I had to face my fears; I would have at least become used to it. But I never did. In fact, I developed my own form of trans PTSD from the number of times I was rudely rejected by the public. I could not get it out of my mind that if I was laughed at once, I could be laughed at again. Which I discovered just was not true after I learned to dress for the public of ciswomen around me.

Finally, a little confidence began to creep in, and I did better for the most part, but it seemed the fear of being myself just would not go away. Maybe I can blame my old male self who in his own way was as strong willed as my feminine self and did not want to give up all the male privilege he worked so hard to earn. His reluctance to give up pointed to a deeper problem I had. The fear of facing myself. At the same time, my dreams of even trying to become a fulltime transgender woman in the world seemed to be a far-off dream.

What I decided to do then, even though I still was experiencing deep fears about my future, was experiment by going out into the world a little at a time. I started in what I perceived as safer spaces such as shopping malls and gay venues. If and when I was successful (or grew tired of) in those places, I would try more challenging places. Lessons I learned included money overcame gender problems in the malls and I was just considered another drag queen in the gay bars and made to feel completely out of place. I discovered to enjoy myself more I would need to try to frequent the same sports bar venues I went to as a man. Where I could drink draft beer and watch my favorite team on the big screen televisions. Sure, I was scared to do it as I knew how single women were viewed in sports bars, but I had to try.

Desire overcame fear and I was successful as long as I followed my three basics of smiling, never causing problems, and tipping well. Before I knew it, I was a regular and gained the backing of the bartenders who even saw to it that I had restroom privileges. Before  I knew it, I had built a small circle of lesbian friends who shared my love of sports, as well as another transwoman. Loneliness became a thing of the past for me, and my fear of being seen as a woman was going away too.

Just when my trans confidence was at an all time high, obstacles such as drunk guys would come along and ruin my evening. The night I remember the most was when a bunch of drunks noticed my trans friend and I at the bar and started playing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” time and time again until the manager asked us to leave. We did, temporarily, because a month later when I was in a nearby competing venue, I was surprised to see one of the bartenders who was there when I was asked to leave approaching me. I was astounded to learn the manager who had kicked me out had been fired for drug use and I was invited to come back. So much for the drunks who had played that song over and over and I had put my fears to rest. To this day though, when I hear that song, I cringe.

Sadly, even though I have been in the public’s eye as a transgender woman, I still look over my shoulder when I do things like use the restroom. Fortunately, I have Liz to help me out when I have to go and mainly these days, I don’t present as trans as much as I do as old and partially immobile. I am happy these days when I can find a restroom with a handicapped stall to take my fears away.

My deepest fears now revolve around the number of ridiculous restrictive anti-transgender bills currently in the Ohio legislature. One bill would make it illegal for anyone to wear makeup different than their birth gender. Which I guess would mean the orange felon or his sidekick Vance would be arrested if they come to Ohio. I am lucky that age and years of HRT have softened my facial lines to a point of where I don’t wear much makeup at all but what about the younger transgender population. Hopefully, none of this will actually happen or the courts will strike it down.

These days, I have managed at least to calm down my fears of what will happen to me if I have to go into assisted living or if I develop dementia like my dad had. I finally came to the conclusion not to worry about something I have no control over.

I don’t know why I waited so long to be paranoid over what has made my life worth living over the years and decades. I used to be a go with the flow type of person and if I got myself into some sort of a mess, I could get myself out of it. Probably now it is because I have to depend on my wife Liz for so much. Fortunately, most of my deepest fears came from pursuing my gender truth and when I came out to myself, I proved that I was the most important person of all to be truthful with. It was not until then did my life began to change for the better and I could live without all the fear I was experiencing.

 

 

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mayur Gala

Once I stopped being a victim thinking I was the only male in the world who wanted to be feminine, I quit being so negative about my life as a whole. That is when I started to enjoy wearing my mom’s clothes and experimenting with her makeup. All I really knew was that the process of cross dressing took away the problems I was experiencing in everyday male life to the point of even relaxing me. The only real issue I had was when the next time was I could find the privacy to do it.

I even went to the point (in warm weather) of stashing a small collection of clothes and makeup in a hollowed-out tree in a woods next to our house. I was in my own world and enjoyed the privacy I had to feel the clothes and dreaming that I was one of the attractive girls I saw at school and envied very much. At that time, I did not understand how I would take on a lifetime of work to pursue my labor of love.

The first task I needed to accomplish was when I was financially able to do it, was shop for and acquire a whole new set of clothes so I could present better in a world of ciswomen I needed to compete with in many ways. The first task I needed to complete was to slim down my male body as much as I could so I could fit into more stylish clothes I was suddenly finding in all the thrift stores I was shopping at. I liked the stores for two main reasons, the first of which was price of the items displayed and secondly, I never had any problems using the changing rooms to see if the items I was looking at actually fit. Plus, the challenge of doing so much shopping was something I loved. The only problem was where I was going to store away all my fashion treasures from the prying eyes of my wife who would wonder where they came from. Fortunately, we had a huge old house with plenty of places I could store my clothes.

After I began to dramatically improve my worldly presentation and use the public as my mirror, I found myself in a position where I could blend in with the public. To test myself, I even did tricks such as wearing sunglasses where I could see the eyes of the public when they could not see mine. That way, I could tell if they were staring at me or not and I was overjoyed to learn I had passed the test, and the public was ignoring me. From there I could widen my horizons on where I was attempting to go as a novice transgender woman. I was in love!

My love ironically did not last long because very soon, I discovered the public actually wanted to interact with me. Suddenly, I needed to work on a presentable voice so I could attempt to basically communicate mainly with other women since men did not want to have anything to do with me since I left the men’s club, I used to be part of. The fact remained; I did not miss male interaction at all. It was something I never had in my male life either as I always preferred the company of women. Surprisingly to me, as I transitioned, I was having no problem gaining feminine company. Probably because ciswomen for the most part were curious about what I was doing in their world. Plus, the women did not carry the paranoia about their sexuality that men had, they were not scared of me. Finally, I was showing the ultimate honesty about who I was which many women appreciated. For any number of those reasons, I loved the interactions I was having and being able to learn more from them about being a woman than ever before.

The fact I was loving my life at this point as a transfeminine person led me to realize that for the first time, my life was headed in the right direction. I felt so natural and even happy when I followed my gender path to a point where I was allowed behind the gender curtain to see if I really wanted to give up all my male privileges and keep moving forward to my ultimate goal of starting gender affirming hormones or HRT. If I could be approved by a doctor to do it. As I always say, I was approved and the changes were magical and I was in love again.

Before you begin to think my love revolved just around me and not another human being, my future wife Liz came into my life over a decade ago and changed everything. I was in my sixties and was thinking about spending the rest of my life alone when Liz and I met on an online dating site. We got along and she turned out to be the final push I needed to leave the male world behind. She was the missing link I needed to turn my transgender life around, and I love her very much.

It feels good to say that I love someone else more than I love myself or my gender transition for the first time in my life. According to my second wife who died many years ago. It would be interesting to see now what she would have thought about the feminine person I have become.

My final point is it is said you must love yourself before you can truly love someone else. Maybe I needed to learn my true self as a transgender woman before I could love someone else. It certainly took me long enough to love myself, a lifetime for me which spanned over half a century. Once I realized my path was a long labor of love, I learned the hard way I needed to be patient. Which was difficult for me, but I made it through and learned from my labor of love.

 

 

 

 

Gender Lost and Found

 

Image from Ewoud Van Der
Brandon on UnSplash. 

On occasion, I think you must hit rock bottom in your male life before you can begin to build a new feminine one. I equate it to my own transgender lost and found in my life. Before I get into what I found when I started my path to my dreams, I decided I had to have a basic knowledge of where I wanted to go.

Seeing as how I was born into the pre-internet times when information came in magazines arriving in the mail, I was stuck in the “Transvestia” world of Virginia Prince if I wanted any information at all about transvestites or cross dressers, as Virginia called us and oh yes, we had to be heterosexual to join. Through it all, I was intrigued by the pictures of attractive men dressed as women, as well as the entire world of mixers you could go to. If you happened to live close enough to one to go which I did. Ironically, the mixers I attended did not do me much good because the only mixing which happened involved my brain when it was all over. Often, I left more confused about where I wanted to be with my gender struggles than when I started.

None of my searching was helping much and my attitude about myself was sinking to an all-time low. I felt lost and forsaken in my life and felt sorry for myself because I was the one who wanted to do away with being male and assume a feminine existence. It took me a while, but I finally backed off from being a victim and my ideas of whom I really was started to improve. I had hit rock bottom and was beginning to improve, which helped primarily my fragile mental health. My goal was to close my transgender lost and found department for good.

Sadly, I was a little ahead of my time to closing my department because I still had so much more to learn about existing and competing in a world run by ciswomen. With or without men. I labored under the impression if I could present well enough as a woman with my makeup and fashion, that would be all I needed to do to enter the world as a trans woman. I totally ignored all the layers of life a female needs to go through to be socialized into a full-fledged woman and I was painfully aware not all females make the transition. And even more aware of the path I would have to take to make my own transition because I had even farther to go to make it to my goal. I needed to be even better than the average ciswoman to be able to be accepted in the world and be allowed behind the “sacred” gender curtain which women used to provide a layer of protection from men.

On my path to going behind the gender curtain, I had at least one big stop sign I needed to work my way around. It was proving how badly I wanted to give up all my male privileges and start all over again. I just did not magically appear in the ciswoman’s world asking for admittance without paying my dues. My transgender lost department was closed as a man, and I found I had done the right thing by pursuing a feminine life. My only problem was that I was impatient about the road I was going down and constantly I wanted more. Before I knew it, I was even getting ahead of myself in the plan I had set up for my grand gender transition. Here I was busily carving out a new feminine life where no one knew me as a man while at the same time I still had a loving wife, family and good job to deal with because I knew I could lose them all when I found my transgender self completely.

My problem also was, I was filling out my gender workbook faster than I ever imagined I could and my plans were coming into focus. No longer did I have just dreams of the possibility of transition into a feminine world, I had the reality of doing it. My lost and found was gone from my male side and he had finally begun to see the reality of his situation and gave in to the feminine side of life which was taking over for better or for worse.

It was at that point in my life when I pursued my ultimate dream of pursuing HRT or gender affirming hormones as the next step in my transition to being a transfeminine person. I went to a doctor for a physical and was approved to start a minimum dosage of the precious new hormones I was taking. Almost immediately, my body began to feel the changes as if it had always been meant for them to happen. The changes always take a whole blog post to describe, but to put it simply, my internal changes such as my new emotions would fill a book. The external changes became quickly obvious too, as my hair grew along with my breasts and my skin began to soften along with the angles of my face. I can only describe the changes as amazing and magical as they made living as a man impossible to me anymore. I had to close my male life and never look back.

I can not oversimplify it enough about all the stress and work I put into to close my transgender lost and found for good. To be sure, it was a labor of love to do it, and I would have never had it any other way. If Indeed I had another choice anyhow. Once I determined I never really did, I could relax and get rid of my guilt about doing away with all the male privilege I had worked so hard to earn. In the end though, it was worth the struggle.

 

 

Trans Girl on the High Gender Board

 

Image from Navy Medicine
on UnSplash.

I remember completely when I was a kid, intensely afraid of heights, and my mom made me jump off the high diving board at the swimming pool we were at. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I still don’t know till this day how she convinced me to do it. But she did. I am sure she thought that once I did it, I could do it again, which I never did.

Perhaps, by this time, you are thinking what does this have to do with being transgender but of course I can connect the lines as always. Fast forward to the days when I was first gathering all the courage, I could muster to leave the house and attempt to explore the world as a woman. To do it, I needed to jump off that high diving board again and again. Plus, I would have to raise the diving board even higher every time I tried it.

As I did, I discovered little pockets of cross-dressing acceptance I could exist in. Such as the women’s clothing stores where almost everyone was nice to me. It took me awhile to realize the clerks who waited on me were not being nice just because I was another woman, they were being nice because I had money to spend. To them, my gender was not trans, it was green. Even though I took acceptance and built on it to other potentially mellow venues in malls such as bookstores and coffee shops. I was successful in them and was able to build my confidence from there and move up to a higher diving board and jump off. No matter how scared I was, I needed to force myself to climb and jump.

The next comfort zone I forced my way out of was by forcing myself to stop for lunch to see if I would be accepted. For the most part I was, because again, my money was green and I smiled and tipped well. The magic ingredients it turned out to be accepted into a challenging new feminine world. Or so I thought until I kept on climbing. It turned out the climbing part was the easiest. Once I arrived where I thought I wanted to be. I added “thought” in because once I made it to a higher board, the jumping part really scared me. Mainly because I was leaving so much behind me, along with all the male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. Such as fighting back when someone made fun of me for the way I looked. When it happened, the only recourse I had was to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board and try to determine what I was doing wrong.

Before long, my drawing board became quite littered with fashion mistakes I had made. Going through my cross-dressing adolescence was quite painful because I was a thirty-year-old male trying to do it before I learned otherwise. I was exhausting myself climbing up the high dive and then down when I discovered there was no water in the pool. Finally, I learned the hard way to cross-dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me because they ran the pool I wanted admission to.

It turned out that the pool was much farther down than I thought it was, and I had too much time to think about what I was trying to do before I hit the water. I had not made the time to build up the feminine muscle memory I would need to allow me admission to the world as a transgender woman. It did me no good at all if I vaguely looked like a woman if I could not move or communicate like a transfeminine person.

At that point, jumping off the high board became very real to me. I was rapidly coming to the point of decision about what I would do with my life. By this time, I was in my fifties and was beginning to carve out a respectable life as a trans woman. My new world knew what I was and did not care. About my present, or more importantly, my past as a man. I was able to bring what baggage I wanted from my male life without any interference. It made all the difference in the world to me when I needed support from wherever I could get it in the worst way.

As I lost my fear of the high dive, I began to consider other transgender alternatives such as taking advantage of therapy and HRT through the Veteran’s Administration health care system which I was already a part of. I wondered then what my mom would have thought (she had long since passed away), about teaching me to take the long and difficult path to the high board would come back to help me so much later in life. Especially when she was the one who was dead set about me coming out to her after the Army when I tried. Karma came back to help me when I needed it the most. I could jump off the highest diving board I could just to prove I could.

Of course, the final high board I jumped off was the one which saw me do away with all my male clothes and live life as a fulltime transgender woman. In reality, I was never a stylish swimmer or diver, but at least I made it to the point where I could make it in a woman’s world. A world which would prove to be much more complex and difficult for me to succeed in than I ever thought possible. Probably, because, for the most part (except for a few friends) I was filling out my gender workbook as I went along. Preparing myself for when I could achieve the ultimate goal, my lifetime dreams of living as a woman to the best of my ability.

At the least, I was happy I gathered enough courage to go ever higher on my gender diving board and more importantly jump.

 

 

 

Imagination or Knowledge

 

JJ Hart. 

In the very beginning of my transgender journey, I often wondered if it was all just part of my very active imagination. Perhaps it was all part of me secretly hoping all of my gender issues would magically go away.

Of course, my gender dysphoria never went away until much later in life when I faced up to it and all I was doing as I viewed myself in the mirror cross-dressed as a girl, was slowly instill the knowledge my trans desires were not going anywhere. In fact, back in those days, the transgender term had not even been invented to use at all. I was living in the pre-internet “dark ages” of information. All I had was the well-worn issue of “Transvestia” from Virginia Prince to connect me at all to the world of people who had the same gender issues as I did. Closets were impossibly dark and lonely back then.

It took the knowledge of my situation to finally break into the light and see the world as a small part of who I really was. I finally used my issue of “Transvestia” to locate nearby mixers which were headlined for heterosexual transvestites only. If that was true or not, I found a diverse mixture of people attending which ranged from beginning cross-dressers all the way to impossibly feminine transsexual women heading for gender surgeries. The frustrating part for me was that even with the choice of individuals I felt close to, I could not find a group to hang out with. I was frustrated that I had come this far to still feel this completely different. The light was there, but it was very dim due to my complete misunderstanding of who I really was.

The one fact I was waking up to was that none of what I was feeling was my imagination. My gender issues ran very deep and would be very difficult to solve. As I always point out, since I was so busy being an active man at the time, the conflict was real. Once I realized what I was really battling. On the plus side, about this time, the internet became part of my life, and I was able to see and even reach out to others like me. It was all well and good until my second wife, who was more computer savvy than me, caught on to what I was doing and tried to stop me. After I used my imagination to find ways around her, I was still able to build knowledge of what it would look like if I was actually able to enter the world as a transgender woman.

Once I began to really explore the world as a novice transfeminine person, I really had to use my imagination to succeed in getting out every spare moment I had from work. I would purposely schedule myself off from my work on the days I knew my wife was going to be working late just so I had free time for exploration, is a prime example. In that case, imagination became knowledge as I actually began to explore what I needed to explore behind the gender curtain. Even to the point of making new friends who had no knowledge at all of my previous male life which I was trying hard to do away with.

More importantly, as I sat myself up for success in venues I really wanted to be in as a woman, imagination further faded as knowledge sat in as I was able to fill out my gender notebook. No more gay venues for me where I was treated as a drag queen and even ignored when I tried to order a drink, all the way to be treated as a regular where I wanted to be was the knowledge that I needed to succeed further.

During this time also, I spent a lot of time soul searching about if I was doing the right thing about attempting to femininize myself even more with my new lifestyle and going even further my seeing it I could be approved for HRT. Mainly because I felt so natural as my feminine self among ciswomen, I thought I would take the path of least resistance and continue building knowledge of taking the gender leap I was considering. In essence, I was taking all the imagination that the young girl in front of the mirror away and replacing it with the knowledge of what I could expect living as a fulltime transgender woman. I needed all the knowledge I could get because the risks in jumping the gender border were so great. It all meant saying goodbye to all the male privileges I had worked so hard to build up. Not to mention the extra pressure of the possibility of giving up spouse, family, friends and employment as I knew it. I needed to be prepared to burn it all and start over.

What I ended up doing was, hedging my bets a little by making new friends in a new feminine life which I hoped would soften the fall if I decided to jump off the cliff and never go back to my male self. At this point, I always mention all the women who helped me along but somehow, I miss the most important one, my inner female who came through in a big way when she was allowed to run my life for a change. Once I gave her the platform to flourish, there was no imagination of the path she was going to take.  She took the highroad without all the evilness you see in some fulltime transgender women. She just wanted to enjoy her life and be an active part of the world and the LGBTQ community. And she wanted to help others by writing about her experiences.

Which brings me full circle to where I am today. No imagination, just the knowledge of experience to get me by in the world.