A Destination or a Retreat into Trans Womanhood

Image from Brian Wangenheim
on UnSplash. 

As a youth, all I did when I failed at a male task was to seek the reassuring feelings of my feminine clothes and makeup. I knew then I would not have the male world I hated for a while.

The pattern continued with me into adulthood and was even expanded to include a better sense of wardrobe and makeup as I ventured into the world. But then it started to slowly reverse as I started to blend in with the ciswomen around me. Increasingly, I was feeling better about the progress I was making as a serious cross-dresser and wanted to do more as I moved towards being a transgender woman in my mind. Even though I was still extremely lonely as my feminine self, I was starting to embrace the unique person that I was. Afterall, how many people get to experience both sides of the primary genders in their lives.

On occasion, I even reverted to appreciating all the male privileges I had learned after a particularly brutal day of exploring the world of cross-dressing. Early on there were many I needed to go through as I continued to pay my dues to get to my dream of possibly living my life as a transfeminine person. Not a man.

Even though mixing genders was beginning to have a bit of normalcy for me, I came to the point where I would not recommend the journey to just anyone who was not totally committed to it. My mental health, which was already frail at the time, did not take easily to the journey ahead and it suffered. Again, sending me back to the comparative safety of the only other life I had learned to live successfully when I was competing as a man in the world.  At that point, it was difficult to tell if I was on a trans destination or a male retreat. The only thing that kept me going down my path was the deep sense of satisfaction or gender euphoria I felt when everything was going better when I interacted with the world as my true authentic self. Free and out of the closet for a change.

It took me years of experimentation in public, as I set up my own personal bucket list of what I perceived to be the real-world ciswomen had to face in their lives. I figured out why I would want to go there if I could not make it. In other words, I kept challenging my feminine self to do more and more such as do more than just spend very little time in public just walking around or shopping in easy venues such as women’s clothing stores where your money overcomes any reaction to your possible gender when it came to testing myself. I certainly then was setting myself up for a possible transgender destination in my life as I worked my way through my bucket list.

As with anything else in life, all I had learned about being in the world was not all positive and I found myself deeper into my quest to cross the gender border and complete my male to female femininization project. I learned the hard way to try to not get myself into questionable safety situations that women know not to get into that do not bother men. It seemed the gender universe was testing me on certain nights such as the one I needed to fend off negative advances from a much bigger cross-dresser admirer at a party I was at with the help of my second wife. Something I never bargained for as I went around a blind corner on my gender path. It was easier to think about erasing all my male privileges such as safety but harder to learn what to replace them with.

I do not think I ever did replace my new lack of intelligence with the cismen I interacted with as I was mansplained more times than I cared to remember by men of questionable intellect. Such as the tow truck driver I was forced into a conversation with one night when he was towing my car home. I had to sit there, and act interested when he had to tell me all the workings of his truck. Like I cared when all I wanted was to get home safe and sound. Which I did. All the bucket lists in the world did not prepare me for the reality of living a feminine life, but even still, I was loving everything I learned behind the gender curtain. If I was ever a girl scout, I would earn merit badges like what to do if your car breaks down when you are by yourself and the first person who stops to help is a sheriff. Who would not listen to me when I was trying to explain to him and the tow driver the easiest way to my house. I finally just gave up.

It soon was becoming obvious to me that I was no longer retreating behind my dresses and makeup to cover any vestiges of a male life I wanted to cover up. Instead, my full-fledged female life was a complete destination. A destination I wanted to do more than anything I ever had done in my life. There would be no more retreating back to my male world. No matter how easy it would have been to do it because he had always kept a comfortable home for me if I ever wanted to return. Much to his disappointment, I continued my feminine destination into the world of HRT gender affirming hormones which separated me farther from ever hiding again in my old unwanted male world.

HRT was certainly the end for any thoughts of ever returning to my old male self because I felt to increasingly natural when I took them. It was as if my body was telling me what took so long as my external self-synced up with the woman, I always saw myself to be. It just took me years to get there. Which was the tragic result of me not listening to myself.

Thanks for reading along on a few of my trials and tribulations of my gender journey. I hope yours is much smoother. Any comments are always appreciated.

 

 

Discovery in a Trans Life

 

Image from Spencer Davis
on UnSplash. 

Without knowing it, my life has turned into a path of gender discovery. When I woke up this morning and looked in the mirror, I discovered yet again what the magic of HRT hormones had done for me and how fortunate I was to be in the situation I was in. But it was not always that way.

Like many of you, my discovery began when I was spending too much of my time as a youth exploring my mom’s clothing and makeup. From that point forward I was hooked as I tried my best not to destroy any of mom’s clothes as I outgrew them. Possibly, I was successful because she never said anything to me about her wardrobe which was fairly extensive for a high school teacher back in those days. In the 1960’s.

Very early on, as I was making gender discoveries left and right, I ended up refusing to accept the most important one. That my life was much deeper than just wearing girls’ clothes in front of the mirror, I really wanted to be a girl. If I had the information tools to know it, instead of just liking the clothes and the look, I was in fact, transgender. The problem was, this was way before the internet and social media years, so I had no access to the world of cross-dressers than my occasional delivery of “Virginia Prince’s” “Transvestia” magazine. Once I received my newest edition, I could compare how I looked with all the other cover girls in the issue. To be sure, a real discovery came from every issue.

Perhaps, most importantly, were the back of the issue pages which I discovered advertised “Tri-Ess” social mixers for so called straight transvestites all over the country. Including ones in my native Ohio which I discovered were within driving distance of me. From that point forward, I wanted to personally attend a social and see where I fit into a gender system which I felt so alone in. When I gathered the resources and courage to do it, I signed up for a social/mixer which was a couple hours away from me. That sparked my first big discovery of my transgender life. By being around like-minded people for the first time in my life, I hoped my loneliness would go away. Sadly, it did not because I still felt alone in the middle of a crowded room. I am sure part of it had to do with my inherent shyness, and the rest from going through for the first time how it felt to be without my learned male self-protection privileges. Starting all over as myself was an initial shock.

In the protected world I was from, I had no idea of how many layers of people I would meet on the gender spectrum. My eyes were opened from meeting cigar smoking cross dressers who seemed to be denying the fact that they were there at all. All the way to the impossibly feminine transsexuals who had been on HRT and were headed to gender realignment surgeries. The problem was that I did not know where I fit in the new system I was seeing.

I just knew I needed to figure it out which meant a deep exploration into my inner self, no matter how painful it might be. Discovery then took on a new meaning to me as I explored the world as a transgender woman trying to carve out a life for herself. At the time, I was only going to gay venues to see if I could meet a like minded individual there but quickly learned I could not and took the next best step to try to test myself out by discovering if the straight world would accept me. By doing so, I found myself in all kinds of different situations in everything from small lesbian bars to big straight casual dining venues such as TGIF. After some scary beginnings, I discovered I could fit in on my own terms. Which surprised me beyond my greatest expectations. I was also learning that my goal of living an everyday life as a trans woman just maybe could be within reach. If I wanted it bad enough.

I did discover I did want a transfeminine life enough to sort out my male baggage I would not need on a male to female gender transition. It seemed my path for the first time was lit up like a new highway to my future if I wanted it. The best part was I was still discovering what it meant to be myself as I made a new world for my long-awaited transgender woman to emerge and live in. It is not often that a human has a chance to re-invent themselves and enjoy the challenge of doing it but I got there. I discovered by putting myself out there in the world I could build a new feminine life from the ashes of my old male life, I even went online and my wife Liz found me on a dating site, and we have been together for nearly fourteen years now. I was prepared at that time to spend the rest of my life alone and discovered I did not have to. It was a real surprise.

Over what has turned out to be a long life, I have been able to make many discoveries which have aided my progress in the world. Including more than a few which I never thought would happen such as my relatively easy time in the Army all the way to me being able to make my way to living a life as a fulltime transgender woman. While, at the same time retaining some of my most important male building blocks along the way.

I hope you have the chance to make your own discoveries in your life that you deserve. Enjoying your discoveries should be a part of your pleasure.

Thanks for reading along and comments are always appreciated.