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| Image from Maximus Beaumont on UnSplash. |
Over the years, I experienced slow progress towards achieving my transgender background which I refused to accept.
What I did to exist with my gender dysphoria was to cross
dress when I could, all the way to attending Halloween parties completely
dressed as a woman every year. When I did, I could judge the reactions of the
public to me. Eventually though, the part-time cross-dressing and annual
Halloween parties were not enough. Which led me to explore more and more the
world as a novice transgender woman. Being a novice, I suffered too many bumps
and bruises as my world changed from male to female. Primarily because my male
ego was suffering at the abuse he was taking when he tried to give up control
to my long hidden feminine self. He thought wearing ultra short mini skirts
would be enough to gain acceptance into a female world.
When just the opposite happened, he needed to grudgingly
give up more and more control in my life so I could progress and even briefly
thrive as a transgender woman. When I started to look around at other women
around me and began to blend in with them, I started to be successful in my
life. In fact, I was too successful at
times when I started to be accepted in the world. I began to look for more places
to go to see if I could progress my life as a transgender woman. Keep in mind,
at that time, living a life as a transfeminine person was still a distant
dream. Fortunately, I was receiving enough positive feedback to keep moving.
I discovered most of the world did not care about me, even though
I felt all eyes were on me as a woman. Women were looking me up and down to see
what made me tick while at the same time, for the most part, men were ignoring me
because I was not that attractive. I started to progress in my new gender when
I began to have confidence in myself knowing the world could get over it when
and if I ran into any problems I could survive. At the same time, I was
improving my wardrobe and makeup skills, which helped me to improve my life as
a transgender woman. All of a sudden, I realized I could achieve my dream of
living in a feminine world, but I still had a long way to go.
Progression began to happen much more quickly, even though I
had roadblocks on my path in areas such as communication. Naturally I knew women
had an entirely different way of communicating than men. Direct communication
was out, and passive indirect communications were in. I needed to learn quickly
how to look another woman in the eye and try to judge what she was thinking
about me.
Through it all, I had a wife and
very active male life to deal with. Neither wanted me to succeed in my dream
life. At certain points of time, the
noise of life around me was deafening and neither would step up to help me as I
was trying to adjust to a new scary existence. I was alone. I thought. But I
wasn’t, I had my long hidden feminine self to step up and help me. She took
over as if she had never been forced into the background her entire life. She
led me to be the person I should have always been.
I was able to progress through the
final steps I needed to make to succeed. The combination of women friends,
experience and hormones (HRT) provided me with the final push to shove my male
self into the closet for good. Even still, the final decision to give all my
male clothes away took a lot of thought. Finally, one night, I could take the
pressure no longer and needed to make the move to live my dream. When I did,
the pressure was off, and I had a new lease on life. Once I lifted the weight I
had carried for so long, I was a new person and had progressed towards my dream.
I also wondered what took me so long to make the move. Fifty years of cross-dressing
and testing the world was far too long and my mental health suffered because of
it.
Finally, I made the choices which
should have been obvious to me all the time and decided to reach out and grasp
my transgender dreams.
