Did I Get it Right?

Out to eat with my wife Liz on left. 

I make no secret of the amount of major moves I needed to make to how I arrived to live my life as a transgender woman. Now at my advanced age of seventy four, I wonder if did I get it right.

Of course like most of you, I needed to give up much more than my unusual white male privileges to transition. Along the way, there were marriages/ spouses, friends, family and job losses to deal with. In other words, many sacrifices to make to follow my gender path. In other ways, destiny and years enabled me to transition to a feminine life. My one big deterrent was my relationship with my second wife who in no uncertain terms was telling me she did not want to live with another woman. In fact she made it abundantly clear she didn't like my woman self at all. Except when she needed help with her make up. What could I say? She was correct when she said she didn't sign up for all the gender issues she was now dealing with in our marriage. 

Most of you know she died suddenly from a massive heart attack. The tragedy freed me up to do my own thing. My own thing turned out to be I quickly turned to my own woman for comfort. I discovered almost immediately, I got it right as I was having the time of my life as I explored a new world as an out transgender woman. 

I also found I got it right when I discovered other women in the world who would accept me without having any knowledge of my old male past. When I did, I was able to really begin to live a new life of my dreams. I also did it right on how I was able to raise my daughter who ended up being one of my biggest supporters to this day. However, I didn't get it right with my brother and his in-laws who roundly rejected me. Sadly, by this time, most all of my very few real friends had passed away so coming out to many people was not a problem. 

So, by waiting so long to complete my male to female gender transition worked out right to me plus, even though I was not enjoying my old male life anymore, I still took advantage of the male privileges I would lose. It finally got to the point it was ridiculous to continue a life anymore split between the two major binary genders. The stress and tension became too much for my mental health to sustain and I tried alcohol to solve my gender problems.

I did it right and stopped drinking as much as I did before I permanently injured my body and when I moved to Cincinnati to live with my future wife Liz. Liz encouraged me to permanently leave my male life behind and live fulltime as a woman with her when she told me she never had seen any male in me at all. Even when I was trying to be.

Finally, I really did it right when I was medically cleared to begin taking gender affirming hormones. My body accepted the changes easily and I loved them. So all in all, I did it right when I decided to transition into a full time transgender woman. Destiny was leading the way the whole time and the only mistake I made was when I tried to get in it's way.

  

 

The Right Fit

 

Image from the Jessie Hart
Archive

No matter of all the trials and tribulations I went through on my long and eventful transgender journey, I still felt as if everything was the right fit for me. 

Included were all the dark nights when I first began to attempt to test the public as a novice cross dresser (or transvestite). Predictably, in many occasions I was stared at, all the way to being subjected to outright laughter. One time even, I caught one couple trying to take an unwanted picture of me. I call this period of my life, my mirror time. 

Along the way it seemed all I was doing was moving from mirror to mirror seeking the validation of who I really was as my feminine self. In stores, I would always try to seek out well placed mirrors so I could selfishly admire myself. Even to the point of going to the big remodeling/construction box stores so I could look at myself in their selection of mirrors. Through it all, I was slowly building my confidence to come out of my gender shell and face the world. Predictably, I started with store clerks and worked my way forward to others who would actually try to interact with who I was. With my experience in the restaurant/bar industry I knew the benefit of becoming a regular at the bar. I learned the benefit of being hard to forget was a benefit when it came to being remembered. By saying hard to forget, I mention it in a positive way as I tried hard to never be the cause of any negative feelings and always tipped well.

The more I tried to explore the world as a novice transgender woman when the term began to be used, the more I knew it was the right fit for me because I felt so natural once I moved past being so nervous in my new life. I tried more and more venues until I learned (the hard way) which ones I was not welcome in. Ironically one of the first places I felt unwelcome was in a male gay venue where I was treated as a drag queen and had to struggle to even get a drink. The whole scene ended up being beneficial because it sent me back to the bar food/sports venues I was comfortable in. And it was long before I was accepted in several of those and loving my new life. Definitely I had found the right fit, for the time being.

As I was essentially living my dream, deep down I knew the next step I wanted to try was hormone replacement therapy. HRT was not a given for me because of my age and I needed to secure permission from a doctor. I was healthy enough and received a prescription to begin a minimum dosage of Estradiol pills and a testosterone blocker. I couldn't believe the changes which started to happen almost immediately. I knew again, without a shadow of a doubt I had found the right fit as I went through my own version of  a feminine  puberty. Even with the unpleasant hot flashes I experienced the remainder of my body developing as well as my emotional changes were welcome. All of a sudden, I was more subject to moods and I cried for the first time in my life. I even felt temperature changes and my sense of smell became stronger. 

All the radical changes I was going through, proved to me how I had done the right thing by starting HRT. Perhaps my body just was waiting for me to find the right fit my entire life.