How Did I Get Here

 

Image from Colton Sturgeon 
on UnSplash.

Often, I sit back and wonder how I ever arrived here as a fulltime transgender woman. Then, the reality of my life comes around and shows me the power of my dreams so long ago.

Some of my dreams I realized and some I did not, which is probably similar to any person’s life. I am biased, but I think a trans woman’s, or transgender man’s life is sufficiently different from most of the population to be mentioned. I think that very few boys' most prominent dream of what they wanted to be when they grew up was NOT a woman. Mine was. Even though I was into sports completely, I did not have any dreams of advancing into upper-level competition when all I wanted was to be one of the pretty cheerleaders on the sidelines. 

I wanted to be a girl so bad with their pretty dresses and long hair, I even dreamed about being a girl in my dreams and was extremely disappointed when I had to go back to my old boring male life. I just hoped that someday I could find my way out of the closet I had built for myself. On the other hand, I thought just maybe I would outgrow my gender dysphoria when in fact, what happened was I grew into it. As the years began to fly by, my skill at makeup and dressing myself in feminine clothes became better with time. 

What did not become better with time was me being able to sneak out of the house and away from the mirror which lied to me about my appearance and head out into the public’s eye. When I was out in my new high heels trying my best to look natural everywhere I went, I kept asking myself how I got here and why would I want to leave all the male privileges I earned along the way behind me. Mainly the natural defense that most men have simply because they are males in the world. If I was harassed for being my new transfeminine self, what would I do? Luckily the worst harassment I ever received was being laughed at early on and later having the police called on me for using the women’s restroom. I simply retreated quickly to my cross-dressing drawing board to become better as a novice trans woman and the female cop who answered my call just told me to go on my way. No harm to either except to my frail feminine ego. 

I keep writing about my failures in life because as humans we all have them and when we do,we need to pick ourselves back up and learn from them. When I faced my biggest obstacles, I needed to understand in the worst way that I really wanted to be in the new exciting yet scary life I was in, but how much was I going to give up continuing it. Building parallel successful binary gender lives was not the long term way to go. In the end, one had to go. 

The best I could do then was stay out in the world of ciswomen and see if I could make it on my own. It meant attempting to experience the good and the bad of a woman’s life to see if I could earn my way across the gender border into my own version of transgender womanhood. During this time, I did the best I could to establish myself as a totally new person, which meant leaving any vestiges of my male life behind to total strangers. There was no time for me to consider how I got there when I was interacting with the public. Again, I was fortunate in that most of the world was accepting to me and my problems were rare. 

I found myself at a point where I never thought I could be and that was being able to live a quality life across the gender border and being able to be shown the way behind the magical gender curtain I always wanted. Once I got there, my final answer was no surprise. I never wanted to go back to my old male life. Then it was up to me to figure out what to do about all the leftover male baggage I had accumulated over the years. 

As I was figuring all this out, it never occurred to me to consider how I got to such a different point in my life. Afterall, how many other humans have the chance to live such a unique life seeing the world from both sides of the main binary genders. It was not until then did I begin to enjoy where I was in life and the challenge of building a new one. Taking a life down and building a new one is certainly not for a weak person and not becoming a victim when you are down is a key to success to figuring out how you got here. 

Even today, as I prepare for a big dinner out with spiritual friends tonight and I am putting together an outfit, it still feels slightly different for me. For the dinner, we are supposed to bring an object or picture from a departed loved one and I chose the picture I recently found of my dad in 1951 with his dog. Since I have long since made peace with my mom who I tried to come out to when I got out of the Army, I never did try to come out to dad. Looking back, maybe I tried the wrong person, and I blame myself for never giving him the chance to know his daughter. Now this is as close as I can come to letting him know how I got here. Maybe too, since I have had the chance to live my transgender dream as long as I have, I would have been in a better place to explain it to dad. His death took that away from me sadly.

I hope you are on the path to discovering your place in the world. Thanks for experiencing mine. Comments are always appreciated!

2023 A New Year

 I am not sure which part of my life led me to be so short sighted in my thinking and planning. Perhaps it was the time during college or the military when I was forced to pick up and move every several years.

Along the way, I thought perhaps being transgender had an extreme baring on my short term thinking. I was always trying my best to not establish any long term relationships or even friendships because I never knew when I was going to have to give them up. If the friends or family discovered my deep dark secret of wanting to be a woman.

Maybe all of this background life led me to a point of where I tended to take each New Years as just another opportunity to drink quite a bit of alcohol. Many times, I didn’t even know if the current job I had would be long term enough to think about having a resolution about it. Luckily I was in a career field which offered the possibility of many and varied new jobs. So changing jobs to out run my gender issues became easier to do.

Even though now I didn’t drink much alcohol at all on New Years Eve, I still didn’t make any major resolutions. I just hope I can be more active in the New Year.

I understand it takes approximately sixty five or six days to establish a resolution into a habit. At the least I don’t have to worry about counting off the days to make a new habit I may have to work to change later. Maybe that should be my resolution isn’t one. Maybe one possibility I should take into consideration is thanking all of you for stopping by for taking the time to read my work. So many of you have taken the time to subscribe, clap or comment on my posts. I appreciate all of your effort more than I can say.

See you in the New Year!

My First Black Friday

Prior to finally getting out of the closet and beginning to explore the world as my true feminine self, I always considered The Black Friday estrogen filled shopping experience as one I would never be able to explore.

Image Courtesy Marcus Spiske
on UnSplash

As luck would have it, my time to make it out with the largely feminine masses who frequent the Black Friday shopping experience was about  to happen. For those of you who may be across the pond and not know, Black Friday comes on the day after Thanksgiving and normally offers all sorts of sales to entice shoppers to spend their money. My second wife was a big fan (until she found herself in a retail job) and rarely missed a chance to shop very early. Often with a couple of her best women friends. Leaving me to be quite envious.

Finally since my wife was working the day shift at the bookstore she managed,  I saw my opening to be free to explore my first Black Friday shopping experience with many other women. Back in those days it took me longer to get ready and femininize myself so I sat my alarm to go off approximately the time I knew my wife would be leaving. Following making sure she had safely departed I climbed out of bed, knocked down a cup of coffee and proceeded to shave my legs and face. New pamty hose followed  by my bra, false breasts and padded hips. The excitement was building as I carefully applied my makeup and reached for my fuzzy oversized warm sweater which I wore with a knee length skirt, flats for comfortable mall walking and my blond shoulder length wig. Once I was satisfied with the way I looked, off I went to meet the great unknown, as a woman. 

Predictably, parking spaces were at a premium but I was able to park fairly close to the side entrance I always used. Once I was inside the mall, I was used to where I should try to go to pick up an extra gift or two and I was not surprised to see the crowd was at least two thirds women. All of which made it easier for me to blend in. As the morning progressed, I made my way through the mall with no problems what so ever since everyone else was in their own worlds and on a shopping mission. Giving them very little time to notice a stray transgender woman in their midst. 

Back in those days also I had sort of a cross dressing "bucket list" of new feminine experiences I just had to try to see if I could accomplish them. Braving the crowds of Black Friday shopping was on the list to conquer. Once I did make it through the experience I wondered what all the fuss was about. Similar to my women's restroom experiences. So called "sacred spaces" reserved for cis women just weren't that special to me. 

On the plus side, I was able to buy several gifts for my shopping list which were much more fun to shop for as a woman rather than my old male self. Once I accomplished going through a real live Black Friday experience successfully. I was finished with the thrill and actually have never done it again. I replaced it with trips to antique malls to search for vintage gifts for my wife who was really into gardening. 

All in all, discovering the vintage garden gifts made for better gifts anyhow and was more fun to do. So I was able to accomplish two priorities at once  The problem was when I had to return home with my treasures and have to return to my male cross dressed life. I couldn't wait until I could shed my old male clothes and sneak out the door as my feminized self again. When I was able to buy my wife a gift at the same time, it made it all so worthwhile.

Back in the Saddle

 The first big holiday and the official kick off for summer has happened and moved on. It was also Memorial Day which I believe is not celebrated for the right reasons by too many people in the United States. They are more concerned with having a good time, rather than remembering all of those who lost their lives in any of the seemingly endless wars we as a country become involved in. None of that matters to all of those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice.

 Putting all of that behind us, summer is finally here around where I live in Southwest Ohio, Cincinnati, USA. On cue, the temperatures have risen and it's time to pull out all of my tank tops and T shirts out of my wardrobe and wear them again. Seasonal changes around here to me allow me one of the fun things of being a transgender woman. Back in the day when I was a cross dresser before I transitioned, I couldn't wait for certain seasons to roll around. Specifically fall when I could wear my leggings and sweaters. Back then I had considerably more to cover up. Examples would be my hairy arms and legs.

These days of course hormone replacement therapy has reduced my body hair to a fraction of what is was and my breasts are large enough to notice in a tank top or tee shirt. I am so fortunate to finally be able to tie my hair back in a long pony tail wear no makeup and take the dog for a walk. All those years of being so envious of other women are nearly totally in my past. One of first things I noticed about HRT was when my body's thermostat had changed. All of a sudden I felt colder than I ever felt before. Quickly I understood all the women I secretly made fun for being cold weren't kidding. Most certainly my new thermostat does help in the warmer months of summer time.

Yesterday, it all seemingly came together when my partner Liz and I were invited to her son's new apartment for supper. On the way over, we stopped at a convenience store to pick up beverages and ice cream. It was fun and satisfying to be referred to as "ladies" twice when we were in the store. Of course the men who called us "ladies" had no way of knowing how long and hard I had worked to earn that title.

Other than that, the weekend was very uneventful for us. I am still trying to build up my endurance to see if I can attempt the "Cincinnati Pride" pub crawl which returns this year following it's Covid hiatus of two years, It's coming up in approximately three weeks, so I still have a little time to work on it. 

In the meantime, I am attempting to change my walks around to not having to face the hot/humid weather we have right now.