Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

I spent most of my life in the gender lost and found department.

It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What was lost was now found.

Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was lost in a life I did not want.

Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma. But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were holding me back.

What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from there.

The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.

As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person, not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.

The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.

Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of being a transgender person.

Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.

 

 

 

  

My Gender Timing was Everything

 

Image from Danny G
on UnSplash. 

For me, timing was everything when it came to completing my male to female gender transition. Plus, there was no way possible to think I would take nearly a half of century to do it.

The problem was, I never considered the extra layers of a ciswoman’s life rather than what a man had to go through to live. Just having to put up with a man in a relationship would have been enough for me to drive me into a lesbian relationship. Although I never really understood why more men don’t want to accept trans women because we understand so much about the way they think because after all, we had to live as a man for a while. But that is a long, drawn-out story to be saved for another time.

In many ways, timing comes down to everything when you decide to jump out of your closet and enter the world. Just a few things to consider are what would happen to you if you were out as your authentic feminine self and ran into someone you know. It happened to me one time long ago when I was married to my second wife. I was happily following my shopping routines in the small Ohio town we lived in when I parked in a parking lot, slid out of my car and right into the on-coming face of my wife’s boss. As I panicked and headed the other way as fast as I could, all I could hope for was he did not recognize me in my wig, makeup, mini skirt and matching leotard top. Fortunately, as I got a quick glimpse of his face, he showed no reaction to me at all.

I thought the experience was behind me until a week or so later, we were invited to a party at their house. At the party, her boss casually brought up how he had seen this big woman at a big box store he was shopping at the other day.  As I ignored the comment the best I could, I saw my wife suddenly glaring at me from across the room, and I knew what she was thinking. It was me; her boss saw that day. It took me a long time to live that one down because I was never supposed to leave the house as a trans woman unless I was somehow supervised.

Timing kept me living on the edge with my job too. What if my “hobby” of being a cross dresser was discovered? I knew I would not be able to function the way my male self-had all his life. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place on several personal fronts. I was becoming increasingly dependent on my lessons I was teaching myself as a woman and keeping my personal life together. All I could do was keep on working towards my dream of living as a transfeminine person. As I progressed along my often-rocky gender path, all I could do was look for a quick exit. But I found out, exits were as rare as on a long-deserted interstate highway.

It was not until I reached my mid-fifties, did I begin to see the faint out-lines of a possible gender exit ahead for me. All I needed to do was time my male exit correctly so I could cover the main living basics such as spousal support (or nonsupport), a job to support name changes, all the way to all the identification forms I would need such as a new driver’s license. For me, the name change was the most challenging because I needed to go before a very conservative judge I even knew before as a man. Surprisingly, he just smiled and approved my paperwork and name change and the rest was basically easy. So timing on that exit went smoothly with no roadblocks.

Other exits were not so forgiving for me. Such as what was I going to do about a job at that time. I had just closed my restaurant and was essentially broke, and I needed to find a job fairly quickly to support myself. I guess timing was everything and I took an easy exit into a job that I hated. I took the job anyway and managed to keep it for the couple of years I needed to work to claim my early retirement and keep myself afloat by selling vintage collections that my deceased wife and I had put together over the years. During this time of my life, there were other main detours which were difficult to navigate.

That was when my current wife Liz stepped in along with a huge push from destiny to erase any doubts in my mind that I was making the right decisions. I can not forget to mention this was also the time when I was able to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones and take another smooth exit away from my old male life. Putting him in my rearview mirror was the best move I had ever made in my life. I had a new me to go with my new name, and I was ready to go by the time I hit the age of sixty-two. I did not even have to revisit another job exit and just totally retired and moved in with Liz. Where I still am nearly a decade later.

Timing was everything for me, and even though it took me longer than I ever expected to reach my dream, the trip was worth it and I managed to even stay on a very rocky gender road full of roadblocks without wrecking.

 

 

 

If You Dream it, Can you Do It

 

Image from Alaric Duan
on UnSplash.

Dreams can be a motivational tool or a cruel mistake to follow.

Often dreaming it and doing it are two vastly different things. As I always mention, some of the most serious and reoccurring dreams I experienced were those which I was a pretty girl and those dreams carried over into real life with me wanting to be a woman when I became older. For years and years, it seemed to be an impossible dream. As it was impossible to see the future.

Initially, the future just looked bleak to me when my cards told me I would be a male for life. I was born into it, now I had to get over it. I can honestly say I worked hard at being the best man I could. Even to point where I did not appreciate the toxic male behavior, I was witnessing around other males I was with.  I am sure now, I was feeling how my feminine side was reacting to the spectacle I was witnessing. It certainly affected me when I first encountered toxic males when I entered the world as a transgender woman. I was paranoid and considered myself an easy target for them. Still, my dream would not go away, and I continued along my path to gender freedom. Sometimes, my life was like I had climbed a big hill and from the summit I could see my dream life in the distance. If only I could get there and was it just another impossible dream.

In the meantime, I became as good as I could on leading a life which included a heavy dose of male status quo. In other words, I was doing all the right things possible to maintain a proper male life, while at the same time attempting to still see if my dream was a possibility. There were just too many gender variables to ignore. Such as spouse, family, friends and employment. I just had to see if my dream could ever become a reality, and if it could, how would I do it. As I was heavily embedded in the male culture and it seemed as if I was getting deeper in over my head every day. I became so sick and tired of having two people compete for my life and every time I did something as a man, having my woman want to do it too. There was no escape, even on vacation when I was trying to run from myself. All that happened was I would grow frustrated with my situation and ruin the whole vacation with my wife when she kept asking what was wrong. There was no way I could tell her the truth and that I rather be spending my time as a woman.

Until I made it out into the world as a novice transfeminine person, did I begin to see I could indeed have a chance to make it to my ultimate goal of joining the society of cisgender women as much of an equal as I could manage. Or would I be roundly rejected and my dream shattered. Of course, during this time of my life, I needed to really consider what I wanted (or needed) to do. Happily, I discovered there was a place in the world for trans women like me if I approached my dream the right way. I decided to try to slow my life down so I could see the big picture. What the big picture showed me was there indeed was a path to my dream.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to quit obsessing about worrying so much about my appearance and start concentrating on me the best I could. I had spent years doing appearance and achieved all my goals for presenting as a woman. Then it was time for the me who was waiting for her chance to shine for all those years could come out and not  to be outdone. She did not disappoint and she quickly surpassed what my male self-had attempted to do for all those years and proved she was much more than a dream. She emerged as a real person who had paid her dues. I was not the prettiest girl in the room, but I could be the nicest and let my personality rule.

Because of several fortunate events, I was able to see my dream up close and seize it. I am sure if you asked that kid gazing at a girl in the mirror who was him if he would ever make it to living his dream of living as a woman, he would have said you were crazy. He had no way of knowing all the ups and downs and twists and turns gender dysphoria would take him during his life. If nothing else, it made life interesting and taught me a lot about human nature.

For me, dreaming it was doing it. Mainly because I had no other dreams to sidetrack me. I was very much a live and let live person and let life come to me. Except of course, when it came to my gender issues which took years to overcome.

Being humans, we all have different dreams, and I hope whatever your dream is, that you realize it and make sure it is not a nightmare, Surely, if you do your research, it won’t be and you can live your version of yourself as a transgender woman.

 

 

Running...Always Running

 

Image from Filip Mroz 
on UnSplash. 

During my life, I have never thought of myself as a runner of any sort. I have never completed any marathons, or long distance runs anywhere except the Army in basic training when I had to.

In basic, all I really learned about running was to never try to look behind you and see how fast if anyone was gaining on you. Mainly because I was never the fastest person running and I was trying to compete against the clock. Not another person. Lessons which came back and helped me later in life when I set out to battle my gender dysphoria. I would have been so much better off if I had never looked back to see who was chasing me.

For the longest time, I took up too much of my mental universe either worrying about what someone else thought about me or worse yet, feeling extreme jealousy over the way another woman looked. I discovered that I was just wasting my time when I spent too much time or effort on both. Which I was doing. There was no way possible that everyone was going to accept me because no matter what I was doing, there seemed to be to be someone else on my wavelength to tell me something was wrong with what I was doing. And as far as being jealous of the way another ciswoman looked, I discovered later in life that there had not been a woman born yet who did not find some sort of flaw in the way she looked. My job was to do the best I could and work with what I had to present my best transfeminine to the world.

Instead of turning around and wasting time and energy watching who was gaining on me, to succeed I needed to throw all my limited resources towards filling out my gender workbook as fast as possible. If someone did like me because I was a transgender woman, that was their problem not mine.

The main problem I needed to solve about me running from my problems was all the moving and job changes I was putting myself and my family through. Even though all the job interviews and moving around was exhausting, I used the process to run from my inner most feelings…that I wanted to quit being a male and live a feminine life. Behind every job move that I made, there was the ulterior motive of wanting to make my life back then as a cross dresser potentially easier. Ultimately, that is the reason I made moves from places like my conservative hometown in Ohio all the way to New York City where I thought I could find a much more liberal existence.

Finally, I went nearly full circle and landed back in my old hometown, but the difference was this time I would be much closer to Columbus, Ohio where I had contacts in the cross dressing-transgender community. By doing so, I even managed to land a much better job which I had worked for years to get. For once, it seemed I was putting my running life behind me, but I really wasn’t. Not until I finally was able to face myself about my true lifelong issues such as (you guessed it) why I wanted to be a transgender woman. To do so, I still had the usual obstacles in the way such as what was I ever going to do about the twenty year plus marriage I was in and the great job I had worked so hard to get, Stopping all the running I was doing was never going to be easy but I kept painting myself into corners I could not easily escape from when on the occasions I was successful in my feminine presentation led me on to wanting more.

More meant taking an increased number of chances with a male life I should have been satisfied with. All my plans were coming together except for the most important one. Except for the most important one I had been running from my entire life. What was I going to do about my increasingly relevant feminine life. The stress I was under became tremendous. Afterall, I was trying my best to juggle two binary genders at the same time. Lucky or not, I was still able to keep most of my feminine life a secret from most of my acquaintances and I continued on as long as I could before the running had to come to a complete halt.

During my life, I was able to only make and keep a very few male friends and as destiny would have it, they all passed away (along with my wife) in a short span of time. At that point, there was no reason to keep running, so I was able to stop and take the easy way out for a change. I chose going all out into a transfeminine lifestyle and never look back with the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

When I stopped all my running and faced the truth, I had been avoiding all along, the feeling I had was euphoric and one I had never experienced before. My next step was not to hold it against myself that I did not stop running much earlier in my life and take the lessons I learned about not looking back in the Army. I never knew what happiness was until I did it.

 

Practice, Practice, Practice

 

Image from Mor Shani
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes I wonder if some people don’t take the time to understand how much practice I needed to do as I became my authentic self. I guess I could say I went through nearly a half century of work to become who I dreamed of being. It was far from easy.

Starting at the beginning, I never had much to work with as far as being an effeminate boy. Not to mention, I was born into a very male dominated family. Very early I learned I was going to have to work hard to not look like a clown in drag when I tried my best to look like a pretty girl in front of the family mirror. I always equated putting on makeup with painting the plastic model cars I had. Which I was always very bad at doing.  

It did not help when I earned my own meager amount of money working around the house or delivering newspapers in the neighborhood. Then I used the money to try to shop for makeup. I still remember to this day, the first time I was confronted by the sheer number of various makeup brands and variations to try. I finally selected several products out of desperation and hoped for the best as I was trying not to use my mom’s makeup anymore. Now, I don’t remember how successful I was, but I kept on trying to practice on my face until I got it right. Or so I thought. It wasn’t until years later that I visited a true professional makeup artist that I discovered I was not working on the true potential of my makeup to its maximum effectiveness. I was merely making the same basic mistakes over and over again.

I was fortunate to have the makeup artist who was able to explain to me in terms of understanding what he was doing, so I could repeat the process later. Practice for once made perfect. I was able to paint my model cars in a way that my friends admired them. But this time, I was actively admired at the crossdresser-transgender social mixer I was at, and this time when I tried to hang out with the “A” listers (as I called the beautiful, more advanced crowd of attendees) I was accepted. The best part of the whole evening was I then had a basis of where I needed to be as far as being an accomplished cross dresser but on the other hand, I was presented with a deeper set of questions about what I was going to do about my male life as I knew it.

What I decided I had to do was take my transfeminine show on the road so to speak and see if it would play at all in the public’s eye. Away from all the safety of mixers and gay or lesbian mixers. That is when the real practice set in. I needed to stop all of the hard-earned male muscle memory I had learned and start to learn the best that I could the graceful, fluid moves of a cisgender woman. Naturally, the whole process was difficult to do. Especially when I was switching back and forth between the two main binary genders almost daily. Constantly, I needed to remind myself of who and where I was so I would not end up at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Through it all, when I thought I was being successful in going down my transgender path, roadblocks always emerged which sent me back to my drawing board and started setting up more practice. Those were the days of taking every spare moment I had to sneak out of the house and begin to carve out a new life for myself as a trans woman. Once I made it successfully out of the gay venues I was going to and into a few of the big sports bars I was used to going to as a guy, I started to relax and enjoy my new exciting life even more.

No matter how much I try to gloss over this part of my life, the fact still remained I was essentially cheating on my wife when I went out as myself. Deception was never my strong suit, and I was never proud when I needed to lie about what I was doing. By this time, I had reached the point of no return but still was afraid to face it. I hid it by staying in the so-called practice mode I was in. If I could have just one more experience being a transfeminine person, it would make it so much easier when I decided to permanently put my old unwanted male self behind me for good.

Finally, I quit kidding myself, and I was doing so much than practicing over and over again to live a transgender life. I had always dreamed of doing it, so it was time to do something about it and live it. Who knows, maybe all that practice at living a feminine life saved me in the end as I finally learned to move and communicate my way around in a ciswoman’s world.

 

You're so Vain

 

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash

Expressing yourself to the world as a transgender woman carries with it a certain amount of vanity.

Until you begin to relax in your new feminine world, I think you need to obsess over every detail of your exterior appearance. Since we all have such a vast amount of catching up to do to compete with other ciswomen in the world, details matter. Perhaps one of the first lessons you learn is how competitive the world is when you are a trans woman. Ciswomen are every bit as competitive as men but in certain areas not readily visible to the male gender.

For example, the major question comes to mind that do women dress for men or for each other. Sadly, we never had the input of mothers, sisters or girlfriends saying, “are you wearing that?” I know if I had that sort of input, it would have saved me a lot of embarrassment when I first began to go out into the public’s eye. It was a resounding yes for me when I learned who women really dress for…themselves. My problem was, my male self-kept getting in the way and had me dressing like a trashy teen girl. All poorly concealed in a testosterone poisoned male body. It was no wonder I was creating negative attention and getting laughed at. When all I was doing was trying to present myself well the best way I knew how.

After I began to learn and change my thought patterns concerning fashion and makeup, I began to have success in the world. So much so, that on occasion (when I was so vain and did everything right) I received a compliment or two from a cisgender woman. One thing was for sure; it takes a woman to know the work it takes to perfect a public image with makeup and fashion. Plus, I needed to be better than the average woman because I was working at the whole image after I started as a man.

It turned out, having to be better in the world worked well with my increasing source of transfeminine vanity. All I thought of was how much better I could look if I tried just the right foundation and mascara, as I haunted the many thrift stores, I went to looking for just the right piece of clothing to add to my wardrobe of feminine clothes. My personal newfound male to female femininization vanity was in full force as I was having fun. In reality, I saw nothing wrong with being vain in how I appeared as my authentic self, until I clashed with my second wife.

She rarely wore makeup or dresses at all and did not like the way I presented myself at all. On the rare occasions we went out together as women, I tried to tone down the amount of makeup I was wearing along with putting on my most conservative clothes. All because I wanted her approval, which I never got. If I wore any less makeup, I might as well say to hell with it and go out with her as my old male self. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place as far as my feminine vanity was concerned.

As I progressed with my makeup and fashion experience, I understood how much work I would have to put out to achieve the transgender goals I wanted. I knew I would never be able to transform my old male self into the prettiest girl in the room but on the other hand I could present well enough to get by. Everything that I was doing at that point just became a blur of change. Especially when I was approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. As my skin softened, hair and breasts grew, it all was a welcome addition to all the work I had done all those years to just survive in the world. As I wrote yesterday, just not having to wear a wig anymore was a huge deal for me since I had no male pattern baldness to contend with. All of a sudden, I needed to contend with a new form of vanity when I went to beauty parlors to have my hair done just a certain way.

During all the years it took me to fully come out into the world as a trans woman. I learned the true meaning of competing with ciswomen in the appearance arena. Once I did. I needed to move ahead to the larger context of being allowed to exist in women only spaces by the alpha-female gatekeepers. In many ways, my second wife was an alpha female who never let me in, so I wonder what would have happened if she had lived long enough to see/know the person I am today. One thing is for sure; I am no longer the “pretty, pretty princess” she used to call me because I have paid my dues as a transgender woman.

All I know is I did go through my periods of extreme selfishness and vanity to arrive where I am today and I don’t know if there is any other way to go down the path, I ended up taking. Changing a gender is such an intense way to live, especially when you started with so much success as a male that it took me a massive effort to change. Not to say, all of the effort was not enjoyable but at least, it was interesting and challenging to see behind the gender curtain.

For many of us stuck in our own form of gender dysphoria, vanity is just one aspect of our larger need to survive.

 

 

 

Alone in a Crowded Room

 

Image from Bruno Aquirre 
on UnSplash.

I often refer to the days when I was first going out and seeking clues to my true identity as going out to be alone. I called it that because I had not yet met any regular acquaintances that I would have called friends on a regular basis. So, I was surrounded by a group of strangers no matter where I went. Even so, it was better than sitting at home by myself staring wishfully into the mirror.

Following leaving my painfully shy days behind me and becoming a rather social person, I did miss the interaction with the public. Going out alone was the only recourse I had which brought up several other problems. One of which was if I did present as a successful woman sitting by herself at a busy bar, always invited trouble because I was so out of place. It was during those times that I used my cell phone as a prop. In essence signaling to people, I was waiting for someone to arrive and join me. Plus, in the cold winter months, I could place my coat or jacket on the seat next to me to act like it was occupied. Both of which helped keep away any unwanted advances from mainly intoxicated men. On the other hand, other intoxicated ciswomen did not count, and I welcomed any of their advances which completely outnumbered men. Mainly because the women were so curious about what I was doing in their world.

Another problem I had was a huge case of impostor syndrome I suffered from. No matter how nice the stranger approaching me was, somehow, I felt I did not quite belong in the new exciting world I was in. It took me a while to get adjusted to the fact I was succeeding in a life that I had previously only considered a dream. I also still considered myself a rank amateur because of how I was able to conduct myself as a new transgender woman. I knew very little about how ciswomen communicated in the world away from men and it showed. For the longest time, the little nuances women use to communicate escaped me. Forcing me into shutting down and just listening to others and sometimes coming off as a standoffish bitch. Which was the last thing on my mind to happen.

I began to move away from being a stranger in a crowded room when I began to have enough confidence in myself to move forward. I was no longer just an virtual impostor just observing the world to jump in and inserting how I felt about things and people around me. A word of warning though, it took me a while to get there. Too much trial and error before I gained the confidence in my own unique form of womanhood which differed from many other women around me but at the same time, was still as complete. Sort of.

It was not until I began to build up my own circle of friends who happened to be mainly lesbians did, I began to relax and truly enjoy myself. I was no longer an imposter but now a full-fledged participant in my resurgent social life. Probably the only mistake I made was when I did not realize how different two of my friends were who I kept inviting to our impromptu meetings at sports bars and lesbian mixers. I was still naïve to the lesbian culture and did not realize the differences between a so-called gold star lesbian and one that had been with a man. I had one gold star friend along with another who had been previously married with three kids, so on occasion sparks did fly. In the meantime, I was off in my own little world jumping at the chance to be a wing person for one of my friends and trying to set her up with another woman at the mixer. It never worked, but I had a fun time trying.

The best part was I was no longer a stranger in a crowded room. I was becoming a full-fledged participant and loved it. The only problem I was having then was my new feminine life was starting to seriously force my hard-earned male life into an early retirement. A retirement he was so not ready for. Often the gender conflict I endured was mental and brutal. I did the only thing I knew to do and that was to internalize my feelings and move on. Which was the last thing I should have tried to do. My male self-wanted to keep me being a stranger in a crowded room so he could have his way. What he did not count on was, the more I worked on my dream gender life, the bigger and more accepting the room became.

The more I think about it, the more I think my male self-wanted to keep my female self as a kept woman. Validated by him only. Eventually, my transfeminine soul won out and he needed to face the truth. He was always part of living a lie in my life. Since my impostor syndrome was for the most part gone, it was the last remaining significant part of my life for him to cling to.

It felt so good to no longer just to be going out to be alone and know I would have the chance to meet my friends or even make new ones. Because I had hid my true self away for all those years, my transgender dream self could not wait for a chance to live and express herself in a crowded room.

 

 

Happy Holidays!

 

Ralphie!

Happy Holidays to you and yours!

I hope those of you who have experienced close family losses because you came out to them as transgender are able to rebuild close ties with other non-blood more accepting people. They are out there and it sometimes takes a while to rebuild trust with other people with your feelings I know. Sometimes, you can find connections within your local LGBTQ organizations. I know, around here where I live that is the case when organizations host potlucks as well as Christmas parties for anyone who wants to come and be around others.

Also, as we are preparing to put 2025 behind us, we look to the holidays to provide hope for the future. 2026 will be a huge election year for example. It seems we are building a chance to put the political tragedies heaped upon us by a rotten president leading an equally rotten, spineless political party which has used the transgender community for everything evil in our country. It will take all of us, pulling together, to make a difference which is part of the holiday spirit. That is why I urge even the most closeted cross dresser to look out of their closet to a future of freedoms they may need later in life.

Happy Holidays to me also means thanking all of you who took the time to wish me the best this time of the year.

On Christmas Day, I will be binge watching “A Christmas Story” which hits so close to home for me. Other than the time period which it is filmed in which roughly matches my life, there is the story of “Ralphie” and his BB Gun. If you have never seen the movie, Ralphie is the child star of the show who desperately wants a BB Gun for Christmas. And the movie goes through all the trials and tribulations he goes through to receive one as a gift. Just when all seemed lost, and all the gifts were opened and Ralphie was dejected, when his father pulls out a brand-new Daisy BB Gun he had been hiding and then the fun began.

My major point to all of this is, I had a major role reversal with Ralphie and the BB Gun. You see, I never wanted a gun of any sort for Christmas and would much have wanted a nice doll baby or a new pretty dress. But there I was once again stuck in a male world I wanted nothing to do with.  That is why I am so enamored with “A Christmas Story” which goes right up there with the National Lampoon’s holiday classic with Chevy Chase as one of my favorites.

I know I am so fortunate to be spending my Christmas with my wife Liz who scooped me up off the trash heap of life I was on at the time when we met online over a decade ago. She was kind enough to accept some of my off-the-wall holiday traditions as well as me accepting hers. I guess that is the basis of a good relationship but one which worked out so well for me. Hopefully, you will find yourself in the same situation or will be in the upcoming year. It happened to me when I least expected it. 

In the meantime, here is wishing you and yours a safe and festive holiday season and don’t drink all of the high-powered eggnog which I used to do! Save some for someone else…It is Christmas!

 

 

 

More Gender Dreams

 

Image from Robin Edqvist
on UnSplash.

Last night I had one of those dreams I always had hoped I would have when I was young. I dreamed I was dressing myself into a pretty woman and actually going out into the world. The experience was different because of some reason I still dream that I am male in the vast majority of dreams that I have.

Even better, the usual suspects in my world at the time were all present and encountered for in my dream. To the point I was even sneaking around my second wife’s back to cross dress. Another interesting point was my hair. As many of you know, through the power of genetics and HRT, I have been able to grow an amazing head of thick long hair at the age of seventy-six. Going without wigs and having my own hair styled was always an impossible dream for me, until it magically happened. Which is an experience for another blog post.

In the dream, I remember trying to choose between wearing a wig and brushing out my own hair, which I chose. For some reason, I was trying to throw caution to the wind and go out for something to eat with just women’s clothes, my hair and no makeup. Also, I was calling my wife at work to make sure she was still there, which was something I always did back then to not get caught. My second wife was the one I lost to a heart attack at the age of fifty and when and if I dream of her, she always is a blur. So, I was surprised when she appeared in this dream. My guess is it is because my habit of sneaking around her back and cross dressing was so prevalent in my life at that time that it stuck in my subconscious. And it just decided to make an unscheduled surprise appearance.

In the past, I have corresponded with other transgender women on how many of their dreams were with which gender. Interestingly, many of them responded that they dream mostly as women. I do too, sometimes, but mainly I am stuck with being a man in my dreamworld. Perhaps it is because I needed to battle so hard to maintain and even advance in a male world, I wanted no part of. I just needed to survive. That portion of my life still equals roughly two thirds of my time on this planet. So, the more time I spend as a transfeminine person should equal out to the more dream time I have as a woman.

Exactly like when I was young and could not wait to go to sleep and dream of waking up as a pretty girl, this morning I did not want to wake up and rejoin reality. It made no sense to me why I felt that way because I have been so fortunate to have been living a transgender dream in a real world for over a decade now. I guess change comes slow in my subconscious, and I should take advantage of still living part time on the other side of the gender border (male).

I suppose I should be lucky I don’t have gender dreams which turn into nightmares. I do hope I have the chance to meet my second wife in another world after I die and finally learn that she accepts me and not just in a dream. Afterall, she was right when she told me to man up and be a woman. I finally did and became happy.

 

 

 

Staying in your Own Gender Lane

Image from Earnest Tarasov
on UnSplash.

Staying in my own gender lane may have been more difficult than I had ever imagined. Of course, it all started when I was externally born male. Then when I started to understand something was dreadfully wrong with my male existence, I needed to figure it out.

My first indication of what the problem might really be came when I discovered the thrills of wearing my mom’s clothes, since I did not have any sisters to beg for clothing off of. Sadly, even though I was thrilled to see my version of a pretty girl in the mirror, deep down I knew it was just not enough for me to stay in my cross-dressing lane.  I wanted to pull out and find myself in a more comfortable gender lane where I more than ever before to being feminine.

Before I could do that, I needed to define what being feminine meant to me. I knew just acting effeminate would get me nowhere except bullied to the point of beaten up and on the home front (which was very male dominated) I would probably earn a trip to a psychiatrist if my small stash of girl’s clothes and makeup was ever discovered. I was trapped in a male world I wanted nothing to do with, and worse yet, I was pressured to perform well in that world. I needed to be in a passing lane around as many other males as I could.

The problem was, I wanted nothing to do with that world and could not show it. And in the pre-internet era I was growing up in, I felt so all alone with no one to talk to about what I was feeling. I just knew I did not feel the so-called mental illness that gender issues were being referred to back then. All I knew was, I was having a very difficult time staying in the gender lane which was assigned to me when it felt so natural. Plus, when I woke up in tears after having such a realistic dream that I was a girl impacted my life terribly until I could get centered again where I was “supposed” to be.

Somehow, I made it through those very confusing gender days and finally made it out into the world to discover if I had any future at all in a world ruled by cisgender women. When here I was, a novice in their world trying to survive. I equated it with driving on the Autobahn in Germany. I quickly discovered when you were driving a VW Beetle (like mine) and ventured into the outside lane then you saw a car in your rearview mirror flashing its lights, you better get out of the way. My life in those days often felt that way. I was learning lessons about where I wanted my transfeminine womanhood to go but I always seemed to see lights warning me in my rearview mirror.

Through tons of trial and error, I learned I could change my gender lane to the one I dreamed of. From as young as I could remember all I really wanted to do with my life was live it as close as I could to being a woman. Of course, that meant putting all my safe male privileges behind me and set out to build new ones in my gender lane with new life experiences. Like the Autobahn I found there were no speed limits on what I could learn or experience in the new gender lane I was in. More importantly, I had no one except my old male self to tell me to slow down before it was too late and I wrecked. Here is where I make the excuse of why it took me so long to transition because I was overly cautious that I did not wreck.

As I was in the gender lane I wanted to be in for a change, it w as nice to finally wake up in the morning knowing I was coming closer to my dream of living life on my terms as a woman and not having to keep falling back on my male self for last minute support. I was one and she was me for good.

But just when I thought I had it all in my new gender lane, I discovered many small nuances the ciswomen around me use that I needed to learn and put into practice. Such as the powerful use of nonverbal communication and passive aggressive behavior. For the first time in my life, I needed to look intently at other women when I talk to them and search their eyes for what they were really telling me. Which extended into the passive aggressive areas of behavior I encountered. There were many times I fell for a smiling face or non-threatening comment which turned out to be a knife in the back when I let my guard down. They were all lessons I learned the hard way as I earned my ability to stay in my gender lane permanently.

The best part was that the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn about the lane I was in. Even my biggest naysayer, my male self, had to finally give up and get out of my way. I was in my lane for good and there was nothing he could do about it. I had served my feminine apprenticeship I was walking the path I always was destined to walk and in the short and long term I got out of the way until I could salvage was left of myself and move forward. 

More Downs than Ups on the Gender Roller Coaster

 

Image from Pietra K. 
from UnSplash.

The gender rollercoaster of life was very real to me.

That is the reason I attempt to mention all of the ups and downs I have experienced over the years as I battled gender dysphoria. For me, the trip up the coaster was not often worth the trip down as my depression set in. Until I received the proper care for my depression, I would often not want to even get out of bed for days at a time. Of course, I could not do that, and life would have to go on. That life included an increasing interest in cross-dressing. When I was on an upswing, life was better and I thought I was even making strides towards possibly living my future dream of living in and competing with a world of cisgender women. All of which had a very large headstart on me towards possibly achieving their womanhood before I could.

All this turmoil sent me down the rollercoaster of life and right back to where I started from…deeply frustrated. It was not until I began to leave my closet or shell and explore the world, did I begin to experience any relief. In the world, I discovered that not everyone noticed me and it was true what my second wife told me that it was not all about me. I was relieved when I learned that most of the world was just living life on their own terms and outside of few haters, I could live my life too. It was when I discovered that I was able to ride the level part of my dysphoric roller coaster, for a while.  

It never failed that when I started to come off the flat spot of my coaster, I needed to fight my depression again. Nothing I was doing was good enough as a man or a woman. I was so involved in wanting a transfeminine future, I could not maintain a good solid relationship with my long term (25 years) wife. The only things I was doing was keeping my head above water at work as I carved out the beginnings of a new transgender life. While I did all of this, I managed to make myself miserable as well as those around me. If I could not live with myself, how could anyone else, was my main thought pattern as I rode the roller coaster of life. All I knew was, I needed to hang on tightly for the ride ahead.

Of course, you all know I did manage to hang on, or I would not be here writing this today. Many times, it was because deep down inside I had this unmistakable idea of what I was doing was right. I had waited a long time in line to ride this gender rollercoaster, and I was not ever going to give up my spot. Once I came to this conclusion, I was able to stand in line with other ciswomen and not be so intimidated. And they were less intimidated by me and the rollercoaster hit another exhilarating turn as it headed into a tunnel. This time though, coming out of the dark did not mean I was heading into so much depression. Still, I knew I had a lot of work to do before I could reach my goal or dreams of living a fulltime transgender life.

Every time I thought I had finished a ride on the roller coaster, I found I needed to turn right around and get right on. A ciswoman’s life was so much more complicated than I had ever planned for, there were more challenges ahead. I still had key decisions to make concerning how I was going to live my new life. Such as how I was going to support myself and what was I going to do about telling my remaining family and friends that all along I had been living a lie. Last but not least, I would take the major step of seeking out approval to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones.

Amazingly, each time I jumped on the roller coaster, my rides became shorter and less eventful. I had taken the time and effort to set myself up as a regular in certain venues I went to all the time, so I did not have to go out just to be alone. I was always a social animal as a man and now I was too in my new exciting feminine world. Most importantly, I was able to develop a small circle of ciswomen friends who unknowingly boarded the coaster with me. They showed me the final steps I would have to take to get off my lifetime ride permanently. Maybe the best part was they never knew what they did for me. Eventually, what came out of it all was my marriage to my third wife Liz. A lesbian ciswoman who was instrumental in kicking me off my roller coaster permanently.

Even though I was ultimately successful in reaching my transgender dreams, I am not so sure I would recommend how I did it to anyone. I took too many chances and consumed too much alcohol along the way. Often, I used alcohol to give me a false sense of security when I was riding a scary coaster. Those were the days when I had to internalize my emotions and fear and “be a man.”

Finally, and thankfully, the world around me changed and I stepped down off my roller coasters all the way to less intimidating merry go rounds. Even they didn’t last as I decided to leave the gender amusement park altogether. Truthfully, I never got much of anything which was amusing anyway, and on some occasions, bigots and haters even put me into the freak category. Sadly, I never won any prizes for the most rides on a roller coaster or had a chance to reach for the ring on the merry go round. I was at least a survivor. I did not have to be a man at all.

Survival as a Trans Girl

 

Image from David Gavi on UnSplash.

If you are a transgender woman or transgender man, you are a member of the survivor tribe. You have earned your spot through too much trial and error that a “normal” human simply would not go through.

I know there are many of you who are early on your gender transition paths that really need a survival pep talk. My pep talk would be…to try to stay on the bumpy path you are on because it will be full of sharp curves, stop signs and steep walls in your way. What is that old saying? If it doesn’t kill you, it will only make you stronger sadly happens in record numbers to the trans population. In fact, I tried to kill myself several times due to the amount od stress and depression I was feeling through my gender dysphoria. Fortunately, I was unsuccessful at my self-help attempts and lived to talk about it.

Even to this day, I still have to keep a close eye on how I am feeling mentally, and I still take meds for depression and anxiety which have very little to do with my gender issues. I suppose we all have our own weight to carry through our lives, and that one is mine. I am also fortunate in that I have mental health and LGBTQ support groups to attend virtually every Friday at the Dayton, Ohio Veterans Administration. In the group, we have a diverse set of survivors with different experiences to share, and the moderator always starts the session with what good things have happened to each of us every week. It is so successful that anytime now I think the henchmen from the orange crook in Washington DC to catch wind of it and have it cancelled. So far though, it seems to be OK. All I can say is, I have been in many support groups over the years with little to no positive results, so I hope this one lasts.

If you are feeling lonely and need like minded individuals in the LGBTQ community, seek out local groups in your areas. I know it is difficult for those of you in isolated areas but maybe you can do it virtually online. And, if you are jaded like me, don’t expect too much too soon from the groups you are in. Often, these are highly insecure individuals in the group who are reluctant to share until they know you better.

Then there are the ultimate survival tests such as spouses, family members and jobs. Each one of you will have to face your own challenges in these areas and the only thing I can say is, you have to be patient and try to use common sense when telling the world about your seismic gender changes. In my case, my second wife knew I was a cross dresser from day one of our marriage and never stood in my way but totally refused to have anything to do with me going on HRT and being transgender. She told me there was no way she would live another woman, and I understood what she was telling me. My second strike came with my employment. I had a very successful high energy job I worked hard to get and knew there would be no way I could transition on the job. At that point in time, I did not know what I was going to do to survive and continue my dream of living as a transfeminine person.

Perhaps you are blessed with a more understanding wife, and I would suggest a sit-down talk with her before appearing cross-dressed in your best feminine clothes. That way, you can tell what she is going to do and will she ever come to accept you. Then you can make plans for your survival.

Remember too, there are various stages of development as a transgender woman. First of all, you have to accept you are much more than a cross-dresser who can survive on fewer days a month dressed. Even though I had free reign to dress a couple days a week from my second wife, it was never enough to satisfy my need to go behind the feminine gender curtain and learn more. Even though it doesn’t sound like I took a slow and cautious path to my own form of womanhood, I certainly did. I wanted to make sure I could survive when I came out for good.

The amount of introspection alone makes you a better person and more of a survivor than the normal person. To have the chance to experience intimately both sides of the main gender binaries is the reason why some shallow people will never trust you. At some point to survive, you have to learn to accept the fact that you have reached a point where you are better than them. Plus, if you happen to be a person who thinks change is good, you are in for the most change a human can attempt.

When you are a survivor, you will join an elite tribe of humans who have walked an incredible path and lived to talk about it. If you are considering taking the path, just try to reach inside your inner soul to determine if the path is right for you. In my case, when I did, I came up with the answer that it was the only direction I could take and if I did not my life would not be worth living after all. My life then went full circle and a ciswoman who accepted me picked me up and made me the person I am today. I made it through all the self-harm and destruction I tried on myself just in time to transition into a transfeminine world in which I could survive. Hopefully, you can too.

 

 

Tiny Ripples of Gender Hope

Image from Rosie Kerr on UnSplash.

During the overwhelming sense of darkness I felt when I began to come out of my gender shell, were moments of gender hope and euphoria. More than anything else, they kept me moving slowly towards living my ultimate dream. All I could think of was the possibility of living as a woman later in life.

Having to run and hide my small “collection” of feminine clothes and makeup every time I tried to get in front of the mirror and cross dress did not help. I resented the fact I could not be free to do what I wanted, no matter how radical it was…like being a girl. I could not imagine the pain and suffering I would have if I was caught. What saved me was the vision of a pretty young girl which came peeking on through when I was able to be alone and try on my precious clothes. Even though I was depressed I had to go back to being a boy, the brief moment of femininity carried me through the dark days and gave me a ripple of hope.

Fast forward through the difficult days of puberty and adolescence everyone goes through, I needed to deal with my gender dysphoria also. There were so many dark days when I just went through the motions of life that I did not know what was going to become of me. When I did, I desperately needed to find refuge behind my dresses and makeup to give me hope. Perhaps the only good thing which was happening was that I was slowly perfecting my use of makeup. When all my friends were showing off their painted model cars, I was stuck not being able to show off my new eye makeup. I had to internalize my feelings of hope and euphoria when I saw my new pretty eyes. Sadly, I needed to become good at removing all traces of the makeup so my brother and parents would not notice.

I guess you could say I was in the dark through my college years and beyond until I began to be able to enter the world for the first time as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. These were the days of attending transvestite mixers and small parties in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Being around like minded people who were searching for their gender answers almost made my search seem normal for the first time in my life. I was so protected from the world in the pre-internet days that I thought I was the only one like me stuck in their own personal hell. I was experiencing ripples of hope for the first time in my life on a scale I could appreciate. I even upped my appearance game when I went to Columbus from trashy woman to hopefully a passable ciswoman. One of my favorite outfits to wear was what I called my knit black out. I paired a loose fitting black wide knit top with a black leotard, shorts, tights with a pair of black flats and my red wig and was ready to go. After makeup of course.

For me, the whole outfit helped me to tone down and refine my look and it worked so well that I had my first ever encounter with a lesbian from the party when we left and went to a big lesbian venue for a break. I learned many valuable lessons that night which provided me with ripples of hope for the future. Mainly, if I could not be as feminine or beautiful as the transsexuals who were there, I still could be attractive myself to have a good time and most importantly, learn to be just me. Developing the future, me gave me real hope for the future as I learned it would be possible to achieve my transgender dreams if I worked hard enough. I had to learn the new transfeminine me meant so much more than the ripples of hope I had gained in the past went way past how I looked and into how I acted.

Suddenly, acceptance became my main goal, as my interior feminine self-stepped forward in my life. I knew who I wanted to be but still was not quite sure how to get there. For example, I knew for sure I did not want to be like the “Trans Nazi’s” as we called them or the bitchy trans women who thought they were better than anyone else simply because of their appearance or the number of gender surgeries they had undertaken. I suppose I should owe them a debt of gratitude for showing me what not to do to be a gracious, friendly transgender woman.

All of this came together for me when I began HRT or gender affirming hormones when I was sixty. I had spent enough life in the dark to appreciate the light and grasp a ripple of hope when I saw it. The hormonal medications proved to be a natural success when I began taking them. My body seemed to be saying again what took you so long. But on many levels I don’t think even I understood the basic limits I went through back in those days to salvage my life through the brief ripple of hope I received way back in the days when I lived for the mirror.

More importantly, I found myself in a situation where I could pay forward my experiences to helpfully help others. Especially those of you who are struggling to find answers on how to escape your dark gender closets and find your own ripple of hope.