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| Image from Jeffrey Clayton on UnSplash. |
I learned early on in my life to take nothing for granted.
Especially when I was experimenting with my mom’s clothes
and makeup. I needed to use every instinct I had to not get caught cross
dressing as a girl. Which I tried to do as much as I could, so I had to never
take it for granted I would never get discovered and sent off to see a psychiatrist.
My paranoia ran deep back then of my parents sending me to a stranger who would
tell me I was mentally ill. Which deep down, I knew I wasn’t. I just wanted to
be like the girls around me.
My parents, from the “greatest generation” of the WWII and
Great Depression years of our country’s history always made sure I took nothing
for granted also. If I got B’s on my report card, where were the A’s I should
have been getting. Was how I was raised. The only other real aspect of my life
they thought they had to worry about was my interest in sports of all kinds. I
was never the athlete my brother was so I was left on my own to do what I could
athletically in the small rural school I went to. Even when I did manage to
make the football team, I couldn't keep my mind on practice when all I wanted
to do was be a cheerleader in their fancy short skirts and be admired by all
the boys in school. I admired them too, just because of how badly I wanted to
be just like them, and I never took it for granted that I couldn’t. It just
frustrated me when I never did.
The years went by; in a hurry it seemed and even I was able to
improve my feminine femininization to the point where I wanted to get out of
the mirror in my closet and try out the world.
It was a good thing that again I should take nothing for
granted that I would have no problems when I went out for the first time. Even
though the mirror at home told me I made my male testosterone poisoned self
into an attractive woman, why was I getting laughed at by mainly teen aged
girls in public. I was stubborn though and kept going back to my cross-dressing
drawing board to make any attempt possible to improve my appearance. What I
finally learned was I needed to quit dressing the way my old male self was
telling me to do and start dressing to blend in with the world of ciswomen around
me. To do so, I reversed my fashion course from wearing clothes for teen girls
when I was in my thirties and start concentrating on doing my thrift shopping
to develop a more realistic fashion approach. That helped me overcome my thick
male body with big shoulders that I had been cursed with by male puberty.
I had a dreaded inverted T body shape with broad shoulders,
no hips and narrow legs to deal with. I took nothing for granted and set out to
attack my fashion problems with better fashion choices. Since I was told I had
good legs at the Halloween parties I went to, I built up from there while at
the same time, keeping my legs not being a total focus to my look. As I built
up from my legs and I wore Demin skirts often, I used foam pads under my panty
hose which gave me the illusion of having hips. With my size, breasts were
always a problem because I always wanted to be proportioned correctly and have
the right wiggle to them. But not too big and look like a clown in drag. I
struggled to find what I wanted until a cross-dressing friend of mine gifted me
a set of silicone breast forms when he purged his extensive collection of cross-dressing
materials. Then I could finish hiding my broad shoulders with longer straight
hair wigs which fell loosely over my body.
Speaking of my body, you may have noticed I did not mention
anything about restrictive shapewear. I always disliked the feel of being restricted
in any way other than panty hose and padding, so I took the diet approach to
losing my male stomach and did not have to worry so much about all the potential
problems which might happen when I used the women’s room, do my business, wash
my hands, smile sweetly and move on.
The one major accessory I was still lacking was confidence
that I could present effectively as a transfeminine person in a world where
ciswomen ran the show. In my mind, I was still the frightened cross-dresser
leaving my closet and mirror for the first time and getting laughed at by the
public. Out of sheer willpower I kept on taking nothing for granted until my
life as a transgender woman became realized and I began to feel better and
enjoy myself in the new, exciting feminine world I was in.
My ultimate goal was to someday have my own “padding” or
curves thanks to HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was fortunate that in my
later years in life when my testosterone was on the decline anyway (at the age
of sixty) I received a doctor’s approval to start the hormonal program and all
the changes which happened. Over the years, I was able to develop my own
breasts, hips and soft skin as I have never taken the hormones for granted
because I know not everyone has the health to do it.
I even went through the efforts of getting approved by the
Veterans Administration health care system (which I was a member of) to get
approved again for my hormones and take nothing for granted. I guess in many
ways, the paranoia of the kid looking at himself in a dress in a mirror all
those decades ago never left me. Deep down I still fear for those younger than
me in the system having to put up with all the extreme transphobia in the world
today.
We can never take anything for granted when our basic lives
we value so much are at stake. Be safe out there.
