Loneliness

 

Image from Engin Arkyurt
on UnSplash. 

Growing up as I transitioned from my unwanted male birth gender into my feminine one, often I was intensely lonely. The mirror was no replacement for real people.

Since I was still in the pre-internet generation, I found it impossible to reach out and socialize with any others with similar gender issues. I mean, how strange was it that I wanted to be a girl anyway? To make matters worse, the thought of who I should be dominated my daily thinking. I separated myself from the rest of the world my age. I lived in a rural area with very few friends to start with, so I had very few potential friends to begin with. To combat my problems, I did the usual male reaction and internalized everything since I had no choice on coming out to my parents.

It wasn’t until I learned of the “Tranvestia” publication and Virginia Prince that I learned there might be a light of my gender tunnel which was not the train. I learned maybe an entire life of loneliness was not in store for me. I eagerly read of all the other pretty transvestites in the pages who managed to even stay married and have a career. Life went on for me in the 1960’s and then, all of the sudden, I had bigger problems ahead than wanting to be a girl. At that time, the draft for the Vietnam War had me directly in its crosshairs, with very few alternatives to consider. One of the main ones was what I was going to do concerning my gender challenges. Somehow, I knew the drill sergeants in Army basic training were not going to allow miniskirts as part of the uniform.

Making the best of a bad situation, I enlisted for three years to attempt being included in the American Forces Radio and Television Service and thanks to a couple contacts I developed with my congressman, I was fortunate enough to make it and left home for my three-year tour.

In the Army, I was anything but lonely and my confidence as a person increased, but at the same time my inner woman suffered. I resorted to my old habit of daydreaming of what I would do to make myself the most attractive woman I could following my military discharge. I even dreamed of which new car I would buy to show up my fiancé who deserted me when I had to join the Army. Instead of receiving mail from home from a girlfriend or lover, all I had was me and the letters I received from mom. The forced teamwork activities of basic training kept my mind off my basics for the most part. Was I a man or a woman. Certainly, basic was no place to figure it out. I needed to be the best man I could be to get by.

Time went by and I was awarded a spot with AFRTS which in turn, kept me out of most of heavy-duty Army duties. I was sent to Thailand, then Germany so I was able to see and sample two other cultures. Courtesy of Uncle Sam. Best yet, I was able to fight off my loneliness and even met my first wife and mother of my child in Germany where she was also serving at the time.

I suppose you can say I became quite self-contained as a person by the time I was discharged by the Army. I even went as far as coming out to my closest friends as a transvestite and my mom when I arrived home. I was successful with my friends who did not care and rejected by mom who wanted to send me to a psychiatrist. We never mentioned my gender issues again until she passed away. Sadly, she never knew (or accepted) she had a daughter instead of a son.

When I entered the time of my life when I finally learned and embraced the idea, I was transgender, I entered an entirely different set of being lonely, primarily because everything in my life was in question including my sexuality. I quickly discovered on the nights I went out to be alone, I was attracting much more female attention than male. Which I loved. I just needed to be careful where I went and who I talked to being a single trans woman alone. After a couple of close calls, I started to take more precautions and became safer.

I finally emerged from my loneliest period of my life, which I call my dark time, with new women friends and even a new wife in my life. Who I am still with to this day.

Sadly, I still carry the scars of my lonely times in my life, and I am still very guarded with others. I have a regular reader by the name of “Georgette” who wrote in and said our transitions never end. I am sure my transition from my lifetime of loneliness will never end either. But as far as the entire transgender community as a whole goes, I know I am fortunate.

Memorial Day

 

Carla Lewis, Trans Vet. 

Most of you know I am a transgender veteran and proud of it.

I served many wars ago during the Vietnam War (I refuse to call it a conflict) for three years. Plus, it is sad I needed to say many wars ago instead of years since my country has always been at war during my life. 

During Memorial Day every year, I feel the need to remind everyone of the real meaning of the weekend. It is so much more than the unofficial beginning of summer, along with a chance to bring out the grille and treat the family to hot dogs and hamburgers. What the long weekend means is a chance to pause and remember those servicemen and servicewomen who paid the ultimate prize for freedom in our country.

Sadly, now, many of those hard-earned freedoms are being taken away. Especially for transgender Americans in states such as Ohio. Where I live. Specifically, the Republican party has made it nearly impossible for me as a transgender woman to even legally use a public restroom of my choice.

Regardless, we have cemeteries’ full of service men and women who paid the ultimate price with their life when they left their families and homes to serve in the military. I was fortunate in that I did not have to face any combat in Vietnam when I served but I felt the impact when I learned a battle-damaged F-4 fighter jet had veered off the runway and struck the predecessor of the radio/television station I worked at. The damage killed all thirteen workers at the station. Just before I got there.

Meanwhile on the home front, I had one friend who did not survive his time in Vietnam and two others who lived but were deeply scarred for the rest of their lives.

I often wonder now how many of the military members who lost their lives were trying to run away from their gender issues? Since supposedly, the military has had a larger amount of enlistee’s thinking the military would help “make them a man”. Instead of making them dead.

All I ask is, on this Memorial Day, take a second to pause and remember all of those who gave their all for our freedoms. May they not have died in vain.

 

Transgender Dreams

 

Image from Alex Azabache 
on UnSplash.

My last question from my transgender grandchild for my yearlong book of questions I am putting together went something like this: If I had it all to do over again, what would I tell my twenty-year-old self about life.

First of all, before I answer, the questions come from a site called "Story Worth", and at the end of a year, they put all the weekly questions together to form a book on your life. It was a gift from my daughter. I am more than three-quarters through it already with a chance to add more questions for a small amount of extra money.

Now, back to my twenty-year-old self. First of all, at that time, I was consumed by two issues. Being drafted into the military along with a strong desire to be a woman. Conflicting problems to be certain which I was having a very difficult time dealing with. In the tried and true if I had known then what I know now, I would not have spent so much time worrying about basic training and beyond. I learned as I went through basic, that after I got into shape, it was just a team building experience with military realities built in. I made it through much easier than I thought I would and then prepared myself to serve out the remainder of my three-year enlistment. To be honest, I did not join the Army because I wanted to, or I thought it would make me anymore of a man. I was drafted into the service because of the Vietnam War. 

If anything, my gender issues became stronger when I was away in the military, as I constantly day-dreamed any spare moment I had about when I would become a civilian again and be able to pursue my dream of being a woman. It was all I had to get me by. 

Little did I know at the age of twenty, how complex and difficult my gender journey would take me throughout my life. To put it into perspective, the Army only took three years away from me, while deciding to finally come out as a transgender woman, took me forty more. I am sure my twenty years old would have asked why it took me so long to face the reality of who I really was and quit making excuses. I kidded myself for years thinking I was strong and would have to admit to my twenty-year-old, I simply wasn't. 

I would also have to tell my young self to not be afraid to dream because without dreams to achieve, often we arrive nowhere. I would have never made it to my goal of transgender womanhood unless I dreamed of it all those years and took steps to finally make it. Regardless of all the self-destructive behavior I put myself through. You only have one life to live and should try to do the best you can to preserve it. 

I was fortunate to have lived long enough to see my life come full circle from that confused twenty-year-old I was. When I did, I was able to achieve transgender dreams I never thought possible.  Of course, none of us know our ultimate destinies, the least we can do is accomplish goals which lead us in the right direction.

If you are in your closet, thinking you are trapped like I was, just do your best to look for the opportunities you may have to escape. Later on in life, it all may come back to help you with your transgender dreams.

All Hands on Deck

 

Image from UnSplash

As I progressed farther along my long and difficult gender journey, there were many times where I wished I had company to aid my path.

Even though I often whine and cry concerning the lack of assistance novice cross dressers or transgender women have early on in their progression, the fact remains we need to work our way through it and do the best we can with our fashion and makeup. Until I began to see positive results, I am sure I looked like a clown in drag. Still, I was alone with my thoughts. I am old enough to remember with "Virginia Prince" and her Transvestia publication first came to my attention. It provided me with the first real look at others who shared the same interest in being femininized and looking like a girl. I was mesmerized with more than a few of the cross dressers I saw in the publication. I so badly wanted to be like them.

For years as I worked alone to look more realistic as a cross dresser, I still yearned for feminine help. I thought any cis woman could help me because of their years of practice and interaction with their peers. When I was engaged in college, the opportunity to be dressed from head to toe as a woman by another woman finally came my way. Somehow, I begged my fiancé to do it even though I don't remember now how I did it or was so persuasive. I went all the way by even renting a motel room for all the pre-prep work such as shaving my body I would have to do. 

Once I shaved and dressed, I was excited to undergo the long-awaited makeup process. Since she wore quite a lot of makeup, I was confident she could do a great job. It was finally time for all hands-on deck in my young cross-dressing life. Back in those days, mini skirts and dresses were in vogue so I brought one I found and purchased along with panty hose, heels, and a long blond wig and started the transformation process. To say I was excited would be an understatement. Time flew by as she finished my makeup, and I headed for the mirror. Instead of the beautiful blond I thought I was going to see, I was actually disappointed. I could not see much difference in her efforts from my own. Even still, I acted as if I was really impressed with her expertise when in fact, I was impressed with how much I had learned on my own over the years. 

It took me a long time working with makeup to learn each of us has a blank face to work with and we need to learn the best way to work with it. My fiancé was doing the best she could with the knowledge she learned from her own face, not mine. She was far from being a professional such as the help I finally received from a true makeup pro at a transvestite, transgender mixer I attended years later after I was discharged from the Army. He taught me lessons about my face I had never even considered such as which features to play down and which ones to build up. To this day, I owe him a huge vote of confidence and thanks.

It turned out the opposite happened with my fiancé. Due to knowing my deepest, darkest secret about being a cross dresser, she said I should use it to dodge the draft and stay out of the Vietnam war. There was no way I was going to do that, so we split up shortly before I was to leave for basic training. Actually, it was the best thing which has ever happened to me in my life. The pain it caused immediately would have been nothing like the suffering we would have gone through if we had stayed together.  

Looking back, at my life's work as a transgender woman, for the most part, it has been a solitary experience. Not having a female peer group to interact with and learn from was a problem to be sure but one I learned to work around. The end result was, I needed to be better than the next woman to make it. 

Gender Freedom

Image from Irina Rudnick
on UnSplash

 I found freedom was fleeting many times during my life.

The first time I can remember is when I did not ever have the power to cross dress when I wanted to during my early life, I had to really be aware of what I was doing to avoid detection. Of course, if discovered, any life I was living would have been destroyed. I could only imagine falsely promising I would never cross dress again or find myself in a version of conversion therapy. 

The second time I vividly remember my freedom being compromised was when the Vietnam War draft began to loom in my future. It was an unreal situation which became all too real. After college I took my physical and was pronounced fit to serve in the military. I ended up enlisting for three years to be able to further my career as I served my country. 

All along, my youthful self was learning the basics of freedom. I found rare ways to express my true gender self by sneaking out the back door of the house and initially walking around our neighborhood. Plus there were the yearly Halloween parties I went to dressed as a woman to get me by. Both attempts to ease my gender pressure did work, for a short while and then I was back searching for more freedom and often still risking everything I had to achieve it. When I could, I was making the fifty mile trip to nearby Columbus, Ohio to meet and socialize with a very diverse group of transgender and LGB individuals.  From them, I was able to learn more about how far I would have to go to have a semblance of gender freedom.

It was not until I began to really explore the world as a transgender woman, did I finally begin to experience just a bit of freedom. As gay bars and other unforgiving venues began to fade into my rear view mirror (along with malls) did I begin to discover a glimmer of hope I could survive in the world as a transgender woman. With the hope, came a new push to do whatever I could to make myself into a better woman. It turned out, I was not making anything. She was already there waiting very impatiently for her turn at freedom and life.

I learned also, freedom is never free and you have to work for it. In many ways I had paid my dues and it was time to take the chance and collect my winnings. After following a very winding and bumpy gender journey for all those years, many of the traffic signals turned from red to green and destiny stepped in to insure my gender freedom.

My mental health improved and became stronger with everything else in life. Improbably a cis-woman found me and wanted to love and nourish me at one of my lowest spots, so freedom again became a breath of fresh air. Now our gender freedoms are at risk in the upcoming election. One of the candidates who is not female wants to take them all away. Don't let him!  

Veterans Weekend

 

Civil War Cemetery image from 
the Jessie Hart archives.  

Since I am a veteran of the Army during the Vietnam War era, I feel as if I can expand the observance of Veterans Day to more than one day.

Veterans I think should be recognized for their service as well as their sacrifice. It should be noted many vets joined the military to try to outrun their gender issues. Or, the well worn, the military will make me a man theory. More than a few transgender people tried the same method by getting married and having children. In my defense, I did neither. I was in essence drafted into the military and decided to get married to my first wife just ahead of the birth of my only child. 

Interestingly, since I now live as a transgender woman, most of my friends and acquaintances don't remember at all that I am a veteran. As such, I receive very few thanks from anyone for my service. Then again, it fits right in with my experience as a Vietnam Vet. For those who don't remember or aren't old enough, the war was very unpopular. Even to the point of taking it out on the people who served. I gave my Army uniform to my Mom while telling her I never wanted to see it again. In the years following, I reclaimed it as memories started to fade.

It always bears mentioning, the number of in the closet transgender veterans who never had a chance to escape their gender closets and ended up paying the ultimate cost for their country is tremendous. Veterans Day is just one of several days of the year we should pause to remember those service men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for their country. And what would we have without their service. 

Also, I would like to take the opportunity to thank all the other veterans who I know read this blog.  Thanks for your service.

Alawys Going Somewhere

Image from Louis Paulin
On UnSplash

 Back in what I call my formative years, I grew used to trying to outrun my problems. Between college and my military service I literally was moved or decided to move on my own an average of every year and a half. It all started when I left home for college for a year and a half. Amazingly, during this time my gender dysphoria disappeared and suddenly I was free to live a somewhat normal gender life. I say normal because during this time I had several dates with girls from the East Coast who were much more sophisticated sexually than anything I had seen in my shy Midwestern upbringing. In fact, my Mom unknowingly set me up with my first sexual experience with one of her older (not a minor) students where she taught high school.  I think she was nineteen and I was eighteen, so I had a lot to learn. 

The school I went away to was one a group of Midwestern Ivy League schools for students on the East Coast who couldn't make it into the top notch schools or universities in their back yards. What happened was I ended up partying with my friends mainly from Philadelphia and Baltimore and not studying enough to maintain grades to not get drafted into the Vietnam War. After a year and a half I picked up and moved back home to attend a much more academically forgiving nearby university where I could thrive. Which I did by even making the Dean's List several times before I graduated. More importantly to me back then was the fact I was drawn back into my old cross dressing memories of home while I was able still to land a Disk Jockey job at a small local radio station which happened to be owned by a very powerful congressman which turned out to be very important to my future. For awhile I was quite satisfied with satisfying my cross dressing desires by putting on my feminine clothes when my parents weren't around just like the old days while at the same time attending to school while I built my self a career in the commercial radio business. 

Just when I thought I had it all together, Uncle Sam came along with several all expense paid tickets to work and travel in exchange for three years of my life. I was able to salvage my radio career with the help of the congressman I worked for but my cross dressing would certainly have to be on hold for the foreseeable future. My first move was a bus trip to beautiful (?) Ft. Knox in Kentucky for Army basic training. I didn't get to see any gold but I saw many fellow recruits going through tank infantry school. A nice way of saying they were headed to Vietnam to be cannon or grenade fodder for the war. Basic was tough but not tough enough to wash out any or all ideas I had of ever following my feminine dreams. In fact in many ways I think basic just made my dreams stronger because I couldn't wait to get out and live them.

Following Basic at Ft. Knox, little did I know the amount of travel Uncle Sam had planned for me. It all started innocently enough by getting transferred for advanced training at the Defense Information School in relatively close by Indianapolis, Indiana. It was close enough to my home I could drive back and forth for weekends and leave but not close enough for me to cross dress when I was home. It turned out I wasn't going to stay in Indy long before I was sent to Thailand along with my close knit classmates to help run a radio/tv station in Udorn which had recently been destroyed by a battle damaged F-4 fighter jet which crashed at the end of the runway killing all working in the station. Since we were Army working for the Air Force, we received extra pay to live off base. Of course living off base put me face to face with the Thai Ladyboy culture. As advertised, many were indeed beautiful but all I did was admire from afar. I was afraid of any stigma which would have been attached to me if I had tried to know any of the alluring creatures further. 

After my year in Thailand, I was trying hard to get assigned to Europe and work for the AFN Radio Network. I finally did make it but not with more moving around. What happened was I had two sets of orders. One verbal and one paper. I decided to follow the one on paper and report to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Maryland for duty in their information office. What turned out was I wasn't supposed to be there and was sent back home with another weeks worth of leave before I had to leave for Germany, where I wanted to go to start with. After all those convoluted military moves I finally had the chance to live out my dream of seeing Europe because once again I received extra pay to live off base.

I am fairly sure all of this moving affected me in many ways when I was honorably discharged from the military and through with school. More on how it affected my gender dysphoria in another post. 

Veterans Day 2020

 As I semi-frequently mention here in Cyrsti's Condo, I served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War. I was fortunate in that I only was actually in Vietnam for a half hour twice. I served a year in Thailand supporting the troops who supported the fighter jets who escorted the B-52 bombers and did recognizance. At the time as I was trapped in my battles with gender dysphoria, serving time in the military was very close to the last place I wanted to be. I had no choice, I was drafted, passed my physical and then enlisted for three years to have a chance of working in my choice of jobs. In other words, I wasn't in the military to "make me a man" once and for all. 

It turned out the time I served was to come back and help me so many times times in my life. I have written many times of how being in the Army led me to meeting my first wife and the greatest gift I have ever received, my daughter. Along the way I was able to travel parts of the world I would have never seen and receive the health care I receive today at very little cost. 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the veterans past and current and especially those of you like Michelle. She is another transgender veteran who reads and contributes to the blog. Thank you all for your service! 

Freedom is never free as referenced by the election we just went through.

Blog Comment

I follow a non transgender based blog on Word Press called Lifes Fine Whine. Today she posted she wanted comments about childhood dreams and how they came out. I decided to provide a comment about mine. The comment was designed to explain some of the angst of being transgender without getting too in depth. Here it is:

All through my childhood, I wanted desperately to be just like the girl next door. Unfortunately I was a boy born into a male dominated family.
So, I played football when I wanted to be a cheerleader. Went to the prom in a tux instead of the beautiful dress my date wore.

After college, I was drafted into the military during the Vietnam War. I served my time but never lost the idea I was somehow living a lie. I cross-dressed every time I had the chance to relieve the pressure and explored the idea of living a feminine life.

Along the way, I went through two marriages to women who knew of my "secret." The second passed away quite unexpectedly leaving me free to make a decision in my life.

Finally, at the age of 60, I came out as transgender and started hormone replacement therapy to feminize my body as much as possible.
I began to live my life as a transgender woman. Found an incredibly accepting partner and settled into living my dream.

It took me awhile but now I feel blessed to have lived on both sides of the gender fence.
I have also benefited from my daughter and three grand kids who also are extremely accepting.
In many ways I feel I should come out sooner.
However the wait was worth it.