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| Image from Peyton Sickles on UnSplash. |
I don’t know if I could have ever made it to my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman, without the help of strong allies.
There were many times when I had hit a stopping point on my
gender path and was clueless on which way to go. Mainly because I was attempting
to find myself as a woman so I could continue to live after a failed suicide
attempt.
I have several examples. The first of which came when I
first started to go out and secretly wanted to find a social life as a trans
woman because I was so lonely after my wife of twenty-five years unexpectedly
passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. In the past I had
considered myself a social person, and it hurt deeply to be lonely. At first, I
went online and tried the usual methods of establishing a contact or two to
date but I ran into the usual problems of inviting all sorts of trash into my
life, which included many no shows when I had arranged to meet someone in
public. Which was the only way I would do it for personal safety reasons.
In the meantime, I was fortunate to escape the gay venues I
was going to (where they thought I was just another drag queen) and establish
myself in a couple of the big sports bars I used to go to when I was a man.
Places where I could drink pints of beer and watch sports on big screen
televisions. Ironically, being alone in one of these venues led me directly to
my first two powerful allies.
The first happened to be the mother of one of the bartenders
who set up a casual date between us one night where she worked. It turned out
we got along really well, shared the same interests and set up future dates, so
my end to the extreme loneliness I was feeling was looking like it might me
coming to an end. I was further encouraged not long after that when one night a
woman came in to pick up her to go food order and suddenly slid her phone
number down the bar to me, to my amazement. Not long after that, I kept the
number and had the courage to call it.
From that point forward, the three of us made an inseparable
trio as we watched sports and drank beer in the venues we met in. Plus, as it
turned out, the two women turned out to be lesbians which put a unique perspective
to my life as I was regularly attending lesbian mixers and learning any thing I
could about the culture which was so new to me. As we socialized together, I
was learning as much as I could about being a woman. The first major lesson I
learned was that I did not need validation from a man to be a woman which was a
relief because of two reasons. The first being that I had very little
interactions with men at all primarily I think because I was not attractive
enough. The second of which was I really did not want to deal with all the
drama I knew men can bring from all the time I spent as a man. I knew how to
deal with ciswomen all my life and felt more comfortable with the drama women
bring. I always had more women friends than close male friends.
The two most profound allies were yet to enter my life at
that point.
As part of my online searches, I did have one response from
a Wiccan/lesbian woman in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. She told me I had sad eyes
from my online picture, and we slowly began to correspond by text messages
before I felt comfortable enough to talk to her in person. Finally, I got over
my shyness and after talking to each other I decided to ask her out on a date. She
accepted, and we decided to meet halfway between our homes with friends and go
to a drag show at a well-known gay bar. We ended up having a great time and
decided to set up another date. This time with my other friends at a women’s
roller derby event. I was in gender heaven to be able to go with three other
women to one place and enjoy myself for once. My help from allies was coming
through for me.
At the same time, I needed to come out to what was left of
my blood family. My parents and most of the rest of the family had passed away,
leaving only my daughter (only child) and my only brother to come out too. I
thought at the time I would have problems with my brother and hopefully not my
daughter and I was right. My daughter’s only real reaction was why she was the
last to know and my brother totally rejected me by not inviting me to the
annual Thanksgiving Day dinner. He sold me out to his rightwing religious in-laws,
and I have not spoken to him since which has been over a decade now. I was
fortunate when my allies (daughter) and Liz stepped up to help me in my time of
need. Not only was I invited to one Thanksgiving family dinner, but I was also
invited to two. Even though I was happy to have someplace to go for the
holidays, it was quite stressful for me to meet people at my daughter’s in-laws
who had known me for years as a man but also meet Liz’s dad and brother for the
first time.
The best part of having all of these strong allies on my
side was they expected me to be myself. In fact, I was still on the fence of
living as both binary genders as I met Liz. It was not too far into our long
relationship that she told me the final words to kickstart my final plunge to a
feminine life. One day Liz told me what I was waiting for, she had seen both
sides of me and had only seen the female side, nothing of the old unwanted
masculine me. That was it, I agreed and went about giving away what was left of
my male wardrobe and never looked back as I started HRT or gender affirming
hormones to further femininize my exterior self.
Along the way, I tried to explain to all my ciswomen allies
how much they had done for me, but they would not take any credit. They never
understood how much they did to help me become the happy transgender woman I am
today. And, by the way, Liz and I finally got married after eight years and now
have been together for over a decade.
