Stopping was Never an Option

 

Image from Josiah Niklas
on UnSplash.

Very early on, during my very confusing crossdressing years, I wondered if I could just stop the madness of wanting to change my gender as I grew older. I did not know at the time that stopping would not be an option.

As I grew older, my desire to be a pretty girl (then a woman) grew with me. The more I cross-dressed in front of the mirror, the better I became at the basics of makeup and whatever fashion I could get my hands on. Plus, the better I became, the more I wanted to do more to improve myself. Increasingly I knew stopping and purging all my feminine clothes was never going to be an option even though I tried and tried. At that point, I tried a clumsy attempt to come out to a couple friends I had but was rudely rejected. I needed to return to internalizing all my feelings of wanting to be a girl if I was to survive in my world. Which was cruel and unusual punishment for me and more importantly, my fragile mental health. I was already stuck in long periods of depression before I was diagnosed as being bi-polar by a therapist I went to as I grew up and away from my parents.

When I did move away to college, I actually lost my desire to cross dress and act like a girl for almost a year. I did not know how to act when stopping all of a sudden became an option.

Of course, before I knew it, my gender dysphoria came creeping back into my life. I then needed to build my wardrobe fashion, undergarments and makeup all from scratch. I vividly remember the trigger object which started it all. My future fiancé for some reason, found a short wig to cover her long straight hair, and tried to surprise me with it. I was not pleased and let her know it. I then set out to get her a wig I liked. Funds were tight as I worked at a small radio station where I went to college, but I managed to scrape together the money to buy a beautiful long blond wig I had seen in the window of a beauty shop in my hometown. Under the guise of buying, it for her, I had really wanted it for myself. As luck would have it, she did not like it, and I was able to “inherit” the wig when we separated years later.

I kept the wig until I joined the Army for my Vietnam War tour of duty and beyond, as I was able to hide it away on the rare occasions, I could use it to “top” off my outfit when I cross-dressed. Even with all the traveling I was doing with “Uncle Sam” I still was able to anchor myself with the belief that stopping my idea of being a woman was not a fairy tale and could still be possible someday.

It wasn’t until I seriously began to explore the public’s perspective of me as a newly minted transgender woman, did the world start to change and I knew nothing that I was trying in my new world was going to change…ever. Even still, ever became a big word for me as I hit a series of roadblocks to become a full-fledged transfeminine person. Just when it seemed I was moving in the right direction, something would come along and temporarily stop me. At that time, through all the roadblocks, I finally realized I could see my dream of living like a woman was certainly not an option and it would be a shame to waste all the time and effort I put into my path.

I also needed to make the final decisions I would need to successfully put my male life behind me. What I would do about supporting myself and coming out to my remaining family became very important decisions. My only child (daughter) made it easy on me because she accepted me totally. While on the other hand I was rejected by my only sibling (brother) and we became estranged. My parents, second wife and most of my friends that mattered had passed away which made my coming out process easier. One way or another, I had decided to go my own way no matter what anyone thought.

If I had realized earlier that stopping my male to female gender transition was never an option, life would have been so much easier for me. I would have been allowed to live the best I could, make all my mistakes earlier and achieve my ultimate dream sooner. Rather than stubbornly hanging on to a male life I was born into but never wanted.

 

 

 

Closing the Circle

 

JJ Hart at Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio.

Very quickly when I opened my gender closet door and looked out, I noticed a whole different world I would have to conquer if I was to survive.

To begin with, I was slightly overconfident with my ideas because I had spent so much time studying the girls around me. I was jealous of their pretty clothes and how the boys chased them. I so badly wanted to run in their circle but as we all know, that was not going to be possible for years to come. To begin with, there were so many smaller circles to negotiate before I could advance. So many, I could barely keep track of them all. I had a LONG way to go.

To put it all into perspective, if you remember the Hula Hoop craze, with the round hoop you put on your hips, arms or even neck and spun it around. I was so uncoordinated, I had a difficult time playing with one as I grew up. If I could not even spin a simple hoop around my hips, how was I ever going to accomplish anything vastly different such as changing my gender identity. For the most part, I was naïve and did not understand all the complexities I was facing. While I was obsessed for years looking like a woman, I should have been obsessed with knowing what a woman was really all about. I remained too new to the gender game to be allowed to enter woman only spaces, or what I refer to as the girl’s sandbox.

Then in the middle years of my life when I began to explore the world more and more as a transgender woman, it seemed I had too many hoops or circles in the air. So many, in fact I kept making wrong choices such as the wigs I wore and how I misconstrued how I needed to look to blend in with the public. Instead of dealing from transfeminine strength, I was dealing with my old male ego hanging on and causing problems. I was stuck in my so-called teen cross-dressing years until I rapidly outgrew them in my thirties. Better choices of fashion and makeup helped me to overcome my testosterone body flaws and blend in with the other women who may have had traces of my problems with their body too. Even with all my newfound success, I was still having a difficult time closing my circles. My major problem was I did not completely realize how difficult it would be to stop a life and start over from a completely different point.

As I chased my Mini skirted tail, I had plenty of time to consider what I was doing with my life. In fact, too much as every spare moment I had, I was daydreaming of the next time I would spend as a transgender woman and what I would wear. I am surprised now I had kept my mind on my job enough to be promoted to an upper management position. I would love to have a portion of the time back I wasted. Perhaps, the sky would have been the limit for my male life, but it was not to be because I could not stop until my gender circle was closed.

It finally took a close circle of cisgender women around me to help me through my crisis. My current wife Liz in particular who told me she had never seen any masculine in me at all when I was still living part time as a man. It was the final shove I needed to reach out and close my transgender circle for good.

I don’t think I gained any physical coordination from transitioning, but I am sure I gained mental help when I long neglected woman side took over. I found part of feminine privilege came when I was allowed to participate in a softer side of life which did not revolve pushing and blustering my way through. My new circle involved more mental gymnastics with other women to see where they were coming from, as well as dealing with a passive aggressive side of life.

Not going in circles anymore was a wonderful experience. All my trial-and-error times in the world as a novice transgender woman came back to help me when I made the final transition to where I always wanted to be. No more spinning hoops to deal with which were destroying my mental health. To be sure, all of my bi-polar depression issues did not go away but the overlaying gender issues did. It sounds easy for me now, but all I needed to do all along was listen to my true self and close my gender circle.

 

 

Living in the Transgender Present

Image from Alexander Grey
on UnSplash.

As I lived and constantly thought about escaping my unwanted male world, I daydreamed major parts of my days away.

It became very difficult to stop looking ahead and live in the present when all I could think of was the next time I could cross dress as a girl or woman. Over the years, I wish I could reclaim just a bit of the time I lost due to my day dreams of being a woman. The problem I ran into was when I started to journey away from my dark gender enclosure and was successful, the more natural I felt and the more I wanted to challenge the world as my authentic self. My overall life became more and more complicated and further disrupted my already fragile mental health. At the time, I was seeing one of the few therapists in my native Ohio who dealt with transgender issues at all. Along the way, during one of my sessions, she (my therapist) told me the truth. There was nothing she could ever do about my gender issues and somehow, someday I would have to deal with them. On the positive side, she also diagnosed my bi-polar depression for the first time and was able to separate my two main issues, mental health and gender. 

Then I reached a  point  where I had to decide how to exist in the present dealing with two major issues. I was prescribed several different medications to deal with my mental health issues but as we all know, there is no magic medication to deal with being transgender. The only positives which ultimately came from seeing the specialized therapist came from my wife. She thought I was trying to help the problem she saw in our relationship which back in those days was considered cross dressing or being a transvestite. Which still was a long way from just being viewed as a guy who liked to dress as a woman for Halloween. Naturally, my wife was afraid of what our friends might say. During it all, we hoped seeing a therapist would help. I can only imagine, if I had listened to my therapist about the long term life expectations of being transgender would be, how much different my life would have been.

With each experience, as I started to explore the feminine world more and more, I began to begin living in my transgender present. Every time I was successful in the world, the more confidence I began to experience and maintain. My whole world essentially flipped. When before I day dreamed about being a woman, now I was dreaming in a negative way about going back to a male life I increasingly did not want. To help even more, I had a new therapist who helped me keep my two main life issues separate and even provided crucial assistance in aiding my search for gender affirming hormones. 

In my mind, the hormones, or HRT as they were called then, helped me to cement where my life had become. I loved the external and internal changes the hormones had aided me in achieving. In a short period of time, I had come so far I asked my therapist for her help in changing my legal name and other gender markers. She came through with flying colors and with the help of my daughter, I came up with a new family based name which reflected my heritage. I chose the name of one of my maternal grandparents as my first name and my Mom's first name as my new middle name so my initials would be easier for my three grandkids to remember and use. 

From there on to the present, I have gone all out to live in my transgender present and make up for all the lost time I had in my life daydreaming away for my next trip in the cross dressing mirror.