Change was Coming

 

JJ Hart

As I grew into myself, I learned the truth. Change was coming if I liked it or not.

Change was one of the reasons I loved the fall season so much. As the weather cooled off and football came on, I could go through my feminine wardrobe and see what I could keep and what had to be discarded. Plus, I can’t forget Halloween which of course is the cross dressers’ national holiday in October.

Sadly, as the leaves began to change and fall from the trees, the whole time was bittersweet for me. The worst fall I could remember was when I was on a six-month delay to join the Army and I was working at a small radio station in Bowling Green, Ohio. If you are not familiar with that part of northwest Ohio, it is very flat to the point that any hills are manmade. One night, I was just driving around feeling sorry for myself as I looked ahead to Army basic training and I was so sad as the leaves blew in front of me. If I could have cried, I would have, but tears were nearly impossible for me in my male pre-HRT days. Similar to everything else in those days, I internalized my feelings and tried to move on as deep down I knew change had to happen.

During that time, I almost outed myself to my roommates in the apartment I was staying in until I left for basic. On one trip home, I brought back one of my favorite outfits along with a wig and makeup to Bowling Green. One day when I left, I assumed I had hidden my belongings well enough to not be discovered but I was wrong, and one night when I was preparing to surprise a male visitor to the apartment, after I went to work of shaving my legs and face, I checked for my clothes, and they were gone. I certainly thought, for a while change was coming then it was not. No one said a word to me and very soon, I was off to play soldier anyway so nothing else mattered.

Back in those Vietnam War days, basic training was an intense team building experience when a few drill sergeants needed to try to get a bunch of raw recruits ready for possible combat. During this time, the only way I could keep my girl self-alive was to bury her deeply in my subconscious mind, So, when we were on long forced marches around Ft. Knox, I made sure I thought about the well-being of my girl and the changes we would go through after my military service was finished.

Looking back at the three years I served; the time now seems like a blur and when I was discharged, I came really close to making a big change then by picking my future wife up at the airport cross dressed as my transfeminine self. I even went as far as hinting as such when I wrote her a letter. (Remember those?) Again, my male self-won out and I decided not to, and my big change had to go back to coming again. I did not have the courage yet to face my gender truth and took the easy way out and went back to accepting all the male privileges I had earned.

It was not until I became a parent and had reached my thirties did change to me become a real priority. I will always remember my thirtieth birthday being my hardest because I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with my life. Sure, I had employment and financial issues to be aware of but again the underlying big elephant in the room was what changes would have to happen with my gender. I knew it was never going to be easy to present well as a woman, and I needed to work extra hard to earn whatever passing grades I could achieve in the public’s eye. Once I made the mental changes to proceed, much of my work became cosmetic in nature.

I was able to move the elephant aside and set about learning what it would take me to really live life as a transgender woman and not just be the “Pretty, pretty princess” my second wife called me. As change set in, I learned very few trans women or women at all live the life of a princess and I had a lot of work to do to put my male life behind me.

The last major change I put myself through was the hormonal one when I started gender affirming hormones. The HRT allowed me to sync up my external and internal selves and live a more productive life as a transfeminine person.

Kicking and Screaming.

 

My trans friend Racquel
with her fur-baby.

Sometimes I am asked why I waited so long to finally make the serious transition into a transfeminine world at the age of sixty.

The partial answer is I did not want to face up to my truth of who I really was. Instead, I internalized my gender desires as long as I could. Another reason was, I had a powerful male self who did not want to give up all the white male privileges he had fought to gain. Every bit of ground he lost to his transgender sister was hard earned. Plus, he had a powerful ally with him in my second wife who wanted no part of me to progress any further than the cross-dressing stage I was in when I met her.

My excuse is for not transitioning sooner goes past just ignoring the obvious. I just did not factor in the other major changes I would have to go through just to see if my dream of living as a trans woman was even feasible. Maybe I could never make it at all was a fatal flaw in my thinking because I needed the inner confidence to live. At that point, I opened my gender closet door and began to look around and my male self was dragged kicking and screaming into the world. Early on he was being laughed at in drag when he went out which hurt his male ego. Until he summoned up enough skill to stop the abuse.

All of this led up to finally realizing (for whatever reason) I was more than a cross-dresser. I was a transgender woman. It all led up to the scary, magical night when I decided to change my mind set when I went out for a drink in a venue, I had frequented many times as my male self and had always wondered what it would feel like to do it as a woman. As I said, I was scared to death, and sat in my car for what seemed like forever adjusting and readjusting my hair and makeup before I went in. I knew from previous visits, when the nearby mall closed, the bar would fill up with single professional women who just socialized with each other. As I steadied myself to go in, my male side was still screaming no as my feminine side was excited to finally get a chance to live. That night, for the first time, she had won the battle because I had a great time and even stayed for an extra drink just because I could.

Little did my feminine side know, winning one big gender battle would only make the war seem further away. Following the evening out, she wanted more which caused severe problems with my marriage and life. Deep down, I wanted to experience the thrill of feeling natural in my skin for the first time, and when I could not do it, I became depressed and downright mean to the world around me. Internalizing my gender issues became less and less of a way to run my life. As a result, I started to sneak out from the house any spare moment I had to attempt to reinvent myself as a transgender woman.

I learned I could and began to slowly carve out a new life for myself with people who knew nothing of my past male self who was still strongly resisting every move I was trying to make out of my closet. Sure, I had my ups and downs with what I was doing but my overall trajectory was up, and I was proud of myself. I had come so far from the early days I had admiring myself in the mirror. Even the kicking and screaming from my male self was beginning to fade. But I found not to be too confident because I still had a long way to go on my gender journey to be a full-time transgender woman. Since my trans woman friend Racquel always told me, I passed out of sheer will power, I always had to work harder to make it in the world. I would forever have a testosterone poisoned body my male self-had left me to work around since I did not have the finances or will power for expensive facial femininization surgeries like Racquel did.

So, I did the best I could and managed to build a small tight knit group of women friends who accepted me while at the same time instructed me on the finesse points of being a woman. All of it brought the final curtain down on the kicking and screaming of my male self. I just wish he had not been such a formidable opponent. On the other hand, his interaction kept the bullies away from me for the most part and allowed me to get through the military in one piece, so all was not bad.

The end result was, he never felt as if he was the most natural person for me to be. That distinction always went to my feminine side who never gave up winning my own gender war. She ended up just ignoring all the kicking and screaming until it finally went away and the lack of extra noise in my life was a welcome change.

 

Adjusting to Change

 

Image from
Rafella Mendes Diniz
on UnSplash.

I am biased, but I think adjusting to a lifestyle in a gender you were not born into is one of the biggest changes a human can make.

As many of you know, I took nearly a half a century to adjust to my gender changes. Looking back, some of the changes were a blur while others were so very slow. The reasons possibly were there were so many changes I made to arrive at the spot where I could take the big leap. For example, the night I went to an NFL Monday Night Football game with a lesbian friend of mine and her family. I was just coming out as a transgender woman and was scared to death but knew I needed to make the move and go with her. Needless to say, after the evening, my life changed forever.

The other night I mention often was when I went to see the Christmas lights at a local grist mill, by myself as a woman. I was not as nearly afraid as I was at the football game and ended up enjoying myself immensely. I felt secure in my fashion choices for the evening and was warm and cozy when I went up to one of the hot chocolate vendors for a warm drink with extra marsh mallows. Most importantly, I did not run into any major problems at either venue and my confidence skyrocketed. Maybe I could be secure in my transgender womanhood after all and live out my dream. 

By now, you may be thinking was that all it took to propel my confidence forward into a new life and leave the old male life behind. No, it was not. It is difficult to mention all the nights I spent out alone as a single lonely woman before I found friends to share my changed life with. Through it all, I needed to be so careful to separate my old male life with my new femininized one. Which meant to separate everything I was talking about to new people. Plus, I did not want to create a totally false past in my life and ignore everything I worked so hard to achieve. I found I could bring in the family I had and just change the perspective I was speaking from, and it worked. At the time, fortunately, I was busy closing out my old male life anyhow which had for the most part collapsed, so the time was right for a major change.

Surprisingly, change did come easier for me than I expected. My femininized life was a pleasure to adjust to. Since, I should have been living it all along. It was like my feminine inner soul was telling me she was right all along. If I just had the courage to make the gender change and stick with it. 

All the adjustments I needed to make in life to survive were worth it for me. Finally, at the age of sixty, I had seen enough of the small changes I was trying to make as a stopgap measure and I decided to rid myself of all my male clothes, start gender affirming hormones (HRT) and live the life I was always meant to live. 

How did I know I made the right change? Because, after I did it, I felt so relieved and natural. I let myself go to fall off my gender cliff and had a very soft landing. All those years which started out as just me in the mirror had come full circle and I was able to live my desired life. All because of the changes I went through.

The Past

As impossible as it is to dwell on any changes one could have made to change a life, we transgender folk seem to always do it.

Take away the fact we are trying to do one of the most impossible things to do in a life (changing a gender) and it turns out we trans people are always trying to figure out a way to have done it better.

One example is timing. Those who transitioned later in life, like me, always have the nagging ideas such as what would have happened if we would have attempted the big move earlier in life.

The easy answer for me is I probably could have accomplished so much more. I spent so much energy and torment trying to live with my gender dysphoria.

When you factor in all the outside factors such as family, society, etc, it just hurts my noggin to even think about it.

My example is if I would have followed my first finance's lead and told the Army I was gay when they came a knocking during the Vietnam War draft. She gave me the option of serving or her. As painful as it was at the time, if I had chosen her, I would have missed out on such tremendous life experiences as having my daughter and traveling over three continents in three years on Uncle Sam's dime. Now I'm happy I didn't choose her!

Still it wasn't good enough. At times I resent the years I spent just trying to live up to the macho code. I can rationalize it all now though by thinking I was just ahead of my time. I was just waiting for the world to catch up. As far as transgender community goes, the good "ol" days weren't so good. After all, I remember men being arrested for just dressing like women.

I could go on and on about the torment of growing up as a boy wanting to be a girl but none of that does any good anyhow.

Maybe I should just keep thinking about how things are, not how they should have been. I am happy where I am now. If you ever would have asked me how it all would end up to this point, I would have not believed you anyway.

Dwelling on the past is useless anyway.