The Second Time Around

 

JJ Hart (middle) at my first
Girls' Night Out. 

If you are one of the rare human beings to experience a second time around in life, you owe it to yourself and others to live it the best you can.

Being transgender can give you that rare insight into two of the main binary genders which should give you an edge in dealing with the everyday world. Having an intimate knowledge of whatever the other gender maybe thinking of us as trans women or trans men brings out fear in the public's eye. Who are we to possess such a wonderful scope of knowledge anyhow? It is especially bad with the male gender who has such a poor grasp of their sexuality to begin with. I know when I transitioned from male to female, one of my main concerns was my own sexuality. Was I expected to suddenly change my sexual preferences which had always been with women and suddenly start liking men. I even went to the point when I first came out when a straight woman friend of mine told me to buy bananas and practice. I will let your imagination do the rest.

We all know though there is so much more to a gender transition than sex when you set yourself up for the second round in life. I found I was leaving a life as a man where I was mildly successful and entering a totally new world full of women who were able and willing to question my existence in their world at all. Away from men, the women were a complex tribe, and it was difficult for me to be given the access to play with them behind the obvious gender curtains. First and foremost, just looking like a woman just got me in the game and the difficult part was just beginning. I spent hours and hours in the world just learning how to be the new me.

Suddenly, before I knew it, the doors to a totally different world opened for me and I was invited to the girls’ night’s outs. The invites could never replace the learning experiences young girls have when they are in their formative years and they get to go to girls’ overnighters with friends, but they were all I had to attempt to catch up on my gender homework. No chance to experiment with makeup or gossip about boys or other girls.

The main problem was, I had another male life to deal with at the same time. Looking back, I don’t know how or why I put up with all the gender stress and tension I did to make it to my dream. I guess the reason was I did not have the confidence to know if I could make such a major life changing step at all. We all have a lot to lose when we undertake such a step, don’t we? Plus, as I slid towards the idea I could live fulltime as a transgender woman, I was being accused of being selfish. Which made me feel guilty until I finally came to the conclusion I was being selfish. Because I had to save my own life.

As I was accepted into the girls’ sandbox around me by the majority of the women around me, my confidence grew that I could indeed live a second time around life as a transfeminine person. My long hidden inner female took over and surprisingly became a rather social person as I formed bonds with my small group of lesbian friends which was the best of all worlds for me. As I always say, the first and main thing my friends taught me was I did not need a man for validation. Which included my sexuality. All I needed to do was still keep an eye out for the rare bigot who hated me for no real reason. It turned out the haters would have to go through my cisgender friends to get to me, if they wanted to.

At that point in time, I met my wife Liz, and my second time around became easier and easier for me to live up to. I say live up to because I found myself at a point where I always dreamed of being. But I never thought I could make it. Never say never became a reality for me when Liz told me she never saw anything male about me. I was in gender heaven and stayed there until I realized what a heavy burden I needed to face. Here I was with the rare chance for a do over in my life and to not repeat the same mistakes I made as a man.

So far so good I think as I head down the stretch run of my life and I can be thankful for the chance to live two lives regardless of what the gender haters say.

 

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.

 

 

Transgender-When Life Throws you a Curve.

 

Image from Chu CHU on UnSplash.

It’s baseball season as we head down to the “dogdays of summer” around here in Cincinnati. As I have mentioned many times, the gender gods allowed me to take my passion for sports with me when I transitioned from male to female. This year, I have been completely emotionally immersed in the Cincinnati Reds professional baseball team. So much so, sometimes I feel guilty about my involvement.

Overall, though, life threw me a real curveball when it came to sports. For several reasons, athletics helped me to keep the bullies away, since I was doing “boy” things. As I played, I found I could not hit well at all, primarily a curveball and resorted to running home to my dresses and makeup to feel better about my failures. And I did, which solidified my deepening idea I should have been a girl all along. Dressing in my pretty feminine clothes certainly felt better than crying in the shower after I committed a key error or struck out to end the game.

As time went on, I faced the reality of non-athletes everywhere, life had thrown me a curve ball I just couldn’t hit. Somehow, I just needed to adjust and become the fan I am today and quit being a victim. I think perhaps it was my Army duty which took any idea of self-pity away from me. So what if my draft number was twenty-three, I would just have to enlist for three years to make the best of it. Plus, the entire routine of basic infantry training took any idea of being a victim away from me. At least I was not one of the guys crying on the night bus to Ft. Knox in the middle of a Kentucky winter. Somehow, I would have to make the best of a situation I did not want to be in.

It turned out, that idea carried right over into my gender dysphoria. The older and more experienced I became as a transgender woman, ended up clashing with my increasingly successful male life. Life had thrown me a gender curveball, and it was not fair but the problem was mine to deal with.

Initially, I kept striking out on my path to transgender womanhood. I was woefully unprepared for the world I so desperately wanted to enter. The path was quite dark with many bumps and curves, so I needed to be careful with the high heeled steps I was taking. Perhaps the most important problem I faced was when I was completely outed as a man in a dress was quickly going home and attempting to figure out what I was doing wrong. Was it my fashion, or my makeup, or what?

This time I refused to be fooled by a gender curveball and hung in there until my life began to change for the better. Slowly, I was being accepted as my true transfeminine self in the public’s eye. I was not hitting any home runs yet, but I was making contact with the public and was successful.

Incredibly to me, the more contact I was making, the more I needed to make. In particular, women were curious what I was doing in their world and drew me into conversations which were uneasy for me in the beginning. Life was throwing me curveball after curveball, and I became halfway decent at making contact with the strangers I met. I think too that after the public met me, more than a few of them reacted to the fact that I was a person who was living with their truth. Then I needed to catch up and respect myself for living my truth. Which was difficult for me to do for years.

Ironically, at that point, I went to work for a company which would not accept any of their successful managers being victims. I carried their training over into my real life and was better prepared for any and all setbacks I encountered. I began to see my supposed setback in life just could be a positive if I made it one. Not so much different than when I went to Army basic training wondering how I was going to make it without my cross-dressing crutches.

After immersing myself in the world of cisgender women, I came out as a better person. Certainly, well rounded in how the two main binary genders interact with each other. I could not ever make it as any sort of an athlete, but it turned out I could as a transgender woman. A journey I came to respect many times along the way.

 

Gender Lighthouse

 

Image from Juan Gomez
on UnSplash.

As I grew older and more in touch with my possible transgender womanhood, it often seemed to me to be a distant light at sea in my life. 

In fact, I equated my brief encounters with gender euphoria as moments in time when I was hopelessly adrift in a huge sea of life around me. I was rowing my little boat as fast as I could against a strong current, I mostly did not understand. Long ago, my gender notebook had been washed overboard, leaving me on my own to understand a new and exciting feminine world. 

As I was stuck rowing in circles in my shrinking male world, faintly in the distance, I could see a lighthouse which would ultimately show me the way to gender freedom. As I kept on against all odds, the light grew brighter. The entire ordeal was difficult, and I needed to battle tons of self-destructive behavior on my part to just survive at all.

Plus, through it all, my mental health suffered terribly. Since I was already diagnosed as being bi-polar, the last thing I needed was gender dysphoria to worsen my condition. Worse yet, I tried to self-medicate my problems with too much alcohol. Which ultimately caused me to lose my way more dramatically and take more self-destructive chances. I was taking my eyes off the lighthouse, and it was fading away in the distance. Just in time, I was able to regain my equilibrium and was able to set my eyes firmly on the light again.

I was able to get out of my boat and try the world at its best and worst. As I said, my feminine workbook long ago disappeared and I had to go it alone. As I mentioned in my last post, out of sheer good fortune, I was able to work my way out of potentially dangerous situations when I could have hit the rocks in my little fragile boat. I reacted to the experiences as surviving points on my gender learning curve. I resolved to learn from each one and keep my eyes on the light which was slowly becoming brighter. Maybe, I could achieve my dream of transgender womanhood after all. 

For a long time, the person who kept the key to my dream was my second wife who told me on occasion to me to be man enough to be a woman and being the pretty, pretty princess just was not going to be enough to make it. The problem was, she made me figure out what she meant, and it took me years to do it. I needed to wait until I had rowed to shore on the feminine side of the beach and found my way behind the gender curtain by learning lessons cisgender women grow up understanding from lifelong lessons. Or the pretty, pretty princess better learn how real women live in a world they control. I started to dress to blend in with other women on one hand and how I lost intelligence in my conversations with men on the other. Very quickly, I grew tired of being "mansplained" on the very simplest of topics. 

Once I found the lighthouse and made it to shore, the hard work started, and I needed to learn how to communicate with the world, one on one. Nothing told me, my communication efforts would be mainly with the women I met in the world as most men mainly left me alone. I knew most of the women started the conversation because they were curious what I was doing in their world. I did not really care because I was learning what I needed to know to keep my boat on the gender beach. 

Thanks to the world of women I encountered, I found the lighthouse at the end of my search and was able to find my way in a new world as a transgender woman.