She Was Always There

 

Trans Ohio Symposium
JJ Hart

No matter where I went in my life, she was always there.

It did not matter if I was in the middle of playing a football game as a defensive end, she was always with me wanting instead to be a cheerleader. She carried over into my everyday life also as I daydreamed all the time what if would be like to cross the gender border and live a feminine life. As I dreamed my life away, my feminine side may have had an unfair advantage because I was only seeing the positives of being a girl or a woman. It seemed so unfair to me that they could wear all the pretty clothes, have long hair and not have to worry about being forced into military duty during the Vietnam War. Plus, why did I have to be the chaser whenever I wanted to ask someone out. I never saw the competition between the girls for attention, being able to wear makeup and more. They were far from the simple life I was seeing but had no one to tell me so.

Even so, she was always lurking in the background as I fought off the shyness, I felt when I had to be around people I did not know in public. Especially other girls. I did not know then why I was attracted to them in a non-sexual manner because it would be the way I would live my life as I grew older. I learned my natural comfort zone in public always came with other women and I never felt comfortable making friends with men at all. Maybe it was because she was always there in the background. Telling me what to do.

When she did, often major conflicts in my life would occur because in my male life I was always trying to put up a macho front to keep the bullies away. It was difficult to do when she was always whispering in my ear, I was doing the wrong thing when all I was doing was to survive my gender dysphoria and live. It was the beginning of a lifetime of warring genders that would consume me to the point of self-destructive behavior.

When I progressed in my career into management, she was always with me when I needed to handle the women in my crews different than the men. She was studying the way I handled myself and how the ciswomen I was dealing with handled me. Primarily, I learned a lot about how women exist with each other and how alpha females can control a clique of other women. It would be valuable experience later in life for me when I was trying to gain acceptance to the girls’ club. If I had an alpha or two helping me along, they could make my life so much easier.

It began to matter more to me when I began to listen more and more to the feminine voice who was talking to me. She was a powerful influence when other women approached me to investigate what I was all about. Somehow, I was like them but yet so different as a transgender woman. I would have to learn how to build trust with other women as a like minded person and only use the long unwanted male basics of my life when I was asked to. Such as when women asked me questions about understanding their boyfriends or husbands. The last thing I wanted to say was I never understood them either, so I helped the best I could and I was flattered by the questions.

Most certainly, she was more than in the background when I started to explore the world as a trans woman. To do it, interaction and communication was the key as I had to come way out of my closet to do it. I even went as far as taking feminine vocalization lessons to learn more about how to communicate more effectively one on one in the world. The lessons were wonderful and taught me more than I ever thought they would. I knew of course that ciswomen had their own way of communication, but not as much as I learned about the nuances of feminine speech patterns. It was a huge change for me as I had developed many bad listening habits as a man that I needed to change…quickly, if I wanted to survive and thrive as a transfeminine person. Such as beginning to closely listen to what another person was telling me rather than skipping over it to how I was planning on answering it.

As I added layer upon layer in the world to the feminine self I was building, I did not have to pay attention to the woman within me that had always been there in the background. She was having a chance to see the fruits of always being with me come to bear as she was able to take over my world. Since I had already put in years of effort into my presentation as a trans woman and had taken it about as far as I could, my background woman was overjoyed to see me take the extra step and listen to her where to go next. That step was to put the communication mode fully into my life and complete my feminine image in the world. I finally made it out of my closet’s mirror and had a chance to be happy. Something that was never emphasized in my family when I grew up. I did not know how to act with such a new emotion.

Then it became time to flip my gender equation. My male self still vaguely exists as my female self runs my life. I discovered it was nearly impossible for me to erase the decades I had in life doing my best to make it in an unwanted male world. So, I tried to take the best and leave the rest behind. It is working for me so far.

Speaking of working for me, I will not be writing tomorrow as I must go to my new Veterans Administration clinic for my annual checkup, Flu and Covid immunizations and even blood labs. I have not had any problems for years at the VA because of my gender, so I do not expect any tomorrow. But if past Flu and Covid shots are any indication, I will not feel like writing. If any thing crazy happens with the clinic’s personnel disrespecting me, I will report it.

Thanks as always to reading along with my gender journey exploits. Hopefully my thoughts can be of value to you.

 

 

 

 

Spending Your Whole Life Changing a Person

 

Image from Hoite Prins
on UnSplash. 

Sometimes, change comes slow in the life of a transgender woman or transgender man. I can speak from experience since my change came roughly over a fifty-year span.

During the old if I had known then what I know now experience, if I had known my male to female femininization project would have taken that long, would I have tried it at all. Then again, I would have had too because becoming a woman with my own standards was always the main dream I always had. I never knew how I was going to make it, or if I even could but I was determined to try.

And try, I did. Repeatedly until I came closer to getting it right. I spent countless hours in front of the mirror as a youth trying to get my makeup and clothes just right and dreaming of the day when I could afford a nice wig. I had had enough of my short male haircuts, and as far as change of hair styles went, I would be forced to wait until after I got out of the Army before I could begin to grow my hair out to where I wanted it. In the meantime, I was able to buy a beautiful long blond wig to help my change along.

About that time, I realized I could help my way along with a major change by going on a crash diet. By doing so, I was able to lose enough weight so I could finally fit into the more fashionable women’s clothes I was finding at all the thrift stores I was shopping at. Even the weight loss, along with my new skin care program, did not help me enough in the change department. I wanted more in my desire to be the most attractive woman I could possibly be and worked constantly at it. Much to the chagrin of my second wife who wore nearly no makeup at all. We clashed about it all the time, but I stayed on my path to always do better.

Sadly, before my second wife’s death, my formative years of change as a novice transgender woman set in. I wonder now, how I made any strides with all the restrictions which were put on me. I did know one thing that I could not see any real changes in my feminine life until I could make it out of my restrictive lifetime closet and be allowed to explore the world. Something my wife was dead set against, adding an extra barrier on my gender path. In place of being able to explore more in the world, I daydreamed my life away. Thinking what it would be like to live the experiences I had as a cisman as a woman. I would like to get back just a portion of the time I wasted daydreaming and have often wondered what I could made of my male self if I had been constantly focused on him. Of course, I could not get the time back and had to make the best out of what I had been given.

When I was able to finally break out of my closet and begin to explore the world as a transgender woman, change began to come quicker for me. I got to the point where I could not wait for the next time I had the chance to go out so I could have the opportunity to learn more about the life I should have always been able to live. In an extraordinarily short period of time, I was able to establish myself and begin to carve out a new and separate life away from my old male one. For once, I did not have to wonder what the life of a ciswoman was like as I was experiencing it for myself. The time was especially valuable to me when I began to lose most all my friends to death and I was desperately lonely. I needed a new place to turn and all the changes I had worked so hard on over the years really came back to help me.

Perhaps the biggest change which helped was that I came back as a wiser/nicer self than I ever was before. All the years of watching and learning from the ciswomen around me did come back to help me after all because I learned that all women did not fit the kind and giving stereotype of the feminine world everywhere. I gained some basic knowledge of which women to look out for in the world and how to change around their often-passive aggressive spirit. Lessons I learned the hard way on many occasions when I learned a smiling face did not mean a smiling spirit.

If I had not let a lifetime of change help me, then shame on me. So, I needed to make the best of a life which on occasion seemed to be totally out of reach. It was not until I realized it was that I resolved myself to do the little things to make me a better transfeminine person. That is where the little circle of women friends who I built up around me came in to help me. All the girls’ nights out and lesbian mixers helped me to round off the remaining rough male edges that I had and send my life in the right direction where I did not need a man’s support to validate me as a person. Another woman’s validation was just as valuable to me without all the resultant drama and sexuality questions I would have had to have gone through.

I suppose all the changes I went through in the military when I was stationed on three continents in three years got me used to change and in fact, I often craved it. It worked to my advantage later in life when I had all the gender changes I could handle. Even though my immensely influential male self as well as me trying to appease my second wife went, they never won and I changed anyhow. A drastic change from societies’ standards as I was able to cross the gender border and femininize myself from male to female.

I certainly was fortunate to be able to do it all and see the world the way I could behind the feminine gender curtain. Even though I ignored the obvious about myself and it took so long to do it.

Thanks so very much for joining me on my gender journey!

Any comments or thoughts are always welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

Sink or Swim Time

Image from Jeremy Bishop
on UnSplash.

Coming off all my new and exciting Halloween adventures, it was time for me to decide if I was going into the deep end of my gender pool to see if I could sink or swim for my life.

One way or another, I knew I could not wait another full year to leave my closet and explore a feminine world which I had barely learned anything about. What I learned was that I loved the femininization process and wanted to know more. I loved the process of learning to apply makeup properly and the feel of the clothes, but even more the fact I was just a little closer to living my dream of how a ciswoman really lived. To accomplish it, I would have to keep swimming in my pool of life. Especially when I was in over my head.

I caught myself in the deep end too many times when I did not know what I was doing in the early days when I was struggling to blend in with the world and essentially disappear to most of it. In the shallow end of the pool, I discovered most strangers did not care about me anyhow as they went about their everyday lives. It was the deep end where I ran into problems. Since I always considered myself a quality student of the women around me, I quickly found how little I really knew about where I wanted to go as a novice transgender person.

It was not until I learned how complex a ciswoman’s life was as compared to a cisman’s did, I figure out how far I would need to swim to make it to my dream. To make it, I needed to become a long-distance gender swimmer while I stayed in the deep end. To stay where I wanted to be in the pool, I needed to fight back all the fears I had of stripping myself of the male life I had tried so hard to build up and start all over again. To make matters worse, I was highly insecure about if I could ever make it to my goal at all. You have probably heard the old saying that you must dream about something to do it and I was having a difficult time even dreaming about my own unique path to womanhood. At the time, and into the future I knew I could not afford any expensive gender surgeries so I would have to go the distance on my own out of sheer will power as a transwoman friend once told me.

The only things that kept me going were the deep sense of feeling natural when I was following up on my feminine instincts and an even deeper sense of gender euphoria any time I succeeded. Maybe I could make it after all and be more like my transgender woman friends I so admired at the diverse parties I was a regular at in nearby Columbus, Ohio. I figured they had made it in the deep end of the gender pool and so could I. Plus, every party I went to seemed to teach me more about the life I was expected to live as a trans woman without any gender realignment surgeries. Which separated me out from most all the other accomplished transgender women I met in Columbus.

From there, I left the gay venues I was relying upon for socialization and ventured into the straight bar scene I mention so much. It was all part of treading water in the deep end of the gender pool until I figured how I was going to make the next move. Either give up and go back or keep on swimming. Along the way, I became tired of all the effort I was putting into my new life as a transfeminine person until new energy came along to keep me going.

I cannot say I was not in danger of drowning if I did not vigorously keep swimming towards my dream goals in life. My already strained mental health was already causing me to be very self-destructive and a danger to myself, so I was in a bad place to be if I was in the deep end of the pool struggling to figure out my future. To make matters worse, nearly everyone I was close to in my life passed away within three years of each other leaving me in shock and nearly all alone. Somehow, I found the inner strength I needed to stay afloat until I was able to reach out to a whole new set of women friends who enjoyed my company. Above anything else, they saved me from drowning while at the same time teaching me the fine points of being a woman. I tried to thank them, but they never understood and we continued to have fun together.

Included in the group was my current wife Liz who met me in an online dating site against all odds when I was in a lesbian woman seeking woman group. It turned out we lived semi close together and were able to correspond online until our first date at a drag show. We have been together nearly fourteen years now and married for the majority, so I consider that a great success story which makes up for all the down times I suffered.

If you are considering a swim into the deep end of your gender pool, make sure that you are sure you want to give up everything you may have to not turn around and go back. It is never easy and each of us has their own particular path to follow and you need to claim your successes when you have them. Gender euphoria is often brief and fleeting for those of us who have not been blessed with many natural feminine characteristics. We just have to work harder to even stay in the pool and take everything we are given to stay afloat.

I have had several recent comments from readers who are in despair because they have nothing to work with as a novice transgender woman or cross dresser but do have several understanding ciswomen who accept them to fall back on. A great way to study the fact that all women are different and more than a few might be closer to you when it comes to shapes, sizes and personalities than you think.

As I always say, I hope you can find your own path on the way to your own personal gender freedom. Thanks for reading, and commenting!

 

 

  

I Did Not Just Wake Up This Way

 

Image from We Vibe Toys
on UnSplash

I get a sense of amusement (mixed in with a little frustration) when someone thinks I just woke up one day and decided to put on a dress and makeup.

I don’t have much energy to keep explaining how my gender dysphoria has always been a part of me and one I did not ask for. My frustration sets in when some time ago, an acquaintance from the transgender community I met proudly told me she had never been gender dysphoric in her life which I had a hard time believing since she finally went through the extensive gender realignment surgeries.

Then, I began to think did she or even me know the true definition of gender dysphoria. So, I went to look it up from a well-known online dictionary and here is what I came up with: “ a state of severe distress or unhappiness caused by feeling that one's gender identity does not match one's sex as registered at birth.”  I felt that my acquaintance simply did not know the meaning of the words.

Immediately it made sense to me because that is the way I felt growing up wondering if I was a boy or a girl. The only thing I knew for sure was the way I was born and how it affected my life. Perhaps the worst thing was that if I did not understand the way I was with my gender mix-up, how could I possibly expect anyone else to understand it either. So, I headed down the worst path ever and tried to internalize all of my feelings. Internalizing left me with only one way out. Which was to attempt to cross-dress myself in front of the mirror as a girl, away from my perceived dominant male gender.

As many of you know, cross-dressing in secret behind the back of your family is never easy as you have to sneak around and plan every spare moment to do it. It was something I would not have wished on my worst enemy. Why couldn’t I just have been a so-called normal boy like all if my friends seemed to be. Then reality set in as I realized again, I was not “normal” to many people and would have to live with it. Living with it became increasingly more complex as I matured as a serious cross-dresser into an even more serious transgender woman. I evolved into needing more than just admiring my feminine self in the mirror and wondered if I could do it in the world too. Before I did, I needed to gather the courage and confidence to do it. Which was very difficult for me to do because I just did not wake up and lose all the insecurities I had in my life. Many of which involved me ever being able to live as a woman, trans or not.

As I always mention, my early days in the world as a novice transfeminine person were not easy until I developed the tools in dressing myself and learning the basic makeup arts so I could blend in with the ciswomen around me. After many failures in the malls, I finally knew I had made it when the teen girls who used to notice and harass me began to leave me alone and concentrate on their own developing socializations into women. Which was the same path I was on. Just from a totally different direction, but it was taking me awhile to wake up and realize it.

One of the reasons was that my male life kept getting in my way. He needed space to continue to work on his marriage, help care for a daughter, and work on expanding to a growing successful career. Nothing too remarkable for most cismen, but very difficult for the average transgender woman trying to build her life at the same time. The worst-case scenario happened and the two binary genders within me began to compete for space at the same time. It was like the old days of waking up wondering what gender I was going to be any given day and the stress to my overall mental health was building more than I can say. I became very self-destructive as I finally thought I was not strong enough to handle the life I was given.

Somehow, day to day, I put my life together trying to remember who I was that day until I was fully able to try to disguise my true feminine self to the world. While, at the same time presenting myself as my “normal” male self. I ended up covering my feminine tracks so well that no one expressed to me that they knew all along when I finally emerged into my transgender world. They were all surprised that I never showed any signs of the true journey I was on with my gender.

When I finally woke up to the fact of who I really was, it was as though a tremendous weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I did not need my “Two C’s” so much anymore to get me by in the world. I was gaining the confidence I needed so I did not need as much courage as it took previously to carve out a new life as a woman and blend in with all of the ciswomen around me in their world. Saying that I was overjoyed when my life was coming together would be an oversimplification as age-old questions for me were starting to be answered. The main one was that I had been living my life backwards for decades causing conflict. Regardless of what society told me, I was never a man. I was a woman trying my best to lead a male life. For the most part I was successful, which made matters worse as my genders clashed for survival.

All along, I just wanted the battle to end so I could live my life in peace. I had my feminine side telling me how natural her life felt when she was allowed to live it. While at the same time, my male side was questioning why I would ever give up all the male privileges I had gained over the span of my life.

I chose the natural path which led me to a happy feminine life over the materialistic life which had only brought me stress because I was in the wrong place. Waking up was the best thing I ever did.

Thanks so much for reading along with my transgender experiences. Hopefully they can help you to understand yours too! Any comments are always appreciated.

 

 

Peeling Back my Gender Layers

 

JJ Hart with "Brutus Buckeye"
In the Ohio State Student
Union. 

Following the awakening I received from the numerous Halloween parties I went to “costumed” as my authentic feminine self, I needed to determine the complex path I would take so I could survive in the world.

What I ended up deciding on was a layered effect as I learned the ropes of the feminine universe I had only dreamed of living in. Like many of you, I started slowly with trips to my closet’s mirror, cross-dressed as what I thought was a pretty girl. In essence, the mirror provided me with my first layer to build from. Since putting on mom’s clothes was a relatively easy thing to do, I needed to concentrate on wearing her makeup which was not. No matter how hard I tried at applying makeup, I somehow ended up looking like a rodeo clown in drag. Adding this layer of expertise to my attempts to be pretty were intimidating before I started to see improvement.

Once I started to believe I had mastered the makeup arts part of my new life, I needed to add a new layer and set forth to do more about doing what I could to counteract the testosterone poisoning of my recent puberty. Since there was nothing, I could do about certain aspects of my body, I needed to do better in hiding them to the world when I started to leave the closet and explore. Those were the days of crash dieting and hunting through many thrift stores for just the right fashion item I could not live without. Mirror worship came back to help me during this layer of my life when I could honestly tell myself if an article of clothing really flattered me or not. I needed to get out of my teen cross-dressing fashion years and into a more realistic look I needed to blend in with ciswomen everywhere.

Blending in brought a whole new layer to my gender existence. To my relief, women had more of a tendency to embrace who I was becoming in their world, while cismen everywhere shunned me for leaving their club.  It all was an extension of my life as a man because I had never had much of a liking being around other men anyhow. I guess it all was a precursor to the person I was destined to become as a transgender woman. Probably, more than anything else, the Halloween parties I learned from helped me to be a success during this layer of my life when I was allowed to learn the basic differences between the two main binary genders. And landing squarely in the middle of both until I decided once and for all which direction my life would take. Should I take the easy way out and stay a very serious cross-dresser or follow my instincts and achieve my dream of living a transfeminine life.

To do so, I would have to add layer upon layer to my life by taking the old male building blocks I had used to get me by and use them as a foundation to build a better future. Little did I know what I was getting myself into as I was going past the princess-appearing layer of my life. For once, I was going to have to not listen to what my parents said about me when I approached any project I took on. To put it bluntly, they always told me I “half-assed” everything that I did just to get by. To advance through the gender layers that I wanted to, I knew I could not take the old approach to life I had always taken or I simply would not make it to my dream. It suddenly looked as if it was getting closer and closer to becoming a reality.

Before I just set all the male privileges I had learned aside, I needed to see what I was getting myself into. What would I really face as a fulltime trans woman if I ever decided to cross the gender border. I was selfish and wanted to see if I could peel back all the diverse patterns of life a ciswoman goes through before I went down her path. I was lucky in that all the right gender doors opened for me as I learned the ropes of being a woman in a supposed male dominated society. To do it, I needed to learn to leave the male domination behind me and learn a whole new society which existed for and about women. But I needed to earn my way in from all the gatekeepers in my way. I learned it was not going to be easy.

It did not help that initially I was so timid when I presented myself the keepers of the feminine world and it took me the “two C’s” to overcome it. The “two C’s” I speak of are courage and confidence. I needed the courage to think I was ready for my next gender layer and the confidence to do it. Somehow, I needed to get back out in society and prove myself all over again and carve out a totally new life as a trans woman for myself. I needed to keep reminding myself that yes, I was different, but what was wrong with that. I would never be a ciswoman but my socialization as a woman came from a whole different world you would not understand unless you lived it. Surprisingly, the gatekeepers let me in and I decided right then that HRT or gender affirming hormones should be in my future to provide a major kick forward in my transition femininization journey. I had done most of the hard work peeling back the layers I needed to learn if I wanted to do it and now it was time to take the easy hormonal way towards my future. I say easy because my body took to the hormones like what took you so long and all the changes seemed so natural.

The main thing I learned along my gender path was the number of layers I would have to peel back to achieve my goal. I knew going into it that nothing would be easy, but nothing prepared me for what I was about to face. Once I did face my reality that I was feminine all along, it was clear sailing to my dreams.

As always, thank you very much for reading along and I hope my experiences can help you along your gender paths. Comments are always appreciated.

 

The Season to Party as Your Feminine Self

JJ Hart
Cincinnati Witches Ball

It’s October, the season to party as your feminine self with no repercussions if you are lucky and have the chance.

In my case, Halloween parties that I gathered the courage to go to provided me with tons of valuable information I would use later in life. For example, I learned that just going to parties dressed as a trashy woman did not do me much good and when I went dressed to blend in with the other women around me, I was much better off.

My best Halloween evening ever happened to me when I was living in the New York City suburbs running a well-known fast-food chain restaurant and just happened to receive an invitation from one of my ciswoman assistant managers to a Halloween party that her and her friends were going to. Eagerly, I accepted and started to plan my “costume.” I immediately knew from my past Halloween adventures that I wanted to dress provocatively like many of the women do, while not going overboard and not appearing clownish. Since I already had the minidress, long wig and matching heels to go along with the dress, I knew what I was going to wear.

In all fairness to my second wife, she was not into Halloween and all the costumes that came with it, so she was alright with me going by myself although she highly disapproved of what I was wearing. As I was putting on my heels and makeup, she merely said be careful and out the door I went to a new adventure as I chased my feminine spirit.

Since I was relatively new to the area where I lived in New York, I had to navigate the streets in my truck as I wore my heels for the first time. I managed to do good and did not hit anything and anybody and made it to my manager’s house intact. Of course, I was beyond nervous as I found a place to park, adjusted my hair and makeup in my mirror and went up to her front door. When she opened the door, I was shocked and pleasantly surprised to see the friends of hers which were going to the party were all tall very attractive ciswomen with whom I could blend in with easily. When they saw me, they all grew silent until they realized I was not all I seemed to be. Out of pure luck, I had stumbled into a cross dressers dream of being around like-minded women for a Halloween Party.

From there, we wasted very little time leaving her house and heading the short distance up a couple of blocks to the neighborhood bar where the party was taking place. I was in heaven when I heard my heels clicking along with the other women as we walked the short distance to the venue. But it was just the beginning of a fantastic evening, I will never forget. It was like my first girls’ night out and I did not realize it.

It turned out, the venue we went to was smallish and dimly lit which was good for a novice, nervous cross-dresser like me out for a Halloween adventure. What I did not anticipate happening was being left alone by the other women I went with as they split up and began flirting with men they already knew. What I did was grab a seat at an unoccupied table so I could rest my feet. Somehow, I managed to go to the bar and order my own drink and head back to the table without attracting the attention of any of the other women I came with. However, I did attract the attention of an older cisman who sat down beside me at the table I was at.

I almost panicked when he offered to buy me another drink or wanted to know if I wanted to dance but I managed to say no to both since I had no idea if he knew I was not all I seemed to be and did not want to lead him on. At the same time I was flattered by all the attention I was getting, and my gender euphoria was soaring. I felt as if I belonged and fit in nicely in the venue I was in.

About that time, my new female acquaintances came looking for me telling me that they were leaving for home. All too quickly my Halloween dream evening ended, almost. On my way home, I drove past my restaurant and saw a stray car still in the parking lot. Ignoring for a second how I was dressed, I pulled through the parking lot and noticed one of my grill cooks in his car. By this time, I was emboldened by my earlier experiences in the evening and asked him if everything was alright. He said he was fine, and we ended up talking for a short time. During which he complimented me on the way that I looked and precisely about my legs.

Sadly, the glow of my evening was beginning to fade, and I needed to face the fact I had to return to reality and head back home. I walked away in my heels with new life/gender lessons I had learned for the first time. Primarily it is every woman for themselves when it comes to intermixing with men who maybe interested in you. Any loyalty fades quickly away. I also learned that under the right circumstances I could use the cover of Halloween to lip behind the gender curtain and see what was on the feminine side. Most importantly, I liked what I saw and wanted to experience more without having Halloween to help me.

When I returned to work the next day, I was interested to see the reaction from the rest of the crew and my boss over my “costume” the evening before. Overall, outside of a few knowing smiles from my boss and manager, life went on as normal with no questions asked so I was encouraged that my evening in heaven did not hurt my career, Halloween had given me the best of all possible gender worlds for at least one evening. I had to just figure out how I could have more without waiting another year.

 

Like the Bulb which Refused to Go Out

 

Image from Christian Dubovan
on UnSplash.
 

Years ago in another life, I bought a small corner tavern in an 1860’s era brick building in my hometown with a friend of mine.

My dad aptly called the bar the place flies did not have to stop when they flew through and I had to agree. But his criticism did not stop my friend and I from trying to make it the best tavern we could. When we were bored, we started to look around in all the saved junk that ancient bars accumulated and found a vintage, part wooden beer sign we could not wait to put up, even though that brand of beer did not exist anymore.

Amazingly, the sign had an ancient filament light bulb that still worked, so we used it and it kept on working for years. Later, I began to think of that bulb and how it could describe my gender conflicted life. No matter how hard I tried, my inner gender feminine light just would not go out. Not even a three-year stint away in the Army from the external expression of me being a cross-dresser could put it out. In addition, when I was honorably discharged, I found I needed to replace my inner gender bulbs with ones of a greater wattage to illuminate my dark, lonely closet.

Brighter bulbs helped to illuminate my feminine image in my closet mirror and helped me improve my makeup art as well as determine what clothes would be the right ones to wear. My new visions of myself helped me to speed up the cross-dressing experience and I just wanted to have more. That is when I began to take chances by going out into the malls and shopping centers close to my home. It did not make matters any easier as I learned how far I needed to go to successfully blend in with the ciswomen around me. Instead of displaying a small/dim bulb to succeed, to get to where I wanted to go, I needed a brighter bulb to display myself if I was ever going to make it as a successful transgender woman

At first, I was just using my light to interact with clerks and salespersons until I built up my confidence to do more. I was moving past my early days of Halloween exposure to the world as a trans woman and I was scared to death because for once I did not have the, “well I am wearing a costume” excuse to fall back on if I experienced any pushback for my cross-dressing in public. I was not up to no good, all I wanted was for my light to shine brightly in the new exciting world I was in. Unfortunately, in my early years, you might say I was a dimwit when my light bulb flickered and I thought it was going to go out. Those were the dark days of “purging” or getting rid of almost all of my feminine belongings and pledging to myself that I was going to turn the light off for good, put it all behind me and go back to where I was as a successful man.

As I said, those were the days of being a dimwit because deep down I knew I needed that feminine bulb to survive. No matter how dim it was at the time. Ironically, every time I “purged” I discovered very quickly I would need a much brighter bulb to sustain my life when I returned to my gender reality. Then I started to work hard to see what my new reflection in the world really was as a transfeminine person. I had to be constantly on my toes with my best behavior to do it as I was learning so much from every woman or the rare cisman I interacted with. It seemed as if I had to keep a constant supply of new bulbs handy every time I went out in the world. I always mention the stripping of all my male privileges as the main way which drastically dimmed my new light as a trans woman until I could replace the privileges with the whole new euphoria of being able to exist equally as myself in the girls ‘club I so desperately wanted admission into. It finally became evident to me; to be admitted, I had to find a bigger, better bulb to improve my overall presentation. So, I would never have to start all over again with my feminine life.

After years of experimentation and trying, I made it into the girls’ club where I always should have been in my life. And I put all those years of replacing bulbs behind me. Suddenly, my gender path became well lit like a large city street which I was able to navigate easily. With the help of powerful/magical HRT gender affirming hormones which helped me sync my external selves with my feminine inner self. I really became a whole person with all the gender benefits I had ever dreamed of. My emotions became clearer as I became more sensitive to the world. Among with the usual changes in hair on my head and breast size to my chest. Probably, most importantly, I was able to quit trying so hard with my makeup as my skin softened along my facial angles which made me more passable as a transgender woman. The world questioned me less, so I was able to change out fewer bulbs as I continued to play in the girls’ sandbox for the first time in my life.

The only regret I have is that it took me so long to follow my feminine destiny and live out my truth in life. I wasted too much time and money cross-dressing my life away changing gender bulbs until I got it right. I should have taken the time to write down somewhere the number of excuses I heard from my male self why I should ignore my truth and not try to live a life as a transgender woman. But I did not and the only thing I can fall back on is when my male life was good, it was very good and very bad when it was not. It is the only excuse I have to waste all those bulbs I did over the decades of gender experimentation I did to arrive at my destiny.

Hopefully, you can do the same. Thanks for reading and comments are always welcome!

 

 

 

 

It Was Decision Time

 

Image from Malvestida 
on UnSplash.

I had many years in my life to make a crucial decision on which way I was going to lead my life. Continue in the male box I was put into by mistake at birth or continue the path I was taking into a fully feminine world.

I say many years because it took me approximately fifty years of cross-dressing in the mirror and then the world to figure out if I wanted to finally take the final steps, I needed to do to lead my dream life as a transgender woman. The funny thing about life is that now the half a century seemed to go by so fast, but when I was doing it, it was very slow.

Along the way, I had many of the usual suspects crop up I used as excuses as why I did not transition earlier. Such as, having a severe lack of information because I was born into the pre-internet era, or was I cross-dressing just because of the thrill of the clothes or the danger of getting caught. My whole life hung in the balance when I was doing my best to look like a pretty girl because if I was caught, I knew I would have a trip to a psychiatrist in my future who would say I was mentally ill. At such an early age I knew that what I was doing as my cross-dresser self-did not make me mentally ill. All I wanted to do was live a life among the girls I saw at school and put my male life behind me.

Before I could even consider living a fully feminine life such as a new term which I read about (transgender) on the internet, I would have a ton of living and researching my future to do. I was only seeing one side of a ciswoman’s existence which was the good side with all the pretty clothes and hair which was the external side. Before I could see what ciswomen had to do to get there, I would have a lot of living to do before I could ever be admitted to the girls’ club for good.

Undoubtably, the biggest mistake I made was not moving forward into my male to female femininization world faster than I did because femininization came from the inner self for me. Much more I found than the purely external femininization I thought that I was facing. So, I often miscalculated what I was doing as a novice transgender woman.  Among many other things, I had to outgrow what I call my teen girl cross-dressing years when all I wanted to do was wear my clothes too short or too tight for my testosterone poisoned body shape. Once I found how wrong that was, I could move forward into being able to blend in with the world of ciswomen my age.

As I left my teen cross-dressing years, I was able to expand my search for my true self even further. I made mental lists for myself on what I should try next in my feminine life. Or what could I do to see if I really wanted to give up the successful male life I was living. A life that was very good when it was good and terribly bad when I was suffering from my reoccurring gender dysphoria. It all made coming up with my final big decision such a hard one to make.

Still, I did not stop my constant research on whether I could make it as a transfeminine person. All it really did was add years on to my final decision, as I added layer upon layer of trans woman experiences to fall back on. Some were bad, but most were good which encouraged me to move on. Without the help often from anyone to guide me, I went the “Trial and Error” route as I hoped my errors in a women’s world would not be too embarrassing. I was successful more times than not because I let the other ciswomen in my world take the lead, and I could sit back and learn from them. It was quite the change from my old male self who was trained to always take the lead.

I can call it what I want, but destiny finally came along and opened my gender changing doors for me. I was able to be approved by a doctor and a therapist for HRT or gender affirming hormones. Which was the final nail in the coffin for my old male self who was on his last legs anyhow. I was all alone after my second wife passed away, so I did not have to explain my gender differences to anyone else for a change. I even set out to prove I was not wrong in my choices when I tried and failed to date women as a man again and I even tried to date cismen as a trans woman to determine once and for all my sexuality as a person. I was firmly in the female camp and was encouraged by all the extra attention I was receiving from women and even lesbians as I changed my life.

I ended up giving my male self-more chances than he deserved which wasted more precious years of my life. But I was able to overcome my timely errors by meeting my wife Liz online. Fourteen years later we are still together and hopefully even though she did not get the rest of me, she got the best of me. Because of Liz, it was easier for me to make my final decision to transition out of my male life forever.

I was able to overcome the wasted male years of my life as I pondered if I could live my dream. I just have always wanted the time back, which of course is impossible. Having the chance to survive a life as a “Yo-Yo” gender has provided me the chance to live out a positive life. Once I decided to go all out and live it. I should have realized years ago when it was decision time when it came to my gender.

 

 

 

What Goes Up Must Come Down

 

Image form Vicky Hladynet
on UnSplash. 

Gender euphoria for me has been a double-edged sword.

The sharp edge of the blade has been the powerful elixir I gained from when I was successful in my early attempts to cross-dress successfully and enter the world. I was well aware of the feelings from my initial view of myself as a perceived pretty girl in my home mirror. Well before I had the courage to leave the house.

On the other hand, the dull side of the blade was the quick coming down I needed to go through after my successful journeys into the world of ciswomen and cismen. But I found early that the women were the ones I needed to concentrate on because they were curious about me. Ciswomen were the most likely to pick me out of a crowd and notice that I was not all that I seemed to be.

To combat my severe ups and downs, I needed to set up and stay on a steady diet of cross-dressing activities. To do my best to always have the joy of gender euphoria to get me by the worst of my gender dysphoric issues. Often, my rhythmic cross-dressing adventures were the only thing which kept me going in life when I became so depressed with a fatalistic “Why me” mentality.

As I learned later in life from one of my therapists, I was a bi-polar depressive which added to my problems of feeling down. When I was down, I was really down and had to force myself out of bed for days at a time. When I got the professional opinion about my depression issues, I was relieved because it was one less thing I could blame on my gender issues. Then I could concentrate on my sword again along with its ups and downs. What I did was expand my ups by doing more when I was out in the world exploring to see if I really was a transgender woman or a serious cross-dresser or what.

When I was out at the bigger shopping venues in nearby Columbus, Ohio, I learned I could be accepted as just another well-dressed feminine shopper looking for gifts from the specialty stores, I went to. Perhaps because I was trying to soothe part of my guilt of not telling my second wife what I was doing, I always tried to buy a little gift for her from one of the big gardening stores I knew about and visited. She was a very dedicated gardener and for a change I could make her happy. Along with me at the same time. At least I was trying to do something positive with my gender euphoria before I started to go home and crash back into my old unwanted male life.

Sadly, after I crashed, I wanted more of my feminine world and when I did not get it I tried to internalize my feelings which only made my life worse. Since I was suffering, I was selfish and wanted everyone around me to suffer too. It got so bad that I nearly lost jobs over my attitude and probably should have lost my marriage too, if my wife was not so strong. That also had its good and bad points. The good was that when we were good, we were very good and when we were bad because of my gender dysphoria, we were very bad. Mainly because my wife had everything as a woman that I envied and I resented her for it. The worst part was she should not have had to suffer along with me on my path of severe ups and downs because I was incapable of explaining either the ups or the downs of my life when I had them. One thing was for sure; the worst move I ever made was internalizing my feelings from my second wife.

To help my ups, I continued a serious program to learn if I really wanted to risk my life as I knew it to live a transfeminine life. How could I risk all that I had built up as a man for such a selfish move which would have far reaching effects past just me. Including my marriage, my family and my employment which were all doing well except for my marriage. I felt as if I was on a run-away train on a dead-end track with my life if I ever faced my truth about who I really was.

At the same time, my downs just had to be worth all the ups I was experiencing. My gender tipping point was rapidly reaching the critical point of no return as I was increasingly carving out a new and exciting life as a trans woman. My confidence was staying at an all-time high and suddenly my dreams might be able to become a reality. The only downs I was experiencing happened when my wife was still alive and I was feeling like I cheated on her with myself every time I snuck out into the world as the new me. I think deep down, I knew our relationship was not going to be sustainable, but I never thought it would be because she would die ahead of me. Naturally, her death hit me hard and at the age of fifty-five I was going back to my drawing board. This time to do much more than re-work how I looked as a woman. Now I needed to determine how I wanted to live out the remainder of my life.

Even with the obvious answer staring me in the face, I managed to still ignore my reality and stumble forward with one foot firmly planted in each of the binary genders. Finally, my male foot began to slip, and I quit fighting the obvious. I was never meant to be a man at all, and I was a woman living a lie and living like a man. When I did, almost all my depression went away, and I was free to live the life I was always destined to live.

As always, thank you for reading along with my lifetime of gender experience. I hope I can help you and comments are appreciated!

 

 

 

When A Good Day was in the Details

 

Image from Ali Hassan
on UnSplash

I remember vividly the frustration I felt when I tried to connect all the dots I needed to connect to make blending into the world as a feminine person a reality. A good day was when I was able to recognize the details and improve my overall feminine presentation.

It was because I had so much new to remember when I finally summoned the courage to leave the mirror and get out into the world. The mirror was kind to me and often would not tell me when I was looking like a circus clown in drag. It took being out in the public’s eye to do that for me, unfortunately. When the stares and laughter caught up to me in the initial stages of being out of my shell, I had to scurry home to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board to go over all the details I was trying to put together if I ever was going to make it as a novice transfeminine person.

It seemed when I arrived at the point where I did a reasonably good job of applying my makeup, then I would make some huge mistake with how I was moving and mess up the feminine image I was trying to portray. One example that comes to mind was when I was in a mall blissfully minding my own business as a woman when one of my heels stuck in a crack in the sidewalk and I almost fell. After I determined that no one else noticed my embarrassing move, I gathered myself back up and resumed my journey. A lot wiser for the experience which I am sure that many ciswomen have gone through. It was just that the overall gender learning experience at times seemed to be so cruel and frustrating.

Overall, it took me submitting to practice, practice, practice to make it to just an entry level where I did not look like a linebacker in a dress when I moved in a new, scary world. Of course, I knew ciswomen move very differently than cismen, but to copy it was not going to be easy for me. It also seemed all eyes were upon me as a transgender woman which was and was not the case. As I found out if I could just do the basics, most people would be in their own worlds and not notice me at all. That is, if I did not give them anything out of the ordinary to look at which initially I was quite bad at. Why? Because I tried dressing as a teen girl, which was a major mistake as I was trying to disguise my thirty-year-old testosterone poisoned body.  It did not take me long to get laughed out of doing it and settled into a more reasonable look which was able to blend in with the ciswomen around me.

At that point, a good day was when I was able to put my overall appearance together with the way I moved as I began to put the ideal mirror image I always had into motion. I began to try my hand by going to well attended events such as urban festivals in downtown Dayton, Ohio. When I went, I always wore my best sunglasses so I could look to see if other people were paying attention to me and I knew I had made significant strides towards living my dream and I was ecstatic. For once it seemed, everything was coming together for me in my life until I hit two major roadblocks. My second wife and my male self-sensed the potential of losing their lives with me as they knew them.

It was all good for awhile as I was able to maintain the delicate gender balance I was trying to live until the portion of my life, I came to call my own dark ages when I lost my wife and three of my closest male friends to death. Naturally, I was knocked for a loop and did not know which way was up for a while. As an experiment I even tried to date ciswomen again as a man, but it did not work since I did not want to start to explain all over again to another woman my gender issues. Finally, I resorted to taking myself out to an outdoor concert in a Dayton suburb because my daughter gave me two tickets to see “Joe Cocker”. The woman I was going to take essentially stood me up a week before the concert which gave me time to consider taking myself. Which is what I did as I went in a black sleeveless top, black flowing silky pants and sparkly silver sandals. No one gave me a second look as I nervously played with my long dark-haired wig and I enjoyed myself immensely.

I knew right then, I was on the right path because I felt so natural in my new world as I was connecting all the right dots and my feminine power was in the details. Until I hit my next big roadblock. Just how was my new transfeminine person going to do her most difficult task of all, which was being able to communicate with the world around me. A world which I had to put all the way up there with my initial feminine problems such as makeup, hair and movement as my most difficult task to take on. Here I was in this big, highly nuanced new world I was in with very few tools to help me.

At first, I resorted to mimicking the tone of the other ciswoman who was trying to talk to me. Which worked well enough to get me by with short, simple conversations with clerks and salespeople but fell miserably short when someone really wanted to communicate with me. That’s when I knew I needed to seek out professional help about feminine vocal patterns which helped me to learn the basics of being able to not necessarily sound like a woman when I was talking but still say the right things a woman would say. a huge detail I needed to communicate in the new world I was in,

I was fortunate when I survived my dark ages and the onslaught of my male self-trying to survive that I was still able to move forward. I began each day with good feelings for once concerning how I felt about my gender dysphoria in my life. No matter what the mirror was telling me in the morning, deep down I had connected all the dots and attended to all my gender details, so I knew who I was.

It made all the difference in the world as it took me so long to do it.

Thanks as always for reading along. I hope you can find and overcome all the gender details and connect your dots along the way. Comments are always welcome!

 

 

 

 

Loving What You Do as a Trans Woman is Never Work

 

JJ Hart Doing Transgender Outreach. 

Perhaps you have heard the old saying about hard work. It goes something like this... If you love what you do, it is never work. Anyway, I looked at it, the phrase really fit my life as a transgender woman or an early cross-dresser.

Even though, early on it was hard work finding one of mom’s dresses I could still fit into and not rip apart in the seams, I still tried it. As I grew into a more mature version of my feminine self, I learned my work to transform myself into the woman I was always meant to be was not going to be an easy task as testosterone poisoning was ravaging the body I wanted to have as a girl during male puberty. While the girls around me were developing the curves I wanted, all I got was a larger angled male body I hated. If I wanted to continue, my path was cut out for me, and it was not going to be an easy one to follow. I would have to make it a labor of love to ever succeed.

The first thing I needed to do was find feminine clothes that fit me, and at the same time disguised my male body with my large torso, broad shoulders and narrow hips. Plus, I had the extra problem of look really liking the feminine shape wear I need to wear to suggest I had hips when I cross-dressed as a woman. It was always too restrictive for me to enjoy and I was not careful; the restrictions went as far as hurting my chances of success in a women’s restroom setting. If you know what I mean. What I did was make extensive use of pieces of foam which I wore under my panty hose to give me the illusion of hips under the skirts and leggings I wore back in those days. I remember spending day upon day of destroying foam rubber pieces until I thought I got them just right. That solved the hip problem partially so I could concentrate on my all-important breasts.

To advance my presence in the world as a transgender woman, having the proper breasts was another labor of love and at times a comedy show. Before the advent of easily obtainable silicone breast forms, I tried a number of ill-fated ideas to give myself the proper breasts which fit the size of my body but were not too big and looked like I came from a circus somewhere. Before my first silicone breasts were gifted to me by a purging cross-dresser friend of mine who was getting rid of all his feminine belongings, I tried exotic ideas such as bird seed and water balloons. Water balloons I liked because they warmed to the temperature of my body and did a realistic job of looking like real breasts in the bras I wore at the time.

All along, I knew on the negative side, I was taking a big chance using water balloons for breast forms because they can easily break. And of course, the worst-case scenario happened to me one night when one of my balloons broke in public. Luckily, I was going to the women’s room anyhow and it was empty so I could clean up and head back home to end my love affair with water balloons as breast forms forever.

As I put all this concentration into making my transfeminine better, I was concentrating less on my male life. Although it was a labor of love for me, it was not for my second wife who grew tired of my obsession to be an attractive woman and told me I was missing the whole point of being feminine. It was not to be obsessed with makeup and clothes; it was being able to slide behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen’s lives really play out. It did not take many times of being called a terrible woman for me to drop what I was doing, change course and try to find out what she was trying to tell me. Then I found myself in a “Catch 22” of sorts because if no one would allow me to play in the girls’ sandbox how would I ever learn to do it. It was like the job interviews I went to, where they told me I did not have enough experience but would not give me a chance to work for them and gain the experience.

I finally had to stop being the victim and head out into the world to discover what my wife was talking about. If indeed I was a terrible woman, I need to correct that and move forward. It was then I went on a collision course with myself to determine what I really wanted in life. Did I want to be the successful man I was becoming or have the chance to live out my dream living in a ciswoman’s world.

The labor of love that I entered involved me having to learn what a ciswomen’s life was all about. I knew it was going to be quite the change to learn a new scary complex world, but I was not prepared for the barrage of information I needed to deal with. It seemed that half the women I met wanted to interact with me and find out what I was doing In itself, interaction was not bad if I was ready for it. Which I was not. I had to go on a crash course in understanding my communication with women like I had never known before. I was used to listening to ciswomen the way cismen always to by hearing only what they want to hear and ignoring the rest. Woman, on the other hand, have so many nuances in their communication that I had a lot to learn. But again, it was a labor of love for me and no work at all. If I had put that much work into my college studies, I would have finished with a four-point average. It showed me where my priorities in life really were.

From the first time I tried to experiment with mom’s makeup to living the life I live today, my male to female gender transition was never any work because I loved doing it.

I also love writing for you in the hope I can help you along in your life’s journey. Thanks for reading along and any comments are always appreciated.

 

 

 

 

 

When My Tomorrow Became my Today

JJ Hart

My desires to always look like a pretty girl early in life led me to always be a tomorrow person.

 I always thought that somehow tomorrow I could get a real wig, nicer clothes and more makeup which would help with my feminine transformation. I guess you could say that the whole process made me into quite the dreamer as I sat in school and envied the girls around me in their pretty clothes I could not have. At least today but maybe not tomorrow if any of my dreams came true.

Soon I discovered that dreams never came true on their own and would take an enormous amount of work on my part to make a dream happen. Especially once as complex as crossing the gender border to live a transfeminine life. I often wonder if I would have had an ounce of foresight into how difficult I was going to have it; would I have ever undertaken such a crazy path to begin with. One which would completely consume all the spare energy I could use.

The first problem I had to conquer in my feminine life was my often-frustrating attempts to look like a woman and not some sort of a clown in drag at the circus. I found I was setting the bar way too high in my appearance standards as there was never going to be a day when I could match the prettiest women I envied. I just needed to blend in with the rest of the ciswomen in the world just going about their everyday lives. It took me many painful attempts at presenting properly as a trans woman before I got it right and was able to move around in the world without causing any undue attention to myself. When I did, I was happy to stay in the present until my brief gender euphoria went away. As I crashed from the euphoria of living as myself, I was bitter, nasty and tried to take my frustrations out on the world of ciswomen around me. Why could not I be like them and live in their world held me back in mine, so I kept dreaming about the next time I could I could live my dream in the world fully cross-dressed as a woman.

The good part was that all along I was becoming better in my presentation as a woman and was finding it easier to cross the gender border. The bad part was once I did it, I wanted to stay and not go back to the male I was living. It was then that my todays became longer, and my tomorrows seemed further away. My new mentors became the established transgender women I had met at the socials I was going to in nearby Columbus, Ohio. They had crossed border and were living successful lives and I wanted to learn more about how they did it. What I learned was that every trans person’s journey was different and it was rarely ever easy. All I ever knew was that every time I was accepted into their circle, I felt natural and wanted to learn more about them.

As I look back on it, the one thing the mentors had on me was their natural beauty which I never had, so I had to keep putting my tomorrow off until I found out I could do a male to female transformation my own way. Or out of sheer willpower as I had a transwoman friend of, mine tell me in a straight bar we were in one night. By this time, I had given up on any natural feminine beauty I might have and made my tomorrow become my today by using other strengths ciswomen bring to the table when they don’t happen to share the extreme passing gene that some women have. They go on to lead fun and fulfilling lives by tuning out all the demands to be beautiful they hear. That is what I had to do because for sure ciswomen come on all shapes and models and I could certainly find a group I could fit in with. Which in my case, happened to be lesbians.

I was really seeking out the company of lesbians so to speak; I just happened to stumble across their culture at a small lesbian venue I started to go to as well a through a bartender at a big sports bar I used to go to who introduced me to her mom. Through it all, I knew the next step for me was to become more feminine by using HRT or gender affirming hormones. My approval to take the hormones focused my tomorrow so much I could not wait to get there. I changed during the time I was socializing with my new lesbian friends who took me to watch sports as well as big lesbian mixers. I was having the time of my life as my tomorrow was rapidly becoming my today.

Maybe most importantly, my friends helped me to validate myself as who I was really was as the subject of my past life as a man never came up. They did not want to know, and I did not want to bring it up as I was just appreciating my spot in my new present as a transfeminine person.

The final touches in my today came when my daughter accepted me totally and I met my current wife of over a decade Liz. They helped rid myself of any lingering doubts of how I should live my life. Over my gender cliff I went into their soft arms and my gender tomorrow was gone for good.

My only passing regret was that it took me so long to face up to who I was always was as a full-fledged human being. There was no way I should have let it go as long as I did, I should have let tomorrow be my today. I was all wrong as I tried to cross-dress my pain away. My excuse is I was jinxed all along into leading a backwards gender life thinking I was a man trying to be a woman rather than the other way around. That way, I would have never let my todays and tomorrows get mixed up the way they did.