Luck or Destiny makes a Trans Girl Tick

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Along with my regular blog postings, I am writing I book about my life through a company called “StoryWorth.”  My daughter purchased it for me, and it only goes to selected members of the family, so it is intensely personal and made to read in my opinion, after I have passed away. This week’s question was based on what I have done in my life, which was the most difficult to accomplish and what were the lessons learned and did they happen due to luck or destiny.

My answer was an easy one the two biggest accomplishments I had in life which surprised even me were when I was able to be accepted into the American Forces Radio and Television Service as a broadcaster during the Vietnam War. And the other was when I finally kicked my old male self to the curb and started to follow my dream of living my life as a transgender woman. For the longest time, neither seemed to have any chance at all in coming true, but the slimmest of hopes kept my dreams alive.

Along the way, I learned to not believe in luck during my life, however I became a firm believer in destiny. I need to make the point that destiny only found me because I made the effort to put myself out there in the world and try. I would never have made it to AFRTS without all the time and effort I took to write letters to my congressman, and I would have never made it to a transfeminine existence without leaving my closet and experimenting in the world. It was like I needed to scream destiny here I am, now find me. None of it was ever easy as I was swimming upstream against what society said I should or should not do. I should have quietly went about my way and let the Army recruiters have their way without question or had done the same when I rebelled against being in the restrictive gender box I was born into. I just couldn’t do it.

By far, the greatest act of rebellion happened when I went about seriously crossing the gender border. Presenting as a convincing ciswoman never was easy for me as I had very few natural characteristics. Like many of you, I have the prototypical male body with the thick torso and broad shoulders which I needed somehow to cover up if I was ever going to make it in the world as a trans woman. In fact, the shape of my body always threatened to derail all the work I was doing with my makeup, hair and clothes before I ever got started. I don’t think I ever would have made it without me finally taking the time to look at all the different shapes and sizes of the ciswomen that were around me. Like many of them, I would never be thin and attractive but just maybe with the right padding and wardrobe, I could be a presentable thick woman. By “padding” I meant I needed the right size of breast enhancements as well as hip padding until much later in life, I could add my own “padding” through the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

Then I started to realize that maybe I could do this and become a fully functional transgender woman, if I worked hard enough at it. That meant I needed to overcome the bumps and bruises I encountered along the way when I refused to stop at stop signs along my gender path. To do it, I needed to build up much deserved confidence in what I was attempting to do. Which was stop my life and start it all over again. It was as if I was packing for a trip and only had so much space to take things along. I had to decide what could stay (if anything) from my male past. Again, I needed to look around at the ciswomen I was close to and notice what their interests were. A major example was when I began to think I would have to lose my passion for sports, I began to notice many women with their favorite team jerseys watching games and drinking beer on the big screen televisions in the venues I was going to as a man. It didn’t take a genius to figure out if they could do it, so could I.

Destiny, in all its glory began to show me I wasn’t building anything new when I crossed to going behind the female gender curtain. I was just going to where I always should have been. I started to see that I could be accepted in lesbian circles as a sports loving femme (or lipstick) lesbian and I was relieved I did not have to institute some sort of a forced sexuality change I never wanted to do. Even though I kissed several men to see if there was any real attraction, there wasn’t so I happily moved on to where I was comfortable.

Believing in myself was certainly difficult to come by and took a lot of learning to do as I switched my life from a fairly successful man to a new transgender woman. Because at times, I thought I was in over my head until my confidence stepped back in and I started to move forwards towards my dream goal once again. I just had to remember how far that I had come from that scared, excited boy in a dress and make-up in the family mirror.

If I had it all to do all over again, I am sure I was given a bad deck of cards when it came to dealing with my gender and for the longest time, I played the victim card to delay the obvious. I was a male only because my genitals told the world I was. It took a while for me to mature into the trans woman I am today. But with the help of destiny, I put myself out into the world and made it. There was no luck to it.

 

 

 

Memories or a Dream?

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Too many times, when I went out into the world for the first time as a new transgender woman, I wondered if I was making a memory or living a dream.

Sadly, most of the time I was working so hard to succeed for the first time in a new exciting world, I did not have the time to know if I was making memories or working my way towards a lifetime dream. There was simply not enough time to do all I wanted to do, such as present well enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. It was like I was driving a new car, and I did not know all the new features I was trying to master. How was I ever going to stop being a man with all the male looks such as a scowl and how I walked and turn myself into a pleasant looking feminine person as I camouflaged all the testosterone damages male puberty had caused me.

There turned out to be a way after I worked my way through not dressing like a teen girl which just drew negative attention to me. Certainly, creating more negative memories than positive ones and my dream of living as a full-time transfeminine person, remained just that. A far-off dream. At first, I had many memories to make and learn from as I followed my dark and lonely gender path. Perhaps my biggest problems came when I realized I was trying too hard when it came to expressing my own brand of feminization because I was working so hard to catch up with my own gender workbook and decide where I wanted to be.

The only dreams I was having during this time of my life were the rare occasions when I went to sleep and dreamed that I was the attractive woman I always wanted to be and the pressure was off to look a certain way as a woman which I had always lived with. I was obsessed with trying to try any beauty secret I could to improve my appearance in the world. This obsession very much was with me until I began to settle into my own beauty routine

 The dream took a giant step towards materializing when my daughter took me to her up-scale beauty/salon and spa to color and style my hair for the first time when it had grown long enough to do it. Even though I was scared beyond belief to do it, I knew this was a golden opportunity to go behind the gender curtain into a female dominated space I had never dreamed of going before. It was amazing as I wrote about several posts ago, and I knew right then why ciswomen were so adamant about having their hair done a certain way. I could not wait until I could scrape up the extra money so I could afford to go back. Plus, with my new hair, there was no way I could keep on presenting male in the world as I knew it.

I was so obsessed with putting myself out into the world, I needed to think of different ways to do it and build more memories such as when I started to meet the ciswomen and lesbians who would form my circle of friends and help me slip across the gender border and behind the gender curtain where I desperately dreamed of being.

At this point, I always mention the good and the bad that happened to me along the way to validating myself as a transgender woman. It took a lot of confidence I didn’t have to make it happen. Too many nights of rejection when I attempted to push the gender envelope too far and was sent home in tears with my new dreams shattered. When it did happen, I needed to rely on my deepest inner feminine self to assure me everything would be OK and these were just memories which happened to be unpleasant to add to my dream. She told me that the roughest dreams you ever had are the ones you had to work extra hard to achieve.

Sooner more than later, I began to have more pleasant memories than bad ones and my ultimate dream again began to come into focus. If I tried hard enough to accomplish all my feminine goals, I could join the others ahead of me in the transgender community I was familiar with and leave my male past behind me forever.

Surely, there is a big difference between memories and dreams. I consider memories a less than physical form of dreams. Meaning memories are easier to come by and dreams are something a human should always have to keep their lives headed in a more positive direction.

Depending upon where you are on your gender path, maybe you are just in the dream phase of where you want to be and that is fine. It is when you begin to build memories of your journey do you start to build the blocks you will need to make it through. During Pride month, no matter what you may read from haters, TERF’s and bigots, you should be proud of the gender dreams you have.

You are worth it and often there are more silent allies and developing transgender women and transgender men that you know who are ready to join society. Just look at your memories and dreams as what you had to go through to arrive where you are today. Someday you may be able to become that confident trans woman you only were when you were asleep.

When it comes right down to it, it does not matter if you are clinging to memories (past and present you are making) or the life you are dreaming of living, The most important thing is the self-love you are able to give yourself. Without it, you have a difficult time loving anyone else.

Thanks for reading along with me and thinking of your own memories and dreams. Any of your comments are always appreciated!

 

When Nothing Else Mattered

 

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Perhaps, similar to many of you, you have been described as selfish when you pursued your gender desires. I know, I was by my second wife as she told me many times my desire to be a pretty cross-dresser in my life was not all about me.

During this time of my life, sadly or not, all my spare thoughts and time dedicated to my cross-dressing activities, so yes, it was all about me. I did my best not to be that way, but I was failing miserably. Especially when I figured it out, I could leave the house as me and do a portion of the household chores such as grocery shopping. I figured by doing so, I was helping my wife and at the same time helping myself.

The more proficient I became at doing my new portion of some of the weekday household chores, the more I felt that nothing else mattered to me than my quest to explore my inner femininity. Increasingly, I broke the rules and made excuses to leave the house and explore the new, natural and exciting world I was experiencing.

As years always do, mine flew by in a blur as I became more proficient in perfecting my feminine appearance and it began to be more apparent to me that the life as I was living as a man would have to be sacrificed at some point if I wanted to pursue my dream goal of living as a transfeminine person. That is when I began to fall back on my ill-fated male habits of internalizing all my feminine feelings. Hoping that eventually, they would just go away. Compliments of my latest purge of my cross-dressing belongings.

Very soon, it became evident that all the purging in the world would not rid me of my deep-seated gender issues and nothing else began to matter, not even the massive fights my second wife and I were having when she caught me out of the house as myself. I would go to any extent possible to try to mend the wounds from my breaking the promises not to ever go out again unattended, all the way to promising I would go to a therapist in Columbus, Ohio who specialized in gender care to attempt to solve my “problem.” Even then, I would not listen to the therapist who told me that my gender issues were not a “problem”, and there was nothing she could do about them. I made the mistake again of thinking there was something radical I could do about how I was attempting to live my life. I could keep trying to sneak out of the house and try to learn more about my possibilities of living life as a transgender woman, while at the same time continue to live with my wife. She always know I was a cross-dresser but was completely dead set against me going any further towards being approved for gender affirming hormones (HRT) and living as my authentic self.

Perhaps the biggest problem was I was not sure what my authentic self really was. I knew I loved my second wife as much as the day I married her years before, but I really was not sure of how deep my transgender issues were going to run. Plus, all the research I was doing into a new life, jeopardized my old life which at times was not so bad because I was accumulating all the male privileges such as wife, family and job that I did not necessarily want to get rid of. The whole situation just mentally tore me up as I did not know what gender I was going to be from day to day. Was I going to try to be my true self or go out into the world again and “act” like the strong man I was not.

It all led me to feeling completely detached from the world and wanting to end it all because I felt so worthless to everybody. Fortunately, after I hit rock bottom, I got help from a good therapist and was prescribed medications which helped my on-going Bi-polar disorder and anxiety. It turned out my anxiety was triggered in many ways by my gender issues so that was easier to solve, but my depression was not so my new meds really helped. Giving credit to where credit is due, my help came through the Veterans Administration health care system and as luck would have it, I was teamed up with a therapist who knew what she was doing when it came to depression and LGBTQ care.

By this time, my second wife had tragically passed away from a major heart attack leaving me totally alone with my thoughts. Quickly, since nothing else mattered, I took the path of least resistance into my own form of womanhood. All those dues I was paying as a cross dresser working with my appearance came back to help me when I could hit the ground running in my heels (not really) and concentrate on rounding out my persona of the trans woman I wanted to me in the world of alpha cis women around me. I was able to see and learn from what they did to make their lives more fulfilling as women, and I wanted to do that too. I was having fun while at the same time was secretly learning everything I could from the ciswomen around me.

Most certainly, nothing else mattered when I sought out approval for my gender affirming hormones from a doctor I found in an LGBTQ newspaper. Along with the hormones, I was putting my new life together by legally changing all the gender documents I could with the VA and in the civilian world. Very soon, my old male life was in my past and my “dead” name faded away.

The only thing that did matter was building a new life with my third wife Liz, a lesbian ciswoman who accepted me for what I was. I could not let a second chance such as that pass me by.

 

 

More Serious Stop Signs

 

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“Tia” wrote in yesterday and commented on my recent “Stop Sign” post. She wanted further insight into what my biggest stop signs were and how did I get through them.

First, thanks for the insightful comment, Tia and here are the answers as I remember them now.

By far, my biggest stop sign was put directly in my path by my second wife. As I was stuck between the rock and the hard place with her because of the transition I was slowly making from cross-dresser to transgender woman and my wife. Rightfully so, my wife pointed out I was breaking the marriage covenant we had and she did not want to be married to another woman. The last thing I want to do here is make her the bad person in all this gender turmoil because she knew and accepted my cross-dressing before we got married.

She even went as far as attending the social activities I went to in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio and supported my efforts to leave the house to explore the world as a transfeminine person for the first time by backing me with money for motel rooms to get ready in. The only real stop sign I had was to agree to never leave the house dressed as me. Was it enough for me? No. I blew right through the stop signs and started to throw caution to the wind and go out into the world like the authentic me. Regardless of the heavily populated area of town, we lived in.

I kept on doing this until I was caught time and time again by my second wife and could not lie my way out of me breaking our agreement. I resorted to even going to therapy for help which never actually came. Mainly because I was not doing anything wrong in my struggle to just be the inner female I always thought I was. I even had a therapist I respected totally tell me that and I just ignored her. Thinking I could balance my gender issues and fight on to maintain the status quo. By ignoring the stop signs I was facing, I was just making my life worse and not helping our relationship in the long term which I will get back to later. Because, as it turned out, there would not be a long term relationship anyhow.

In the meantime, as I became more serious about the possibility of living out my life as a transgender woman, I began to see other stop signs ahead. They were major signs too such as how I would support myself in the world without my wife and perhaps the rest of my family. Obstacles which face nearly all transgender women and transgender men as we attempt to cross the gender border and live out our lives as normal everyday citizens. It is difficult to end one life, pick up the pieces and start over again. Something I wish all the transphobes who try to attack us would try to understand but that is a whole other topic.

Pure destiny helped me to negotiate the other major stop signs I faced with the attitude that if others could complete a male to female transition, why couldn’t I. Life became a circle for me as I went through the darkest period of my existence before I was able to pay my dues and take advantage of the new world I was in. The most tragic part was losing my wife to a major heart attack. I never ever thought she would ever die before me with the stressful lifestyle I was leading but I did, which led me to wonder what I would do about the biggest stop sign of all in my life. In the new darkness as I searched for my new path which had existed so long. All I needed to do was remove the stop sign and continue to live.

I also found I needed to do a quick look into who was important to me in my life and who I could afford to lose if I crossed the gender border. In my darkness I guessed my daughter who would support me and my only brother would not. Which was exactly what happened. It has been over a decade since I have talked with my brother, and my daughter has become one of my biggest supporters. My parents had long since passed on so I did not have to worry about coming out to either of them. Even though I did try to come out to my mom years ago and was rejected. I took that stop sign down and forgot about it.

It seemed, once I got used to taking down my gender stop signs the easier it got. Although that was not necessarily the case. Destiny stepped in again and provided me with an age excuse when it came to how I was going to support myself. I was fortunate to have worked a good job with a good wage which helped my Social Security retirement payments. I turned out if I was able to sell the collectables my wife and I had collected over the years, I could retire and support myself. Which saved me having to look for a job as a new transgender woman.

Of lesser importance was when the Veterans Administration started to provide care for gender conflicted veterans such as me. I jumped at the chance for lower cost HRT meds and the mental care to get them. The mental care provided me with a qualified therapist who helped me with the legal documents that assisted changing my legal gender markers within the VA and the public sector.

Perhaps removing the biggest stop sign of all that remained was discovering a loving relationship which I could cherish for the rest of my life. That person of course was my wife Liz who discovered me on an online dating site. I was always a social person and had resigned myself to a life of being alone before I met Liz and we are still going strong over fifteen years later.

I hope all of this answers the questions Tia and all of you may have had about my transgender stop signs and how I handled them. Some stopped me for years while others I simply rolled through or ignored altogether but one way or another I made it. As always, all of your comments are appreciated!

 

 

 

 

No Participation Awards for a Trans Woman

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As I traveled up my very long gender path with all its stop signs, I realized there were no awards for just participating coming my way. In fact, just the opposite was true.

Every time I was able to cross dress in front of the family mirror and not get caught, I experienced major gender euphoria but no awards because I knew I would just have to go back to my boring male life which I wanted no part of. Since my feminine self was deeply hidden from the world, there were no awards when I mastered a certain make up look or did not run my panty hose. On the other hand, I could expect some sort of gratitude when I achieved good results as a boy. I hated the total imbalance of the system I needed to live under with no available choices coming my way soon.

It wasn’t until much later in life did, I began to experience any participation awards at all. In the very beginning after trips to the big malls I was going to, even on the nights I was laughed at and scorned for my appearance, I felt at least I had tried and needed to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board to come up with ideas about what I was doing wrong. After setting aside my stubborn ideas of trying to dress sexy like a teenaged girl, and dressing age appropriate I was able to blend in with the ciswomen around me and not cause any undue attention to myself. I gave myself a bigger reward when I reached that major milestone in my life back then as a part-time cross-dresser.

Then, I became frustrated because it seemed the awards began to become harder and harder to come by as I started to overachieve as a transfeminine person seeing the world for the first time. Those were the days of trying to overcome a portion of my guilt for sneaking out of the house dressed as me by trying to do things which helped the household such as grocery shopping or better yet, trying to find my wife a garden gift at one of the nearby antique malls I went to. She was a huge gardener, and I thought an occasional gift would please her but probably pleased me more because it helped soothe my guilty conscience and gave me an imaginary award to put up on my mantle. I wish I could say I had a lot of awards, but they were very difficult to come by. Plus, my collection would be destroyed every time my wife caught me out of the house, and I became discouraged and decided to purge all my feminine belongings only to have to start all over again. Until I realized purging was fruitless and my desire to be a woman ran too deeply than just having the clothes, shoes and wigs that I had collected.

Overtime, with all the purges I attempted, I became better at keeping key items of my wardrobe I would need if (ha-ha) the urge to be a trans woman hit me again. I was not the sharpest tack in the box and still had not realized being trans was apart of me and would never just go away.

In the meantime, I continued to go out at night in the world and collect my participation awards as I learned what it really meant to be myself. To do so I needed to leave the gay bars behind that I was frequenting where they only thought I was a drag queen and try out the real world for a change where at the least I could be accepted as a woman from a different past. To do so, I needed to hitch up my big girl panties and do a deep, scary dive into the world I wanted so desperately to be in. I was growing increasingly tired of living a lie as a man and wanted out. In the beginning, I still took what I thought was the easy way out. By going to venues, I frequented often as a man and had wondered how it would be to live it as a transgender woman. It also helped that I was able to see how single women were treated in the straight places I was considering going. The last thing I wanted to do was to feel unwanted or afraid being a single woman in a venue full of couples.

After much thought and caution, I tossed my misgivings aside and considered what was the worst that could happen. My frail ego would be destroyed, and all my participation awards would be destroyed was my first thought. Then, I relied on all my new-found confidence as a transgender woman to succeed at my first big moves in straight venues in the world around me. To my amazement, I was treated well in my new world, and no one laughed at me or treated me with disrespect as I left my unwanted male privileges behind to learn what all the female privileges were all about.

I learned immediately one of the benefits was just being treated nicer. Even to the point where I was invited to staff girls’ nights out when the bartenders were concerned, I was lonely. Which I was. Better yet, one bartender set me up with her single lesbian mom whom I remain friends with to this day. Ten years later. There would have been no way that I could have made friends as easy as I did as a woman than I ever did as a man. A major reward for all the years of work I had put into succeeding on my gender path to my dream.

Another major reward I have received over the years comes from all your comments and feedback to my experiences. Originally, the idea was to write a blog (before I even knew what was one) to help others with similar gender differences so they could learn from them. Thanks to you, the idea has grown way past my expectations.

Thank you!

 

 

  

She Was Living Rent Free in my Head

 

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It took me years to realize that I had a tenant living rent free in my head all along.

I should have known from day one when I was going through my mom’s clothing that she was here to stay. In fact, she increasingly demanded more and more space in my head to justify her life as a cross-dresser or transvestite as we were called back then. I would need to wait several years for the transgender term to even become popular in our gender diverse society.

Also very early, I realized that the small closet I gave her to exist in just was not going to be enough. When she succeeded in expressing herself in the world in the smallest of occasions, she wanted to increase her space in my head. Prime examples were the days in school during study halls when I should have been actually studying. But I wasn’t as if I was having too much fun envying the girls around me who I desperately wanted to be like the next time I had the rare chance to be by myself and cross-dressed as a pretty girl in the mirror. And I realized I did not want them sexually as much as I wanted to be them physically and mentally.

It was during that portion of my life that I completely did not have any idea of how much rent-free space my evolving trans woman needed for her share of my head. Now I want back all the time my male self-spent fighting her for my life as I lived it. The gender ripping and tearing was certainly no fun, as both genders in my head fought for their right to survive. For awhile I tried the old male fallback of just try to ignore my number one problem in my life and she would somehow just disappear. When, in fact, the opposite was happening. The thrill of putting on a dress, hose and makeup would go away, and in its place, I would have a deep-seated feeling of just doing what was coming to be just natural for me. It was increasingly evident that I would need more space for my rent-free tenant to operate in as she went out to explore the world as a novice transfeminine person.

Following more than a few rough patches when she was going out in the world, my woman began to understand the sacrifice of her male ways it would take to survive. She became more serious and began to work on the basics such as presenting herself convincingly in the world. I went on a crash diet and succeeded in taking off enough weight so I could go down a size or two in the world of women’s fashion and I could find and wear stylish clothes for a change. Along with that major move, I began to take extra better care of my skin. Using a good moisturizer following every shave. Which paid off by not having to use so much foundation makeup and I could look so much more natural as if I was not trying so hard to look like an attractive woman. The trips I started to make to the department store makeup counters for guidance certainly did not hurt my progress either.

I was learning the hard way that I could not cut any corners if I was to be successful in my quest to present successfully in a world of curious ciswomen. I needed to give my rent-free tenant the opportunity to expand her space in my head and the finances to do it. I would be spotted a mile away as a man trying to be a woman if I used cheap makeup and did not do my best to shop for (and try on) clothes that fit me and even flatter my testosterone poisoned figure that I could do very little about. I did learn from my observations of the ciswomen around me that there were women of every shape and size that I could copy from and be successful. Which gave me the positive energy to carry on and pass as a trans woman friend of mine said, “Out of sheer will power.”

Even though the progress of my rent-free tenant was not moving along as fast as she wanted, there were still major obstacles in my way to deal with. Such as what would happen to my twenty-five-year marriage, my relationship with my daughter and the problem of finding a new job as a trans woman in the world. To be sure, all were major obstacles to deal with, so my tenant would have to be patient as she was beginning to understand she was the only tenant left in my head with any power. My male self was just going through the motions of life to keep a job and the outwardly show of male privilege in my life.

Finally, it was time to go on gender affirming hormones and allow my tenants to switch places. My previous rent-free tenant had earned her right to live as the dominant person in my life and my male self was left to pick up the pieces. I should say baggage more than pieces, because that is what he left me to consider in my new feminine life as a fulltime transgender woman. It was difficult to do, but I was able to keep several of my main male building blocks of my life such as my will to succeed and a deep-seated desire to bring my hobbies with me such as my love of sports. Which I learned was alright when I made ciswomen friends with the same passion for sports that I had built up over the years of my life.

While I certainly would not recommend a life like mine to anyone. Letting someone live rent free in your head for all those years was never easy. Perhaps, the only positive was, having all that time to learn the world as a trans woman gave me a stable basis to work from. That is my excuse, and I am sticking to it.

 

 

Being Hyper Focused as a Trans Girl

 

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on UnSplash.

As I followed my path into transgender womanhood, I found several times that I was too focused on my goal of presenting successfully as a woman when I went out and tried to join the world.

Essentially, what I mean is I was trying too hard to mimic the way ciswomen look and how they move about in the world. I had not yet had the time out in the world to develop the muscle memory I needed to be at my best with others. I so badly did not want to slip back into my old male ways and look like a linebacker in drag in high heels in the mall. In the meantime, I was spending every spare moment I had by myself to try to practice my best feminine walk.

The problem became when I was practicing too much and forgot where I was. Looking feminine in the least at work would not have been good for my macho career. I did the best I could with the time I had to work with just was not enough to create the habits I needed to progress the way I wanted to towards my transfeminine dream. Every time I went out, I would do something wrong and destroy the image of being female that I was trying to portray. If I had my makeup, clothes and hair to a point where I was satisfied, something would come along like catching one of my heels in a sidewalk crack to hurt me. I was very frustrated at the time until I finally began to relax and began to enjoy the new world I so badly wanted to be part of. As I did it though, I was totally surprised at how complex the entire scope of what I wanted to do as a potential successful trans woman would be. My life was like one of those huge “Bloomin Onions” you get at steakhouses. Every time you peel back a layer, you find another layer to surprise you.

As it turned out, at the time I was peeling back more gender layers much quicker than I had ever imagined. I was dodging all the stop signs that I thought I would have and was able to look around my world and enjoy what I saw. Most importantly, I was becoming the me I always wanted or destined to be. Again, I was being blindsided in that I would have to go through yet another transition as my life was coming full circle. I was not becoming someone different at all. I was just becoming me.

The one remaining aspect of my transgender being I did have to remain hyper focused on was when I began in depth communication with other women. I was always paranoid that I would give away too much of my old male past when I was talking with another woman. I worked so hard to be in the world as I was, I did not want to out myself as an intruder. Quickly, I made strides to learn the different way ciswomen communicate that men just don’t understand such as non-verbal cues about danger and happiness. All the way to the power of passive aggression that women use so effectively. To aid in my efforts, I even took feminine vocal lessons to learn key terminology I would need to complete my communication efforts in the world.

As I followed this new direction on my gender path, I did slide back into being hyper focused in my quest to be me. I was intently watching all my new ciswomen friends to see how they lived their lives and how I could fit in. In essence, the new me needed a new place to live and they gave it to me without ever realizing what they were doing because they took their lives behind the feminine gender curtain for granted and I never could. And still don’t to this day since I spent so long trying my best in the dark to get there. I guess I was paying my dues as I learned what my second wife meant when she called me a terrible woman. Back then I was, but I did not want to make that mistake again. So, I became hyper focused on a new goal…earning a spot behind the gender curtain.

My confusion set in because I learned early in life what it took to survive behind the male gender curtain, but I had no clue at all what it would take to survive as a trans woman. Because I knew I would never be able to have such life altering experiences such as carrying and birthing a child such as ciswomen have but on the other hand, I still had a very unique way to my womanhood which still counted. I just had to wait and earn my way back to being me. Furthermore, I did not want to completely throw away everything that I learned for fifty years living in a man’s world. I just wanted to take the building blocks I learned and use them so I would be able to be a quality transfeminine “me” person and never be told again I made a terrible woman. If I was “making” anything from scratch, I wanted it to be presentable to the world.

Once I was able to stop being hyper focused on my early experiences with makeup, hair and appearance, reality in the world set in which meant I would have a chance to live my dream of throwing out or giving away all my male clothes and starting all over again. I hope being a hyper blend of the two main gender binaries helped me along once I finally sensed the true path I wanted to be on.

The ups and downs of life on the journey I took was never easy, but worth it when I made it to the surprise location I was heading for that I never realized. All along, I was just focused on being me.

 

There was Never a Maybe

 

Image from Marija Zaric 
on UnSplash. 

In my life, there were never any maybe moments about having gender issues, only a resounding yes, because I had them.

Time fades the memory, but I think the first inkling of the issues I had was when I began to experience very vivid dreams that I was indeed a pretty girl. That is when I went the only route, I knew how to go and secretly began to raid my mom’s clothing drawers and closets for her clothes I could still squeeze in to at the time. Before I knew it, I had somehow acquired my own “collection” of feminine clothes and makeup I used to practice my new artform. While the boys around me were practicing putting together model cars, I was busy practicing being a girl. At the time, all the practice flustered me, but would come back to help me later in life when I would not have to work so hard on the basics of presenting as a ciswoman.

The more I accomplished in my cross-dressing pursuits, the more I wanted to do because I felt so natural. Which was a huge clue to me that I was on the right gender path, and this part of my life had always been a deep part of me. If I had followed the clues and not ignored them, I would have been much better off in the long run. By putting my deep instincts off, I ended building up a successful but deeply destructive male life. Every time I built something up as a man, I needed to somehow destroy it because I did not want it to interfere with my possible upcoming male to female femininization project. I guess I could say the possibilities intrigued me as much as they terrified me. How would I ever be able to live as a transgender woman dominated most of my everyday life as I envied the lives of the ciswomen around me.

At the time, all of this was happening, all I was trying to do was experiment if my gender dream could ever come true and I could give up all my male privileges I had built up to try it. If I could do it, I could live it became my goal. Which was easier said than done because I was still living most of my life as a transfeminine person only in front of the mirror and not the world where I belonged. At times, making my way from the mirror was a brutal experience for me because the world treated me in ways that I really deserved when I did not dress myself in the proper way to hide the best I could my testosterone poisoned body and attracted undue attention. Not dressing to blend in with the other ciswomen around me was hurting me badly until I finally learned my lesson.

Probably what I suffered from the most was not having the role models I needed to help me in my male to female transition. It was very lonely in the pre-internet days with no social media tutorials to help new struggling trans women or cross dressers along. It was just me and the public to provide feedback on my progress because I discovered the mirror was quite OK with lying to me about how I looked. It would tell me I was attractive, then I would get immediately laughed back home by a group of teen girls was a prime example of what I was going through. I remember vividly the days when I began to seek out the girl’s attention to measure how well I was doing in the world, rather than running from it. I figured if I could succeed in passing my toughest tests anything was possible.

As I began to pass more and more feminine tests, my confidence began to grow, and I started to face my deepest dreams and fears that I could conceivably leave my old male path behind and carve out a life as a transgender woman. On my own in the world. All of this had its good and bad points. The good was that I was finally realizing after all this time I could live my dream and the bad was, what would I do about the remainder of my male life. At that time, I still had a very good marriage to deal with, as well as a family and successful job to consider. It was as if I was painting myself simultaneously into two gender corners which would be hard to get out of. I found wanting the best of both binary gender worlds was impossible to do and coming up soon I would have to decide which way I was going to have to go.

The decision I made turned out to be the easiest one and one I should have made long ago. I certainly had the gender issues I worried about endlessly and would have them as long as I lived. I had always thought that tomorrow would be the day I could figure it all out, but all the tomorrows started to become years and decades and I still hadn’t done anything about it. Gender procrastination at its finest, or its worst. Bottom line was the procrastination I was doing ended up hurting me in ways that I never imagined such as with my mental health which really paid the price of living the pressure of life in two genders. I needed to finish painting the gender corners I had put myself into and do it fast.

On one of the nights, I went out to try to be by myself, I ended up really socializing as a trans woman and enjoying myself. Right then, I decided I had made my final decision to pursue HRT and finally put what was left of my old male self to a permanent rest. It occurred to me then that the decision had always been made for me from those earliest days in the mirror I went through.

All the maybes were in my past. I could succeed as a trans woman, and I had a bright future ahead.

 

Success is no Accident in the Trans World

 

Image from Priscilla du Preeze
on UnSplash. 

Success is definitely no accident in the world of transgender women and transgender men. Very few of us survive our puberty by having no natural characteristics of our authentic selves that we want to be.  I know I wanted nothing to do with the size and angles my male body was willing me to have without my permission.

It was not until I became very serious about my male to female femininization project did, I take the necessary steps I needed to take to begin to ensure my future successes were no accident. The first step I took was to try to make myself smaller for I could fit into more stylish feminine clothes. Naturally, all I could do to make me smaller was to go on a diet. I was successful in a short period of time because I had a very active job and my high male metabolism was still working well. I ended up losing nearly fifty pounds quickly and had the fun job of going back to the thrift stores and searching for new clothes in my size and trying them on.

The next step I took to improve my work to become more feminine to the public was to take better care of my skin. Every day I was careful to moisturize my face after I shaved to make it easier for me to use less makeup because I knew less was more when it came to using makeup. It was a start but was all I could do without the public and my wife beginning to notice a major change in me. Even so, I was proud of the beginning steps I was taking towards my overall femininization.

It proved to me that over the long haul, none of this path I was on would be easy to navigate as I sought to cross the gender border. Also, what I did not know was how much more difficult my life would be because just looking like a ciswoman would not be the end result of the process. It would just be the beginning when I left the mirror and challenged the world as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman. I never realized the depth and scope of the world women use to run their lives. With or without the help of men.

By accepting the challenge of femineity I was seeking, I was also challenged to move like a woman and more importantly communicate as a woman because I discovered quickly how many other women wondered what I was doing in their world. From the ease of dealing with clothing stores clerks to having conversations with women at restaurant/bars I was at, I found I was dealing with much more interaction than I ever had as a man. My new success was no accident, but I needed to work hard to keep it and always stay aware of my new surroundings. One slip up and the setback could be tremendous and discouraging to my dream goal of being able to live full-time as a transfeminine person.

Many times, my frustration grew over the decades that I struggled with my gender issues. Was I going too fast by going out into the world, or not enough to keep learning what I needed to know to progress along my gender path which kept showing me infuriating stop signs along the way. Particularly from my male self who was becoming very successful in his business world. He was making it difficult to choose between his growing male privileges and living the life I had always dreamed of. Ironically, it was lessons he learned at work which were carried over to my female life that proved that success was no accident. If I wanted my goal bad enough, I could achieve it.

As I progressed with carving out my new feminine life as a trans woman, I found that my successes were painting me into corners which were difficult to get out of. I had nights when butch lesbians were flirting with me and buying me drinks until I ran out of time and had to be back home before my wife was take my makeup off then calmly try to wind down by watching television. I was on the gender rollercoaster going from one high to another and eventually it was too much to take.

Before I broke for the final time and had to make a decision between staying with my wife as a man and deciding to live my life as a woman, she took my decision away and suddenly passed away. Leaving me all alone with my other woman who happened to be me. It took a while for the shock to wear off, but when it did, my internal female took right over and claimed her territory in my life. She thought success was no accident and she had claimed hers by paying for those dues all those decades when she was hidden for the most part. In the light of day, she flourished and never looked back. Especially when HRT or gender affirming hormones were introduced into her old male system.

The ultimate measure of success is coming around and transitioning ourselves from transgender into just being ourselves. Many of us have to go through extensive gender realignment surgeries to do it, and some not but that is OK. Whatever makes you whole as a person is the final key to the lock or piece to the puzzle. I am sure that whatever the case, everyone who succeeded in finding themselves would agree that success was no accident. They had to work hard to achieve it.

If you are on your path, just keep up the hard work you are doing, and you can find success also. Pursuing such a complex journey will never be easy but as the saying goes, if it was easy, would it be worth it.

Thanks to all of you who read along with my posts! All your thoughts, comments, claps and subscriptions are always welcomed.

 

 

 

 

No Laughing Matter

 

Image from Priscilla Du Preeze
on UnSplash. 

I am always amused when someone thinks I had a choice to follow my transgender path. Obviously, they were not there for all the trials and tribulations I had and the extreme harassment I received as I came out into the world. All the times I hurried home crying when I was stared at or glared at by the public before I was able to improve my feminine presentation to the point where I could blend in.

I did all I could to improve my testosterone damaged body by going on a crash diet and did my best to improve my skin by using moisturizers everyday after I shaved before I went to work. Why would I attempt all of that if I thought crossing the gender border was just a choice I could make. The farther I went, the more I had to do to improve. Mainly because it felt like it was the right thing to do.

Perhaps the most important sacrifice I needed to be prepared to make was losing my white male entitlements or male privileges. Even though I did not respect the growing rights that I had obtained through hard work as a male, I needed to keep in mind continually I did not really want them anyhow and there were better days ahead if I ever had achieved my dream of living as a transgender woman fulltime.

Through it all though, I wondered why all this gender turmoil was happening to me. Often when the poor, poor pitiful me aspect of my life was at it’s worse, I would “man-up” and purge myself of most of my feminine belongings. As most of us know, purging does not work for any length of time. All it did for me was make me go out and buy more makeup, clothes and shoes to express my femininity again. A total waste of money, but at least I always tried to build back better following every purge I tried. Finally, I looked back at purging as just another rite of passage I needed to through as I followed along my gender path to success, and I was able to put my transgender victim mentality behind me.

As I grew older and set in my cross-dressing ways, I knew increasingly I had no choice in how I lived my life. I was rapidly going through yet another gender transition from just having a so-called hobby into being a transgender woman. I was doing more than just shopping for more and more clothes and was trying out new ways to experience the world the way ciswomen do. I started doing a portion of the grocery shopping successfully as the new transfeminine me all the way to starting to do all my Christmas shopping in unique situations also. Just to see if I could.

At that point, the things I needed to go through to survive in life became increasingly evident to me. I would need to express myself as a woman and I had no choice but to do it. I also knew the risk I was taking when I thought about losing the male life, I had worked so hard and long to be successful at. What would my daughter think of her new dad was one of the few variables as I knew I would lose my long-term marriage and great job that I had. I needed to know beyond a shadow of a doubt I was doing the right thing, and I truly had no choice but to stay on the course I was on. This is where my transgender humor comes in. Why would anyone ever put themselves through such a life full of turmoil if they ever had a choice. Or, when just putting on a dress becomes so much more than a fun experience, where do you go then?

It is no secret where I went and I had the chance to experience so much more in my life because it is exceedingly rare when a human gets the chance to experience both sides of the binary gender spectrum. The problem is we transgender women and transgender men don’t have a chance to enjoy the trip because of the pressure we put on ourselves to perform behind the gender curtain we chose. If we are not doing it to ourselves, the pressure is certainly on from the public to do it too. Especially these days with the charged anti-transgender political attitude we are seeing from the orange menace in Washington DC, and in many states such as my own native Ohio.

If we can ever get the public at large to understand we trans people never had a choice on the life’s direction we ultimately took, we would come out so much further ahead. Sadly, the path to get there does not seem to be getting any closer for many of us as the things we have to go through just keep on coming. I know for those of you who are still on your transition path or even consider it, it is a major step to take. Hopefully on the way, you can take the time to stop for a moment and enjoy how far you have come. I always thought if it does not kill me, it will just make me stronger would help me along. And on a lesser scale, the old sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me saying really applied to me also.

When you are on your path long enough to realize there is no turning back, you will also know you had no choice but to keep going towards your goal. It was never easy, but so worthwhile as you navigated the final blind curves, potholes and stop signs. At the least, you will know you lived a life where you had a choice and made the most of it.

Plus, certainly it was no laughing matter. 

As always, thank you for reading along with my experiences. Any comments, extra claps or subscriptions are welcome!

 

 

 

 

Nothing Lasts Forever...or Does It?

 

Image from Lucas Stankey
on UnSplash. 

Yesterday when I first went to the bathroom to begin my start to the day, I turned the light on and was greeted by a slight “pop” and the bulb going out. I was disappointed that it was one of those bulbs that is supposed to last forever. Then, I began to think that nothing lasts forever, especially light bulbs no matter what they say.

As I normally always do, I took the idea I was following to another level and compared it with my old broken-down self. No surprise, but I was not built to last forever either. Just like my transgender desires, or were they? I know when I was very young trying on my mom’s clothes and makeup, I thought perhaps I would outgrow my desire to be a girl as I became older. As it turned out, the opposite was true. I did not outgrow my desire to be feminine; I grew into it as I became more skilled in applying make-up and cross-dressing myself the more, I wanted to try my newfound skills in the public eye.

When I accomplished the seismic shift from mirror approval to public approval, I knew any approval would not last forever because of the mixed reactions I was having in public where I tried to go. Outside of the usual gaggle of teen girls who would laugh at me, I found that the largest part of society did not notice me when I took the effort to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The mistake I was making was very simple when I finally took the time to figure it out. To dress for success did not mean to dress to attract unwanted extra attention. Success meant that I fit in with the public at large. Carefully, since I was a large woman, but a woman none the less when I presented myself correctly.

At that point, the responsibility of being a stable presentable transfeminine person began to set in. Just looking the part of a woman would not last forever as by then I certainly knew I would never just outgrow my feminine desires. By responsibility I mean it became time for me to fully accept what I was becoming in the world. To catch up, I took feminine vocal lessons to improve the nuances of my speech patterns and worked hard to listen to my progress. If nothing was going to last forever in my life as a trans woman, I was driven to do it right. Outside of the very good job I had and the relationship I was desperately clinging to with my wife, being a transgender woman who passed in the world was my ultimate goal.

That point in my life became a blur as I was learning almost daily what went on behind the gender curtain, I was given access to. It was not all good, but I knew the bad would not last forever if I continued past the stop signs, I encountered on my gender path to my ultimate goal of shedding my male past. The best part was no one knew him and I could build a new life from scratch with the good and bad of living as long as I did as a man. Everything was going so well for awhile that I was waiting for the next high heeled shoe to fall on me since nothing lasts forever. Sadly, I was right when my personal world around me began to rapidly crumble.

I call it my dark period when almost everyone I cared about passed away. I knew about the finality of death because of my parent’s death, but I wrongly assumed I would be the first to go in the small circle of friends and family I had built up because of my self-destructive lifestyle.

The person who helped me out of my dark age was my wife Liz who made me a believer in myself, and my forever could be with her. That was over twelve years ago now, and I hope it can go on forever too. I am just grateful I was able to find her when I needed her the most because I was drinking way too much and struggling.

The moral to the story is that life is but a circle and you can ride out the down parts if destiny shows you the way. It was true for me that the darkest hour was right before the dawn when I attempted the ultimate self-destructive act of all. Taking my own life. I failed and ended up being able to live the most exciting and self-fulfilling days of my life. I would have missed everything from the tour bus experiences Liz and I took all the way to being humbled in my two fairly recent hospital stays for Covid and pneumonia. Sometimes I think I was just given the chance to do as much living as I could in the time allotted to me. Being transgender just added to the mystique of my life.

Whatever the case, I was completely wrong when I was a kid thinking I would grow out of my dreams of being a woman, transgender or not. Growing into my dreams was certainly the most challenging thing I have ever attempted. Sometimes causing me joy and sometimes causing me extreme pain and suffering.

I know nothing lasts forever, but when mine ends, I will know I gave it my best shot.

Recently I learned that even backwards Ohio who only concentrates of passing anti-transgender bills, is considering a bill which would legalize euthanasia for terminally ill persons. Even though I seriously doubt the republican legislature will pass the bill, it would be nice to be able to end your own life when the time has come and gone to do it. I would love to have control of my own destiny. Nothing lasts forever, including humans.

Sorry to end this on such a negative tone but death is as sure as birth and we need to make the best of it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I Always Was a Dreamer

 

JJ Hart

I always was a dreamer and a person who thought why not me if others could do it.

I guess it all started with the parents I had who were from the “greatest generation” or WWII and Great Depression survivors. Ironically, I was taught to think for myself as long as my thoughts did not conflict with theirs. That is why I could never tell anyone in my family of my dream to someday be a woman. I needed to fall back on my default answer that I wanted to be a doctor or lawyer which kept me out of the psychiatrist’s office.

My most difficult dreams were waking up when I was still male and my vision of being feminine was just that…a vision. I had only dreamed that I was the pretty girl I desperately wanted to be. It was then that I started to play the odds that I would not be caught wearing my mom’s makeup or dresses, or worse yet get caught shopping for my own makeup in a downtown store close to where my dad worked as a banker. As luck would have it, I managed to always be clean and dressed back into my unwanted male clothes by the time my parents or my only brother came home from wherever they had been. Even though I had been able to briefly help decrease the gender pressure I felt from cross-dressing, deep down I knew I had other urges and I began to dream of what I was ever going to do about them.

The first problem I had was I had little to no confidence in my ability to present as an attractive feminine being when I tried. I was fond of thinking I looked like a circus clown in drag. And I am sure I did before I was able to come to a basic understanding of how to use makeup. On most occasions, I could only dream of the time when I could look better as a girl in my mirror and I kept playing with the odds I would not be caught and ruin my whole future as I knew it.

The playing the odds attitude helped me considerably when it came time for me to serve in the military during the long drawn out and deadly Vietnam War. Rather than serve the basic two years if I was drafted, I could have a couple other choices such as enlisting for three years and attempting to get a job I wanted to do or even join the National Guard for six years and basically stay out of the war that way. As decision time approached, I made a split-second decision to turn down the guard offer and take the enlistment offer as I hoped I could get a job in the Army that I really wanted. Which was I really wanted to continue my radio DJ career in the military which was nearly impossible to do as the Army only had sixty broadcasters in their entire system. I played with the odds and won and the three years I spent serving my country turned out to be very beneficial to me as I got exactly what I wanted. A slot in the American Forces Radio and Television Service in Thailand, then Germany.

My success in my near to impossible military profession taught me that perhaps I could be successful in my transgender dreams also. Nothing might be impossible if I only kept trying and refused to stop during my gender journey. I was naïve, which was probably for the best because I had no idea of all the stop signs, I would continue to face before I was allowed to play in the girl’s sandbox. I always knew women led a more layered, nuanced existences than men, but I didn’t know how much more different I would have it as a transfeminine person until I tried.

I knew when I started to become successful in my dream to live in a world full of competitive ciswomen, my ultimate goal might have been within reach. My presentation in the world as a trans woman was benefitted from all those frustrating hours, I spent experimenting with makeup when I was younger. The next challenges turned out to be the most difficult ones when the world (primarily ciswomen) wanted to challenge me with their curiosity about what I was doing in their world. I discovered what I already knew from my past that whatever did not kill me just made me stronger from the rare negative interactions I had with other women. I was able to learn valuable lessons on how to look for passive aggressive disagreements and recover along with the claw marks up and down my back.

Another positive was that I rarely had a wishful dream that I was a woman anymore. My feminine dreams just went to the shallow extent of showing me how my life would be if I was more attractive or had the chance of not missing all the days of growing up in the world as the girl I always knew I was. Plus, I knew I must be doing something right because none of my feminine dreams turned out to be nightmares in the real world.

In addition to wondering what my second wife would think of me now as a trans woman who has had a decade or so to fill out her gender workbook, I wonder if my parents would have ever come to accept me either. Or at least recognize the mental seeds they planted in their oldest son who turned out to be their oldest daughter after all. Somehow, the irony is not lost on me how such rigid parents could raise such a child who turned out to be such a dreamer. Somehow, I believe my dad who was a self-made successful man would have come to accept me long before my mom who I tried to come out to and was rejected years before.

Even then, she could not break my spirit or my dreams.