Your Gender Path maybe Different Than Mine

Image from Erik Mclean
on UnSplash. 

 

Even though many of us share similar paths to our dreams of becoming successful transgender women or transgender men, often our paths diverge and we end up going different directions.

Most of us start out on our own without the help
of an understanding sister or mother and must fill out our gender workbooks as we go along. There is no one to tell us what to wear or how to act in our younger years as a cross-dresser. We just know we have conflicting ideas on what we are doing. On one hand, we cannot wait to put on the pretty dresses we found that still fit us, but on the other hand, we felt guilty doing it. It was somehow taking away what was left of our fragile masculinity.

At that point, most of us were willing to sacrifice that masculinity for the intensely intoxicating appeal of looking at ourselves as pretty girls, especially before puberty got ahold of us and testosterone poisoning set in. We all know what happened then, our bodies grew angles instead of the curves we admired on the girls around us and life would never be the same again. From that point forward, many of our paths seem to diverge. Over the years, I have heard from several readers who put down their urges to be feminine with no problems until much later in life. While others followed a more focused stairstep path which meant meeting and learning from other cross-dressers or transgender women searching for their true meaning to life. I know when I first discovered there were others like me who shared gender issues and I could go meet them; there were many layers of people who attended the socials. Anyone from cigar smoking men in dresses still going overboard to preserve their masculinity to completely femininized transsexual women whose next stop was gender surgeries.

It was then that I began to see and appreciate the different layers of the gender community I was seeing in person for the first time. I could almost compare it to the amazing number of cosmetics I saw the first time I went shopping with my own money to buy my own. The entire idea of going to a mixer of my peers did not work for me at all. I became more confused about where I fit in on the gender spectrum than when I started. I knew I was much more than a part-time cross-dresser but was not committed enough to consider complicated and expensive gender realignment surgeries which were still fairly rare back in those days. The direction I decided to take was one of experimentation which I found set me apart from many of the other gender conflicted individuals I had met.

I certainly would not recommend the direction I took because it involved a certain amount of risk and way too much alcohol in the mostly gay venues I initially was going to. What happened was, I used the fake courage of the alcohol to allow me to take ill advised chances in places I should not have been as a single woman. Especially a transgender one. I was fortunate when I escaped unharmed in a couple of situations I should have never found myself in as I was dressed way to provocatively for where I was going and one time in particular found myself having to be bailed out by my second wife who had warned me ahead of time about my mini-dress being way to short. I attracted the unwanted attention of a cross-dresser admirer who was huge and had me trapped in a small hallway with nowhere to go when my wife grew curious and came in time to rescue me. Believe me, it took me a long time to live that incident down with her.

Even when I became a regular in the big public straight sports bars I was going to, I would not recommend my methods of establishing a path to gender freedom as a trans woman. Being a single woman in a public place can sometimes be dangerous to the point where you don’t see many ciswomen do it. They always bring a friend or two for safety which it took me awhile to finally come to the point where I could do it too. My only recommendation is to act like you have a friend coming to join you by acting as if you are talking to them on a cell phone, or “save” a seat next to you with your coat if it is wintertime. Better yet, you can solve the problem completely by sitting at a dining room table, but what fun is that?

Another way to attempt to find companionship is through the use of social media. I tried that too and had to sort through a tremendous amount of trash before I hit the jackpot with the person who turned out to be my third wife Liz. Unbelievably, she contacted me on a social media site which I was listing under woman seeking woman. Better yet, it turned out we were within driving distance of each other and began to correspond until I became brave enough to talk to her on the phone. I was so ashamed of my voice to do it. I finally jumped off the deep end and had success as we started to date. That was over twelve years ago and we married and are going strong I am happy to say.

I see and hear from so many transgender curious people who are on the gender edge in their life with no evident way out. My only recommendation is that at some point you need to take chances if you ever want answers in your life. The only certainty is if you do nothing, nothing will happen. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that you do have to be careful though with all the scammers out there these days and all the negative people you may encounter if you decide to go public. With the political arena and anti-transgender laws which are being passed in many states such as my native Ohio.

No path is right and who is to say, your path is not right for you even if you decide to stay in your closet which is safe and not risk giving up things such as spouse, family, friends and employment. Maybe you can experiment too as you discover which path is right for you. As I said, be careful of the stop signs and bumps ahead.

 

 

I Had to do Something Right

 

Image from Mark Farias on Unsplash 

In my dark days of confusing cross-dressing, I vaguely knew I was doing something right. Or at least I thought so because I could not wait to try it again.

Looking back, it was the brief moments of gender euphoria which clouded all my doubts about my gender and kept me going. Even through the nights when I was the laughingstock of teen girls in malls, a little voice kept telling me to keep going and eventually I would improve my overall feminine presentation so that I would blend in and not get noticed. Along the way, I even needed to lower the expectations I was putting on myself to keep going. I was never going to be the most attractive woman in the room, but at least I could still be like most ciswomen I saw and live a decent life. Even though I started to feel this way, I never gave up the idea I could do better with my makeup, fashion and hair so I could survive. Simply because I was enjoying the experience so much.

Later on in my life, doing something right extended to my interaction with the world as a novice transgender woman. I was surprised when I attracted more attention from ciswomen than men and just thought they were curious about me and were welcoming me into their worlds, while men were just the opposite. Most resented the fact I was leaving all of the male privilege behind (along with the good old boys’ club) and moving to the other side of the gender border. I did not care because my need for companionship was being satisfied and I had always gotten along with women easier than men most of my life. Increasingly I found I never wanted to go back to the male life I was attached to by a spouse, family, friends and jobs. It seemed the longer I waited, the more male baggage I was building up when I really did not want to.

The next problem I ran into was the impostor syndrome I was feeling. Specifically on the girls’ nights outs I was invited to. It never failed that right in the middle of me enjoying the evening, I had suspicions sneaking up on me that I did not belong there at all. I was an impostor in a scene made up of women who had worked their entire life to get there. It took me awhile to come to the conclusion that I had worked my entire life also to make it to my own version of womanhood, and I deserved as much as the next woman to be attending. Fortunately, I received very little negative feedback from other women attending the get-together, so I did not have to face my impostor syndrome at all. I was doing something right for a change to even be invited to such special women only events.

I was able to take my experiences with girls’ nights out to my everyday life primarily because it built my confidence as a transfeminine person so much. With my newfound feelings, I worked even harder on my makeup, fashion and hair to appear more feminine than ever before. Primarily, I learned the power of contouring and colors on my face from professional makeup artists I met at the cross dresser-transgender social mixers I went to. One in particular, took the time to explain what he was doing in terms I could understand and repeat on my own. It was a powerful experience when I had to set my makeup ego aside and learn better results from a professional. From that point on I worked on taking weight off, so I had a better opportunity to find and buy more fashions that flattered my male figure at the many thrifts stores I frequented. When I arrived at that point, the problem then became getting out of the mirror and started putting my new improved feminine self into motion in the world. It proved to be the most difficult part of me doing something right.

Suddenly I had to consider how I was moving as I tried to mimic the unique way ciswomen move and put all my male linebacker moves behind me along with the scowl on my face I was used to wearing as my male defense mechanism. And the most difficult issue of all was learning to communicate one on one as a woman. I knew with certainty I would have issues with my communication, but not to the point that I did. I even went to the extent of taking vocal classes to improve my feminine basics and be able to talk easier in the world with women and men. It just made sense to do if I was continuing to do something right.

It turned out, the more I did right and received positive feedback, the more I wanted to do to refine my feminine approach as a transgender woman. Because I always had the belief, I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to just survive behind the gender curtain. When I was just trying to do something right, on occasion I paused to reflect on how far I had come along my gender path to arrive where I was. I did remember that scared little boy dressed in his mom’s clothes in front of the family’s hallway mirror, wondering what was next. For the most part, back in those days, there was very little to let the young boy know he was doing anything right.

Somehow, I survived all the negative feedback and impostor syndrome problems and continued forward to a better world. One I wanted to be in and dreamed of my entire life. As I love to say, as with any woman, I needed to socialize myself into the world. Being born female does not automatically make you a woman, you must learn to be one. The same was true for me. I just took a radically different path to earn my womanhood. I needed to do many things right to arrive at my dream.

 

 

 

 

What is THAT Sound?

 

Image from Jason Rosewell
on UnSplash. 

What’s that faint noise I hear far in the distance? It took me awhile to figure it out, but it was the sound of my feminine self-yearning to be set free to live. Very early on, I thought she would go away as I aged but the opposite turned out to be true. She grew stronger as the years of my life progressed.

That is when I started to realize just looking at my cross-dressed self in the mirror was just not going to be enough. I wanted more of the feminine life I had experienced. What I was experiencing was the idea of I had much more than a casual interest in women’s clothes and makeup. I was more into how they lived. The term transgender had not even been invented yet, so I had nothing to compare my feelings with. I did not think I was transsexual like Christine Jorgensen, but I was certainly different from other cross dressers I was seeing in my well-worn copies of “Tapestry” and “Transvestia” magazines. When all of that happened, the sound kept getting louder and something larger was wrong with me and it took me years to realize what was wrong with me was not what the sound was telling me.

I went on fighting myself searching for the truth I was looking for when it was right in front of me if I chose to see it. I ignored the advice of my handpicked gender therapist (one of the few I could find back in those days) who told me she could do nothing about me wanting to be a woman but could do something about my manic depression. Which I always had thought was something to do with my gender dysphoria. She told me it wasn’t and helped me by prescribing medications to help me in everyday life. At the time, it turned out, I was ready for help with my depression but not ready to face the facts about my gender future. I was used to loud sound from my days as a radio DJ and I was stubborn enough to want to hang on to a dual gendered life.

At the same time all of this was happening, I was beginning to explore the world as a novice transgender woman and learning every time I went out what the sound I was hearing really meant. I had life all backwards with my struggles to live a male life and the sound was telling me increasingly I was destined to be a woman all along. Not in the mold of having extensive major gender operations but doing it on my own schedule as I marched to my own drummer. Yet another sound which was growing in volume. Before I did though, I needed to undertake an extensive program of more exploration. I desperately did not want to make the move across the gender border at some point and find out I had made the biggest mistake of my life. My spouse, family and job meant so much to me, giving them up for no real reason scared me beyond belief.

Every time I began to have doubts about my upcoming gender decisions, my drumming sound grew louder as I felt more alive and natural when I was allowed behind the gender curtain with cisgender women. The work I was doing to prove myself to the world finally was paying off, for the most part. When I suffered a setback, I had the confidence and experience as a trans woman to do the right thing and move forward in my new life as I followed the sound of gender success. During this time, even though it is a blur to me now, I still remember that it all was not pleasant as I went through the turmoil of deciding which way I was going to turn next.

I know what you are thinking, what was she doing even thinking about turning her back on the gender future she had worked so hard to build. But I did as my male self stubbornly tried to drown out the sound my feminine life was making. Perhaps desperately would be a better term because of all the male privilege he had built up. He was desperate to hold off any more change.

Finally, the sound of change became deafening to the point where it could not be ignored anymore. I was not getting any younger and my transgender transition clock was ticking, loudly. As I had a huge heart to heart talk to myself, I came up with the decision to seek a doctor’s approval for HRT or gender affirming hormones as a natural progression of my feminine progress. In addition, I decided the hormones (if my body responded positively to them) would be the point of no return. I would have to come up with a different way to support myself financially, plus gather the courage to tell what was left of my family the truth about myself. As it turned out, the hormones began to feminize me faster than I ever thought possible and soon it became increasingly difficult to hide my protruding breasts, longer hair and softer skin than ever before. Long story short, my daughter accepted me and my brother rejected me as I revealed my life to them so I had the best of all worlds with the support of my daughter.

Ironically, one of the changes I went through was I had a greater, deeper appreciation of sound and music as a transfeminine person. I had gone full circle in my life understanding what that sound was and better, yet what it meant to me.

I always loved being right when it mattered most, and it did when I relaxed and listened to the sound of my gender spirit. I should give all the credit where credit is due…to the little sound inside of me who said keep trying when the going gets rough. Through the good times and the bad times, she was always there to help me survive.

 

Facing my Deepest Fears

 

Image from Tonik on Unsplash. 

Over the decades I have found that my gender desires have produced the biggest fears and anxiety I have ever felt.

Prime examples came from the times I was first testing the world as a transgender woman. The number of occasions I needed to sit in my car making endless tries at adjusting my hair and makeup until I felt everything was right to attempt going into whatever venue I was going to. You would think from the number of times I had to face my fears; I would have at least become used to it. But I never did. In fact, I developed my own form of trans PTSD from the number of times I was rudely rejected by the public. I could not get it out of my mind that if I was laughed at once, I could be laughed at again. Which I discovered just was not true after I learned to dress for the public of ciswomen around me.

Finally, a little confidence began to creep in, and I did better for the most part, but it seemed the fear of being myself just would not go away. Maybe I can blame my old male self who in his own way was as strong willed as my feminine self and did not want to give up all the male privilege he worked so hard to earn. His reluctance to give up pointed to a deeper problem I had. The fear of facing myself. At the same time, my dreams of even trying to become a fulltime transgender woman in the world seemed to be a far-off dream.

What I decided to do then, even though I still was experiencing deep fears about my future, was experiment by going out into the world a little at a time. I started in what I perceived as safer spaces such as shopping malls and gay venues. If and when I was successful (or grew tired of) in those places, I would try more challenging places. Lessons I learned included money overcame gender problems in the malls and I was just considered another drag queen in the gay bars and made to feel completely out of place. I discovered to enjoy myself more I would need to try to frequent the same sports bar venues I went to as a man. Where I could drink draft beer and watch my favorite team on the big screen televisions. Sure, I was scared to do it as I knew how single women were viewed in sports bars, but I had to try.

Desire overcame fear and I was successful as long as I followed my three basics of smiling, never causing problems, and tipping well. Before I knew it, I was a regular and gained the backing of the bartenders who even saw to it that I had restroom privileges. Before  I knew it, I had built a small circle of lesbian friends who shared my love of sports, as well as another transwoman. Loneliness became a thing of the past for me, and my fear of being seen as a woman was going away too.

Just when my trans confidence was at an all time high, obstacles such as drunk guys would come along and ruin my evening. The night I remember the most was when a bunch of drunks noticed my trans friend and I at the bar and started playing “Dude Looks Like a Lady” time and time again until the manager asked us to leave. We did, temporarily, because a month later when I was in a nearby competing venue, I was surprised to see one of the bartenders who was there when I was asked to leave approaching me. I was astounded to learn the manager who had kicked me out had been fired for drug use and I was invited to come back. So much for the drunks who had played that song over and over and I had put my fears to rest. To this day though, when I hear that song, I cringe.

Sadly, even though I have been in the public’s eye as a transgender woman, I still look over my shoulder when I do things like use the restroom. Fortunately, I have Liz to help me out when I have to go and mainly these days, I don’t present as trans as much as I do as old and partially immobile. I am happy these days when I can find a restroom with a handicapped stall to take my fears away.

My deepest fears now revolve around the number of ridiculous restrictive anti-transgender bills currently in the Ohio legislature. One bill would make it illegal for anyone to wear makeup different than their birth gender. Which I guess would mean the orange felon or his sidekick Vance would be arrested if they come to Ohio. I am lucky that age and years of HRT have softened my facial lines to a point of where I don’t wear much makeup at all but what about the younger transgender population. Hopefully, none of this will actually happen or the courts will strike it down.

These days, I have managed at least to calm down my fears of what will happen to me if I have to go into assisted living or if I develop dementia like my dad had. I finally came to the conclusion not to worry about something I have no control over.

I don’t know why I waited so long to be paranoid over what has made my life worth living over the years and decades. I used to be a go with the flow type of person and if I got myself into some sort of a mess, I could get myself out of it. Probably now it is because I have to depend on my wife Liz for so much. Fortunately, most of my deepest fears came from pursuing my gender truth and when I came out to myself, I proved that I was the most important person of all to be truthful with. It was not until then did my life began to change for the better and I could live without all the fear I was experiencing.

 

 

 

 

Was I being Selfish?

 

Image from UnSplash and
Brooke Balentine.

When I was a maturing cross-dresser, one of my wives made it a prime point of her argument against my cross-dressing at the time saying that I was just being selfish. The problem I had with her saying that was deep down, I knew it was true. Mainly because I was spending all my spare time thinking about or doing my cross-dressing activities. I felt guilty, but there was little I could do about it as I wanted to be feminine so bad. So, I went on with my daily activities ignoring the best I could what she said.

Sadly, my selfish problem only became worse the farther along I traveled up my gender path. I simply wanted more from my life than what I was getting and I was pursuing it. I thought to hell with the risk I was doing to my male world and life as I knew it if my secret was discovered as it almost was several times. Like when I almost ran head on into my wife’s boss going to a big box store in a small Ohio town we lived in at the time. I did not think he recognized me, but he did bring up seeing a a particularly “big” woman the other day when he left work to pick up supplies at a party we were attending at his house one weekend. Of course, I could not let on it was me he was talking about, but my wife knew and questioned me about it later. I don’t think she ever believed my denials, but life went on until I made it to the next level of being selfish.

When I was out in the world as a successful transfeminine person, just doing it a little bit was just not enough. Success bred success, and if I could not for some reason make it out into the world again, I grew angry and bitter with life and tried to take it out on the world around me. By doing so, I even almost lost jobs because of my attitude. Having a sullen selfish attitude got to be so bad, I even sought out gender therapy to help me from one of the few therapists in Ohio at the time who dealt with it. It turned out to be that she could not work miracles with my gender issues, but she did with my attitude which was influenced by being diagnosed with a Bi-Polar depression disorder. Following a few experiments with medication, I found one that worked and my life became better. Except for I did not magically quit my feminine ideas and remained on my selfish path to see if I could ever live my dream of going full-time in life.

What made matters even more frustrating was, even with all the mental energy which was going into my transgender issues my male self was still able to advance in his life too. Making it harder for me to think about moving along with my plans and even being selfish about them at all. Through it all, my guilt was building about why I was even cursed with being transgender at all. This was before I finally began to understand my gender problems were not a curse at all.

In the meantime, my wife and I were clashing every time she caught me being selfish and leaving the house as my feminine trans woman self. One time she was even mad enough to tell me why I wasn’t man enough to be a woman. If I was smart at the time, I would have listened to her advice. I should have faced my true self and started making plans for my ultimate male to female femininization project. I just was not ready for several reasons such I loved my wife very much and the life we had built together.

By now, you have probably noticed a theme here. I kept shooting myself in the foot by being supremely selfish when I set out to build a new life when I already had a perfectly good one with a loyal wife, good job and loving family. All of which helped to describe why I felt so much stress and tension during this portion of my life. All the therapy and medications in the world could not help me until I had the courage to face up to my true self as she looked at me in the mirror. She had been there all along, and I thought I needed to apply makeup to bring her out (which I did for the public) but one on one, she was very real to me. She appreciated all the outwardly things any ciswoman needs to survive but inwardly, she just needed to be recognized for the person she had the potential to become.

Ultimately, I outlived my second wife (and many family members and friends) which freed me up to not feel any selfishness at all about what I was doing with my femininization. I was just busy preparing my world for the truth I had so deeply known. I should have never been a male at all and was just a woman cross dressing as a man. Needless to say, it was an enlightening experience coming out of my gender shell and having the opportunity to live my feminine truth. Just having the chance to compete in a world of ciswomen on their level was an intimidating yet exciting experience which my true self was up to. After living life hidden away all so many years against her will. As with most all transgender women and transgender men, it is a major project to bring ourselves into the world and unfortunately, we must be selfish to do it. The good thing is, once we go through the selfish part of our lives, we have the potential to be good, loving partners. If we are destined to find that special someone to love.

Life dictates it is nothing but a circle, and we have to take the good with the bad. Selfish or not.

 

 

 

 

 

Wishing and Hoping never Made it For Me.

 

Image from Abbot
on UnSplash.

Sadly, just wishing and hoping that we can make it to our feminine dreams just won’t get us there.

Since most of us started our gender journeys with very little natural external characteristics of the gender we want to become, it makes our struggle even more difficult. Even more so when you consider how far trans women like me had to go to hide my true self so I would not be bullied by the men around me. I played sports such as football and worked on cars to hide the fact I did not really want to follow a male path.

In the deep, dark recesses of my closet I spent my time wishing and hoping time would come along to magically change me. We all know how that worked. It did not and I grew more frustrated as I spent my meager leisure time wistfully cross-dressing in front of the mirror at home in the long hallway we had. After the initial success I felt from looking at my imagined self as a pretty girl, I knew it was just not enough. Looking back, I was going through the early stages of being transgender without having any of the terminology to go with it. In the meantime, I needed to keep my public charade alive of making the world think I was male.

Then, along came the shock of puberty with all its unwanted physical changes such as size of body and bone structure. I was helpless as all the changes took place and I was depressed that I was moving farther away from the feminine person I always wanted to be. All I could do was wish and dream for change which never worked. I finally had to do something about it, the pressure on me was intense. The little trips to the mailbox when I was dressed as a girl just were not enough anymore, I could no longer just exist on that little interaction with the world as I introduced my true self.

Early on, once I grew older and found a place of my own, I did venture out into shopping malls and often the experience was brutal. No matter how good the mirror at home was telling me I looked, the public quickly told me something else. Too many times I had to come home early crying because of being laughed at by groups of teenagers I attempted to dodge but couldn't. Fortunately, something deep down inside me kept telling me to keep trying to get better with my make-up and fashion and maybe then I could present well enough to get by in front of the mirror and the public both. The brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced were the indication I needed to know there was indeed more and I was on the right path after all.

Once I did discover I was on the right path, then I needed to stay on it and try to navigate all the blind curves, potholes, and stop signs I encountered. Initially, I was naïve and was not prepared for everything I was about to face. I thought I had a fairly good idea of what was behind the gender curtain with the ciswomen I would have to coexist with, but I did not. All of what I was seeing was the pretty clothes and passive aggressive nature without seeing all of what went into it later as I actually made my way into the world. I really misjudged how complex and layered a woman’s life could be if I decided to follow along.

At first, I thought I needed some woman to show me the way but again was so wrong when I tried. By the time I did, I actually had a better knowledge of makeup than she did, so basically, the whole experience was wasted, and I knew I would have to go up my path on my own if I was going to be successful as a transgender woman. Then, I had to figure out what being a trans woman meant to me. As in my earliest days in front of the cross-dressing mirror, I knew I wanted so much more, and I knew it would involve my evolution into a unique woman of my own. As with any other human born female, I knew they needed to be socialized into being a woman and so did I. It just was because my path to womanhood came from a different way than most women but that should not exclude me. Once I felt secure with feeling this way, I freed myself to more completely live my truth in the world with people who accepted me

Surprisingly, I had fewer problems than I anticipated when my trans friend Raquel told me I passed out of sheer will power, that became the story of my life. I was not trying to “fool” anyone into thinking I was the most attractive woman in the room. I was simply announcing my truth to the world, and they could take it or leave it. No more wishing and hoping for me, if someone did not like or approve of me, that was their problem not mine as I paid my dues to be where I was.

As I look back at all the wishes and dreams I had when I hoped to somehow live my dream as a transfeminine person, I know I wasted a lot of my time which I could never get back. Once I did get my late start and began to make up for lost time, I did begin to learn what I needed to survive in the girls’ sandbox once I was allowed in it to play. Once I did, I resolved to never look back and enjoy what I helped to create. A woman with an unique background allowing her to arrive at where she wanted to be.

Before I wrap this post up, I would like to thank Sara E for writing in and commenting. She is in a similar position as most of us went through. A married man, working through her feminine side.

Thanks to all of you who take the time to read my writings and comment!

 

 

Trans Girl on the High Gender Board

 

Image from Navy Medicine
on UnSplash.

I remember completely when I was a kid, intensely afraid of heights, and my mom made me jump off the high diving board at the swimming pool we were at. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I still don’t know till this day how she convinced me to do it. But she did. I am sure she thought that once I did it, I could do it again, which I never did.

Perhaps, by this time, you are thinking what does this have to do with being transgender but of course I can connect the lines as always. Fast forward to the days when I was first gathering all the courage, I could muster to leave the house and attempt to explore the world as a woman. To do it, I needed to jump off that high diving board again and again. Plus, I would have to raise the diving board even higher every time I tried it.

As I did, I discovered little pockets of cross-dressing acceptance I could exist in. Such as the women’s clothing stores where almost everyone was nice to me. It took me awhile to realize the clerks who waited on me were not being nice just because I was another woman, they were being nice because I had money to spend. To them, my gender was not trans, it was green. Even though I took acceptance and built on it to other potentially mellow venues in malls such as bookstores and coffee shops. I was successful in them and was able to build my confidence from there and move up to a higher diving board and jump off. No matter how scared I was, I needed to force myself to climb and jump.

The next comfort zone I forced my way out of was by forcing myself to stop for lunch to see if I would be accepted. For the most part I was, because again, my money was green and I smiled and tipped well. The magic ingredients it turned out to be accepted into a challenging new feminine world. Or so I thought until I kept on climbing. It turned out the climbing part was the easiest. Once I arrived where I thought I wanted to be. I added “thought” in because once I made it to a higher board, the jumping part really scared me. Mainly because I was leaving so much behind me, along with all the male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. Such as fighting back when someone made fun of me for the way I looked. When it happened, the only recourse I had was to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board and try to determine what I was doing wrong.

Before long, my drawing board became quite littered with fashion mistakes I had made. Going through my cross-dressing adolescence was quite painful because I was a thirty-year-old male trying to do it before I learned otherwise. I was exhausting myself climbing up the high dive and then down when I discovered there was no water in the pool. Finally, I learned the hard way to cross-dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me because they ran the pool I wanted admission to.

It turned out that the pool was much farther down than I thought it was, and I had too much time to think about what I was trying to do before I hit the water. I had not made the time to build up the feminine muscle memory I would need to allow me admission to the world as a transgender woman. It did me no good at all if I vaguely looked like a woman if I could not move or communicate like a transfeminine person.

At that point, jumping off the high board became very real to me. I was rapidly coming to the point of decision about what I would do with my life. By this time, I was in my fifties and was beginning to carve out a respectable life as a trans woman. My new world knew what I was and did not care. About my present, or more importantly, my past as a man. I was able to bring what baggage I wanted from my male life without any interference. It made all the difference in the world to me when I needed support from wherever I could get it in the worst way.

As I lost my fear of the high dive, I began to consider other transgender alternatives such as taking advantage of therapy and HRT through the Veteran’s Administration health care system which I was already a part of. I wondered then what my mom would have thought (she had long since passed away), about teaching me to take the long and difficult path to the high board would come back to help me so much later in life. Especially when she was the one who was dead set about me coming out to her after the Army when I tried. Karma came back to help me when I needed it the most. I could jump off the highest diving board I could just to prove I could.

Of course, the final high board I jumped off was the one which saw me do away with all my male clothes and live life as a fulltime transgender woman. In reality, I was never a stylish swimmer or diver, but at least I made it to the point where I could make it in a woman’s world. A world which would prove to be much more complex and difficult for me to succeed in than I ever thought possible. Probably, because, for the most part (except for a few friends) I was filling out my gender workbook as I went along. Preparing myself for when I could achieve the ultimate goal, my lifetime dreams of living as a woman to the best of my ability.

At the least, I was happy I gathered enough courage to go ever higher on my gender diving board and more importantly jump.

 

 

 

Is Your Life Running Away

 

Image from Zac Ong
on UnSplash. 

Running more and more over the years described my life on so many levels. Most all because of my desire to be a woman. Over the years, I have moved many times, mostly because of a search for better jobs along with cross-dressing opportunities. I thought moving from my conservative smallish Ohio town to the huge metro New York City area would provide me with a more liberal base of people to work with. Which just wasn’t true, I found for the most part, I was still hiding my desire to go public in my skirts and makeup most of the time.

Mainly, it was a learning experience until I began to get older and all of a sudden saw time was moving away from me. Maybe you could call it my transgender biological clock. No one lives forever, and I still needed a chance to live out a chance to live life as a transfeminine person before I died. My new attitude added a certain importance into learning what I could about living as a woman. Or what I like to call, slipping behind the gender curtain to see how the other half really lived alongside a world of men who thought they ran the show. After several attempts of running straight ahead into failure in the public’s eye, I began to get it right with my presentation. Allowing me to explore more the true world of ciswomen who had carved out successful lives for themselves.

When I did all of that, I ran directly into communication problems. I will forever remember the first night when I attempted to add my thoughts to a group of men, I somehow found myself a part of. Suddenly, I found myself being totally ignored in the conversation and I needed to leave. There were pros and cons to what happened I found because the positive was I had presented as a woman well enough to be ignored but the negative was the whole affair marked the first time; I felt a major part of my intelligence along with my male privilege was being taken away from me. For the longest time, I felt the impact of running directly into a gender wall.

Happily, I did not receive any black eyes I needed to cover up with makeup from the running collisions I was having with the public as I set my high heels in motion to conquer my little part of the world. The personal stubbornness I had to succeed came back to hurt and help me when I moved forward in the feminine world of ciswomen. It hurt me when what was left of my old male self-tried his best to dictate how I should look for the world, which led to many fashion disasters. It helped me when I needed to pick myself up after getting knocked down again and again as I was trying to see what I would have to do to be a successful transgender woman. When I was able to put all my old self behind me was when I was able to finally see my future and run to it successfully.

The whole process of male to female gender transition was very exhausting as I tried to live in both major gender binary worlds for a short while. I always mention it to pass along a warning to all you who are thinking of trying it too. In the short term, painting yourself into a gender corner you cannot get out of is no fun unless for some reason you want it to be. For me, all it did was wreck my already fragile mental health situation. Since I already had been diagnosed as being Bi-Polar, I was already trying to keep one clinical depression controlled when I had another creeping up on me when I could not express my feminine self. I needed a lot of good therapy to separate the two potential huge problems. When I was doing it, I was still running as fast as I could to continue to chase my dream of living as a successful trans woman. Which would ultimately lead me back to just being me.

The frustrating part was the running target I was aiming for kept moving on me. Once I thought I had all I needed to play in the girl’s sandbox safely, I discovered another aspect of a woman’s life I never considered. Mainly because I was naïve and knew a woman’s life was different than a man’s, but I was not prepared to find out exactly how different. All the varying layers of a ciswoman’s life really got to me for a while until I began to get my gender workbook filled with relevant new ideas on how I was supposed to live. In other words, all the doodling in my workbook started to make sense and I could see all the running I was doing to catch up coming to an end.

Either way I was getting into shape from all the running I was doing, or I just began to give it all up as I began to become much more successful in the world as a transgender woman. At this point too, the HRT or gender affirming hormones I was approved to take helped to calm me down and sync up my internal and external selves. Internally I began to feel emotions I never knew I had and externally I was helped along by softer skin, longer hair and my own breasts. Among all the other changes the hormones brought about. I just wished I could have started HRT earlier in my life because the changes felt so natural and I would not have to spend my whole life running from an invisible foe, myself.

Now in my advanced senior years, I am finishing out my workbook on its final pages. My final transition is just being the true me I always was meant to be. Deep down, I was never meant to be a runner after all.

 

 

 

The Power of Allies

 

Image from Peyton Sickles
on UnSplash. 

I don’t know if I could have ever made it to my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman, without the help of strong allies.

There were many times when I had hit a stopping point on my gender path and was clueless on which way to go. Mainly because I was attempting to find myself as a woman so I could continue to live after a failed suicide attempt.

I have several examples. The first of which came when I first started to go out and secretly wanted to find a social life as a trans woman because I was so lonely after my wife of twenty-five years unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. In the past I had considered myself a social person, and it hurt deeply to be lonely. At first, I went online and tried the usual methods of establishing a contact or two to date but I ran into the usual problems of inviting all sorts of trash into my life, which included many no shows when I had arranged to meet someone in public. Which was the only way I would do it for personal safety reasons.

In the meantime, I was fortunate to escape the gay venues I was going to (where they thought I was just another drag queen) and establish myself in a couple of the big sports bars I used to go to when I was a man. Places where I could drink pints of beer and watch sports on big screen televisions. Ironically, being alone in one of these venues led me directly to my first two powerful allies.

The first happened to be the mother of one of the bartenders who set up a casual date between us one night where she worked. It turned out we got along really well, shared the same interests and set up future dates, so my end to the extreme loneliness I was feeling was looking like it might me coming to an end. I was further encouraged not long after that when one night a woman came in to pick up her to go food order and suddenly slid her phone number down the bar to me, to my amazement. Not long after that, I kept the number and had the courage to call it.

From that point forward, the three of us made an inseparable trio as we watched sports and drank beer in the venues we met in. Plus, as it turned out, the two women turned out to be lesbians which put a unique perspective to my life as I was regularly attending lesbian mixers and learning any thing I could about the culture which was so new to me. As we socialized together, I was learning as much as I could about being a woman. The first major lesson I learned was that I did not need validation from a man to be a woman which was a relief because of two reasons. The first being that I had very little interactions with men at all primarily I think because I was not attractive enough. The second of which was I really did not want to deal with all the drama I knew men can bring from all the time I spent as a man. I knew how to deal with ciswomen all my life and felt more comfortable with the drama women bring. I always had more women friends than close male friends.

The two most profound allies were yet to enter my life at that point.

As part of my online searches, I did have one response from a Wiccan/lesbian woman in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. She told me I had sad eyes from my online picture, and we slowly began to correspond by text messages before I felt comfortable enough to talk to her in person. Finally, I got over my shyness and after talking to each other I decided to ask her out on a date. She accepted, and we decided to meet halfway between our homes with friends and go to a drag show at a well-known gay bar. We ended up having a great time and decided to set up another date. This time with my other friends at a women’s roller derby event. I was in gender heaven to be able to go with three other women to one place and enjoy myself for once. My help from allies was coming through for me.

At the same time, I needed to come out to what was left of my blood family. My parents and most of the rest of the family had passed away, leaving only my daughter (only child) and my only brother to come out too. I thought at the time I would have problems with my brother and hopefully not my daughter and I was right. My daughter’s only real reaction was why she was the last to know and my brother totally rejected me by not inviting me to the annual Thanksgiving Day dinner. He sold me out to his rightwing religious in-laws, and I have not spoken to him since which has been over a decade now. I was fortunate when my allies (daughter) and Liz stepped up to help me in my time of need. Not only was I invited to one Thanksgiving family dinner, but I was also invited to two. Even though I was happy to have someplace to go for the holidays, it was quite stressful for me to meet people at my daughter’s in-laws who had known me for years as a man but also meet Liz’s dad and brother for the first time.

The best part of having all of these strong allies on my side was they expected me to be myself. In fact, I was still on the fence of living as both binary genders as I met Liz. It was not too far into our long relationship that she told me the final words to kickstart my final plunge to a feminine life. One day Liz told me what I was waiting for, she had seen both sides of me and had only seen the female side, nothing of the old unwanted masculine me. That was it, I agreed and went about giving away what was left of my male wardrobe and never looked back as I started HRT or gender affirming hormones to further femininize my exterior self.

Along the way, I tried to explain to all my ciswomen allies how much they had done for me, but they would not take any credit. They never understood how much they did to help me become the happy transgender woman I am today. And, by the way, Liz and I finally got married after eight years and now have been together for over a decade.

 

 

It's Complicated

 

Image from Fa Barboza
on UnSplash.

About a month ago, when I was being admitted into a hospital with what turned out to be pneumonia, I had to go through a very complicated conversation about my gender with the emergency room nurse.

Complicating matters is the hospital I have been to before has my gender listed correctly as female, but the nurse had heard the emergency squad driver refer to me as “he” several times after he talked to me about my living situation. When I told him I was married to a woman, somehow, he automatically assumed I was a man. Which I did not care about at the time, as all I wanted to do was recover from whatever was wrong with me. Plus, chances are, I will never see him again (I hope.)

Anyhow, the admissions nurse waded right in with the complicated gender questions. She did ask how I would like to be referred to in the pronoun department which was nice after I needed to tell her I was born as and still was a biological male. Actually, none of the conversation bothered me as I told her I lived fulltime as a transgender woman and was even married to a woman. Where some of the confusion was coming in. She accepted all of that, and we moved on to more important matters such as my medical care. Since I had been admitted to that hospital in the past, I had all the confidence in the world we could move past the complicated part of my transgender self and get on to the real work.

Since I have now been out in the world as my authentic self for over a decade now, normally questions about me don’t bother me. Except in the case of a mammogram nurse, I had several years ago who enquired if I had any “surgeries down there.” Like it was any of her business. I was upset at the question and showed it because then she went ahead and did her job of completing the mammogram. I also consider myself to be an educational curiosity to many people who have never seen or dealt with a transgender person. They have been radicalized by the recent wave of anti-trans political ads and have no way of knowing we often lead similar lives to them and are not the flamboyant style drag queens again on the ads.

Seeing as how I chose a complicated life to live, I need to live it the best I can, and I must say, I have encountered very few haters of gender bigots in the world. Which surprises me. I judge my public gender success on the amount of “he’s” or “she’s” I get when I am out in public. Going back to the hospital, the overwhelming number of nurses and aides did not gender me at all. They did their job and just kept going. All except one day nurse I had for two of my five days who kept infuriating me by calling me “buddy.” As I was stuck with her, I saw no point in explaining how I was not her buddy, for several different reasons.

I have a lot of compassion for those people who don’t understand me if they are not evil about it or want to further take away my rights. Mainly because I try to remember how long it took for me to understand myself and even longer to do anything meaningful about it. If I don’t set my expectations of people too high, then I am pleasantly surprised when they reach my expectations of a good person who of course tries to understand complicated me.

I think too, that growing up with gender dysphoria automatically qualifies you to be more complicated than the average non-transgender person. I know for me, the daily conflict of trying to decide if I was a boy or a girl growing up was a pressure I would not wish on my worst enemy. Learning to live with it was a constant problem I needed to deal with for what turned out to be nearly fifty years before I came to my final decision on how I was going to live. What a relief it was to get the gender burden off of my shoulders and on with life. Knowing completely, I would be facing difficult, complicated life choices ahead on my path to my dream.

It turned out, my recent hospital visit was just a reminder of the life I was trying to lead. I spend too much time in my cocoon away from the public. When I do get out, I am fortunate to have my best ally Liz to lead the way. If anyone is on the fence concerning my gender, when she continues to call me she, it really helps to set the tone and pave the way for public acceptance, A prime example was the recent bus tour to Florida we took. All the interaction Liz had with the other travelers set me up for success.

If you are contemplating going down a similar path as I did, just be aware that it will be complicated but on the other hand (as Emma said to me in a recent comment, very interesting.) For whatever reason we choose this path to our dreams of living as a transfeminine person, when we keep in mind what the difficulty factor in doing it is, we are better off and well adjusted to the new world we are in. There are few human efforts as inherently difficult than crossing the male to female gender frontier. The gender euphoria is worth it though when the public reaffirms who you are and you can finally come full circle back to the person you were always meant to be. They will never understand how difficult and complicated your journey was.

When you make it interesting too, you really have been able to make your life a success. It is for you and only you to understand.

 

 

 

 

Living in the Real World

 

Image from Jacqueline Mungala
on UnSplash.

Living in the real world became a challenge to me as I transitioned from a male existence to a feminine world. The main problem I had was figuring out what was right and what was wrong as I followed my path through many blind curves and stop signs.

One thing I never thought of completely was how different my life would be if I had ever had the chance to live as a fulltime transgender woman. Sure, I was not totally naïve and thought my world would basically involve pretty clothes and being chased by boys. When I finally was allowed behind the gender curtain, I discovered how complex and layered lives ciswomen really live. Very quickly, trying to live in the real world as a novice struggling trans woman got me in over my head. I would be remiss if I did not bring up how I tried to present myself. I thought trying to look like a sexy teen girl was the way to go, and fortunately my time in that cross-dressing phase of my life went away quickly. Often with brutal consequences of being laughed out of any venue I was trying to visit.

In other words, I put what my male self was telling me about presenting as a woman in the real world behind me and started to look around to what I needed to do to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The challenge was not only did I have to be as good as the next woman, I needed to be better to survive in the real world I found myself in. With success, I brought confidence I could do more.

The next problem I faced was what was I going to do about my deteriorating (already fragile) mental health. As luck would have it, I was assigned a qualified therapist within the Veterans Administration who knew what she was doing and was able to separate my Bi-polar disorder from my gender dysphoria issues. She provided me with permission to begin HRT which is something I had always wanted and made the real world more livable for a transfeminine person like me.

At the same time, I was trying to take every spare moment away from work to explore different venues as a trans woman. I was attempting to accomplish trying out (as much as possible) everything I would have to go through if I ever followed my dream into womanhood. What was a ciswoman’s life really like and how was it different than what I had already lived as a man. I was entering the scariest yet most exciting time of my life as for the most part I was successful when I went out. The biggest issue which eluded me, was being able to communicate effectively with the world of women I encountered. Learning all the nuances of non-verbal communication women use was the biggest challenge for me. For the first time in my life, I needed to really listen to what was being said to me and watch the other woman’s eyes at the same time to see if I could catch a clue of what she really meant.

Through this portion of my life, I had a powerful motivation to succeed as a woman in the real world. My second wife of twenty-five years had unexpectedly passed away to leave me completely alone with my gender issues. I had no spouse to worry about how to tell my truth about wanting to be a woman. Yet another terrifying yet exciting time of my life. What was I going to do about my newfound freedom. Since you are reading this post, you know what I decided to do. I started making plans to finally make the leap off the gender cliff I had thought of for some time and throw caution to the wind for the remainder of my life. I figured why not because my confidence was at an all-time high with my small circle of friends I had built up. Along with factoring in all the time and effort I put in exploring the real-world ciswomen live in because for once, I had earned my way (or forced my way) behind the so called “sacred” gender curtain.

Once I had made it to this point, after another stop sign on my transgender path, I found I still had more learning to do to really be ready to live in the real world. That is where my ciswomen (lesbian) friends came in which is a subject of another blog post. I will say, they taught me how to be validated as myself in the real world. It was another main transition to go from thinking I was a transgender woman to knowing I was just me. Which took me from cross-dresser to trans woman, back to a secure me during my lifetime. A long, often brutal journey which had a happy ending. I learned the person I had been running from much of my life was not such a bad person after all.

Maybe, most importantly, I discovered the one aspect of my life I never thought I could experience and that was having the ability to be happy. I never had a chance to learn it from my family, and I spent so much time trying to deny myself any satisfaction I could have had from a successful career as a man, there was no time to ever be happy. It turned out that when I turned the corner back to just being the true me, I allowed happiness to be part of my existence.

I had survived all the lessons I had learned as I followed my path to a brighter, more authentic gender future. Living in the real world was not such a bad thing after all. My only regret is that it took me so long (all the way till sixty) to have the courage to face my truth so I could live as I truly was.

 

 

 

I Could Never Say No

 

JJ Hart with two Special People who 
made it Impossible for me to say No.
Liz on left, daughter on right. 

I discovered early in life that saying no to cross-dressing as a girl was something I could never do.

I tried many times, but I was a miserable failure as the pressure would build to run to my makeup and wardrobe to look at myself in the mirror. I even went as far as trying to shave the ugly unwanted hair off my legs with my mom’s electric razor. When I did, the world seemed to come together for me…for a while. Like clockwork, I could almost predict when the pressure would start to build again to cross-dress. Like most of you, I even purged or threw out most all of my feminine belongings in a wild rush which felt so good at the moment, until my old urges came rushing down on me. Saying no was just not an option.

For a while, I thought being feminine to the point of living as a transgender woman fulltime was always going to be just a dream. At other times, I thought that some point in my life I would just outgrow my gender urges and revert to a fulltime male life, no matter what my brain was telling me. I guess you could say, sometimes I thought a permanent purge would be in my future. I was kidding myself. That permanent purge never came as I tried many times to no avail. It seemed each time I tried to say no, my urges to follow my transgender needs came back even stronger. This time fueled by the positive feedback I was receiving when I was able to present better going out in public as a novice trans woman in a world of ciswomen. Just entering their world was much more difficult for me than I ever thought possible.

One of the problems was my old male self and my second wife did not participate in my dreams. It was far from my wife’s fault because none of what I was doing was anything she signed up for when we got married. She tried to help as much as she could, but my dream was growing so fast I could not control it. I started out the marriage as a cross-dresser and now I was into a transgender woman, and I did not have the courage, or knowledge to explain it. I just knew, I could not say no to pursuing my dreams. I am sure all she saw was her man slipping away. Sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly and I understood why she did not like it.

As I said, I really always knew saying no was not an option in my pursuit of a transfeminine life when I really went out into the world and found myself in the middle of new friendships who knew nothing of my past. growing Just trying to look the part of a woman faded away as I always thought it would when I found myself at the point of wanting to be that woman. Doing my best to communicate with the world on their terms. As I continually searched my soul for guidance on the path I should take, the answer always came back the same. Follow your instincts and do what you need to do to feel natural. With input such as that, why should I ever say no to myself again.

Finally, I reached the point of no return in my life when I needed to look at myself in the mirror to see who I really was. With no makeup at all one morning, I had a chance to see the real me and the words my wife Liz said to me came through loud and clear. There was no male in me and for once everything with a “no” word in it made sense. Plus, I was mentally exhausted from fighting myself all my life. I had enough, and it was time to make my final decision.

When I replaced no with yes, my life opened up to new horizons I never thought possible. Yes, meant I could be the long-hidden self I could never find. If you are on a gender path of your own, I hope you can do a better job of facing your truth than I did. I kept saying no too long and missed a significant amount of my life trying to outrun myself. On the other hand, changing a gender is a huge move, and one that cannot be taken lightly. You have to get to the point where saying no is not an option to you anymore.

 

 

 

Nothing Easy but the Hard Times

 

Image from Anthony Tran
on UnSplash.

Finishing up yesterday’s post about having a medical appointment with one of my medicine providers Regina, my worst fears materialized. After years and years of seeing Regina, she is retiring and I am being shuttled to another provider at the Veterans’ Administration here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now I have only one more time to see her before a significant part of my life begins to shift.

I think my shift will continue when I see my endocrinologist on May 7^th. She is the only remaining tie to my old providers in Dayton, Ohio VA where I used to live and this visit is ultra important because I will have to ask to have my Estradiol patches prescription renewed. As I said yesterday, I am thinking about changing from the hormonal patches to self-injections which is not a big problem with me, but will it be with the “new” VA I am beginning to experience. If I am told I must get a new endo doc in Cincinnati, what will I have to go through to get my HRT, or will I have problems, is my paranoia. Time flies when you are worrying and before I know it, the time for the appointment will be here. I guess I was born to worry, and nothing is easy but the hard times.

I guess worrying fits right in with being transgender. Early in life, all I did was worry about getting caught when I cross-dressed in front of the mirror. I had plenty of hard times as I worried about my slightly younger brother discovering my feminine secret and telling my parents who would have promptly sent me off to a psychiatrist who knew absolutely nothing about gender dysphoria back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. At that time, I was mistaken that several of my main worries would take care of themselves as I became older. One of course was me wanting to be a woman, and the second one was what was I going to do about the military and the Vietnam War. To make matters worse, I was worried about them on several different levels. One of which being I could just relax and both the war and my urge to be feminine would just disappear.

Needless to say, both of them never went away. The war went on and on for years, and my desire to be a woman just intensified as I had more public experience when I gathered the courage to leave the mirror and go out into the world. Which I was starting to do before I entered the military, which in many ways just made matters worse. Certainly, I felt nothing was easy but the hard times as I tried alcohol for the first time to dull my pain. It was the beginning of a long one-sided love affair with alcohol I had which fortunately I won before it was too late. I took me much longer to realize my desire to be a full-time transgender woman was not ever going to go away and I would have to do something about the hard times I was experiencing by acting.

Acting meant I would have to put my male side behind me for good and plan for a radically different feminine future. That is when I truly found nothing ever would be easy in life but the hard times. So, for the first time in my life, if I ever wanted to achieve my dream, the path was clearly there to do it. Like a runway for jumbo jets lit up at night. All I had to do was learn how to land the jet.

At that point, I was rather confident that I could do it. Afterall, I had spent all those years cross-dressing and perfecting my feminine presentation, so what could go wrong. It turned out plenty. As I was completely lacking in rounding myself out as a transgender woman capable of holding her own in a world full of competitive ciswomen. I discovered I was completely not ready to communicate in a world where I needed to be better than the next woman to be accepted at all. Just presenting better as a trans woman was just the beginning I found, and I started to worry all over again.

This time, all my worries turned to action as my new life became a blur as I started to carve out a new, more complete path to my transfeminine dream. I could not believe it was me becoming a regular in venues I used to go to as a man and had wondered how it would be to visit them as a woman. I used to blame my second wife for holding me back, but learned it was all my fault, and I was just being a victim.

I think being transgender automatically brings a lot of worry with it. We are subject to violence, job and medical discrimination among many other negatives. When you add all of those to already problematic everyday lives, that everyone has, it is no wonder transgender suicide rates are so high. Which proves my point that nothing is easy but the hard times when you are trans. Reality comes when the attraction to all the pretty clothes begins to fade and the daily life of a woman sets in. A woman’s life is a many layered existence and one you have to accept when you transition.

By accepting the challenge, you made yourself, you have decided to set out and build your new life from scratch. There will be many times when you think you have bit more than you can choose, but after you have been successful, you can feel the pride and for once knowing that the hard times were ever easy but somehow you made it through to living your dream of living and thriving in a feminine world. You should be proud of your accomplishment.