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| Image from David Valentine on UnSplash. |
When I seriously pursued my male to female life as a transgender woman, along the way I was fooled into thinking I was on a smooth fast interstate highway.
What happened was I was stuck on slow-moving two-lane gender
roads and going nowhere for years. Plus, I needed to keep an eye out for
potholes bumps and sharp curves. Too many times, I led myself down dead-end
streets when I transitioned. The entire process just slowed me down and I lost
decades in the process. Then I discovered one of the main problems I had was my
old male self was exercising too much influence on my life. My main example I
always use were the ill-advised fashion choices I was making when I tried teen girl
outfits in my thirty-year-old testosterone poisoned body. I was guilty of not
looking around and noticing what other women my age were wearing or what I
could wear to disguise the defects I inherited with my body. Even though I was
always going to be a big woman, there were plenty of other women my size to
blend in with in public. While I am not a huge proponent of age women’s
fashion, I am a proponent of looking good and not shocking the world.
One way or another, as I was able to put most of the fashion
mistakes behind me, I was able to speed up a little and enjoy the new small
gender towns and cities I always wanted to visit as a woman when I was a man. There
were to be no more miserable vacations when all I thought about was when I
could cross-dress again in front of the mirror. I was far beyond that point. I
had developed the confidence I needed as a transfeminine person to take the
next two-lane highway ahead and see where the journey took me. More than
anything else, the mini trips taught me I could not go to sleep on my gender
journey as I was risking my life as I knew it at the time.
In many ways, I was used to the pressure of discovery all
along since it had started when I was so young. I just ended up accepting the
pressure as a way of life for me if I was ever going to achieve my dream of
living as a transgender woman. It all started with the threat of a psychiatrist
visit when I was quite young, all the way to losing my family and job if I was
discovered later in life.
Perhaps the biggest mistake I made on my road was trying to
internalize the entire process and going through the infamous ill-advised purges
of everything feminine I owned. It turned out to be one of the dead-end roads I
was facing when I found I could not purge my deepest feelings of wanting to be
a woman. In no time at all, I was back on the road and ready to try to get on
the gender interstate. Many times, I was guilty of taking the wrong exit and
having to go back to start all over again when I made the wrong choice of a
venue and tried out a red neck, rightwing venue when I should not have. One
time, I even had the cops called on me when I visited one venue, I was not
familiar with.
After being told to leave, I quietly did and regained my
composure up the street at a place where I knew I would be accepted and got
back on the road. Once my transgender life began to speed up, I was able to
stay on the interstate gender highway thanks to a lot of help from my cisgender
friends who taught me more than they ever knew about discovering myself as a trans
woman. More than anything else, they propelled me forward towards my dreams. They
validated me to a point where I did not have to hide myself anymore on a bunch
of dark deserted two-lane roads and stay on the well-lit interstates. I mention
them a lot because without them, I could still be hiding my true transgender
self away in my dark closet.
It took me so long to transition, I wore out a couple of
vehicles along the way, but I finally did it. Regardless of the naysayers who
said I was not trans enough to make it, or I passed as a woman out of sheer
willpower. I accepted my life for what is was finally at the age of sixty and
did what I should have done years earlier. Stood up for myself and started
gender affirming hormones (HRT) which was like getting a new sports car to
drive on the gender interstate. Again, I was able to leave a lot of negative people
behind and live the dream I always wanted to live, as a transgender woman.
