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.

 

 

 

 

Father's Day

 

Image from Tim Mossholder
on UnSplash.

Father’s Day always brings about a set of conflicting emotions in me.

First, I remember my dad. He was a powerful figure in my life. He was a part of the “greatest generation”, served in WW II, survived the great depression and ended up being a self-made man. He ended up eventually building his own house from the ground up and retired as a vice-president of a bank he worked at for years.

The conflict came in when it came to expressing any emotions to his family. Primarily he was shy in expressing anything to my younger brother and I. He was a strong provider but a weak father figure in many ways. I think now, he was doing the best he could with what he had to work with. His generation could only give so much.

As fate would have it, my brother and I were able to overcome dad’s lack of emotional leadership or guidance. We both were very hands-on in how we raised our children. I have a daughter, and he has two sons to raise. Any of you who are regulars around here know how fortunate I am to have a very diverse and acceptable daughter. I must have done something right when I raised her.

Here is an example of what she has done to accept me over the years. From day one, when I was scared to death to come out to her by blurting out, I was transgender. She responded by doing several things including a shopping trip (which I turned down) all the way to inviting me on a trip to her upscale beauty salon which I accepted, my mantra became when I was scared to do something, go ahead and do it. Because of the amount of fear I felt on the day I went to the salon to have my long hair colored and styled.

Now here is the part of the story with my daughter gets a little messy with some folks. When I first transitioned, I went from Father’s Day to “Parent’s Day” which was fine with me. Then, suddenly, my kid started to honor me on Mother’s Day with no prompting from me. Initially, I was too embarrassed to accept such an honor but when I received the same honor from my wife Liz’s son, it stuck with me.  

  In addition to be so honored, my daughter had worked with me to pick a new legal name which would be easy for the grandkids (three) to grasp and remember. In a short period of time, I came up with a new name which was a throwback to family names of the past I had admired. My parents had given my male name as a tribute to the doctor who successfully delivered me. They had gone through three still births before me and were ready to give up and adopt a child until I came along. The problem was that my dead name was going to be very difficult to feminize so I went in an entirely different direction.

What I chose, with the input of my daughter, was to slightly feminize my maternal grandfather’s name and use it as my first name. Then, for my middle name, I chose my middle name as my mom’s first name when I buried my hatchet with her and honored her for all she did for me. If she is up in the sky looking down on me now, I wonder what she would think about my life now. Which has nothing to do with Father’s Day.

I would have chosen part of my dad’s name if it had been possible. His two names (like mine) would be too difficult to femininize. No chance for Charley to be changed to Charlene is an example. My point is that I don’t want to underrate the effort dad put into being my father. As I said, I have forgiven him because of the tools of fatherhood he received did not live up to my expectations. I guess through it all, I knew he loved me in his own way

Even though I have been removed from the Father’s Day agenda and moved into an arena I never thought possible, I still appreciate all I was given to me by my dad, even though he is long departed, he never knew he had a daughter not a son. I never had the courage to bring up the subject to him before he caught dementia and passed away. I labor under some sort of an idea he may have accepted me, unlike my mom.

Sadly, throughout the transgender world, so many trans children are never accepted by their parents. Leading the way to higher rates of transgender suicide.

Whatever is the case for you, I hope you have a great Father’s Day.

 

 

What Would Mom Say

Image from Jenna Norman
on UnSplash

This week my question to answer on the year long bio I am writing for my daughter and family as well as my wife Liz involved what parent I learned the most from.  

As I compared my Mom and Dad, easily I learned the most from Mom. Outside of the usual circumstances, I found I could find many more opportunities to spotlight Mom's influence on me. For example, I remember at a very early age watching Mom put on her makeup. Being a product of the "greatest generation" she was not shy about dressing up. However, I don't think watching makeup being applied led me to being a transvestite or even a transgender woman really mattered. Somehow the gender issues I faced went much deeper. Perhaps as deep as the medication Mom took during her pregnancy (DES) which was offered to women at the time to prevent problem births.

It turned out, I was successfully delivered just before my parents had decided to give up after three still births and adopt a child. I think because of all of that, my Mom put an extra emphasis on raising me and my brother who came along two years later. So much so, I wonder now what would have happened if Mom would have realized she had a daughter rather than a son. In all fairness to her, the fifties during my youth had very little information on gender issues. When it was available, gender issues were known as mental illness. 

Throughout the years, I always mistakenly thought girls had all the benefits in life I always wanted. Girls were able to wear the pretty clothes I wanted, be gifted the dolls I wanted and even never had to worry about being drafted and serving in the military. Male privileges were not known to me in those days because I had not yet earned any. As a side note, once I did earn the benefits of being male, I learned some of them were automatic and I did not want them anyhow.

I have forever wondered what my life would have been with Mom had I been born a biological female. Being as similar personality wise as we were, we fought quite a bit as mother/pseudo son and I have to think it would have been worse as a daughter. Mom was very headstrong and I am sure we would have had battles over fashion styles in the 1960's as well as when I could begin using makeup. In fact, when I was sneaking around using her makeup, I was probably younger than I would have been had I been her actual daughter.  I am sure too, Mom would have tried to influence me into going to her college and joining her sorority. She would have done her best to push me down a certain path which was certainly going against my generation's rules at that time in history during the upheaval in the later 1960's.

By this time, you may be asking where was Dad during all of this. It was not like he was not an influence in my life but he was not as hands on as Mom was. He was long on providing and short on emotions which I struggled with for most of my life. One thing I remember most about him was how desperate I was to never disappoint him and since I rarely if ever heard a positive from him, I never knew what he really thought of my life. He was blessed with excellent health and outlived my Mom by ten years and I never came out to him before his death from Dementia.

I did try to come out to Mom but it was a dismal failure for both of us. Predictably, when I told her I wanted to be a woman, she offered up mental health counseling. The conversation took place just after I was finished with my military duty and was never mentioned again until her death fifty years later. I used to hold her thoughts against her and was quite bitter but I gradually mellowed with age and came to realize she was just a product of her generation. 

To honor all her sacrifices, I used her first name as my middle name when I legally changed my gender markers nearly ten years ago. Had I had the opportunity to be accepted as her daughter from the beginning, it would have been interesting how our lives would have intersected. Way past the pushback I would have received for wearing my skirts too short and wearing too much makeup when I was a teenager. I know what Mom would have said. You aren't leaving the house looking like that. Maybe I should have thought of that when I tried and failed to dress that way later in life.  

 

Transgender Whirlwind

 

Early Archive 
Image. Jessie Hart

Looking back, there were certain decades of my life which seemed to shoot by faster than others.

When we hit the new century, my life seemed destined to speed up without me even knowing it. First, my Mom passed away, leaving my elderly Dad by himself and before he was diagnosed with dementia. Fortunately, my suddenly smaller family bonded together to take care of Dad. My brother and sister in law took care of all his meds and my wife and I fed him. The situation worked well until the very sad day when he needed to go into assisted living. If you are not familiar with Dementia, it is a very sad and ugly disease which towards the end robs the patient with all of their integrity, making them a child again or worse.

Then I used my inheritance to buy a restaurant which after a good start hit the skids when the town I was in was deeply affected by a severe economic downturn. My whole move was similar to pushing all my chips to the center of the table in a poker game and hoping I would win. Which I didn't. Regardless of all of that, life was dealing me death cards right and left. To begin with, I lost nearly all of my few close friends to cancer then in 2007 I lost my wife of twenty five years to a massive unexpected heart attack. I was in shock and ended up taking the only sure route I could to saving myself, falling back on my feminine self. In her, I took solace and knew I could make it through my dark times. 

The problem I had was, I needed to catch up with my fashion, makeup and everything else it would take me to present in the world as a transgender woman. The best part was I was all by myself and could basically do whatever I needed to achieve my goal. Which was seeing if I could indeed jump the binary gender frontier and see if the grass was greener for me. The more I explored the world, the more I discovered I could indeed carve out a new life, if I wanted to bad enough. 

During this time, which would have been around the year 2010, my life was moving towards being a whirlwind of transgender experiences. I equated it to sliding down a wet hill towards a steep cliff which I had no idea of steep and long it was. What I did not realize at the time, I was losing all of my male privileges and starting to panic. Still I persisted until I learned what female privilege meant to me. Finally I learned being a trans woman meant so much more to me than having doors opened by men. It meant freedom of expression for me. My inner female finally had her chance to live and was taking full advantage of her opportunities. Even still, it seemed every day, I was facing the differences in life I had only dreamed of. All the way to going to male dominated spaces and seeking service which was something I had to do to live the existence I wanted.

Even though life finally did begin to slow down and I became more and more comfortable with my life as a transgender woman, there were still surprises. Since I had survived the gender transition whirlwind, the surprises were easier to overcome. Plus, seeing as how I had survived all the dark years of death I went through in my life, I became more appreciative of the life I was still living. Especially since I was able to transition at the same time.

Having Fun????

 

Image from Jarritos Mexican Soda 
on UnSplash

Depending upon which label you use, transgender or cross dresser, when you reached the heights of dressing yourself as a woman, did you ever feel as if you were having fun?

I guess before you can answer the question, you have to define what fun is to you. To start I went to a popular well known source for an answer and it said whatever provides amusement or enjoyment. At that point I began to think at what point did I achieve either amusement or enjoyment. Although I couldn't remember many times I was amused with my life as a serious cross dresser or novice transgender woman, there were plenty of times I enjoyed myself. Even though many moments of gender euphoria were rare. However rare, there were enough moments to encourage me to move forward in the world I wanted to create for myself. 

There were many times my old male self filled in the blank spots in my life as he always did. To him, he rarely enjoyed anything and was amused by less than that. I can blame my parents on how I was raised to feel nothing was ever good enough, I could always do better. There was never time allowed for fun or enjoyment when I was moving on to the next thing.  My male life carried over to my earliest cross dressing days when I always thought my next outfit or wig would allow me to present better the next time I went out into the public's eye as a feminine person. Even on the rare times I was successful in my transgender quest, I never allowed myself a moment of fun. 

During that period of my life, like most people, I thought I would never be old and wrinkled and my idea of having fun would change. Even though, unexpectedly, the introduction of estrogen based hormones into my system plus the blessing of good genetics, allowed me to continue the partying lifestyle much longer after I should, sooner more than later I needed to calm down. In order to save my body the best I could, I needed to cut back nearly entirely my alcohol consumption. On the other hand, as I reached my mid seventies in age, I needed to find activities to motivate my mind and body as I approached the end of my life. 

What I decided to do was continue to write the Cyrsti's Condo blog on two on line platforms now and on the other hand try to push my body to do more walking. Since my Dad began to give up on himself and retire to his easy chair later in life until dementia ultimately led to a very ugly death, I figured even though I couldn't enjoy the same aspects of life I didn't take the time to savor when I was younger, I try to set myself up for the future and enjoy what I have. Such as the rare accepting cohesive family I am so fortunate to have. I cherish the relationship I have had over the years with my wife Liz as well as my daughter Andrea. 

Even if I am not having fun as such, being able to lead a life as a fulltime transgender woman is special to me. I try to always remind myself how truly special it is to lead the life I do. 

It is always special to me that all of you take the time to stop and read my blog. It means so much to me and thank you.