On A Gender Vacation

 

Image from PR Media 
on Ubsplash.

As I matured as a person and a crossdresser, taking a vacation from my male gender became a reality for me.

It all started when I first felt the inclination to try on articles of my mom’s clothing and moved on from there. Very soon, I spent as much time as I could in front of the family’s full-length hallway mirror imagining myself as one of the pretty girls I envied so much. Before my unwanted male puberty set in, I did not have so far to go to be on vacation from my boyhood self. Then the changes set in and I began to develop the body angles and shape of a man as the girls around me were showing off their new curves in pretty clothes.

At that point, vacations became harder to earn, as it was becoming more difficult for me to look like a girl at all and try to work my way around having no knowledge of makeup at all. That chapter of my transgender notebook (like all the others) was empty, and I struggled not to look like a clown in drag at the circus. In a very short time, I became aware that if I was to ever reach my dream of living my life as a transgender woman, I had a long, hard struggle ahead.

It did not make matters any easier when I went on family vacations and saw other girls my age in cars on the highway. One young dark-haired beauty still stands out as one I remember. As I saw her time and time again when we passed on the highway, I so wanted to be like her and put my pillow over my head and pretended to sleep. No imagined vacation for me on the real one. My gender reality was with me all the time.

One way or another as life went on, I needed to do something to survive. Somehow, I needed to break through the bonds of the increasingly complex male life I was living and start to carve out a new transfeminine existence on my own. If my reality was indeed female, I would have to do something about it. What I did was begin to mix business with pleasure on my vacation. Business was when I was learning that ciswomen ran the world I wanted into and pleasure was when I was able to finally blend in until I was allowed behind the invisible but so real gender curtain.  To maintain the lifestyle, I was trying to lead, I needed to do a lot of research and repetition to see if I wanted to be there at all. Those were the nights when I broke away from all the gay venues I was going to and started to see if I could be accepted in lesbian and straight places.

The vacations I took into the world as a new transgender woman turned out to be life changing for me. For once, I did not have to wonder what if would be like to live in the world as a woman and just do it. My time away from my old boring male world, took me into a wonderful new life as the woman I always wanted to be. I was the trans woman at the big sports bar enjoying my large beer as I watched my sports teams play on the big screen televisions. Occasionally, I received some pushback from a toxic man, but it was not enough to deter me from having a good time. Mainly, because of my confidence in who I was building every time I was successful trying out the me, I always should have been. I was not building anything new, just allowing my true self to flourish in the world.

At that point, it occurred to me that my vacations were changing drastically. Instead of believing I was taking vacations from my male self as a trans woman, I was now taking time from my feminine world to allow my male self to finish up important things such as working and keeping up a false image of a man for the world to see until I could fully complete my male to female transition. Since I had accumulated so much male baggage over the years, clean up was not going to be easy. Finally, it occurred to me that transitioning to my new life was going to be an all or nothing proposition…or was it?

A big decision I needed to make was involving my sexuality which had never been a question for me in my male life as I had never been physically attracted to another man ever. It did not help me when I got a suggestion from ciswomen to buy bananas to get ready for a new sex life that never came. Even though I had dates with several cismen, nothing ever sparked within me and we never went anywhere except kissing, Women, on the other hand were different as I still cherished their company which I found they enjoyed mine too as they went on vacation with me. Since HRT hormones took away any possibly of traditional sexual intercourse between me and another woman, by choice I took it off the table.

It all led me to wonder what I would do about sports, the one big passion left in my life. Could I still interact with the world as a passionate sports loving woman or would I have to give it all up. It turned out that no, I did not have to give up my passion, it just changed direction like so many other things in my life. For example, when my lesbian friends and I were talking sports, we did it on an equal footing. But when I talked sports with a man, often I needed to take a back seat to his sports knowledge even though I had plenty of my own. I learned my lessons and moved on.

Even though many of my vacations from life were just quick, cheap escapes, many were extensive, expensive paths to my future life. Plus, they handed out much needed respites for my often-battered mental health as I battled depression and anxiety. It all helped me to survive and make it to my dream goal I never thought I could make it to. A life as a transgender woman.

As always, thanks for not taking a vacation to read and comment on my posts. Your input always means a lot to me!

 

 

If You Don't Try...You Will Never Get There

 

Image from Luis Villasmil
on UnSplash

During our lives as transgender women and transgender men, we come to many obstacles that we have no idea of how we are ever going to get around.

After many early failures in my unwanted life as a boy, it was increasingly evident to me that if I did not attempt to try harder being a girl, I would never have a chance of making it to my dream. In many ways I was stuck between a gender rock and a hard place. On one hand, I was running to hide behind any failures I might have with my dresses and makeup, and on the other, I was making myself afraid to try anything new at all.

It took me years to learn that if you don’t venture into the world outside of your little closet, nothing will be gained. I discovered after I went through male puberty, I had very little to start with as far as having any natural feminine characteristics to work with. Even still, until I got out of the mirror and into the public’s eye, I had no idea of how bumpy my gender path would be.

In the early days, my male ego took it badly and my female ego was hurt deeply when I was laughed at in public. Until I began to take matters into my own hands. In order to improve my feminine presentation, I went on a crash diet which enabled me to fit into and purchase more stylish fashion. I learned to be in the right place at the right time if I really wanted to try to blend in with the ciswomen who ran the world, I wanted to be in. It took time to try more extreme transgender bucket list items I had put together to learn how it would be to live in a woman’s world if I had to try hard enough.

It was about that time that I landed a job with a very successful casual dining restaurant chain who taught me a lot about not being a victim and if I did not try to succeed I wouldn’t. In essence the chain took what I had learned about myself in the military and improved it. Which was just what I needed to take the gender box I was stuck in and find my way out. What I discovered was that most of the world did not care anything about me once I began to learn the basics of not drawing undue attention to myself. Setting me up to try more and more gender trials on my own. Because I had no one else to help me. The mistakes I was making and learning from came from the fact that my gender workbook was blank and the women I could share my secret with left me on my own to learn my own lessons and be a better transgender woman. Once I figured out what that was and how I fit in with the terminology.

It turned out the only ciswoman with any access to me was my second wife who, for the most part, left me alone with my struggles. Only stepping in when I made mistakes causing huge fights. The problem became I had very little public output for my desire to work the world as a trans woman. I became very frustrated and depressed when I had no way to get out and live because deep down, I knew I was on the right path, and I just had to keep on trying. My only regret now is that I would have taken the steps sooner to be myself and not dragged my wife and I through all the torment I was putting us through.

It was not until she passed away, did I find my path again and began to try to actively carve out a life as a trans woman. In order to do it, I needed to have the confidence of my gender convictions that I had never had in the past. For once, I had few other distractions to slow me down and it seemed everyday I was learning and making progress towards a gender dream which had seemed so unlikely in my past. And, for once, I was not doing it on my own as I slowly build a small circle of ciswomen friends to do it. They were able to teach me more about womanhood than they ever knew as they allowed me behind the gender curtain into their world as lesbian women. Somehow, my male baggage which helped me was kept such as my basic mistrust of men since I had been forced into their circles in my life and the fact I could fit in with them image-wise because I was largely a tomboy in my tight jeans and boots.

Through it all, there were a couple of other things I needed to try to improve my world as a transfeminine person. The first was attempting to see if I was healthy enough to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. I was and my life improved dramatically as I took on more and more feminine characteristics. The process was so easy, it was as if my body was saying what took me so long for such an important move. The other was the move initiated by my therapist’s permission at the Veterans Administration to have most of my legal gender markers changed. It was the best Christmas gift I ever received when I saw a judge and received my formal name change approval on Christmas Eve which got the ball rolling towards securing a new driver’s license, Social Security Card and getting my VA paperwork changed over. To the gender I always should have been.

I would never have made it through all the dark gender moments in my life. Especially with the added problems of depression and anxiety I had if I had not made it through and kept on trying to reach my dream of being allowed to live fulltime as a transgender woman. It was certainly touch and go until destiny stepped in and helped me along by pushing me back out into the world until I found other women to socialize with. I even played the online dating game and won after sorting through an enormous amount of trash, my wife Liz found me fourteen years ago and have been together ever since. If I had played my old victim cards, there would have been no way I could have ever made it out into the world.

I learned firsthand, if you never try, you will never make it to your dream.

 

 

Trusting the Process

 

JJ Hart Very Early On, 
Trusting the process in a 
rest room. 

One of the hardest things to do as a transgender woman or transgender man, is to trust the process as you continue along your gender path.

Especially when your path is lasting longer and taking you places you never thought of going to. Then you have the probability of picking up more of the gender baggage than you never thought you would. Trusting what you will take with you and what you will leave behind becomes a huge problem.

As you build your new personality, you can use your old gender baggage as positive building blocks if you can take the leap of faith to learn from your past. Perhaps, more than anything else, you must trust in yourself to believe in what others may think of you. This was very important to me as I began to build from my small core of ciswomen friends and have the courage to spread out into society.  I started following my new wife’s Liz lead and joining her spiritual group to start and then spreading out further into other “Meet-Up” groups in Cincinnati which matched our potential interests such joining writers’ groups for me, along with craft groups for Liz. It worked well for me as I was able to work my way out from being so shy around strangers and build more trust in myself.

Trust comes with a couple of drawbacks such as what if your trust is betrayed and how you will ever build trust again. Going way back to my second marriage, I destroyed most of the trust my wife and I developed over the years by breaking the deal I made to never go out of the house alone cross-dressed. I certainly was not proud of what I did but just could not stop myself from doing it. Essentially, I felt as if I was cheating on her with another woman who just turned out to be me and whatever she did was just not good enough for me. As I was busy destroying her trust, she was correct in telling me I made a terrible woman, and it had nothing to do with my appearance. Which at that time meant the world to me.

During this time and beyond, it was difficult for me to try to trust the process I was on during my gender journey. It seemed nothing was going fast enough for me to ever see if I could make it to my ultimate goal of living full-time as a transfeminine person. I guess if you take into account all the years, I spent cross-dressing my life away from the male world I disliked so much, it is no wonder I felt that way.  From start to finish, it took nearly a half a century for my male to female femininization project, which should have been more than enough time to trust the process and have faith where I was going.

My excuse that I always hang onto is that my male life was not that bad and my male self was a powerful ally with my second wife on me ever transitioning into transgender womanhood. And did I trust what all of that meant to me anyhow. I did realize any sort of a gender transition would mean I stood a very real chance of losing all the materialistic male privileges I had built up over the years. In an instance, my spouse, family, friends and job could be wiped out and I would have to start all over again. At that time, I did not think I trusted myself to do it, so my made the worst choice I have made in my life and tried to juggle a life somewhere on the gender border between male and female.

As I am always hesitant to write about, my choice to walk the narrow gender line wrecked my mental health and led me to a self-harm event. I was already diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person, so it did not take much to send me over the edge. Fortunately, I had a good therapist to help me realize my truth and help me through it. I was slowly coming to a point where I could trust the process and understand where I truly fit into the grand plan of my life the way it always was meant to be. I should have never embarked on any path to being male at all. A place which was foreign to me and I just did not belong. I was no wonder I felt the way I did around other men I was with. Full of mistrust in them for the most part.

Once I was over that hurdle in my life, I needed to begin to trust the world through the eyes of a trans woman which was hard to do. Mainly since I knew the way toxic men treated women from my past. Once again, cis women with their open minds to me joining their club were my secret to building trust again. Even though I still carried the scars from attacks by passive aggressive ciswomen, I was able to build my own new life with a feminine confidence I had never had before. I felt so good, I went ahead with my long-awaited legal name change and even longer awaited plan to be approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. By doing so, I effectively painted myself into a gender corner I could not escape from. I had to trust the process and not try to turn around no matter how attractive the idea sounded at times when I learned what I was losing with my male privilege being taken away.

Primarily, I lost much of the knowledge of life I had learned as a man as well as needing to keep a closer eye on my personal security. Which was quickly at risk as a transgender woman joining the world for the first time and learning first hand what ciswomen already knew about being around toxic men.

As I said, trusting the gender process path I was on was never easy, but it turned out it was the only path I had.

 

Dreaming in "3-G"

 

Image from Amin RK
on UnSplash.

Dreaming in “3-G” seems to be coming natural for me these days.

Somehow, I have skipped the old two gender dreams I was having and replaced them with a more complex series of dreams I can remember in the morning when I wake up. I call them three gender dreams.  It’s kind of like going from black and white movies back in the day to full color masterpieces.

Here is an example. Recently I was having a dream that I was a guy but later became a woman complete with a new bag of lipstick. I wondered at the time how the lipstick got there but I had no answer as the dream moved on. Also, I have noticed recently that my dreams have been shifting out of my old male world and into my relatively new feminine world. I suppose I was expecting miracles when I thought fifteen years of fulltime transgender life could replace sixty years in the male world. In my subconscious.  

All my gender dreams can be traced back to my earliest days of life when I had vivid dreams of being a pretty girl and being very disappointed when I woke up in the same body every morning. But as I remember, my dreams were all in “2-G” and involved me in one of the two main binary genders, male or female.

I find it interesting that some transgender women or transgender men who I happen to talk about concerning their dreams say they are always their authentic gender self when they dream. When I have always been a mixture. I suppose that it is another complexity of what trans folk go through. The only constant in all my “2-G” or “3-G” dreams I have had over the years is that from most of them I was having a positive experience that I wanted to continue. Such as in my early years when all I really wanted to do was present well enough to make it in public as a transfeminine person. Who could blend in with ciswomen everywhere and not cause any extra attention.

What confused me was when I was starting to successfully lead a trans woman’s life, why it didn’t it follow me more into my dream world. I took what I could get and kept moving on with my own male to female femininization program. Dreams were just an integral part of keeping my gender sanity along the way. They helped with dispersing all the pressure in life I was feeling from juggling two genders. Plus, I have considered too that the anti-depressant and anxiety medications I am on may contribute to the vivid dreams I have been having.

I also find it strange when I have a “3-G” rare negative dream. I would have thought that with all the success I finally had on my gender path, I would not have an ugly dream about someone pulling off my wig in public. Especially since I have not had to wear a wig in almost a decade and never had anyone try to pull mine off when I did. It is my own version of a nightmare-cross dresser style.

At the least, when the “3-G” dreams don’t turn ugly, they are cheap entertainment and I wonder how I got here. When I do, the answer always comes back loud and clear that I made it to the place in life where I always should have been. And my dreams just are a reflection of that.

Maybe too, my dreams are finally transitioning to my current feminine self. Which is currently making the transition to just being the me I needed to be. “2-G” or “3-G” dreams should not matter anymore as they are just a needed respite from the real world we transgender individuals must put up with.

No matter where your dreams lead to, I hope they find you in a good place in this sometimes-negative world we live in today. We need all we can get to lead a quality life away from all the gender haters and bigots and a little daydream of how your future could be can never hurt anyone.

This is just a little shorter post than you are used to seeing from me today as I have to get mentally prepared for my Veterans Administration assigned psychiatrist virtual visit. I thought it would be a fun time to write about the effect dreams of all kinds have on our lives as trans people.

Good night!

 

 

 

 

Staying in Rhythm as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart gaining my rhythm with women.
I ma in first row on left.

 

It took me years to get into rhythm as a new transgender woman when I no longer considered myself a weekend cross-dresser.

The main problem I had was I needed to go back and forth between my male life and the feminine life I was trying desperately to learn. My wife and I had come to an uneasy truce about my increasing need to explore the world of ciswomen. She thought it was fair that I took three days out of my week to cross-dress and would even see that I had the money to go to a motel to complete my male to female femininization. Anything but me leaving the house dressed as me.

As you can tell, that was more than a fair deal but not a deal I could keep. Every time I was getting used to the makeup, clothes and movements of being a woman, I had to have it all taken away with a jolt of reality when I had to go back fulltime into my unwanted male world. Before long, I grew tired of the truce and having my gender rhythm destroyed and started to leave the house as me any time I wanted. As with most good times, my brief on an off life as a transgender woman was threatened with ending as my second wife discovered me time after time, I had excuses for being dis-honest and jeopardizing the good marriage I had but deep down I had no choice if I wanted to keep my feminine rhythm going.

Through all the good times and bad times with my second wife, I was learning what it would take for me to express my femininity and it was all me who drove us to our breaking point. More than once when I tried things such as gender therapy to curb my desires to be a woman. The only time that therapy helped me was when I was diagnosed with being a Bi-Polar depressive person which said a lot to me. Mainly it explained why I was spending days at a time not wanting to get out of bed and others when I thought I could conquer the world and it had nothing to do with being transgender. After trying several medications, I did not tolerate well, I found some that I could, and they keep my moods stable to this day. I was able to work my depression issues into my life and build them into the rhythm so I could live a good life.

Even with all the success I was having on my depression medications, I still had to face the problems I had switching back and forth between the two main binary genders. Most of the time on a daily basis. As I would rush home from work, pull off my shirt and tie and be the woman I always wanted to be until my wife came home. I was able to juggle my genders and make some sort of a life with all of this until the untimely passing of my wife from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. Even though we never saw eye to eye on my transfeminine desires, I still loved her deeply and our marriage made it to the twenty-five-year mark.

Naturally, the whole tragic deal sent me into a tailspin, and I had to figure out what to do about my all of a sudden very lonely life. Was I going to go back to try to establish a male life with another ciswoman or get rid of my male life altogether and start all over as a transgender woman.

By this time in my life, I did not want to try another relationship with a ciswoman I would have to lie to, so the answer was clear. Take all the time and effort I had put into building my new rhythm as a trans woman and head for a new life. All the time and effort I put into presenting as well as I could as a woman, as well as communicating well as one too came back to help me. Confidence as well as an extreme amount of destiny opened doors for me that I never thought possible would happen. As my third wife Liz told me very few people ever have the opportunity to stop their lives, learn from their mistakes, and start over again. Don’t screw it up.

I took the insight I received from my time as a man observing how ciswomen live around them and tried to mold that into a new life. Because I fell into the arms of loving women during my male to female transition, I did not have to worry about such rhythms such as my sexuality ever becoming an issue. I had always desired women sexually as a woman myself, and nothing had to change. Add in my passion for history and sports and I hit the trifecta of being exactly in the place I wanted to be. Through it all, I could not believe it was all finally happening to me after all the years of sneaking around and struggling with my gender.

Better yet, I had reached the point where if I looked like a woman, walked like a woman and communicated as a woman, then I was a woman. Even though I did not gain my status the same way most women do. Their gender rhythm came naturally while I needed to work to find mine was the only difference.

Even though I was a slow learner when it came to learning to finally live how I was always meant to live, I was a survivor which was all that mattered and when I learned my feminine rhythm I never had to let it go.

As always, thanks so very much for reading along with my exploits in exploring the transgender world. Any comments you might have are always appreciated!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Nothing Else Mattered

 

Image from Klara Khokhlova
on UnSplash. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Transgender Challenges

 

Image from Beta Builders
on UnSplash. 

For me, the challenges of being a transgender woman ran deep and came often.

The first challenges I faced were just keeping my small collection of feminine belongings secret from my younger brother and parents. From there, my dealings with my cross-dressed self and the world only would intensify as I grew up. Very soon, the move from closet to the mirror would not be enough to satisfy my gender curiosity, and I began to leave the house when I could dress in my clothes and makeup for small walks to our rural mailbox. As puberty took its toll, finding anything to wear became my biggest problem because I was outgrowing my short mom’s clothing. She was only five foot two.

Somehow, I beat the challenge of keeping my deep gender secret to myself and kept up my routine of taking every spare moment to satisfy my desire to be a girl. Of course, it took me awhile to come close to perfecting anything which came close to being acceptable when it came to applying makeup and even shaving my legs. Which I was probably sneaking around and doing before most of the girls I was around who I envied so much. As it turned out, the magic of makeup really escaped me until I had the courage to accept the challenge of having a professional makeup artist do my makeup (and explain what he was doing) at a transgender-cross dresser social I was attending in Columbus, Ohio years later. The makeup pro taught me the basics of foundation, contouring, eyes and lips among other helpful tips. All the compliments I received showed me I was indeed on the right path I had chosen in life, and I could at least expect to fit in with other ciswomen in the world on a regular basis.

Then, as I always point out, the real work and challenge of what I was setting out to do set into my life. At the same time my male counterpart was beginning to establish himself as a successful person in his chosen career. As much as my self-destructive personality kept trying to tear down all he accomplished, it never worked, and he succeeded anyway. Which meant he was increasing the amount of potential baggage I would have to account for if I was ever going to reach my goal of living as a successful transfeminine person.

What hurt me was when I miscalculated what it was going to take to live the life I always dreamed of. The challenge was making the jump of just looking similar to a ciswoman, all the way to having a basic idea of how she lived her life. A great example of how my cross-dressing fun and games became very serious when just after I decided to go full time as a trans woman and had given away all my male clothes, my wife Liz’s dad passed away and I needed something appropriate to wear to the viewing and funeral. I was fortunate that I had several items of clothing in black, so I could be properly dressed for the occasion. A long way from the day-to-day life I was expecting to challenge me as I went through my male to female femininization project.

It turned out to be a huge step in my life when I finally accepted the challenge to live the life, I was always destined to live. I was no longer the lost kid in the mirror desperately cross-dressing his life away dreaming of a world he could not be part of. I was a full-fledged adult with a rapidly clearing view of the challenge ahead if she wanted to survive. Perhaps you noticed I used the “she” pronoun as I increasingly adopted it as my referred self. It made me feel more complete as a transgender woman. If I did not believe in myself at this point of my life, how could I convince the world who I was anyhow.

The next big challenge to me was seeing if I could be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT which I am still on (thankfully) to this day. Before I did anything with the hormonal challenge, I knew I would have to seek out a doctor’s approval to see if I was healthy enough to do it. I was able to find an ad for a doctor in nearby Dayton who said he specialized in hormonal care and I made the appointment which would change my life forever.

In our first meeting, the doctor gave me a brief physical, asked me a few questions about what I knew the HRT would do to me and started me on a minimum dosage to see if there would be any ill effects. There were not, and very soon I was on a larger dose of the magical hormones my body seemed to take to naturally and the changes to my body were on. In fact, the changes began to happen so fast, the challenge then became to move up my timetable on when I was going to give up what was left of my male existence. It was becoming increasingly difficult to hide my growing breasts, softening skin and long hair from the public and all the internal changes such as emotions from myself. I finally had enough and embarked on the greatest challenge of my life at the age of sixty. I put nearly half of a century of a part-time cross-dressing life behind me and never looked back.

Destiny helped me too, when the Veterans Administration health care system which I was a part of began to treat gender dysphoria in veterans with hormonal care. I needed again to go through the approval process and made it again as it seemed as if the challenges would never end. It was worth it because it tied me in with the VA’s mental health system for my depression and anxiety issues. As luck would have it, I was paired up with a mental health professional who I was with for years and helped me with all my issues such as having my legal gender markers changed within the VA and society at large.

I guess the challenge of any first-time experience can be traumatic for any human being. It just seems unfair that transgender women and transgender men have more than their fair share of challenge.

 

 

 

 

What Kind of Man was I?

 

Image from Christian Lue
on UnSplash.

I had a good question on one of the blogging platforms I write for the other day. The person asked a simple but relevant question about what kind of a man I was before I went down the strenuous male to female femininization I chose for my life.

Here is how I replied: Thanks for the question. In my former male life, I did the best I could to be successful and hide my true self from the world. Early on, I played football and worked on cars to essentially build a wall to keep the teenaged bullies away. From there, I went off to college and earned my first degree, a bachelor’s in history before I was swept off into the Army during the Vietnam years.

After the Army which I was honorably discharged from after three years away from being able to express my feminine self, I ended up jumping back into my cross-dressing ways and eventually getting married for the first time and fathering a daughter. Once again, I was doing my best to do the all the right things to make the world think I was a “normal” male which of course I always struggled with.

From there, I jumped out of the radio business and into the tavern venue world when a friend of mine and I bought a small neighborhood bar where we lived. My dad described it best by saying it had two doors, so the flies did not have to stop when they went through the bar. He always had away with words. At any rate, the bar did not make it long, but my ownership of the building did. Initially I did not want the responsibility of property ownership but was talked into it by my dad. I think at the time, I did not want the extra pressure of owning anything I would have to get rid of as extra baggage if I decided to make the jump from one gender border to another.

I stayed in my male mode and managed to turn the failed bar into a successful pizzeria until I was drinking too much and lost it too. I was trying to over medicate myself as I ran from my depression and anxiety issues, along with the major problem I had which was of course I wanted to be a woman more than anything else. During this time also, I managed to sneak in another degree, an associates in business, from a local college to take advantage of my veterans’ benefits.

By this time, you can see the theme of my life was not a good one. Anything successful I did, I managed to destroy because of my gender issues. I even lost our house I bought off the GI bill.

Ironically, my life began to turn around when I met the first of the two most influential women in my life. The woman I met worked at a radio station I worked for after I was discharged from the Army and was trying to run the pizzeria successfully. I was literally swept off my feet and ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying the second woman. By the way, both women knew of my cross-dressing desires before we were married. It turned out I was man enough to stay married to her for twenty-five years before she suddenly passed away, wrecking my life for several years before I could rebuild it.

During the twenty-five years I went through with my second wife, I began to really learn I was not the man I used to be as I felt myself transitioning again from cross-dresser to transgender woman. In the meantime, I had thrown my old baggage caution to the side and had built a successful career for myself in the restaurant industry. By the time she passed on, I had built was too much spousal support, family, friends and jobs to casually risk it all and transition. Although it was always my dream to do so. Being the man I was meant I would have to give up the positions I held with civic organizations in town too. I felt flattered to be a part but at the same time never felt really at home there.

After I had given up any hope of ever finding anyone else to be with the rest of my life, I met my future wife Liz, and she was instrumental in pushing me into pursuing HRT by telling me she had never seen any male in me to start with. Her gentle push was all I needed to give away all my male clothes and stop the charade I was living life as a man.

I guess you could say that although I tried hard to be a successful man, I kept trying to destroy any success I had. It took a series of good women to show me the way to where I should have been all along, living my dream of being a transfeminine person fulltime.

My first wife went with the flow and did not seem to care what I did, my second wife approved of my cross-dressing but totally disapproved of HRT and any idea I was transgender, and my third wife totally helped me along. Out of the manhood I never wanted. The only woman left to mention was my internal one who (not so patiently) had to wait for her turn to do more than survive as she needed to thrive for a change.

I hope this answers the question of what kind of man I was before a jumped out of the man’s club and into the girl’s sandbox. I led a complex life of failure and success as a man but never felt as if I was doing the right thing. I was fortunate when good people came along to save me from my self-destructive self. Without them, I doubt if I could have ever made it to the place, I am today.

Thanks for the question! I appreciate any response I get from all of you plus any claps and subscriptions you send my way.

 

 

 

 

 

New Therapy Visit

 

JJ Hart with "Brutus" Buckeye
at Columbus, Ohio. 

As promised in a recent post, I am passing along the results of my new psychiatrist visit this morning.

First of all, I needed to run the waiting room gauntlet after I got checked in. The woman checking me in was very nice and I had no problems with my pronouns which was different from the past. After that, I needed to walk past the rest of the waiting room men waiting for their appointments. When I did, I received the usual number of stares and glares I normally get, so I was not upset over anything new.

Very quickly, my new therapist came out to greet me. I was relieved when he turned out to be a younger man as I have found to be more accepting of gender situations such as transgender women and trans men.

As we started to go through my past, I was surprised at all the information the Veteran’s Administration mental health system acquired on me during my previous appointment. All I needed to do was fill in the many blanks he asked me. Immediately, I tested him by telling him my former fulltime psychiatrist separated my transgender issues with my struggles with depression and anxiety. He agreed with me that the issues I have are separate and should be treated separately. Furthermore, coming out in the world and expressing myself as a transgender woman fulltime had helped me express that side of my personality, the help never resolved my other issues.

Other issues we covered in-depth were my suicide and self-harm attempts. It was decided my medications were working and we should stay on the course for the most part. Those were the difficult issues we talked about and others we finished up with included my childhood and military service.

This appointment marked the next to the last move from all my care from the Dayton, Ohio VA hospital to the Cincinnati VA. All I have left to do is my endocrinology doctor services from Dayton to Cincinnati which could be the most difficult move of all. My next appointment is coming up early in May and I need a refill on my Estradiol prescription. With the current situation in Washington, I do have a constant paranoia that my HRT hormones can be cut off at anytime by the VA under direct supervision of the orange war criminal. I think what I am going to do now is go ahead and get my refill then try to transfer my needs down here and close out my need to deal with Dayton at all. As a point of reference, Dayton VA is in close proximity to where I used to live before I moved the nearly one hundred miles to move in with my wife Liz.

From there, my appointment was over and my next visit was up as a virtual appointment in three months. I finished the early morning off by stopping at our favorite coffee shop, drive through and picking up coffee and a breakfast sandwich. I am happy to say the shop’s LGBTQ flag is still up on the wall and the young man at the window probably was gay and very friendly to me. All the better for me and the perfect ending to a great morning.

Just a short post to check in on my progress with my VA mental health care which has overall been a very positive experience over the years. When I started many years ago, I had to educate everyone about what a transgender woman was all about. These days, they know and I don’t have to.

Fortunately, I did not have to explain myself this morning and I look forward to my next appointment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

 

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!

 

 

Time is All I Had

 

JJ Hart, Trans Wellness Outreach. 

Time is a fickle beast which sometimes comes back to help us, and other times it comes back to haunt us.

Depending on how far you are in your gender journey, perhaps you can remember your first experiences with the clothing of the gender you desired so much. Then again, I have heard from several readers who started their explorations at a much later age. Either way, time became a concrete reckoning to be dealt with. Mainly because time is a finite way of restricting all of us during our lives.

Since I have been fortunate to have been given a long/full life to live (I am seventy-six), I have seen my life come full circle in several areas. I have seen the joys of gender euphoria which kept me going when I hit the deep depression of stop signs and blind curves on my gender pathway. Through it all, I tried my best to learn from all my mistakes and successes. Little did I know I would live long enough to take advantage of everything I had learned. Or much of it as for much of my life I was always second guessing the decisions I was making. Did I make the right decision on taking a new job, or more importantly when I started to go out in public as a transgender woman and risking it all, was I doing the right thing.

What I did not take into consideration I had no real choice in what I was doing. From birth I was destined not to be the male person I was supposed to be. I had bigger and better things ahead of me if I broke the mold and was able to do it. I had the time to finally decide which path was right for me as I diligently explored the world of all the cisgender women around me. Then, a major roadblock arose when I was not allowed behind the gender curtain. The only time I was really getting out in public as a trans woman in hiding was at Halloween when nearly everyone knew me as a man. I badly needed other escape routes into the public eye if I was ever going to have the time to achieve my dream.

It turned out time was cheap in the middle years of my life as they turned out to be a blur. More and more, I began to sneak out of the house and explore the world around me as my transfeminine self. It was only then that I began to be allowed to be behind the gender curtain to see if life there what was really what I wanted. Spoiler alert, it was very much what I wanted as I even though many times I was terrified (yet excited) when I explored. I thought I had forever to do it and took my time trying to find new things to do as a transgender woman in a woman’s world. Which at times, still had me baffled about how it worked because I was still carrying around too much of my old male baggage. His expectations for the most part of how a woman acted in the world were formed from stereotypes he learned growing up as he watched women from afar and for the most part putting them up on a pedestal.

What I did not realize was my indecision to go all the way into the women’s world I was immersed in, was costing me years later on in life that I wanted back. Like everyone else I had assumptions, and mine were that I had plenty of time to research the difficult layered life of  and being a woman, when I simply did not which led me all the way to the age of sixty before I made the fateful decision to throw gender paranoia to the wind, pursue HRT, and change my life forever. While I still had the time because all the people I loved and respected in my life were rapidly passing away around me. The finality of death became a very real reality to me and if I was ever able to live my gender dream of living life as a woman, I had better do it while I still had the chance to enjoy it.

All I had was time was quickly fading away with all the people around me and I had very few people to make my own gender reveal to. For the most part, except for my brother and sister-in-law, my gender reveals were successful with most people telling me they were happy to see me happy. I guess one way to look at it is, if you wait long enough for your reveal you can be the last man standing becoming the last woman standing.

Going back to a theme which has popped up around here recently, if you are transgender you have given up all your rights to be a second-class citizen. And at least all you have going for you is that your journey has been an interesting one. From the earliest days of admiring yourself in the mirror all the way to earning your way behind the gender curtain, you have done it all.

Even though it maybe took a few years to do it, you know how difficult it has been to do it and every step needed to be carefully planned. One false move could send you back down your path and sometimes even worse than that. Ridicule by spouse, family and friends can happen at the same time your gender privileges were revoked. You feel helpless until you get your feet back on the ground to where you can continue and begin moving to a place where you always have known you should be.

For me, the time was now or never when I decided to live full-time, I had taken working on my feminine presentation, as well as being out in as many situations (good and bad) as I could. Anymore and I was just wasting my time and kidding myself if I did not pull the plug on my male life and get on with my future which I felt could be bright.

I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and for once it was not the train. I had paid my dues and was ready to live my life the way I wanted. Even though I ended up taking so long to do it, I was happy when I did. Age turned out to be more than a number for me, it turned out to be the magic time of my life.

Thanks to all of you for taking your precious time reading along!