The End Result?

 

Picnic time with my wife Liz on the right with
JJ Hart. 

Even though I write often about reaching my dreams of living as a transgender woman, sometimes I wonder if I had made it at all.

One of the problems I faced was thinking once I made it to my goal, there was always something else which was challenging me on my gender journey. When I was younger and so naive, I labored under the impression, looking like a woman should be my main goal. After I made it to the point where I could successfully blend in with the other women around me, I found there was so much more to do. I grew impatient with mediocrity and continually looked for more. There had to be so much more for me to discover around the next corner of my life. My prime example always was when going to the malls and clothing stores became too easy for me to do, I sought out other more difficult releases for my transgender challenges. I began to stop at restaurants to order lunch which forced me to interact one on one with employees. It all taught me the basics of communication with the public. 

I say the basics, because communication became the longest and most important part of transition which led to the end result of living my dream. How could I ever hope to live a fulfilling life as a transgender woman if I could not even talk to anyone else. I was also paranoid about anyone wanting to talk to me at all when I was out and about. First of all, I needed to relax and quit putting words in the mouth of the people I met and sit back and listen carefully what they were trying to say. For the first time in my life. The end result was I began to be able to interact with the over-whelming majority of the cisgender women who were curious about me. On the other hand, the majority of men I met wanted little to nothing to do with me, and vice versa. 

Once I arrived at a point when this transgender woman thought she had it all, something else would come along and proved me wrong. I learned the hard way; I needed to be careful where I went on my own as a woman in the world when my male security privilege was taken away. Navigation in a new world proved to be difficult for me. My theory of going out to be alone was at times dangerous as I actively sought out someone to be with. Overall, I was intensely lonely as a man and as a transgender woman. A complex difficulty to be sure in my life dealing with two genders. Primarily, I needed to choose what stayed and what went in my life. All I knew was, I was receiving more positive attention when I was out as a single transgender woman than when I was out as a single man. So, my choice became increasingly easier. 

The end result was, I made it to my goal of living as a fulltime transgender woman, I thought. Even though I was living my dream I never thought was possible, I found I had several other issues to conquer. All of a sudden, with all my male clothes gone and, in my past, I had to plan on what I was going to wear daily in the world. A big difference from the old days when I could look ahead a couple of days to my fashion choices. After several false starts, I made it to the world I always dreamed of, and none of it let me down.  Happiness was always fleeting in my life, but I finally found a slice of it. At times it was quite the adventure as I made my way from cross dresser to transgender woman. 

Even though my adventure had its ups and down to be sure but looking back there were more ups than downs as I made my way (or I should say, learned my way) to my ultimate end result.

The Grand Search for Discovery

 

Image from Gints Gallis
on UnSplash.

Along the path to transgender womanhood, I made many discoveries. 

It wasn't until I finally made it into the world did, I begin to pick up the pace in being allowed behind the feminine gender curtain, so I could learn for myself what was going on. In other words, I needed to earn my stripes as a trans woman to be allowed in to play in the girl's sandbox. Now, I can't quite remember what my expectations were of being allowed in, I only remember I basically forced my way in. Many times, causing the sand to really fly. 

I discovered most other women accepted me for myself and let it go at that, and I learned quickly to let the others go on their own way. After all, you cannot please everyone at the same time. Plus, the acceptance I gained far outweighed any negatives I experienced. I discovered once I made it past the idea I was attempting to "fool" anyone into thinking I was a cis-gendered woman, the better off I was. When I was satisfied to just be myself, more women reacted to me positively. Probably because they appreciated, I was being truthful with them. I was just busy learning how to live my dream and meant nobody harm.

Even still, my gender path was very winding, and steep with many roadblocks. Similar to many of you, I experienced the pain of separation from family, friends and life in general as I transitioned and femininized myself. Many times, I needed to stop and rest on my path because the effort exhausted me.

Out of all the discoveries I made, one of the biggest ones was when I made the transition from weekend or parttime cross dresser to novice transgender woman. Even though I was just dealing in basic gender semantics, the shift in thought was a major one for me. All of a sudden, I began to feel I was achieving my childhood dream of being a woman. Not just looking like one. When I did make the discovery, to change my life, my path ahead became fairly well illuminated. Now, I had the usual hurdles to jump through such as how to make my way out of the mirror and into the sandbox but overall, I had the confidence to move forward.  

The other main discovery I made as I entered transgender womanhood, was how important the gender affirming hormones would be to me. Of course, I knew the physical changes I would go through such as changes to my body such as breast growth. However, nothing prepared me for the internal changes which would go on. All of a sudden, for the first time in my life, I could cry tears of joy as well as sorrow. In essence, estradiol softened my entire life and quickly took the testosterone related universe I lived in away from me. A huge discovery. 

Of course, every discovery does not have to be a good one. When my second wife discovered I was sneaking out of the house to live as a transgender woman was certainly not a good discovery for me. It took me weeks of apologizing and even therapy to save what was left of our twenty-five-year marriage. Which I managed to do until she unexpectedly passed away. When she did, I discovered what loneliness was all about. 

Every human life is filled with discovery if you are living it right. It seems transgender women and transgender men live have an extra amount of discovery. It is very rare a person who has the chance to explore the two binary genders to determine which one they want to live as. I feel it is one of the reasons so many people these days misunderstand our trans community and treat us poorly or even with hate. We have found how deep trans bigotry suddenly runs in our country, led on by a certain felon as president. Which is all I am going to say about it. 

In the meantime, I hope all your discoveries are positive and exciting.

Controlling What you can Control

 

Image from the Jessie Hart Archives

Quite early during my adventures as a novice cross dresser, I found I had several variables I could not control.

One of the main ones was having privacy to admire myself in front of the full length mirror in our house's hallway. Even if my parents happened to be not at home, often I was stuck baby sitting my slightly younger brother who seemed to have the ability to be in the wrong spot at the wrong time. If he caught me cross dressed, I could certainly count on him to run and tell my parents. Which would then put me into all kinds of trouble. This was the 1950's and early sixties when cross dressing at all was a serious offense. I certainly did not want to face a therapist at such a young age when I had no control over the situation.

In those days, I was naïve and thought when I became older, I would have some sort of control over my gender destiny. Little did I know, my boundaries in life I called my closet would be very dark and confining for years or even decades to come. Finally, when I was honorably discharged from the Army, did I discover I wasn't all alone and there were others who wanted to cross dress as women. Better yet, they had transvestite parties or mixers which were close enough for me to attend. Which I did and discovered once again I had little or no control over my gender issues. In my haste to fit in with the group of men in dresses, I found I still didn't fit in easily. I didn't have the looks or attitude to fit in with the "A" listers or mean girls as I called them but then again, I didn't fit in with the other group who were busily smoking cigars and still acting macho. There had to be some sort of a middle point which to that point I had not discovered. 

It turned out, the label which fit me the closest had not really been invented yet. It was called transgender and once I was able to research what it meant, I felt I would fit right in. For once I felt as if I was gaining some sort of control. In reality I wasn't because when I came to the stage of my life when I began to explore the world from a feminine point of view, I again lost much of my control. Most of it came from how I was validating myself as a novice transgender woman. I was taking the easy path and thinking my control of the world came from my old male point of view. Beginning with fashion and makeup, I totally screwed up and didn't try to blend in with the other women in the world around me. The end result was, my validation came from them and gaining it gave me more control over my life as a transgender woman.

With age came the realization I could only change what I could and if someone else didn't like me for whatever reason, it was their problem, not mine. The freedom was wonderful and allowed me to do more and more with my feminine soul who had waited so long for her turn to live in the world. In a very short period of time, she proved herself to be a capable person in addition to being a survivor. In addition, she was much wiser in knowing what she could control, or not and left it alone. It all turned out to be the best move I could ever make.