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| My wife Liz who set me up for success. |
As we follow the complex gender path, we are on, there are many ways to set ourselves up for success or failure in the world.
Being the stubborn person I am, I kept making the same mistakes over and over again until I finally righted myself and was able to blend in with the public. Looking back, too many times, I returned home with tears in my eyes after the mirror lied to me about how I looked. I was somehow not setting myself up for success and had to keep going back to my feminine drawing board until I finally began to improve.
One of the earliest forms of success I discovered was the power of the thrift store. The stores provided me several avenues to improve my novice transgender self. First of all, the stores fit my very limited budget, and I was able to try on or purchase clothes I would normally not. Secondly, I was allowed to shop to my heart's content without any interference from commissioned clerks who were more interested in my money than me. Finally, my third form of success was the entire experience helped me to discover a newfound sense of confidence in myself as a transgender woman.
Slowly but surely, I was learning how to dress myself properly as a transgender woman without being trashy. When I did so, I stopped all the unwanted attention I was receiving Or, all attention as a woman, was not good attention.
Setting myself up for success in my transgender womanhood meant going to the right venues. I found out the hard way not to go where cis women already knew not to go. I started to stay out of dimly lit streets and parking lots. Even more so, I began to stay out of red-neck venues where I tried to go to for a beer and to watch sports. Sadly, the police were called on me in one of the places and in another, two guys thought it would be cute and necessary to play "Dude Looks Like a Lady" repeatedly on the juke box. I solved the problem by establishing myself in venues which accepted me. Which did not include the gay bars I did not feel a part of either.
Through it all, as I learned to accept myself as a trans woman, being set up for success was a long process discovered mainly by trial and error. Since I had no real role models to show me the way. Fashion and makeup were only the beginning before I needed to explore communicating with the world as a woman. I discovered very quickly how many women wanted to know what I was doing in their universe.
Along the way, one thing I needed to learn was to be patient and judge each step carefully since I had so much to lose. Setting myself up for success was so difficult on so many levels. I needed to make sound decisions to make sure I was making the very complex move I was contemplating. I have always viewed a gender transition as one of the most difficult moves a human can undertake.
Sometimes I feel, I took too long to set myself up for success, but I had to be sure I was doing it right.
