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| Image from Joshua Gaunt on UnSplash. |
First, I needed to free myself from the male bonds I was
born into which I had no control over. Looking back, I think one of the main
problems I had was fearing the changes I was looking to go through if I faced
up to reality. From that point forward, life became a struggle as I feared
changing it.
What I became was the best transgender procrastinator I
knew. Any excuse I could come up with not to go through with living my
dream, I clung to like a survivor on the Titanic. What I would do about
spouses, family and employment were a few of the major questions I was asking. So,
what did I do? I ran as hard and as fast as I could from the problem. I was
running so hard, I even changed jobs very quickly so I would not be bored with
my life as a transfeminine fugitive. Eventually, even though I grew tired of
the pace, I found a stable good job and settled part of my life down. I say
part of my life because during that time my gender issues were raging out of
control.
Even though I was slowly becoming successful at blending my
feminine self in with the world of cisgender women, I still had many fears to
conquer. Just when I thought life was improving for me, I would hit another
roadblock and send me running back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Which
was crazily marked with clownish makeup until I got it right. The fear of applying
skilled makeup kept me occupied for years it seemed. On the other hand, when I
got my male ego out of the way and realized I needed to dress for other women
and not men, did I begin to improve my overall look and the laughter I used to receive
in public began to die away. When it did, I learned the most powerful force I
had to combat gender change was having confidence in myself. Surely, I would
never be the prettiest most beautiful woman in the room, but a lot of other
cisgender women were not either and they were surviving and even thriving just
fine. There were many layers to building womanhood and I just needed to find
mine.
For some reason, the more success I felt as a transgender
woman, the more fear I had. I guess it was because of my old male self-starting
to panic because he was losing his dominance over my life. For years, what had seemed
like the impossible gender dream was now looking as if it could become a
reality. As he fought his new reality, the stakes towards living a successful
life as a trans woman, increased dramatically. Every step I was taking towards
my dream seemed to feel as if I was walking in quicksand since at any time,
life as I knew it could be disrupted beyond repair in the little backwards town
I lived in. I still lived in mortal fear that any day I could be discovered and
the acquaintances I had built up over the years would realize I was living a
gender lie. Which I was.
I finally made it to a point where I could not procrastinate
my life any longer and I began to use every spare moment to explore the world
as a transfeminine person. It all meant I accepted the challenge to finally go
all in with making the final preparations for my new life. The bittersweet part
of it all was part of my male to female final transition was built on tragedy. In
the space of a couple short years, I lost my second wife as well as all of the
friends I had built up over the years to death, and I had to start all over
again. Sure, I was still afraid to do it but deep down I knew transition was
the only way I could go. Suddenly it was up to only me to decide if I wanted to
take the ultimate step and try to get a doctor’s permission to begin HRT or
gender affirming hormones. I was approved and then the changes I was hoping for
began to really happen for me. The changes were so dramatic, I sometimes take an
entire blog post to relate them to you.
What frustrates me now are the haters who say that because I
took so long to transition, I am not trans enough for them. Normally, they are
younger LGBTQ individuals who have no idea of what the world was like way back
when I was growing up. We all have our own gender crosses to bear, and we need
to understand each other’s journey.
Sadly, there are all those transgender women and trans men
who can’t take the burden of gender change fear any longer and tragically try
to take the self-harm way out. The suicide rate in our community is completely
too high and could come down with proper help and understanding.
In my case, my excuse is I had a heavy dose of ignorance
combined with fear and procrastination as reasons it took me nearly a half a
century to come out of my gender shell and live freely in the world as a
transgender woman. These days, if you can steer clear of all the online trolls
and haters, you can still get valuable information on the internet concerning
ideas on how to build a new life as a woman from scratch. Plus, fear for me was
a powerful motivator and when I was forced into a corner because of my gender,
I came out fighting because I believed I was right.
It turned out I was.
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