Procrastination

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on UnSplash

For as long as I can remember I have been a procrastinator. Unless I was really pressed, it was always easier for me to put off until tomorrow what I should have done today. 

Later in life, being a procrastinator in my gender life came back to haunt me. As I continually gained ground in learning if I could exist in a feminine world, the more the pressure on me increased to decide what I was going to do with my life. Primarily effecting my already fragile mental condition. I had previously been diagnosed as Bi-Polar along with having elevated anxiety so I already had plenty to deal with mentally. So, I was not in any position to improve my mental condition by procrastinating over my transgender issues. Still I persisted and my problems only escalated. 

I was frustrated when every success I found as a transgender woman, seemingly just led me to the ultimate decision I was having a problem facing. Was I ever going to be follow my dream and live as a woman. Plus, all my procrastination led me to was an increasing reliance on alcohol to limit the mental pain I was suffering. What happened was, the effects of alcohol gave me courage to explore further if I could make it in a feminine world as a full time trans woman. Was I gay, was I trans? I needed to know.

Finally,  rational thinking took place and I could take it no longer. My gender truth was slowly but surely killing me. One night I sat down by myself and made the biggest decision of my life. As soon as possible, I decided I would seek a doctor's approval to begin gender affirming hormones and never look back on an old male life which was always a struggle to maintain. What a relief it was to finally face my truth and move on as my authentic self. It was time to put all my procrastination behind me and my life immediately began to improve. 

Still I was not up on any pedestal. As I always mention, I could have never have accomplished what I did without the help from several key cis-women friends and family. In essence my friends pushed me over the cliff into a world I had only ever dreamed of. Perhaps, not so surprising, my reliance on alcohol started to decline as at the same time my overall mental health began to improve. 

Ironically, my only problem became that I procrastinated coming out as a transgender woman as long as I did. I would have loved to have the years back when I anguished over which of the binary genders I would live as. In other words. sometimes I think I wasted too many years to claim a life as my feminine self I just kept putting off. The only excuse I had was, during my procrastination years, the world around me was changing. In the pre-internet years, there was a definite lack of information and contact. Our dark lonely LGBTQ+ closets were difficult to escape. 

The fact remained I still grew up putting off the most important aspects of my life and it continued until I finally decided enough was enough and it was way past time for me to live as a transgender woman fulltime.   

Making a List

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Jessie Hart Archives

Making a list and checking it twice of course is a very Christmassy thing to do. The closer we would become to Christmas itself was the time I checked my funds and decided what last minute shopping I could do. 

Normally, by this time, I had visited all the usual antique malls (dressed as my feminine self) looking for that last minute special gift for my wife. Frustration built  if I couldn't find anything in my price range or find it when I was shopping as a woman. As time ran out, sometimes I was literally the last one in the mall looking for a gift. As luck would have it, many Christmases, I was rewarded and found a wonderful gift for my wife. The only problem was I had to shop as my old unwanted male self. 

She (my wife) was very difficult to buy for because I always knew she we attempt to outdo me in the gift department. We had three major gift exchanges to plan for, so I needed to do the best I could. The first exchange we went to was at my brother's house, the second in the afternoon between the traditional two of us and one at night when she gifted my feminine self with a couple of gifts. Normally, I received very nice sweater and skirt sets which I couldn't wait to put on.  As I remember, one year my wife gave in and let me cross dress and even took a picture (long gone) of me wearing the gifts she gave me. Obviously, most years, I couldn't wait for the special gift exchange to happen.

Through it all, I never made lists. I mentally kept in mind what I wanted to do and even did a fairly good job of keeping it all straight. This carried with me as I began to seriously transition into a transgender woman. Instead of notes, I knew what I had been successful at doing and then knew either I could try it again or attempt something new and often exciting. Examples included when I began to branch out from just going to women's retail stores in malls and trying out new venues such as bookstores and restaurants. Anything to see if I could successfully exist in my new gender world. What turned out happening was I could exist and needed to do more. Once I did. I still never thought I would need to build a whole new life so quickly and still not make any lists to do it. 

No matter where I was, if I tried to make a repeat visit, I found I would be easily remembered so I started to wear the same wig and always dress to blend. When I did, I discovered the world wanted to know more about me for whatever reason. Basically,  women were curious and men stayed away as I left one gender club and sought admission to another. What I would have never thought to put on a list was how I would need to learn to communicate with other women who were so used to saying one thing and doing another. It was difficult for me to determine which boundaries I could cross (or not) with each of them before the claws came out. 

I suppose if I had been a person who worked from written lists, I would have had quite the history of my transgender transition built up. Or how I went through several separate gender transitions to arrive where I am today. Such as moving from serious cross dresser, to finally coming out to myself as transgender, to making the decision, to begin gender affirming hormones. 

I'm fortunate in my so called legacy continues on with my daughter and grandchildren with no written record needed.    

A HUGE Relief

 

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Archives 

What a huge relief it was when I finally decided I was living a lie barely surviving  as a male person. I remember the evening vividly when I made the decision years ago.

Even still, It took awhile for my male self to gave up and concede all along my feminine self was cross dressing as a man and not the opposite. His ploy was he was cross dressing as a woman to relieve stress or whatever the current excuse was,  because there were many. Such as was I just pursuing a fetish or some sort of a hobby such as golfing. Needless to say, in a short amount of time I discovered I had mush deeper issues when it came to dealing with my gender dysphoria. My desire to seek out the truth kept me searching for nearly fifty years.

The search also wrecked my fragile mental health along the path I was pursuing and I regularly sought out therapy for answers. On occasion, I felt better after visits with my therapist but overall my feelings never really improved. Mostly because I was not facing the truth I had always known but was afraid to face. I never was the man I pretended to be. 

Life became especially difficult for me when I grew older and friends, family and spouses began to pass away. When each death happened, it was like my feminine self was asking when was it going to be her turn to live before it was too late. Still I kept on searching, unwilling to totally give up on the male life I had built. Finally, when I was living my life torn between the two prime binary genders, it all became too much for me to bear. Either I needed to end it all and indulge in self harm or in a sense give up and do the right thing. Which was begin to live a full-time life as a transgender woman. What a HUGE relief it was. As I gave complete control to my inner woman, it was as if she had been watching and learning from the world the entire time I tried to hide her.

It turned out, all the days and nights I was so paranoid about facing the world turned out to be unfounded because I relaxed and let her take charge. The more my old male self stayed out of her way, the better she did. The prime example was appearance. She followed the basics of establishing a fashion sense which blended with other women around her and made life so much easier. The more she did, the more I wondered why I waited so long to give her control. 

Perhaps the biggest change was in my mental health. It improved so much, for the first time in years, I was able to leave my therapy behind. 

All in all I was fortunate in how I was able to transition into a new gender life as a trans woman. I already had a circle of supporting cis-woman friends who never knew much of the old male me, plus an accepting daughter and future wife who were pushing me forward into an authentic life.   I read of so many other transgender individuals who were not so lucky. I can never not give all my friends and family I often mention, enough credit for helping me to restart my life. The entire process of sliding down the male hill into a soft female landing was such a huge relief. 

Another De-Transitionist

 

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Recently I read another social media account post from a person stating they (my pronoun) were no longer identifying as transgender.

Predictably, they received push back from their followers. Many said it was a mistake and managed to state their thoughts in a very negative way. I simply said, it's your life, you should live it as you choose. Which for many transgender women or trans men is easier said than done. Many asked why and they replied they were not happy.

As far as I am concerned, I have written before how in my life, happiness has been difficult to achieve anyhow so a simple gender comparison for me was easy to make. The only fact I could zero in on was I was intensely unhappy with my old male life and wanted it to end. Plus, it made it easier for me to decide to give my feminine side a chance. One of the reasons was, everytime I had dared to give her a chance, the entire process felt so natural. Destiny was telling me my life was always supposed to be this way. I knew my gender path would not be an easy one but I was prepared to face adversity. Such as losing my family, friends and finances. 

I certainly do not put myself up on any sort of pedestal and think I am the only one who felt the way I did when I considered the forks in the road to get out of my gender closet. In addition, when I considered the person who wanted to de-transition, I wonder how deep they were into attempting to live as their authentic self. Or, were they confused what their authentic self was to begin with. It took me years to figure it out in my case. 

Perhaps a person who is considering going back to their birth gender didn't realize how completing a gender transition is nothing to play with. It's much more than changing clothes and entering a world stripped of all your old male privileges. It's a lifetime of commitment in an ever changing country which in many areas is enacting anti-transgender laws designed to put roadblocks in our ways. Conceivably, going back would also put them back in good graces with an unaccepting family system. I can understand the powerful draw of going back. In my case none of it worked. Once I started down the very serious path to living a feminine life, I knew I could never go back. My mental health improved and I was able to live happily as a full-time transgender woman. 

My biggest concern for the person saying they are transitioning is they don't go from the proverbial frying pan into the fire when they attempt to return to their previous gender. In the end, I hope they can just find happiness. 

Endless Possibilities

 

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Jessie Hart
Collection

When I was young, the only vocation I could think I wanted to follow was I wanted to be a woman. 

Somehow along the way, I hoped I would grow out of it. As the years went by, not only did the thoughts of being a woman not go away, they just became stronger.  Initially all of this made me even more frustrated with my life. Possibilities seemed far from endless. I was stuck living an unwanted male life. The only possibility I faced was making my male existence as successful as I could. So I followed traditional male activities and pursuits such as sports and having a successful profession. For years, it seemed I was going backwards towards my dream and/or goal of living as a transgender woman.

Before I did begin to look for my gender possibilities, I needed to learn more completely what the process meant to me. About that time was when the transgender term became known at all. Just having an idea of who I might be gave me a starting point on my gender development. The more I explored getting out of my closet and into the world, happily the possibility of opening more doors began to evolve. I started with the basics such as doing a portion of the grocery shopping all the way to going shopping for Christmas gifts. All as my feminine self. The more I explored, the more possibilities opened up to me. For once in my life, I was finding a way to feel more natural and complete. Deep down I knew I was right when I lived as my authentic feminine self.

All of sudden, I was starting to think I actually could follow the biggest dream of mine to someday live fulltime as a transgender woman. In other words, my sun, moon and gender stars were beginning to come together. Before I knew it, I was going to previously off-limits venues and thriving.  Issues such as one on one communications with strangers began to fade away when I learned living as a transgender woman meant so much more than just looking like one in the mirror. I can't stress enough (for me) learning the many and various layers cis-women live through. I called the process being allowed to play in the girl's sandbox. I was helped along when I was invited to "girls night out" parties as well as other gender specific activities When I pulled the feminine curtain back. I really progressed with the new knowledge I learned. 

If you have ever experienced being tantalizingly close to a lifetime goal and not achieving it, that is where I was. I could see what my life as a woman would be like but taking the final step would not be easy and was all so terrifying. My male self just didn't want to give up all the white male privileges  he had worked all those years to earn. At the time I viewed the process as similar to sliding down a slippery slope towards a steep cliff. When and if I fell off the cliff, I didn't know if I could ever return. Well, I never was able to return to my old male self and I have a series of friends to thank for making my landing as soft as possible.

Included in my circle of friends was my own inner feminine soul. I had no idea once I turned my life over to her, she knew exactly what to do. She had been waiting all those years for her endless possibilities to materialize.  

Building on Success

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Unsplash

I have written often on the times I was a dismal failure when I first came out of my gender closet. The times I went home crying following encounters with the public. To make a long story short, I was stared at all the way to being out right laughed at. Similar to many of my novice crossdressing or transgender sisters, teen aged girls were my worst enemy. During this time I kept asking myself why would I leave my fairly comfortable male world I worked so hard to build and survive in for a new existence in a feminine world. I had a long way to go because I had put so much effort into hiding any female mannerisms I may have had. In nearly all ways, I was (or tried to be) a man's man. It worked because I was rarely bullied or had my gender questioned at all except the one time my evil nephew thought he was hurting my feelings when he said I threw a football like a girl. I just replied thanks and moved on.

During all of the setbacks I did seem to have just enough positive feedback on my gender journey to keep moving forward. It could have been because my feminine inner self was starved for attention and wanted her chance to enjoy the spotlight of life.  Very early in my transition, success came when I wasn't laughed at and merely blended in with society as a whole as a woman. Very quickly I learned just blending would not be enough. I found others, mainly women, wanted to talk to me so I needed to quickly develop some sort of a feminine persona. An example was when I kept encountering a long dark haired beauty in not one but two of the venues I frequented. At first when she approached me she was very standoff-ish so I wondered why she even bothered. After a while though she started to warm up and we were able to chat awhile. Who knows, maybe she was just intrigued by the fact she was really interacting with someone who wanted to give up all their male privilege's and enter her world. All too soon, for whatever reason I never saw her again. 

Having success with women such as her led me to open my feminine self up to the world even farther. It proved to be easier than I thought the gender frontier process would be once I started. Looking back at the process, my inner previously hidden feminine person was finally getting her  chance to live. She was building upon her success and loving it. From then on it was a struggle with what remained of my old male self. After all. he provided years of success to my life's equation. It was difficult to finally totally let go of him but I had to if I wanted to keep living at all. Both of my genders were in a vicious struggle for survival. 

As I continued to build upon my feminine successes, I found not only could I play in the girls sandbox but I deserved my place as well as the next woman. Of course I was not able to benefit from growing up as a girl but again I put in as much time and effort as I was allowed to seeing how girls interacted with society. Finally, once I was able to go fulltime as a transgender woman, I learned so much more on how women exist in the world and how strong yet layered their existence is.  My path to success was slower than most but worth the wait. 

Transgender Ally's

Saturday was National Daughters' Day. Along the way here in Cyrsti's Condo, I have not been shy writing about my daughters acceptance of her transgender parent. 

Liz (left) and my daughter. Credit Cyrsti Hart

I was fortunate when not only did my daughter accept me, she wanted to help me. On occasion she tried to go too far. She was going to help me with my wardrobe and appearance. As I recently wrote about, she gifted me an appointment to her decidedly upscale hair salon. As I said before she came with me and added another layer to me being equally excited and terrified. I distinctly remember the second time I went back for a cut and color and suffered the "sticker shock" of being presented a bill for 175 dollars, not including tip. Due to financial considerations, it was my last visit there! Plus, I moved away. 

Of course my most influential dealing with allies came when I started to actually present my feminine self to the world. I made a couple of cis woman friends through my dealings at a local sports bar I went to and met my current partner Liz on an on line dating site. Liz essentially became my most influential ally when she told me to live totally as a transgender woman because she had always seen me as a woman. 

Over the years though, not unlike almost everything else in the transgender world, allies have come under scrutiny. It's become more difficult for potential trans allies to comprehend the intricacies of pronoun usage as an example. Plus just imagine if you were on the outside looking in and trying to understand the always evolving alphabet in the LGBTQ+ spectrum. Then again, what if your child is trying to tell you they are gender fluid? 

Somewhere along the way I think we have lost some of our perspective on what an ally actually is. As in everything else in our world, being an ally evolves too.

In the meantime, I love my daughter Andrea and my partner Liz very much! 
  

Do I Know You?

 On occasion, my interaction with Facebook continues to dismay and amaze. 

Last night it seemed all the "crazies" were out on FB...including me. Sometimes when I am bored I will sarcastically interact with someone just to see (or experience) the reaction I get. I was rewarded when I got someone's panties in a bunch simply by writing my disapproval of heavily filtered pictures. I was rewarded with a tirade which referred to me as being transphobic as well as other things. Not looking for a fight, I just let the whole matter slip away. 

This morning though, I was greeted with a totally different friend request.  It's very rare, I encounter any requests from my hometown. Not only did I receive one but the woman I received it from actually used to work for me in one of my restaurants I managed.

At my peak, I managed (or tried to) a staff of over seventy five front of the house servers, hostesses and bartenders in my busiest unit. As I looked at the picture and name, my rusty noggin slowly came to the realization the person sending me a friend request indeed was one of my former servers.  I knew this because of one of our mutual friends and the fact she was wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey in one of her pictures.

Overall, the memories of this time of my life were very sad. It was during the period when I lost several dear friends and my wife to various diseases. Plus my gender dysphoria was running at an all time high as I explored if I wanted to, or could, live in a feminine world as a transgender woman. 

As I returned to reality, I was so happy to have lived through the "dark ages" of my life to get to the existence I have now.

To make a long story short, I accepted her friend request. It will be interesting now if or when I will hear back from her.  

Terf's

Do you know what a "Terf" is, or what it means?

To put it simply, a Terf is a cis woman who dislikes transgender women  First of all, here's how the name came to be. It is the abbreviation for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminism. Essentially the idea it is impossible for a person assigned a specific gender at birth to transition and occupy the space of another gender. They take it as far as seeing it  as an invasion all over again from the patriarchy and essentially raping women again. 

In their neat conceptual world, men are the predators and women are the prey. To introduce any form of a transgender woman is an attack on feminism everywhere in addition to trans males being a threat to butch lesbians.

I would have to ask Paula for sure but I think Terf's are more publicized in Great Britain where Paula is from. However, a few years ago I was confronted by gender rejection at a lesbian Valentine's Dance Liz and I went to here in Cincinnati. You could definitely refer to the person who literally sought me out to harass me as a Terf. 

I was minding my own business waiting for Liz to rejoin me with a few appetizers when this lesbian approached and started to ask me about what my "real" name was. Unfortunately, I hadn't had my name legally changed yet to produce my driver's license.  By the time Liz returned, the bitch had disappeared again into the crowd. 

Being the glutton for punishment I was back in those days, I even tried to join Liz's lesbian meet up group which put on the dance. Naturally I was rejected for being transgender and not a "real" woman. Shortly after that, Liz left the group, 

Since essentially, my feminine upbringing was helped along by cis women lesbians, I know all lesbians aren't Terf's. Plus, naively I have always felt the more the better when it comes to any form of human movements. In other words, I don't understand why cis women Terf's wouldn't want transgender women involved in their search for equality in gender rights. After all, we have seen the gender world  from both sides and made our choice to leave our male privileges behind. 

In the meantime, I will forever remember the time I was gender slurred and attacked by a Terf. 

Passing Thoghts

 Not long ago, I wrote a post on passing privileges. Ironically, recently I have seen another post or two regarding toxic feminism. As I did, I began to look back into my past for examples and I came up with several.

One of which was a pre teen birthday party I went to for my Grand-Daughter and a few of her friends years ago before I came out as transgender.  One of the invitee's was obviously a little social butterfly who was off in her own little world. She seemed to be certain she was the best looking party girl at such a young age. I wondered then why she was even invited. 

Then of course were the groups of women I worked with and tried to manage. I learned early how passive aggression worked and how women formed groups of like minded people to get their way. As a manager, once I gained their trust, they tended to be very loyal. I was very successful at passing as a man.

Now it's time to add in a Connie comment concerning the original post which dealt with blending in being a desired goal of "passing":

" I do agree that, for me, "blending in" is not really my desired goal. I had always been pretty quiet and rather shy as a man, while my feminine side wants to be much more social and involved. I have often joked that all I really want is to be the most beautiful girl in the room - which is only a joke if I really think that I ever am. Still, I'd much rather shine than blend. I can't make my feminine appearance be as good as Phaylen's (highly filtered and possibly photo shopped) pic portrays, but I have learned that there is so much more to "passing" than the way I look. It's much more about the self-confidence and living in truth. Although it took much longer than it should have, I finally realized that I belong and have every right to be anywhere I choose to be, as does anyone else. I want to pass as a person (the person I really am) more than an illusion I may have created."

(The "Phaylen" Connie is responding to is an LGBTQ activist and actress and does have passing privileges' probably due in part to advanced makeup and photography techniques many of us don't have access to. See below:)

More Connie: "I suppose that I have some "passing privilege" - at least, I have been told this many times. My dysphoria keeps me from recognizing this allegation, however. Beyond the primary, my secondary (male) sex characteristics add up to be a real challenge for me. Sure, there are cis women who are taller, or with broader shoulders, or with large hands, or with big heads and necks, etc. - but very few of them possess all of them together. Nevertheless, these are things that I do possess, and that I can never change. I have managed to change my attitude, though, and that has gone more toward achieving any passing privilege I have than has anything else."

Perhaps my emphasis on blending in has to do with my intense interaction with other women over the years. Even though I had to act as if I were a man, I interacted as if I was a woman. My gender dysphoria has told me over the years I couldn't be the best looking woman in the room and just being perceived as a woman in the room was good enough. 

Anything else will have to wait until my next life.

Emma Said it Better

 One of the writers I follow on "Medium" is Emma Holiday. 

From what I can gather, she is roughly the same age as I and has shared many of the similar transgender experiences.

Today I thought I would share her latest post "Who is Emma?"

"It took time, a lifetime for me, to understand that she and he are truly just one person. The thoughts they shared were always a collective sharing of perceptions, ideas and beliefs. They are a brother and a sister to each other. They protect and consoled each other. Their endless internal conversations eventually provided the strength for Emma to finally emerge.

She is transgender. She combines a life time of male experiences with the soul of a woman. She has the remarkable opportunity to draw on her gender and her sex to see the world with a unique perspective and to share it with those who care."

Plus there is more: Go here to read it.

Dysphoria 1...Zoom Nothing.

 In the past couple of days I have had three Zoom meetings to attend. 

When the pandemic really began to spread of course, I had to learn all about Zoom. If you don't know, it is a on line visual "meet up" with one or a group of people. Early on in the process, I learned the fear of facing myself on the computer screen for however long the session lasted. 

To put it mildly, the results sent my gender dysphoria into a death spiral. 

Over the years, I have been able to maintain a delicate balance on how my presentation is perceived versus how it is received in reality.

To be blunt, I thought I presented well during my meeting with my therapist and terrible in my second session. 

Look, I know my strong point is I am transgender and like so many of us (cis women too) will never reach the beauty plateau of someone such as Laverne Cox.(below)

I will have to save all of that for another lifetime. Over the years, I have been so fortunate to have met many people who have accepted my true self.

In the meantime, I will have to concentrate on the positives to keep my gender dysphoria at bay. 

Maybe then, I can put Zoom up on the scoreboard.  

Cyrsti's Christmas Post Two

 As we approach the actual day of Christmas, I felt it was a good opportunity to share a few of my more impressive (I hope) holiday memories. 

In our previous post, I remembered the first night I was able to venture out into the public as a transgender woman for the first time and enjoy a major regional Christmas light display. In this post, I am going to share my first time out during a Black Friday shopping blitz at an area upscale mall.

This time, it was relatively easy to find the time to attempt to try my hand at passing on such a major shopping day as a transgender woman, or a just a woman. My wife worked at retail so she had to work and at the time, I was a restaurant general manager to I could set my own hours. I chose to come into work later in the afternoon so I had most of the day to explore another slice of life. 

For an outfit I chose the usual comfortable/blending wardrobe items. In other words, sweater, leggings, boots and wig of course. 

As I left the house, I was more concerned with seeing the neighbors than anything else. I was very secure in my looks but didn't know what to expect with the shopping experience. Since I didn't have much time or the inspiration to find a gift for my wife or others, I was selfishly just there to see if I belonged.

When I arrived, amazingly, it wasn't as difficult to find a parking spot as I had anticipated. I gathered my courage, checked my makeup in the car mirror and headed into my perception of one of the ultimate feminine experiences...Black Friday shopping. 

Once I was in the mall, I found I didn't have any thing to worry about. No one cared who I was at all. I was able to blend in, do a bit of shopping and leave satisfied I had checked off another "bucket list" item off of my Mtf gender transition checklist. 

One again, I used the Christmas experience to do it. 

There will be more to come!

Finding Me

Sadly, it seems I have spent the majority of my life searching for my true self. Selfishly, on occasion, I want the time back. 

Of course, I know it is impossible to regain time spent, so I try to make sense of it all. I try to remember all the highlights (and low lights) of desperately trying to discover my true gender. Unfortunately, I didn't make all the right moves as I went down the gender path to transgender womanhood. One major mistake I made was trying so hard to make my presentation perfect, I neglected the most important part of my Mtf gender transition, what kind of feminine person did I want to become. As I started to go out to the same venues, I was recognized as a person. I recognized at the time, it was because I was trying to discover a new world as a cross dresser but I didn't want to be known as a bitchy one. 

Then I came to the point when I couldn't "put the genie back in the bottle." I was seriously beginning to establish myself as a feminine person and it felt good and natural. Better yet, it was easy for me to be a "nice" person since the greatest majority of the people I met were nice to me. Essentially I was taking another giant step out of the mirror. Early on when I went out shopping or whatever, it seemed all I was doing was going from mirror to mirror to try to re enforce my feminine appearance. 
Looking back on all of this now, it seems like a blur when in reality it took years to happen. 

As I like to do, I'm bringing in another quote from a person named Emma who went through a similar experience

:
"I have searched a lifetime for me, never understanding who I was. My ignorance made me afraid of me. Everyone around me shared the same ignorance and fear.

How desperately sad. How tragic. What a heartbreaking thing to finally realize… but what an amazing discovery. What an exciting realization. What an opportunity to touch a part of your neglected heart, an untouched part of your soul, and to know it’s ok to share it all with the world. It’s ok to feel these hidden pieces mend and meld to make you feel whole, finally, and to tenderly feel their warmth.

It’s like the passing of a storm. The clouds part, and the warm rays of sun create your own personal rainbow. You suddenly breathe in and know that your lungs are filled with the joy of life.
I always will hold on to these moments of discovery for the rest of my life. No one will ever take them away from me."

Well put!

Adjectives

 We all spend incredible time and effort to achieve a feminine transgender life. 

Seeing as how most all of us had a late start on the world and had to make up all of our own rules as we went along, changes were inevitable. Over the years, the woman in the short jeans skirt (me referred to in an earlier post) became the woman who is rarely seen in a dress or skirt at all. Instead I concentrated on refining and building my new person I was building. Seeing as how, very few humans have the opportunity to legally reinvent themselves, I didn't want to screw it up. Since I ran into fewer and fewer other cis women I encountered dressed like I use to dress, I began to dress to blend. 

Instead, I will let Connie add a few adjectives I wanted to achieve:

"Qualifying adjectives I like are: smart, witty, loving, caring, kind, lovely, pretty, talented and capable. The more I try to present myself as a woman who could be described by any of these, the less important it becomes that anyone might also add "transgender" to my identity."

Great words to live by! Thanks.

A Blast from the Past

For those of you who don't know, I have a Facebook page which also has a very loyal group of followers. The difference in the group is many of the people I know personally and have interacted with over different periods of my life. 

One of which is Zena ( a cis woman) who I briefly met and saw a number of times when I first started to come out as transgender. This would have happened around 2010:

"The first time I saw you in a short jean skirt I was jealous, for lack of a better word. I have hardly had the courage to wear one as a cis female and you were so nonchalant and darling....I will never forget that day or your idyllic sweetness. You are so strong. I admire and miss you so"  

Shortly after the jean skirt our lives went separate ways and I remember vividly a few of the feminine "lessons" Zena tried to show me. One of which was mentioning I should probably practice a few of the feminine arts on bananas if you catch the drift. All along I was dazzled this beautiful woman was willing to meet me out in public. 

I also remember the wonderful spaghetti dinner she invited me and a couple other of her friends over for. I think I also wore the short jean skirt then too. Ironically, while she thought I was nonchalant, in reality I was terrified on the inside. Fortunately for me. I was able to learn from women such as Zena and move forward into my own feminine creation. 

Zena, thanks so much for the memory and I miss you so too!

Don't Let the Middle Bother You?

 Almost anyway you look at it, dealing with gender dysphoria creates quite a bit of tension because you are dealing with a middle gender of sorts. Awhile ago I was surprised when several members of the cross dresser - transgender group I was in ,expressed they had never experienced any gender dysphoria as they transitioned. I finally thought they were fortunate enough to have never been in the dreaded gender middle ground. Being gender dysphoric and never wanting to give up certain aspects of my male life, came close to totally destroying me. Leading ultimately to a very serious suicide attempt. Several years later, I was able to discover I could bring many of the so called male activities I enjoyed so much with me as I tried to complete my transition. I say "tried" because I feel I still am transitioning to this day. 

As I always enjoy doing and when Connie sends along a comment which lends itself to a particular post, such as gender dysphoria. I like to share it. Here it is:

"As I sang in my comment the other day, You've got to ac-cen-tuate the positive E-lim-inate the negative The rest of the verse, though, may be more important here: Latch on to the affirmative Don't mess with Mister In-Between As trans women, there will always be that Mister In-Between who haunts us. We put on blinders to avoid seeing him, but we still are aware he's there. As much as I claim that I've transitioned to the point where I have integrated the better parts of my male-self with my female-self, I've really only managed to blur the line between the two - which is where Mister In-Between resides. He may emerge from the fog in different ways: His fat, stubby-fingered hands, his baritone voice, his scratchy face too long after a shave (not necessarily visible, but felt), his big head that connects to broad shoulders by a thick neck. 

Or, it could even be a memory from some long-ago feat of manhood. While none of those things are desirable to my female-self, though, I have to remind myself that they did not necessarily define my past male-self, either. Not only do I compare myself to other women, I have often found myself looking at some men who may have more-feminine features, such as smaller hands with long and delicate fingers, a higher-pitched voice, or a smaller head connected to narrow shoulders by a long narrow neck. Yet, they go about their lives as men because they were born to be men. Although they may wish some things about themselves could be more masculine, they don't have the dysphoria that is Mister In-Between. Still, though I may be envious of their feminine features,

 I would rather live with my dysphoria than to be a man - with feminine features or not. Don't mess with Mister In-Between, but don't let Mister In-Between mess with you, either."

Well put.

Nobody Made Me

I do quite a bit of skimming of my email feeds to try to seek out topics to write posts about. Naturally, sometimes I run into quite a bit of interesting material, then again on days like today, not so much.

The closest I could come was a post I read which referred to being "made" into a transgender person. The post referred to some sort of a deep dark trans force which seized us and made us the way we are. It is still difficult for many people in everyday society to understand we didn't have a choice the way our life has unfolded. Many people still don't know if we continue to live in the gender we were born in either leads to a life of misery as a best case scenario or suicide at it's worst. To be sure we did not "choose" such a life.

Years ago, after one of my all out Halloween "costume" attempts, two of my close cis women friends brought up the party and said "I made a good looking woman." For one of the few times of my life I was speechless.  Finally, I blurted out something like "a lot of good it did me."

What really happened was for a change I had aligned my inner self with how I projected my gender into society and it worked. Looking back on it years later, I wish I had thought of saying I wished I had a power to make someone.

It's also true though, I shouldn't have looked a gift horse in the mouth (or other places of it's anatomy) and just accepted the compliment. In all fairness, I still had decades of growth and learning in a feminine world to be able to know how to conduct myself. So, if I was "made" as a woman. So be it.

Unfortunately, the times I had to try to show my feminine side in public were limited to once a year at Halloween. Plus, when I started to experiment more and more in the feminine world, I was made as a man in a dress.

I do feel these days, the tide is slowly changing (even with the current administration in Washington) and transgender women and men are beginning to be viewed with some sense of normalcy.

Perhaps now people will understand we trans folks were born this way and didn't have a choice. More respect should follow.

International Women's Day

International Women's Day was Monday March 9th. A time for transgender women to pause and reflect on where we belong in the feminine community. Of course there are plenty who think we don't belong at all.

Despite what they think, we do belong. Our journey to womanhood just took a different path than most of the cis women I know. Plus I know several females who never made it to womanhood at all. Being a woman is a social construct, not merely a physical one. 

To better commemorate Women's Day, here is a quote from Rosa Parks:

To Be or Not to Be

Don't worry, this post won't be influenced by Shakespeare and you are not back in high school literature class. In this case, the popular phrase involves coming out as stealth.

Wait? Can you come out as stealth? Isn't that a "Catch 22?" It is but it isn't.

When and if you are in the position to live "stealth" as a transgender woman, should you do it? Remember "back in the day" stealth was the only way to go once you had gone through genital realignment surgery. You were expected to move away and start your life all over again. In many ways, the whole process ignored the basic premise that sex is between the legs and gender is between the ears. I am a prime example. While it is true I have been living full time as a woman for years now, I have no desire to have any invasive surgery.

Now I find myself again  at the crossroads of going stealth...or not. It would actually be a fairly easy decision. The cross dresser - transgender support group I am loosely involved with is increasingly imploding. As a result of a high drama split up, we now have two similar but separate groups. The most recent example of the in fighting was the Thursday night social Liz and I went to. Before the split up we could expect approximately twelve to fifteen diverse individuals. Since the other group decided to have a social the same night, they had ten attendees while we had seven.

So now I am encountering the same small group of people I actually have very little in common with. The only reason I started going was because of the chance to meet new and interesting people. Thursday night the most interesting person I met was a cis woman who was entranced with me enough to smile and say hello. Any number of factors could have been in play. Probably she knew I was trans and her and her feminine friend approved. Or they could have been lesbians too and saw Liz and I holding hands. Then again, maybe she was just laughing at me. Which didn't seem to be the case.

The main force behind me not just saying to hell with it all, is my underlying desire to help anyone who needs it who may find themselves on the same path as me. Plus now I need to see how my upcoming meeting concerning LGBTQ aging issues goes.

If the past is any indication, I probably will continue to not to be...stealth.