Why Not Me?

 

Image from Buddha Elemental 3D
on UnSplash. 

My life has been a series of why not me moments.

As a boy growing up in Ohio, I always wanted to be a better athlete, which turned out to be an impossible quest because there always seemed to be a better athlete in my world to take my place. Then there was my attempt to be more social in the world, but I was incredibly shy, and it was so difficult to do. So, I ended up hiding at home, thinking someday I would grow out of my shyness.

My greatest why not me moments came as I struggled with my gender identity. It became so bad with me that when a stranger asked me what I was going to be when I grew up, the only truthful answer I never gave was a woman. I internalized my thoughts and somehow hoped they would go away. Which of course, they never did. They just got worse because the main problem I had was wondering if I could do it at all. Information was incredibly difficult to come by in my sheltered male privileged world and for the most part I was lost, and I continued the path I was on. Doing my best to live a male life successfully, and at the same time, steal away moments of privacy to cross dress in front of the mirror.

Often, much to my surprise, I was semi-successful at both. I kept my increasingly gender fluid life in balance by improving my mirror image away from drag clown to beginning girl, while at the same time, keeping the bullies away from me by having an interest in sports and cars. I even went as far as dating a few girls in high school where I ended up attending both my junior and senior proms. Little did anyone know I wanted to be the one wearing the pretty gown and getting the flowers. As with the rest of my life, I got over it and moved on, no matter how difficult it was. Why not me was not working, I was still stuck in my gender quicksand and there was no handsome cowboy coming to help me out. Or strong woman as it turned out.

When I finally had had enough of being a gender victim, I opened my closet door and looked around for the first time in my life. I knew I needed to move past the once-a-year Halloween parties I was attending as my novice transfeminine self and try more ways to get out into the world to see if I could be successful or would my dream of life as a woman always must be a dream. I was ever so cautious as I began by shopping in malls and bookstores which turned out to be low impact areas for novice cross dressers or transgender women. I went to places where my money was more important than my gender which gave me the confidence to do more. More meant testing the public with new and exciting ideas such as stopping at restaurants to eat to see if I had any push back at all. I did not and moved on. Maybe, my why not me was coming true after all.

Sadly, dreams being dreams are not so easy to achieve I found out. Especially in the world of gender change. There was no way I could gloss over all the nuances of being a true transgender woman would entail. Many times, I ended up getting my new high heels stuck in more quicksand than I could have imagined and was fortunate to have found my way out, which I have written about in several blog posts. It occurred when I suffered the loss of male security privilege. However, by this time, I was able to take the good with the bad which was beginning to lessen, and I could see my dream being reality.  Which I had never thought possible.

For the first time in my life, I was beginning to live my why not me moments. I was at the threshold of living the life I had always wanted. Free from the male shackles which had tied me down. Sure, at times, it was unbelievably confusing to do, but with the help of a few women friends I always mention, I made it and was able to get out of the quicksand all together and rebuild my life.

Today, I am a woman who happened to come from a different background than most. But it was my dream to make it, and I did. As I said, I never thought I could or would.

 

 

 

 

Chess versus Checkers in Life

 

JJ Hart in Key Largo

On occasion, it seems to me that I am playing chess when the rest of the world is playing with checkers.

Of course, I am referring to how my gender dysphoric issues have affected my life. Let me be clear too, I have never been a chess player in real life ever. None of that stops me from having the utmost respect for someone who excels at the game. So why can I compare playing chess to my life at all? The reason is I can understand life a little bit better than the average person just because I have lived my life on both sides of the primary gender borders. I have had the opportunity to see firsthand how men live and then women when I was allowed behind the gender curtain as a transgender woman.

Having the opportunity to live in both gender worlds has totally put me at odds with some in the world. Especially those who worship the orange pedo/felon. It has been ridiculous how many laws have been passed in certain areas of the country against the transgender population. My prime example is my native Ohio, where I live today. For all intents and purposes, the Republican state legislation has voted me out of existence. The question is why. To find a closer look, you must follow the money here in Ohio where a deep funded dark money political group rented out and renovated offices right across the street from the statehouse in Columbus, Ohio. It turns out the primary objective of the group was to push for anti-transgender laws in the state.

Of course, in the already corrupt legislature, the anti-trans push worked. Often in the dead of night when the Republicans pushed it through. By now you may be wondering what all this political talk has to do with playing chess. With all the new laws, transgender women and transgender men have been forced to be more skillful when they go out in public. To their credit, many of the transfeminine people I know have continued their push to live an everyday life.

On the other side of the coin, those rednecks who would not accept us have never met a trans person in their lives and don’t know how to react when they discover we are just trying to live our lives the best we can. Which gives us a better chance of acceptance when they do.

I think also, many strangers don’t trust us because we have an abundance of life knowledge and skills behind us. Which is the reason many men reject us because they know we were once in the male club and know all the tricks. On the flip side, as I was transitioning into the feminine world, I had several women ask me personal questions on how to deal with their men since I had lived in the male camp for so long. Sure, It took me a long time to be awarded my feminine chess set, but once I was, there would be no looking back and no one was going to take away my new found freedom.

Certainly, I feel the same way today as I did when I came out of my gender shell over a decade ago. This fall, my wife Liz and I are taking another tour. This time to Boston, Vermont and Maine. Even though this is our fifth tour and I have never had any restroom problems before, I always pause to consider the consequences if I do this time. All it takes is one bigot to ruin it for everyone. One way or another, no tRumper is going to keep me from using the restroom of my choice with Liz. If the last tour was any example, I won’t have to worry about any gender related questions because the best one we received last year was were Liz and I sisters.

After being able to live so many years on both sides of the gender border, I feel now I am more than qualified to bring my chess game to the public and leave my old male checkers behind. Now, I even anticipate the sport of anyone trying to challenge me in the world. It took me long enough to get here, so it is time to enjoy it the best I can without something as petty as the restroom standing in my way.

Sorry about the politics in this post, but sometimes I just need to vent the best I can when someone is succeeding in taking our transgender rights away. We just have to be better than our rivals who know nothing about gender chess.

Never forget, men play checkers while women play chess in life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buckle Up! Now Entering Gender Comfort Zone

 

Image from Andraz Lazic 
on UnSplash. 

Around here, in Southwestern Ohio at least, we have been in orange barrel season on the roadways for months now.  As we drive through the new road construction, it is time to be ultra cautious and buckle up your seatbelt for safety.

As I always do when I travel, my mind drifts towards the transgender side of life when my wife Liz does the driving. This time, I equated all the orange barrels we were driving through to my life as a transgender woman.

Even if I had ever had a choice (which I did not), I wonder if under the old if I knew then what I know now if I would have ever embarked on the gender path I took. Initially, it was fun playing in my mom’s clothes and makeup, until suddenly it was not. It seemed too quickly I passed through the stage of wanting to look like a girl, straight to wanting to be a girl. To hell with the mirror, I wanted more out of life. Very quickly, my new attitude was causing problems which I needed to buckle up to and attempt to tackle.

Sadly, there were many times when I swerved when I should not have and hit several orange barrels throwing me back into my mirror to attempt to learn what I was doing wrong. What happened was, I simply needed more time and experience to be successful with a very complex move I was trying to make. Change genders as a human being. All along, I knew women were different, but I did not know how different until I was allowed behind the gender curtain. Plus, just being allowed behind the curtain required special navigation skills to get around the orange barrels. Not only did I need to appear as a woman, I needed to move and communicate as a woman also.

Putting the image from the mirror into focus and into the world proved to be very difficult for me. Since I was trying to live a life spanning both main binary genders, living one day as a trans woman and one day as a man was literally killing me mentally. The pain I was suffering I would not have wished on my worst enemy and worse yet, I was veering off my path and hitting many barrels. Fortunately, after a failed suicide try, I righted the ship and was able to continue towards my dream of living full time as a transgender woman. Without taking out any more orange barrels.

As I became better at being a confident woman from a different background, I began to see life differently. I was able to look other women directly in the eye and tell a lot about what they were thinking. As I took lessons from other cisgender women on nonverbal communication. From then on, my life began to improve markedly as I began to buckle up for more gender challenges. Such as, losing all my male privileges I fought so hard to gain. I nearly had major collisions when I did not plan on losing all the security privileges I had as a man. One night I had a big problem with a large man I could not fend off at a party I was at and needed my wife to rescue me and on another night, I was walking alone on an urban sidewalk after leaving a gay venue when I was approached by two men wanting money. They took my last five dollars and went on their way. Lessons learned from both evenings. One way or another, these two near misses made the loss of my intelligence when I talked to men seem to be very petty.

The next set of orange barrels I needed to navigate came when I began gender affirming hormones. The first major hurdle I had was finding a doctor to prescribe them at all. Back when I was looking for hormones back in the 1980’s in Ohio. Once I had passed the test of being on a minimum dosage for a period of time, I was allowed to take bigger amounts of HRT, and the changes really started to happen. Then, I had a whole different set of barrels to drive around. Such as, what would I do about my rapidly developing breasts and softer facial angles. The entire process moved up my transition timeline into the transfeminine world.

I finally had had enough with the whole gender dilemma, gave my male clothes to charity and set out to build a new feminine life at the age of sixty. Being a late transitioner had its benefits to me because I had more than a little idea of what to expect. Mainly from the time I spent navigating around all the orange gender barrels I saw on my path towards a future I so dearly wanted. As I always point out, it was never easy, and I needed to buckle up to make it.

 

 

Dealing With Severe Escapism

Image from Ludovica Dri
on UnSplash.

Severe escapism has been part of my life for many years.

It all goes back to the humble beginnings of me exploring my mom’s clothes and makeup. The entire process helped me to escape from a male life I never wanted. What never occurred to me had how quickly I escaped would become reality as I kept going back to my cross-dressing beginnings to seek guidance from the mirror.

Problems began when I began to listen to the mirror completely. It was telling me I was an attractive woman but was I really and ready to prove it to the world. When I switched out the mirror for the world, I quickly learned I had a long way to go in my heels to do better in a feminine world. What turned out to be a short trip really kept on going into a major lifetime of escapism.

How did I know I was escaping? Primarily it started when I began to feel so good as my novice transgender self. I thought, how could I feel this good and natural if I was just escaping. It was at that point when I seriously started exploring the possibility of living out my dream of eventually living out my life as a transfeminine person.  

Increasingly, I discovered my dream was a reality if only I could sever my ties with my escapism I was suffering under. No more could I run home to hide behind my skirts if I was so completely exploring the feminine world. Whatever was going to happen just would. What happened was I did not have to escape nearly as much because I was increasingly enjoying my journey into transgender womanhood. Again, because I could not run and hide when someone tried to interact with me. I even was able to conquer my fear of the “mean girls club” as I not so fondly call the so-called gatekeepers of femininity. Perhaps conquering is too strong a term. Put up with maybe a better one. The mean girls may not have liked me but found I was going nowhere.

As I no longer had to resort to so much escapism, I began to look for better ways to live my new life. I started to see new colors in the world as the gender affirming hormones (HRT) in my life began to take control. My senses heightened to a point where I could sense the world as well as the cisgender women around me. I learned women were really cold all the time I thought they were making it up, is a prime example.

It was increasingly a very rare occasion when I needed to revert to my old male life to take advantage of a male privilege such as taking my car in to be repaired. Even though I have needed to conquer that fear, I still have nagging problems with doing anything auto related to this day. Outside of that, I have overcome most of the problems I faced which sent me home hiding behind my skirts. Even my mirror has become a noncombatant in my life. I see myself for whom I really am. No better, no worse and I work from there with my makeup.

To be sure, running away from my gender issues did not improve my life. I continued to switch jobs and locations as I tried to escape my true self. It was not until I landed a dream job in my hometown did, I had to stay put and quit running. For all intents and purposes my escape route was destroyed. For a while, channeling all my gender issues into my work proved to be a wise choice as I made it nearly to the top in my field. Hear I was, with a good marriage, family and job, while all along something was still missing. That something was I still had the nagging idea something was still missing from my gender identity. I was still living a lie and found it increasingly difficult to run anymore from the idea.

In many ways, tragically, escapism would work for me as I became the last person standing in my small group of friends. They all died including my wife of twenty-five years, so I needed to start all over again. As they say, when one door closes, another one opens. Which is all well and good if you can find the door. Destiny paved the way for me to make the final gender transition of my life away from the male road I was on. For every tragedy which I so poorly faced, I discovered a person to help me rebuild, and that person is my wife, Liz.

With the magic words, she had never seen any male in me at all, I threw all caution (and him) to the wind along with all my male clothes and closed out the portion of my male life I had fought so long to do away with. My only regret? I selfishly would like back all the time and energy I wasted on fighting the inevitable, it was always time to allow my transgender woman to live. She was tired of not being allowed to do anything. Escaping was over.

 

No Easy Way Out

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Outreach Work. 

Like many of you, I struggled for years to escape my dark, lonely gender closet.

As I beat my head against the closet walls, I stared longingly into the mirror, dreaming of the day I would find an easy way out. As I did, it became increasingly evident to me that there would be no such escape from my dominating male self. He would make life miserable for years because of my indecision.  One day I wanted to be a boy and the next I wanted to be a girl dictated how I lived.

After years of despair over my gender dysphoria, I began to see a sliver of light in my closet when I briefly opened the door to look out. At first, I was getting the door slammed back into my face when I went out in public. Too many people were laughing at me to my face or worse yet, I could hear their comments behind my back. I was sent home early many nights in tears, wondering what I was doing wrong with my feminine presentation. Following intense introspection, I discovered what was wrong. I was letting my old male self-make my fashion decisions and dressing for men instead of women who were for the most part controlling my destiny as a transgender woman. Without the support of women, I would have never made it out of my closet at all.

Even as I learned my lessons on presentation, I still found there would be no easy way out of my closet. I discovered the more walls I scaled on my path to transgender womanhood; the more walls would appear to challenge me. Mainly because I was out in the public eye so much more, and I was challenged to find the proper wig to wear all the time as well as find better fashion to augment my wardrobe. There was no way I wanted to wear the same outfit day after day when people began to recognize me. To offset the extra attention, I needed to increase my visits to area thrift stores to find bargains I could afford, and more importantly, fit me. I was obsessed with outdoing myself when it came to my feminine presentation.

It turned out, the public was noticing as I lost nearly fifty pounds and started taking better care of my skin. If I behaved myself in the world, and was friendly, I crossed the line into communicating with other women. Of all the walls I needed to climb, communication skills were the hardest to scale. The change was dramatic because I needed to change my communication from direct male to indirect female as I learned women often talk with their eyes. Thus, I needed to get better in looking another woman in her eyes when I talked with her. Often doing it as a man was a threatening option, while doing it as a woman was not optional. I needed to learn to do it. By doing so, often I could see what they thought of me. Did they think of me as a woman or sort of a man seeking admittance into their world.

Mostly what I received back was curiosity. What was I doing in their world? And I think they understood my interest in being admitted to the girl’s sandbox went far beyond just putting on a wig, dress and makeup. One way or another, the process was extremely challenging and kept me guessing every night about what I was going to experience because some nights I was tired of climbing walls. I kept looking for the last one to climb, but found I was not even close. Mainly because the gender club I was seeking to join was so complex. On the other hand, the process of totally leaving my closet and male privileges behind was still quite scary and I needed total confidence in what I was doing before I made the final jump.

My introduction to HRT or gender affirming hormones gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. Suddenly the hormones helped me to sync up my external feminine self with my internal one. It was the final shove I needed to get out of my closet and live a new life as a transfeminine person. It turned out there was an easy way to escape if only I possessed the inner strength to look for my truth. Once I did, my fragile mental health improved, and I set my sights on enjoying my family more since a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. In the end, it was all worth it, but it was never an easy trip to go on, or I could find no easy way out.

 

 

 

 

Too Low on the Down Low

 

Image from Ky Nang
on UnSplash. 

I describe my life when I was cheating on my second wife with another woman(me) as being on the down low. Especially when in the early days I was hanging out in gay bars.

On occasion, I feel as if I make the process of transitioning with or without my wife’s support a little too exciting or even fun. I need to make it clear; it was anything but. It all started with a deal my wife and I made which I could go out in the public as a woman, only if I did not do it from our house. I even went as far as renting out motel rooms to apply my wardrobe, makeup and hair as I got ready to go out into the world.

Of course, with my mentality, that was never enough, and I started to break our agreement to never go out cross dressed from the house. The more I did it, the more I wanted to do it. That is when the going on the down low really started as I was sneaking around behind her back as a novice transgender woman every chance I got. I was stuck in life between not breaking our agreement and feeling so natural every time I went out in the world. During my life, I had always prided myself on being very honest, so I was not happy with the way my life was headed when I needed to lie to my wife when it came to explaining what I was doing in my spare time. Or why I was not successful in removing all my makeup when she came home.

The next biggest problem I ran into when I was on the down low was what was I going to do about the women who were approaching me. It was not as if I was being bombarded with romantic advances, but I did have some slight pushes. I felt bad because I never had any intention of ever physically cheating on my wife. However, I had always been a bit of a flirt which carried over from my days of being a male. There were occasions such as the night a man tried to pick me up in a bar after a professional makeover that I wonder what would have happened had I stayed. I didn’t and I will never know as well as what would have happened had I pushed a little harder to get to know a certain man with a motorcycle I was becoming close to.

I guess I had reached the bottom of my down low except for some stolen kisses from my lesbian friends. I internalized my feelings and waited for them to come to me, just like my male days. Then, when my wife unexpectedly passed away, everything changed and at the least I had purged my feminine life the best I could for the last six months of her life as I did not want to lie to her anymore. After she passed, all my barriers were removed and the first thing I needed to do was determine my sexuality. I thought to do it; I needed to go on public safe dates with a couple men I had met. I had a great time with Bob who was passing through Dayton on business, but he was married and lived far away. I did not have to worry about being brought home to mom in our brief relationship.

On the lesbian side of my life, things were decidedly different since I was no longer on the down low. Since HRT had effectively did away with any masculine sexual advances, I needed to learn new techniques. If I was brave enough, I found with the lesbian culture I needed to move slow and let them make the first move. I basically ended up with a group of three women I was close to. Which was all I needed. From the three, Nikki was never a real possibility because she was too much younger than me and I think would have recoiled at the idea of ever having relations with any sort of men (including me) at all. She was just an entertaining drinking buddy. Kim and my future wife Liz were in totally different situations. Both had lived difficult lives and were closer to me in age so they could relate to me being in a rebounding situation from all the death I had went through. In the end, I decided to move in with Liz in Cincinnati and are still together over a decade later, so I made the right move. Although every now and then I hear from Kim.

One way or another, life on the down low was never any fun for me. I constantly felt as if I was cheating on my wife. It was a relief to finally let it go and live my life authentically as a transfeminine person.

 

A Tale of Contrasts

 

Image from UnSplash.

No matter how you cut it, our gender is a tale of contrasts.

From the earliest age, we are forced into rigid gender roles, who for most people, work out quite nicely because they never question their assigned roles. Then there are those of us who just as early in life begin to question our placement on the gender spectrum. In my case, I knew something was wrong, I just could not figure out what. Then, as I became older, I made the discovery every morning when I had to determine what gender I had to be for the day. A jarring discovery to be sure.

Naturally, since I was born male, I needed to own up to the fact I had to do my best to face the world each day as a guy until I could slip behind my own gender curtain and put on women’s clothes and makeup. Early on, as I lived my limited feminine life in the mirror, I thought appearance was my number one goal towards living my gender dreams. It was not until much later in life did, I began to understand how wrong I was. There were many more contrasts between men and women that I ever dared to think about. Mainly because I was viewing how women live only through rose colored glasses as I thought they had easier lives than men.

It wasn’t until I began to pay my gender dues as a transfeminine person, did I begin to see the reality of what I was looking at if I decided to transition. As I was making my way into what I call the girl’s sandbox, I was getting tested regularly to see if I belonged. On some days I was successful and happy and on others, I was getting beat up (or clawed) and needed to retreat before I came back for more. One thing was for sure, all of this testing from other women was doing me good, because I never quit trying.

The main thing I did learn was one that I vaguely knew, women had their own world away from men and had their own alpha’s who ran the show. Once I was accepted by them, the rest of my life as a transgender woman was so much easier. But, on the other hand, the testing process was so much harder because the alphas were so much more wary of me wanting to be in their world. My second wife was an alpha and she made sure I worked long and hard to even try to earn a spot in the sandbox. An example was one of the many times she told me there was so much more to being a woman than just looking like one and it took me years to understand what she meant.

Perhaps the second most difficult part of being accepted in the feminine world was being able to communicate with other women. Out were the days of trying to bluster my way through a conversation and in were the days when I needed to look another woman in the eye and appear to be less threatening. While at the same time having eyes on my back for a passive aggressive attack. I learned the hard away on that to never trust a smiling face completely.

As I learned to communicate with other women, my life in public became so much easier and I could begin to relax more as I was beginning to put my entire feminine picture into focus. I could forget about completely focusing on my looks and movement and could concentrate on being social with the world. Which was important to me since I had always been a socially active person. Plus, as I always mention, men were never much of a factor to me since most of them ran and hid from me completely. Which was OK since I did not really know how to handle them as a transgender woman either.

My life of contrasts was coming to an end when I entered the final chapter with gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones were magical when they started their changes on me. I think most people consider external changes such as skin, breasts and hair to be important, and they are but to me, internal changes were more important. In a remarkable short span of time, I became more emotional as my world softened. Making me into a complete person.

I am biased, but I think my tale of contrasts made me into a better human being as I could understand both binary genders better. Since I had lived in both. Plus, after having the chance to live as both, I made the right choice to live as a transgender woman, even though at times, it was an intensely lonely and difficult journey. Which could be another blog post.

Who "Ya" Going to Call?

 

Image from Beth Macdonald on UnSplash. 

For many cross dressers or transgender women, our gender pursuits are very lonely. If you are of a certain age, you remember lonely with a capital “L”.

You remember the pre-internet and social media days when any information on being a transvestite or transsexual was very difficult to come by. This is where I always mention Virginia Prince and her Transvestia publication and how it brought a sliver of light and hope into my dark closet. Virginia was all I had; there was no one else to call. My gender workbook was blank.

From the pages of Tranvestia, I learned of the nearby mixers I could attend and for the first time in my life meet likeminded individuals. I was naïve and thought I could meet others I could call and or meet on a regular basis. Instead, I met many people I did not understand and did not want to socialize with. Either I was too much of a woman for them, or not enough it seemed. I was caught in sort of a “Goldilocks” zone with a blond wig and still no friends to socialize with.  I selfishly wanted someone just like me on the gender spectrum.

Slowly, all of that began to change when I started to attend diverse gender mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. I started to come out of my shell a bit and began to meet others who I enjoyed their company which was a great start to finding my way out of the “who ya going to call syndrome”. From parties I was invited to, I actually had people I could call and be invited to come along to excursions such as the Andy Warhol main exhibit at The Ohio State University followed by a visit to a well-known Columbus gay venue I had never been to. I had a great time.

Of course, when I did begin to get out more in the world with or without my new transgender friends, I wanted more. Which left me in a really bad spot with my second wife and my male self who were increasingly putting up resistance to every move I was making. In my own mind, for the first time in my life, I was making progress towards learning if a transgender future was possible. Every step I took was resisted as the other two wanted nothing to do with my progress.

As I continued with building my own confidence as a transfeminine person, my circle of friends began to increase also. I was coming full circle into my own as I was the one setting up our social events and I even quit going to any other mixer in Columbus. Saving my time and money for the monthly lesbian mixers I so enjoyed in Dayton, Ohio. The only problems I still had were coming from my second wife who I loved very much and my male self who kept whispering in my ear was I doing the right thing by just giving all my male privilege away. I did my best to stay in the middle of the gender road while not getting hit by oncoming traffic.

Ironically, I had built such a good wall between my gender selves with my friends, I could not talk to them either. A prime example came when I tried to explain my first hot flash to a good lesbian friend of mine and all she said was welcome to her world. Lesson learned. From then on, I let her take the lead when the conversations became very personal because I knew she had a lot going on in her life, and at least I could be a good sounding board or listener.

I adjusted from moving from the very few male friends I had who had passed away to a very few new women friends who helped me to escape the severe loneliness I was feeling when my wife passed away. In ways they never knew, I was calling a friend and having the best of both worlds. I had reached my own “Goldilocks” zone as my friends were easing my solitude while at the same time, teaching me what it meant to be a woman. Primarily a woman who did not need the validation of a man to feel good about herself. Which was a direct conflict from the old ways of going through genital realignment surgery and then disappearing just to resurface in a new life with a man.

What was left of my sexuality after HRT remained with my lifelong admiration of women, so I did not have to change, which was a welcome discovery. Now, I am so fortunate to live with and have married the only person I need when I am feeling down or even gender dysphoric. I can talk it out with my wife Liz, and she is like I have my own in-house therapist. My problem is opening up after all these decades of closing myself off to the world. I was very good at the job.

 

 

 

 

Creating a New Life

 

JJ Hart, Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio

As transgender women, we have a unique method of creating a new life.

Obviously, we cannot host a birth ourselves, so we do the next best thing, allowing our inner feminine selves to flourish in the world. For some of us, the process takes a long time. I was referring to myself as a late in life transitioner. Occasionally, I still receive the comment I was not transgender enough to transition. Or why did I wait so long. Comments such as those used to bother me until I grew confident enough in myself to ignore them. We all have our own path to creating a new life. How we get there, and our methods are our own business.

What is lost on most civilians is how difficult it is as we create a new life. Which is even more difficult because we are only bringing out what was always there. It took me decades to discover I had all my gender issues backwards. Life became easier for me when I learned I was a woman all along, cross dressing as a man. As with many or all of you, I set out to convince others of my true self.

At first, I needed to prove to strangers I was so much more than a man putting on a dress parttime or a drag queen in my days of hanging out in gay venues. It was not until I began to leave my comfortable closet and take on the straight world, did I begin to improve my confidence and overall presentation. As I went out, I took my bumps and bruises and invested heavily in my future as a transgender woman. I finally learned it was time to cash in my gender chips and go for it all. Each chip was a unique experience I learned from as I learned how to create my new life.

When I had started to test out the ciswomen gatekeepers and was accepted, I knew I had reached the now or never stage of my life. It was time to face my true inner self and live my truth. The secret of making my trip personal was a scary step. I needed to risk strangers taking advantage of me, or my emotions which had been badly damaged after the death of my second wife. I thought I had effectively shielded myself off to the world as a novice transgender woman, but the opposite happened.

As women have a way of doing, they read the true damaged me and a select few reached out. The main one was my wife Liz who I have been with well over a decade now. Just when I was hopelessly online seeking a date with another woman, she responded to me, and we started to communicate back and forth. Liz, as well as my daughter, were instrumental in me creating a new life. They were powerful feminine role models who I could (and can) fall back on to this day.

In many ways, I could resent being born with gender issues as a problem I did not need, but what good would that do. I would never have had the chance to look deep inside me and create a new life which started with hidden glances in the mirror and morphed into a full-time life as a transfeminine person. I would never have thought it possible.

 

 

It's Just Life...Not a Joke

 

Image from Engin Akyurt on UnSplash.

It took me awhile before I finally came to the point in my gender transition when I gave up and thought the whole process was just life and not some sort of an evil joke.

I had struggled enough through the years when my male self-put up quite the struggle to exist at all. It was as if he was on a slippery slope towards losing his life altogether. To make matters worse as I always point out, my male side’s life was not always that bad. I had a long-term marriage, close friends and a good job to fall back on when I needed it.

Through it all, I thought it was only the draw of the feminine clothes which kept me longing for another trip to the mirror. I did not realize my feelings went much deeper than that. I was feeling life itself. It took me many years and even decades traveling a very curvy and bumpy gender path to realize where I was. Plus, many times, when I realized where I was, I became scared of losing everything. Falling off a gender cliff became a real possibility.

No matter how frightened I became, somehow, I kept on moving forward thanks mostly to the brief moments of gender euphoria I was feeling. The interludes helped me to determine if my dream goal of living a transfeminine life was possible at all. Back in those days, I was immersed in the struggle to present well as a woman and not much else. In fact, when I go back and read my earliest blog posts, I cannot believe how much they emphasize fashion and makeup. It all happened long before I needed to learn the layers of life a woman goes through to live her life. It was like my wife told me be man enough to be a woman. In those days I was not as I made weak attempts to live in both main binary genders.

In the short term, I did not understand what my wife meant as I became semi successful in presenting well in the world as a woman, but I had not paid my dues. I found I would have to wait until my wife had passed away before I could earn my way behind the feminine gender curtain to be allowed in by the ciswoman gatekeepers. It was about that time too when I began to understand my dream of ever becoming a fulltime transgender woman could be possible. It was much more than a hobby or part-time profession; it was my life. Then my realization led me to understand what my wife was talking about. I needed to set off on an all-out journey to live my best life as a transfeminine person. I even needed to understand questions about my own long held sexuality. If I lived as a woman, would I suddenly have to like men sexually? I just didn’t know until I set off to experiment.

Along the way, I did manage a couple dates with men which led to kissing but not much else and I did not feel much of a spark of any kind. On the other hand, I was surrounded by curious ciswomen (including lesbians) who wanted to socialize with me, so I was happy, I had always been a contradiction in terms socially, meaning I always enjoyed company even though I was shy and I could continue to feel that way. My life was beginning to come together in ways that I never imagined possible.

For example, I never imagined I would have been able to enjoy a small closely knit group of women friends who taught me more about life than they ever knew. Without any pressure, I was able to sit back and live vicariously through them and primarily how they lived their lives without the validation of men. It was not too long until they began to invite me along to their lesbian mixers, which I loved. I was even approached by other women and kissed. Which provided me with a huge amount of validation.

With my sexuality and life coming together, I could concentrate on enjoying my life on my new gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones went a long way in syncing up my internal and external self. Along with softening my skin and facial lines, my whole world was changing too. My emotions heightened as well as my senses as the world around me was softening. A perfect match to my rapidly expanding social life.

I will never know if waiting so long to transition into a feminine world was worth it or not because I had so many excuses why I never had done it. All I really know is, I did it before it was too late and have never looked back. That’s life.

 

 

At the Gender Crossroads

 

Image from Timelord on UnSplash

Many times, in my life, I have found myself at a gender crossroads.

Of course, like most of you, I learned from the situations I put myself into. As I always mention, the first one was when I needed to leave the comfort zone I had created with the mirror and attempt to live in the world as a transfeminine person. Initially, I was slapped down as people laughed and smirked at me. Until I learned to own who I was, which was a huge crossroad to negotiate.

Over the years, I began to think I had seen everything, but I had not. My main problem was I needed to make the final decision on which way I would go if I was faced with a making a final decision on which gender I would ever live as. Plus, I did not know if I even could live as a transgender woman. I kept searching and learning until I found I was not a man cross dressing as a woman; I was a woman cross dressing as a man.

I discovered also, I would need to transition more than once if I would ever try to make it to my dream life. Primarily when I learned it on the night I finally decided I would quit going out as a cross dresser and change my inner thought pattern. I was fed up with just trying to look like a woman and wanted to feel like one and see as if I could mingle with a group of ciswomen with no issues. I did make it with the other women and crossed another road I knew I could never go back. I mingled and socialized with other women and even used the women’s room with no pushback at all. It was amazing.

The next transition I need to make was when I needed to begin communicating with other women. It was never easy and a complete learning process. It does not take a genius to know women and men communicate on a different level. I knew well how to do it as a man, but I was a total novice as a woman. The first lesson I learned was I had to pause and listen to the other woman I was talking to. As a man, I could often make the first move and hope for the best. With women, I never did and often waited for a passive aggressive response. The real intent behind the smile often startled me until I caught on to the game.

All of it led me to the success I needed to this day to be successful with other women who indirectly try to bully me in their own way. An example was the ciswoman I wrote about in a recent post when she could not adjust to me being a parent not a dad to my daughter. In fact, I had a reader (Michelle) who responded to the woman and my return comment: “You handled it with so much more grace than I probably would’ve. And Liz’s quick response? Perfection. I’m so glad you still got to connect with your daughter and your grandchild, that’s what really matters. The rest is just noise.” Thanks for the comment! The woman was very noisy and was trying to bully me in her own way.

I was just fortunate that both Liz and I had been through similar situations, so we were ready. Somehow, the woman thought she had me over a gender barrel with the dad comment and that was when Liz took over. The woman asked Liz who I was to her and Liz said wife and the woman shut up.

My point it, both Liz and I had been through situations with other women such as her before, so we were able to handle the noise and go across yet another crossroad. By this time, I think there always will be another road to cross as I see my gender dream come together.

As Michelle said, the world is full of noise, and we must separate it into genders to make sense of it. Which would be another blog post altogether. In the meantime, for all of you approaching your own crossroads, try to feel secure on your journey and be careful. Especially these days when depending upon where you live transgender rights of any kind are in danger.

 

 

Just a Gender Detour

 

Image from Belinda Fewings
on UnSplash

After many years of looking back at my life, I began to think of my transgender experience as merely a detour in my life.

The problem was, there are many types of detours ranging from major closures to small delays. I found I needed to be careful with my navigation quite early when I was in the exploration stage of my mom’s clothes. One speed bump could lead me to an impromptu visit with a psychiatrist who knew nothing about gender issues and wanted to pronounce me mentally ill. Even back then, I knew I was not crazy for wanting to be a girl.

As the years progressed, I became increasingly skilled at sneaking around and dodging the detours in my life. Especially, the major ones such as becoming a parent. Even though the whole experience made me extremely proud, it still changed my life profoundly. I remember thinking at the time if it would affect my desire to be a woman but if anything, the birth process enhanced it. I was still in my detour mode, drinking heavily as I tried to find the nearest exit to help me.

To make up for the detours, I began to leave my closet and explore the world increasingly as a transfeminine person. The entire process meant taking chances such as leaving the house dressed as a woman and dodging many speed bumps along the way. It took me many more years before my path began to smooth out and I could see a clear road ahead. However, I still needed to be very careful with what I was doing. I had a long-term marriage and good job to protect among other male privileges. I was stuck between a giant rock and a hard place I needed to detour around. The rock was the better I did with my male life, and the hard place was my female side resented any incursion into her existence. To be sure, a very difficult place to be.

Then there were the times I crashed with my wife and was caught coming home late from one of my nightly gender adventures. A prime example was the night a lesbian was flirting with me and bought me a beer and said she should take me home with her. I was flattered and ended up staying too long and arriving home late. The ensuing fight lasted days after I hit that speed bump. Sadly, there were other times when I crashed on my own by driving an old sports car, which I bought that had the habit of suddenly not starting on occasion. Of course, one night when I was at a gay venue approximately twenty minutes from home, the car would not start. Fortunately, I had planned and left me enough time to call a tow truck and arrive home before my wife did. I had survived yet another close call.

My gender detours did not begin to go away until I started to really be allowed behind the gender curtain. It was after I had placed the gay venues firmly behind me in my rearview mirror and started to prove a fulltime life as a transgender woman was possible for me. The only problem was how fast I should dare to go. In those days, I still had my wife, family and job to worry about. As it turned out, destiny stepped in and showed me the way. Tragically my wife and several dear friends passed away leaving me alone to decide my future.  In addition, my road crew removed other detours such as employment when I discovered I could take my Social Security early and sell collectibles to make ends meet. My final indication I had a clear path ahead was when the Veterans’ Administration health care program approved gender affirming hormones for qualifying veterans. I was qualified and made a big jump towards my gender transition.

By this time, even I could see my detours towards living my dream were coming down, and I was in a now or never situation. I was sixty and had put up with my gender indecisions long enough. I went into a double retirement by quitting a job that I hated and gave away all my male clothes to charity.

Looking back, if I had known all the detours, I would have to take in my life just to survive, I wonder if I would have taken a different path. On the other hand, I was locked into a route I was taking and had no choice. Sure, I would have tried other ways around to get to where I was going. Such as attempting to come out quicker than I did and stop lying to myself. One way or another it is too late now to cry over spilled makeup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Being OK was not Good Enough

 

JJ Hart and wife Liz on right at Picnic.

I grew up in Ohio raised by greatest generation parents who lived through WWII and the great depression. Often, they were long on material support and short on emotional backing.

The main thing I remember from my childhood was, nothing was ever good enough. Take school for an example, while I excelled at subjects such as History and English, I really struggled with the Math and Sciences. Even still, I was expected to bring home straight A’s on my grade card every year. I had no excuses, especially when I went to high school where my mom was a teacher. She was pushing me hard for good grades to make it possible to get accepted by a good university.

I guess I became used to the pushing and figured nothing was ever good enough for myself and it carried over into my gender issues. Every time the mirror lied to me and said I was an attractive girl, I did not believe it and had to discover another way to prove it. Very quickly I learned I needed to replace the mirror with the public. Leaving my dark, lonely closet was the only way I could learn if I could ever achieve my dream of living a transfeminine life. It took every bit of courage I could muster to do it but if OK was not enough (by just standing in front of the mirror), I had to force myself into the world.

When I did force myself, it was like I was getting adjusted to a new pair of shoes. At first, I was tight and uncomfortable before I started to relax and began the basics of enjoying myself. I say I began the basics, because at every turn on my gender path, it seemed I was hitting a wall. Those were the times I needed to step back and decide if I was doing the right thing.

Those examples and failures proved to me I needed to keep going. Mainly because I felt so natural when I was pushing the envelope to leave my male self behind and live more and more as a transgender woman.

On occasion, proving OK was not enough and trashing the envelope almost got me into trouble. Mainly when I began to walk the fine line when I lost my male privileges. The most important being personal security. I was out and out lucky and escaped personal harm by men in the world. I wasn’t smart enough or experienced enough to sense the danger zones women are raised around. I learned quickly to park in well-lit areas or to ask for friends to walk me to my car. I did not want to be a statistic.

As I went through the process of living within the same parameter’s cisgender women have to face, I became a sponge of sorts. Nothing I did as I transitioned was ever good enough as my parents’ lessons oddly came back to help me. I was especially attentive when I went out to socialize with my women friends. They never realized what they did for me as I formed my own version of womanhood. In many ways I became a gender hybrid. It was impossible for me to leave decades of living an impacted male existence behind me, so I tried to take the good with me. For example, I was fortunate to have worked around women in the restaurant business for most of my life and I knew the trials and tribulations cisgender women faced in the world.

To this day, I have not shaken the idea of just being OK is just OK. I must be better just to be successful in the competitive world of women. I knew they could be competitive but not as much as I discovered when I finally had the chance to play in the girl’s sandbox. The whole process made me a better person in the long run, but it was surely difficult at times. Often brief moments of gender euphoria kept me going in my darkest gender hours. That was when I needed to provide electricity in my closet to give me the ability to see right from wrong.

Since my parents were my driving force behind my personality, I never had the chance to thank them for what they did. My Mom knew about my gender issues and chose to ignore them, and my dad never knew so I doubt if either would be pleased about their child raising outcome. They never knew how well OK was never enough worked out for me in my life.

 

 

Trans Girl on the "Down Low"

 

Image from Josh Withers
on UnSplash.

According to Wikipedia, down low is basically an African American term for gay cruising of other men. For this post, I am going to use it in another sense.

First of all, I need to take you all back to when I first considered my down low to be as I cheated on my wife. But I was doing it by cheating on her with another woman, which happened to be me. Of course, nothing made what I was doing right but I could not stop doing it as it had a powerful draw on me. Those were the exciting days of leaving the gay bar scene behind me and begin exploring the world of straight bars as well as lesbian venues.

Very soon, my success turned to failure as I began to feel guilty about lying to my wife about what I was doing. I tried my best to rationalize my thoughts because after all, I was having no physical contact with anyone. Male or female so I could not be accused of cheating, but I still was. The reason was, I had made an agreement with her that I could go out in public several days a week. Providing I never left the house cross-dressed. It was a sacred promise she never forgot and one I could not keep once I began to develop a transfeminine life.

Very soon, I felt as if I was still on the down low every time I snuck out of the house dressed as a woman. As I was basically doing as much as possible. The reason was, I was learning so much about the feminine world I had always dreamed about, I could never turn around and go back to my male life.

It was more exciting to stay on the down low until I could figure out what to do about the life I was leading. In fact, I because the more I experienced the new world, the more natural I began to feel as I was able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. In many ways, I began to feel so natural as a transgender woman, it was difficult to ever return to being a man at all. I had to consciously tell myself I still was a part time man when I worked. So much so, I was beginning to be called ma’am when sir would have worked for the occasion. Still, I was secretly overjoyed when it happened.

Sadly, through it all, my marriage really suffered. Mostly because I was and am a very honest person and hated lying to my wife about what was really going on with me. Often, I learned when I lied one small time, I would have to lie more often to make up for it. An example was one year when we took a week for vacation and headed north to try to escape the heat. About two days into the vacation, I became increasingly mean and irritable because I really wanted to be spending my time traveling as a woman. Finally, my poor wife had had enough and asked me what was wrong. I lied again and internalized my feelings enough to get by, and we could eventually enjoy ourselves. Deep down, I hated myself for it.

Life began to finally slow down for me as I reached certain milestones in my transfeminine life. I was beginning to communicate with the world and started to feel much better about myself and at the same time my down low activities slowed down also. At least to a point where I could control them. It was around this time too, when my wife’s health began to really decline. It did not know it then, but she only had approximately six months to live. For some reason, I decided to go on a major purge and throw most of my feminine things away and went all the way to growing my version of a beard. It turned out, I did the best I could for the remainder of her life.

When she passed, of course I was tragically shocked and lonely, so I reached inward. The beard went away quickly, and I was able to restock my clothes and makeup. In no time at all, my inner feminine self was coming to my rescue. I began to retrace my steps I had taken as a novice transgender woman, and reestablished myself fairly quickly in the venues I was a regular in.

I was totally freed from the down low experiences from my past and could concentrate on going out to being alone. In other words, I wanted to be around other people. I just did not want them approaching me.

It worked in the short term until I began to socialize with and started to build a small circle of friends who knew nothing of my previous self. I never had had to go on the down low again.

 

 

A Trans Girl and her Hair

 

JJ Hart and Mega Hair. Most of
it is tied up behind my head.

Certainly, one aspect of life transgender women share with cisgender women is the love of their hair.

Very early in my life and for years following, like so many novice cross dressers, I had no access (financial or otherwise) to buying a wig, nor did my mom wear one. I was stuck wearing a towel around my head and imagining I had beautiful flowing hair.

I needed to wait until my college years before I could afford to buy a wig, which supposedly was for my fiancé who I desperately wanted to not like it. To me, it was long blond, thick and beautiful, and I couldn't wait to try it on. I was still firmly in the closet to her in those days, so I needed to figure out an excuse to wear it.

Finally, I could not take the pressure any longer and came out of my closet to her and asked her to dress me head to toe as a woman with (you guessed it), that beautiful hair to finish off my outfit. As it turned out, that one day of satisfaction of cross dressing would come back to haunt me later. To make a long story short, she held my gender issues against me and threatened to leave me if I did not tell the military draft board, I was gay when they came after me during the Vietnam War. We broke up when I refused her demands and fortunately, I got to keep the wig. Years later, I found I received the better end of the deal.

After I was discharged from the military, I did have the financial resources to purchase more wigs and was able to be successful on occasion when I did not simply try to buy the longest hair in the wig shop, I went to. I normally traveled at least fifty miles to get to a quality venue to purchase a new wig. I was obsessed with my hair; it was the crowning glory of all the work I put into my fashion and makeup. As with many other aspects of learning to blend in with the other women around me, I took the wig obsession too far. I was beginning to be involved with the public far too often to change wigs every day. They were beginning to know me looking a certain way and I needed to stay on course to carve out a niche as the new transfeminine person I wanted to be. My clown wigs, as I called them, went into a storage bin, only to be seen again on Halloween…maybe.

The biggest jump from there came when I started to grow an amazing amount of my own hair when I started gender reaffirming therapy or HRT. The prescribing doctor told me that I would grow a lot of hair, and he was right. He noticed at the age of sixty, I had no signs of male pattern baldness which I carry over to this day.

Another person who noticed my hair was my daughter and for my first birthday following coming out to her, she offered me a trip to her upscale beauty salon for a color and style of my new hair which was all mine! Naturally, I was scared to death to go but the experience opened so many doors for me. The main door was the understanding of why so many women make a priority of going to a hairdresser to look good. As I soaked up the atmosphere at the salon, I thought I could skip my daily dosage of estradiol tablets I was on at the time were not needed because of all the estrogen in the air. Even though I was still frightened, I still loved it as I was the center of attention for my hairdresser and my daughter who was hovering nearby.

From that point onward, wigs were in my past and I needed to concentrate on my own hair. An immediate problem was I couldn't see the back of my head and did not have a wig head to rely on to turn the hair around and see the back. It did not take me long to master the art of holding another mirror up, catching the reflection in the main mirror so I could see the back of my head. Initially, I compared it with seeing the dark side of the moon.

I know my experience with hair turned out to be very lucky in my world of genetics. While I did not have to put up with expensive wigs, going to a hairdresser is certainly not cheap. Plus, for me at least, I think the ability to go without wigs was one of the most important aspects of me presenting well as a woman.

Maybe it was karma making up for all those years I had to have short hair, when I was finally allowed to grow it out. Whatever the case, I share with women everywhere, trans or not, the importance of having good hair. Plus, you can still have great hair with your wigs, if anyone asks if it is your own hair, you can truthfully answer, yes! I bought it.

 

Jumping Through Hoops

 

Image from Jennifer Mela444
on UnSplash. 

The more involved I became in the transfeminine world, the more I found myself jumping through hoops. Many times, in my heels.

It seemed, every time I became comfortable enough in my transgender womanhood, something would come along to set me back. Sadly, most of my setbacks came at the hands of my deceased second wife. She was accepting me as a cross dresser but recoiled and drew a line in the sand when it came to any idea, I was transgender and wanted to move forward to gender affirming hormones. As much as I wanted to argue (or plead) my case, she still said she did not want to be married to a woman.

It was my fault I did not have the courage to tell her she already was married to a woman. Like it or not. So, since I lacked the courage to follow my gender instincts, I did the worst possible thing and tried to hide all my activities such as leaving the house dressed as a woman. One of the things I promised I would never do. But, as hard as I tried to hide it, she always would somehow catch me coming home when I was cutting my time away too closely. To save what was left of our twenty-five-year marriage, I went as far as seeking therapy. I went to therapy mainly to provide my wife with an idea I was jumping through another hoop to save our relationship.

I have therapy to thank for helping me to strengthen my mental health, but my wife never knew it was not helping our marriage. In fact, one therapist even told me she could do nothing about my desire to be a woman at all. Leaving me with no hoop to jump through at all, and I would have to find another way. In the meantime, I knew just sitting around the house admiring myself in the mirror was not going to cut it in any way. Once I had jumped the hoop and was successful in the public’s eye, there was no way I could ever go back to my old life.

Deep down I knew, I had to keep pushing forward as I set gender goals for myself such as taking the giant step of leaving the gay bars and seeing if I could be accepted in sports bars. When I found out I could, I was ecstatic and kept on going. However, through it all, jumping through hoops was never easy as I kept on doing stupid things such as overextending the water-balloon breast forms I made in my pre-silicone days. Of course, I had one of them break and created a mini flood at one venue I was a regular in. As I said, I needed to very quickly upgrade to silicone breast forms to prevent any future disasters. I had enough other problems to worry about. Such as, what was the new person I was creating be like.

Suddenly, I was beginning to understand when my wife called me the pretty, pretty princess and told me being a woman was more than just looking like one. Most importantly, I was in the middle of learning exactly what she told me. When I was going to my venues and socializing as a transgender woman, I was jumping all the hoops I needed to get by. More precisely, I was learning the layered life a woman lives when men think they are running the show. On more than a few nights, I became so tired of jumping hoops, I just gave up and headed home exhausted.  Along the way, I was facing passive aggression from ciswomen who really resented my presence at all. I learned to leave the other women behind and move on to people who at the least did not dislike me. Life was too short to waste it on bigots and haters.

Tragically, my wife passed away before she was around to meet the new and improved me. It would have been interesting to see if she recognized I took her up on her advice. I tool a crash course on her instructions that a woman was far more than appearance. My period of exploration was intense and to the point and I could deflect my future any longer. I needed to take it upon myself to finally achieve my lifelong dream of living a transfeminine life.

My hoops became so much more real than the earrings I was wearing. I was finally in the process of paying my dues my wife had talked about. What she never told me was, I would have to be allowed behind the feminine gender curtains to really could do it. One led to the other and while it was never easy, similar to jumping all the hoops I needed to jump, I made it. Heels and all.

 

A New Day

 

JJ Hart, Dining Out. 

This post is a little shorter than the recent ones I have posted but no less important and it involves last night's trip to a restaurant venue we always go to.

It seems, every day is always a new day for me. Last night, my wife Liz met her son for dinner at our favorite restaurant where we dine approximately every other week.

As luck would have it, since the venue is large, we have had the same server several times before. About three visits ago, I wore my new Margaritaville T-shirt I bought during our winter trip to the Florida Keys. Even though I thought it was appropriate to drink a Margarita when our regular server promptly called me the dreaded “sir” word. Sadly, my Jimmy Buffett Margaritaville shirt was not feminine enough for me to pass the gender test. So, I needed to relegate it to just wearing around the house. I was sad.

Last night was different. I wore one of my most feminine lace trimmed tops and our regular server seemed a little gender confused but did not call me “sir” and I was satisfied. Also, one of my favorite things about the venue is I never had any problems with being mis-gendered by anyone. I could just relax and be myself. It was one of the first venues where I could sit and ponder the old days when I struggled to exist as a transgender woman at all. I was revitalized every time I went. Which made it a new day.

In many ways the process taught me how far I have come in living my gender dream, but in so many ways can not give up or relax the process. Even though I don’t wear a lot of makeup, I need to make sure I wear the basics every time I face the public. No pun intended. The moment I let my guard down; I could be reverted to the “sir” word I worked so hard to put behind me.

In many ways, when I transitioned from a cross dresser to full time transgender woman, I knew every day would have to be the new normal for me. There would be no more planning ahead three days or so for the special days when I could face the public as a transfeminine woman. I would be doing it every day. I went into a major wardrobe expansion mode. Just to keep up being in a new gender world. As soon as I dropped my guard at all, I would risk slipping back into the world I waited so long and worked so hard to get out of. Fortunately, I was very paranoid about doing it and I was able to translate my fear into positive feelings about what I was trying to do.

There were many steps backwards on my journey to discover how uplifting and pleasurable my life could be at the age of sixty when I seriously began my transition. The longer I was able to live this new life, every day turned out to be exciting and I was less vulnerable to outside threats to going back to my ingrained old male life. Eventually, life took care of itself as I found new friends and part of my family accepted me. I was able to live long enough and escape the self-destructive behavior I exhibited. Life was just a huge circle, and I was on the slippery side of the circle. I could risk everything to selfishly live my life and make everyday a new one. Or stay the same and wither away.

Naturally, making every day a new day was a challenge. Waking up every day addressing a new life was all I asked for and all I ultimately received. It was who I really was and proved to be a wonderful overall experience of gender transition.

Tomorrow Sometimes Comes

 

Image from Mark Attree on UnSplash.

I finally knew tomorrow was here when I started gender affirming hormones or HRT as it also is known as.

It was always my dream to try hormones as a natural progression towards my ultimate transition. By the time I sought out medical care to help my hormonal goals, I had pretty much exhausted my old cross dressing bucket list of situations I could put my femininized self into. I even went as far as pushing myself into situations I should not have been in. But I learned how far I could go.

Through it all, I still did not know how far I could go or have to. Would something come along to change my course or ultimately change my mind. It turned out, hormone therapy turned out to be the salvation to my problems I thought it would be. Quickly, I moved from a minimum dosage to an amount of the meds which would really produce changes. It was as if my body was taken to the HRT as naturally as it could and provided me with yet another what took you so long as I suffered through changes such as my first hot flashes as I was going through puberty again. What took you so long, echoed through the recesses of my mind.

The biggest problem was I was going through all these dramatic changes alone. All my Ciswoman friends would just smile knowingly and say welcome to their world if I brought anything up. So, I did not. I brought back my old unwanted male art form of internalizing my feelings once again. In my mind, it was a shame I could not share the beautiful changes I was going through with no one else. This all happened before my current wife Liz, and I became serious a decade ago.

I continued to realize my tomorrow was here when I was forced to stop wearing male clothes all together and donate mine to the area thrift stores. My protruding breasts were the first thing which gave me away, along the fact my rapidly growing hair was already long enough to wear in a ponytail. My body was telling me it was time to put all my male privilege aside and face the world as a transgender woman. Which meant several things. The main one was I could no longer pick and choose where I wanted to do and how I wanted to dress as a casual cross dresser. Everyday was important and I needed to plan ahead if I was ever going to be successful in finding and living my dream of living as a woman. After going through the motions for nearly fifty years, tomorrow was here.

Fortunately, by this time in my life, I had developed a strong set of allies who had only ever known the new me, so I did not have to worry about my old male self-coming into play. My friends, along with my daughter and Liz formed a strong bond for me and I was able to experience uniquely feminine experiences such as beauty salons with them. In many ways, they made up for the female peer group I never had growing up. My daughter even asked me to speak in front of her temple for my oldest grandsons Bar-Mitzvah not long after tomorrow came and Liz took me on traveling tour excursions as a transgender woman I would have never done without her. You could say, once I got started, tomorrow came crashing down on me. I was receiving what I had asked for all those years. Destiny was telling me, you wanted it, now you got it.

Of course, then I found how the life of women everywhere is more layered and difficult than a male existence. My daughter and I are prime examples when we needed to work together to explain my gender transition to three young grandchildren. We came up with a new name for me which reflected a family background, and the remainder of the process was amazingly easy.

Ironically, my brother came along to ruin my good karma by refusing to back my transition with his wife’s family who are a bunch of right-wing haters. I guess I need to see how the other half lived when it came to the transgender community personally.

As I said, my tomorrow waited long enough to arrive, which was my fault and could only be described as an exciting process when it got here. At least though, I did not crash and burn following a bumpy landing on the runway. I was able to still have enough time to live the life I had always dreamed of in my transgender womanhood. My tomorrows proved to be worthwhile as I lived them out.