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| Image form Vicky Hladynet on UnSplash. |
Gender euphoria for me has been a double-edged sword.
The sharp edge of the blade has been the powerful elixir I
gained from when I was successful in my early attempts to cross-dress
successfully and enter the world. I was well aware of the feelings from my initial
view of myself as a perceived pretty girl in my home mirror. Well before I had
the courage to leave the house.
On the other hand, the dull side of the blade was the quick
coming down I needed to go through after my successful journeys into the world
of ciswomen and cismen. But I found early that the women were the ones I needed
to concentrate on because they were curious about me. Ciswomen were the most
likely to pick me out of a crowd and notice that I was not all that I seemed to
be.
To combat my severe ups and downs, I needed to set up and
stay on a steady diet of cross-dressing activities. To do my best to always have
the joy of gender euphoria to get me by the worst of my gender dysphoric
issues. Often, my rhythmic cross-dressing adventures were the only thing which
kept me going in life when I became so depressed with a fatalistic “Why me”
mentality.
As I learned later in life from one of my therapists, I was
a bi-polar depressive which added to my problems of feeling down. When I was down,
I was really down and had to force myself out of bed for days at a time. When I
got the professional opinion about my depression issues, I was relieved because
it was one less thing I could blame on my gender issues. Then I could
concentrate on my sword again along with its ups and downs. What I did was
expand my ups by doing more when I was out in the world exploring to see if I
really was a transgender woman or a serious cross-dresser or what.
When I was out at the bigger shopping venues in nearby
Columbus, Ohio, I learned I could be accepted as just another well-dressed
feminine shopper looking for gifts from the specialty stores, I went to.
Perhaps because I was trying to soothe part of my guilt of not telling my
second wife what I was doing, I always tried to buy a little gift for her from
one of the big gardening stores I knew about and visited. She was a very
dedicated gardener and for a change I could make her happy. Along with me at
the same time. At least I was trying to do something positive with my gender euphoria
before I started to go home and crash back into my old unwanted male life.
Sadly, after I crashed, I wanted more of my feminine world
and when I did not get it I tried to internalize my feelings which only made my
life worse. Since I was suffering, I was selfish and wanted everyone around me
to suffer too. It got so bad that I nearly lost jobs over my attitude and
probably should have lost my marriage too, if my wife was not so strong. That also
had its good and bad points. The good was that when we were good, we were very
good and when we were bad because of my gender dysphoria, we were very bad. Mainly
because my wife had everything as a woman that I envied and I resented her for
it. The worst part was she should not have had to suffer along with me on my
path of severe ups and downs because I was incapable of explaining either the
ups or the downs of my life when I had them. One thing was for sure; the worst
move I ever made was internalizing my feelings from my second wife.
To help my ups, I continued a serious program to learn if I
really wanted to risk my life as I knew it to live a transfeminine life. How
could I risk all that I had built up as a man for such a selfish move which
would have far reaching effects past just me. Including my marriage, my family
and my employment which were all doing well except for my marriage. I felt as
if I was on a run-away train on a dead-end track with my life if I ever faced
my truth about who I really was.
At the same time, my downs just had to be worth all the ups I
was experiencing. My gender tipping point was rapidly reaching the critical
point of no return as I was increasingly carving out a new and exciting life as
a trans woman. My confidence was staying at an all-time high and suddenly my dreams
might be able to become a reality. The only downs I was experiencing happened
when my wife was still alive and I was feeling like I cheated on her with
myself every time I snuck out into the world as the new me. I think deep down,
I knew our relationship was not going to be sustainable, but I never thought it
would be because she would die ahead of me. Naturally, her death hit me hard
and at the age of fifty-five I was going back to my drawing board. This time to
do much more than re-work how I looked as a woman. Now I needed to determine
how I wanted to live out the remainder of my life.
Even with the obvious answer staring me in the face, I
managed to still ignore my reality and stumble forward with one foot firmly
planted in each of the binary genders. Finally, my male foot began to slip, and
I quit fighting the obvious. I was never meant to be a man at all, and I was a
woman living a lie and living like a man. When I did, almost all my depression
went away, and I was free to live the life I was always destined to live.
As always, thank you for reading along with my lifetime of
gender experience. I hope I can help you and comments are appreciated!
