Gender Lost and Found

 

Image from Ewoud Van Der
Brandon on UnSplash. 

On occasion, I think you must hit rock bottom in your male life before you can begin to build a new feminine one. I equate it to my own transgender lost and found in my life. Before I get into what I found when I started my path to my dreams, I decided I had to have a basic knowledge of where I wanted to go.

Seeing as how I was born into the pre-internet times when information came in magazines arriving in the mail, I was stuck in the “Transvestia” world of Virginia Prince if I wanted any information at all about transvestites or cross dressers, as Virginia called us and oh yes, we had to be heterosexual to join. Through it all, I was intrigued by the pictures of attractive men dressed as women, as well as the entire world of mixers you could go to. If you happened to live close enough to one to go which I did. Ironically, the mixers I attended did not do me much good because the only mixing which happened involved my brain when it was all over. Often, I left more confused about where I wanted to be with my gender struggles than when I started.

None of my searching was helping much and my attitude about myself was sinking to an all-time low. I felt lost and forsaken in my life and felt sorry for myself because I was the one who wanted to do away with being male and assume a feminine existence. It took me a while, but I finally backed off from being a victim and my ideas of whom I really was started to improve. I had hit rock bottom and was beginning to improve, which helped primarily my fragile mental health. My goal was to close my transgender lost and found department for good.

Sadly, I was a little ahead of my time to closing my department because I still had so much more to learn about existing and competing in a world run by ciswomen. With or without men. I labored under the impression if I could present well enough as a woman with my makeup and fashion, that would be all I needed to do to enter the world as a trans woman. I totally ignored all the layers of life a female needs to go through to be socialized into a full-fledged woman and I was painfully aware not all females make the transition. And even more aware of the path I would have to take to make my own transition because I had even farther to go to make it to my goal. I needed to be even better than the average ciswoman to be able to be accepted in the world and be allowed behind the “sacred” gender curtain which women used to provide a layer of protection from men.

On my path to going behind the gender curtain, I had at least one big stop sign I needed to work my way around. It was proving how badly I wanted to give up all my male privileges and start all over again. I just did not magically appear in the ciswoman’s world asking for admittance without paying my dues. My transgender lost department was closed as a man, and I found I had done the right thing by pursuing a feminine life. My only problem was that I was impatient about the road I was going down and constantly I wanted more. Before I knew it, I was even getting ahead of myself in the plan I had set up for my grand gender transition. Here I was busily carving out a new feminine life where no one knew me as a man while at the same time I still had a loving wife, family and good job to deal with because I knew I could lose them all when I found my transgender self completely.

My problem also was, I was filling out my gender workbook faster than I ever imagined I could and my plans were coming into focus. No longer did I have just dreams of the possibility of transition into a feminine world, I had the reality of doing it. My lost and found was gone from my male side and he had finally begun to see the reality of his situation and gave in to the feminine side of life which was taking over for better or for worse.

It was at that point in my life when I pursued my ultimate dream of pursuing HRT or gender affirming hormones as the next step in my transition to being a transfeminine person. I went to a doctor for a physical and was approved to start a minimum dosage of the precious new hormones I was taking. Almost immediately, my body began to feel the changes as if it had always been meant for them to happen. The changes always take a whole blog post to describe, but to put it simply, my internal changes such as my new emotions would fill a book. The external changes became quickly obvious too, as my hair grew along with my breasts and my skin began to soften along with the angles of my face. I can only describe the changes as amazing and magical as they made living as a man impossible to me anymore. I had to close my male life and never look back.

I can not oversimplify it enough about all the stress and work I put into to close my transgender lost and found for good. To be sure, it was a labor of love to do it, and I would have never had it any other way. If Indeed I had another choice anyhow. Once I determined I never really did, I could relax and get rid of my guilt about doing away with all the male privilege I had worked so hard to earn. In the end though, it was worth the struggle.

 

 

Is Your Life Running Away

 

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on UnSplash. 

Running more and more over the years described my life on so many levels. Most all because of my desire to be a woman. Over the years, I have moved many times, mostly because of a search for better jobs along with cross-dressing opportunities. I thought moving from my conservative smallish Ohio town to the huge metro New York City area would provide me with a more liberal base of people to work with. Which just wasn’t true, I found for the most part, I was still hiding my desire to go public in my skirts and makeup most of the time.

Mainly, it was a learning experience until I began to get older and all of a sudden saw time was moving away from me. Maybe you could call it my transgender biological clock. No one lives forever, and I still needed a chance to live out a chance to live life as a transfeminine person before I died. My new attitude added a certain importance into learning what I could about living as a woman. Or what I like to call, slipping behind the gender curtain to see how the other half really lived alongside a world of men who thought they ran the show. After several attempts of running straight ahead into failure in the public’s eye, I began to get it right with my presentation. Allowing me to explore more the true world of ciswomen who had carved out successful lives for themselves.

When I did all of that, I ran directly into communication problems. I will forever remember the first night when I attempted to add my thoughts to a group of men, I somehow found myself a part of. Suddenly, I found myself being totally ignored in the conversation and I needed to leave. There were pros and cons to what happened I found because the positive was I had presented as a woman well enough to be ignored but the negative was the whole affair marked the first time; I felt a major part of my intelligence along with my male privilege was being taken away from me. For the longest time, I felt the impact of running directly into a gender wall.

Happily, I did not receive any black eyes I needed to cover up with makeup from the running collisions I was having with the public as I set my high heels in motion to conquer my little part of the world. The personal stubbornness I had to succeed came back to hurt and help me when I moved forward in the feminine world of ciswomen. It hurt me when what was left of my old male self-tried his best to dictate how I should look for the world, which led to many fashion disasters. It helped me when I needed to pick myself up after getting knocked down again and again as I was trying to see what I would have to do to be a successful transgender woman. When I was able to put all my old self behind me was when I was able to finally see my future and run to it successfully.

The whole process of male to female gender transition was very exhausting as I tried to live in both major gender binary worlds for a short while. I always mention it to pass along a warning to all you who are thinking of trying it too. In the short term, painting yourself into a gender corner you cannot get out of is no fun unless for some reason you want it to be. For me, all it did was wreck my already fragile mental health situation. Since I already had been diagnosed as being Bi-Polar, I was already trying to keep one clinical depression controlled when I had another creeping up on me when I could not express my feminine self. I needed a lot of good therapy to separate the two potential huge problems. When I was doing it, I was still running as fast as I could to continue to chase my dream of living as a successful trans woman. Which would ultimately lead me back to just being me.

The frustrating part was the running target I was aiming for kept moving on me. Once I thought I had all I needed to play in the girl’s sandbox safely, I discovered another aspect of a woman’s life I never considered. Mainly because I was naïve and knew a woman’s life was different than a man’s, but I was not prepared to find out exactly how different. All the varying layers of a ciswoman’s life really got to me for a while until I began to get my gender workbook filled with relevant new ideas on how I was supposed to live. In other words, all the doodling in my workbook started to make sense and I could see all the running I was doing to catch up coming to an end.

Either way I was getting into shape from all the running I was doing, or I just began to give it all up as I began to become much more successful in the world as a transgender woman. At this point too, the HRT or gender affirming hormones I was approved to take helped to calm me down and sync up my internal and external selves. Internally I began to feel emotions I never knew I had and externally I was helped along by softer skin, longer hair and my own breasts. Among all the other changes the hormones brought about. I just wished I could have started HRT earlier in my life because the changes felt so natural and I would not have to spend my whole life running from an invisible foe, myself.

Now in my advanced senior years, I am finishing out my workbook on its final pages. My final transition is just being the true me I always was meant to be. Deep down, I was never meant to be a runner after all.

 

 

 

The Power of Allies

 

Image from Peyton Sickles
on UnSplash. 

I don’t know if I could have ever made it to my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman, without the help of strong allies.

There were many times when I had hit a stopping point on my gender path and was clueless on which way to go. Mainly because I was attempting to find myself as a woman so I could continue to live after a failed suicide attempt.

I have several examples. The first of which came when I first started to go out and secretly wanted to find a social life as a trans woman because I was so lonely after my wife of twenty-five years unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. In the past I had considered myself a social person, and it hurt deeply to be lonely. At first, I went online and tried the usual methods of establishing a contact or two to date but I ran into the usual problems of inviting all sorts of trash into my life, which included many no shows when I had arranged to meet someone in public. Which was the only way I would do it for personal safety reasons.

In the meantime, I was fortunate to escape the gay venues I was going to (where they thought I was just another drag queen) and establish myself in a couple of the big sports bars I used to go to when I was a man. Places where I could drink pints of beer and watch sports on big screen televisions. Ironically, being alone in one of these venues led me directly to my first two powerful allies.

The first happened to be the mother of one of the bartenders who set up a casual date between us one night where she worked. It turned out we got along really well, shared the same interests and set up future dates, so my end to the extreme loneliness I was feeling was looking like it might me coming to an end. I was further encouraged not long after that when one night a woman came in to pick up her to go food order and suddenly slid her phone number down the bar to me, to my amazement. Not long after that, I kept the number and had the courage to call it.

From that point forward, the three of us made an inseparable trio as we watched sports and drank beer in the venues we met in. Plus, as it turned out, the two women turned out to be lesbians which put a unique perspective to my life as I was regularly attending lesbian mixers and learning any thing I could about the culture which was so new to me. As we socialized together, I was learning as much as I could about being a woman. The first major lesson I learned was that I did not need validation from a man to be a woman which was a relief because of two reasons. The first being that I had very little interactions with men at all primarily I think because I was not attractive enough. The second of which was I really did not want to deal with all the drama I knew men can bring from all the time I spent as a man. I knew how to deal with ciswomen all my life and felt more comfortable with the drama women bring. I always had more women friends than close male friends.

The two most profound allies were yet to enter my life at that point.

As part of my online searches, I did have one response from a Wiccan/lesbian woman in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. She told me I had sad eyes from my online picture, and we slowly began to correspond by text messages before I felt comfortable enough to talk to her in person. Finally, I got over my shyness and after talking to each other I decided to ask her out on a date. She accepted, and we decided to meet halfway between our homes with friends and go to a drag show at a well-known gay bar. We ended up having a great time and decided to set up another date. This time with my other friends at a women’s roller derby event. I was in gender heaven to be able to go with three other women to one place and enjoy myself for once. My help from allies was coming through for me.

At the same time, I needed to come out to what was left of my blood family. My parents and most of the rest of the family had passed away, leaving only my daughter (only child) and my only brother to come out too. I thought at the time I would have problems with my brother and hopefully not my daughter and I was right. My daughter’s only real reaction was why she was the last to know and my brother totally rejected me by not inviting me to the annual Thanksgiving Day dinner. He sold me out to his rightwing religious in-laws, and I have not spoken to him since which has been over a decade now. I was fortunate when my allies (daughter) and Liz stepped up to help me in my time of need. Not only was I invited to one Thanksgiving family dinner, but I was also invited to two. Even though I was happy to have someplace to go for the holidays, it was quite stressful for me to meet people at my daughter’s in-laws who had known me for years as a man but also meet Liz’s dad and brother for the first time.

The best part of having all of these strong allies on my side was they expected me to be myself. In fact, I was still on the fence of living as both binary genders as I met Liz. It was not too far into our long relationship that she told me the final words to kickstart my final plunge to a feminine life. One day Liz told me what I was waiting for, she had seen both sides of me and had only seen the female side, nothing of the old unwanted masculine me. That was it, I agreed and went about giving away what was left of my male wardrobe and never looked back as I started HRT or gender affirming hormones to further femininize my exterior self.

Along the way, I tried to explain to all my ciswomen allies how much they had done for me, but they would not take any credit. They never understood how much they did to help me become the happy transgender woman I am today. And, by the way, Liz and I finally got married after eight years and now have been together for over a decade.

 

 

Buckle Up for the Ride

Image from Inis Piazzi on
UnSplash.

I am biased I know but I think negotiating a full-fledged trip through the gender frontier from one side to the other side is one of the most difficult things a human can do.

Unless you are blessed with an overabundance of feminine qualities and characteristics, you very much start out from point zero with your femininization project and it shows. I am an example as I thought I looked good with my tight clothes and makeup which would have looked good on a clown in drag in the circus. In all fairness, it took me awhile to catch up because my gender workbook was blank and I had no one to help me fill it out. No overly concerned mom to tell me what not to do with makeup and no peer group of girls to coach me along. It was all me, and it showed. Except in the mirror which kept on lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl.

It wasn’t until I began going out into the world did, I find out how wrong the mirror was. Numerous times, just after the mirror told me I looked great, I was bounced by an unforgiving public back to the safety of my closet. Through it all, some people were so cruel with their comments, they sent me home in tears. It was during those dark days when I really had to buckle up and decide what I was doing was right. Somehow, deep down inside, I knew I was right and I needed to figure out what exactly I was doing wrong when I cross -dressed and went out.

What happened was, I had the where with all to look around at all the ciswomen around me and notice what they were doing. By doing so, I noticed a few of the women were as big as I was, so size was not the issue which was dooming me to being laughed at. It was how I moved and how I interacted with the world which mattered. Plus, it helped that my makeup skills had begun to dramatically improve. I quit feeling sorry for myself and started to fill out my own gender workbook without being a victim. Because I was stuck with a testosterone poisoned body and somehow, I needed to work my way around it.

I started by going on a diet which I lost fifty pounds on and started to take better care of my skin after I shaved, so I used less makeup and found less was actually more. At the same time, I began to haunt the local thrift stores for just the right piece of clothing which I could buy which flattered my new slimmer figure. I still had my male torso with the broad shoulders, and I had to dress my way around them. I discovered new favorite outfits with loose flowing tops combined with denim skirts that worked really well for me.

Little did I know, all this progress I was making was placing me on a one-way track towards an on-coming train. And that train was how I was going to communicate with the world which suddenly accepted me? I was extremely shy and had a difficult time communicating with the world anyhow and now I had to add on a new totally foreign language to deal with, the language of ciswomen. Initially, I was too petrified to say anything but then slowly gained the confidence to shyly join in conversations. It was so new and difficult that I needed to really buckle up to do it. I found if I did not, I would destroy everything I sat out to do by appearing mean or worse yet, bitchy. The last thing I wanted.

Once I buckled down and put my fear of communication behind me, my world opened wide with new vistas of gender enjoyment. It turned out that what I said was more important than how I said it and with that knowledge, life became easier as a transgender woman in the world for the first time.

No matter where you are in your gender journey, look ahead and not behind you. Sure, you can learn from the past, but it should not dominate you and stop you from proceeding along your way. Keep in mind, you are on a very difficult journey with major life risks at hand such as spouses, family, friends and jobs. Also beware of the trap I fell into when my second wife accepted me as a cross dresser but then completely rejected me as a transgender woman. She was correct in thinking there were vast differences between the two. Just putting on a dress and makeup just did not solve any of my gender problems anymore. I increasingly wanted more of life in the feminine world and was buckling up to get it by wanting to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. I was eventually approved for the dramatic changes the hormones made but sadly my wife passed away before she could experience any of the changes with me.

In my long life, it has been a rarity for me to experience firsthand any trans woman or trans man who has had a smooth, uneventful journey.  So, if you are just considering starting, or just beginning your gender path, it is best to prepare for a bumpy ride, so buckle up tight for the trip. Undoubtedly, it will provide you with setbacks and surprises you never expected. Like I always say, the gender trip is like a rollercoaster at a big amusement park, it is worth the price of admission if you let it be. As I said, just be sure to buckle up for the ride of your life. It is one most humans never get to take.

Think of it this way, make your buckle part of your fashion accessory and everyone can admire it.

 

 

The Dream was Never Out of Sight

 

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Vikrev on UnSplash

On occasion, I write about my ultimate dream of someday living as a fulltime transgender woman. As is the case with any dream, making it a reality is often very difficult, and it forever remains a dream. The main problem I had was having the confidence to move ahead on my seemingly endless gender path. Somedays, it was like I was walking on air in my high heels and others, it was like I was walking through quicksand. I would be confidently clicking away in my heels until I hit an unseen crack in the sidewalk and almost broke my ankle, which was a prime example of my life at the time.

Even on the days when I was doing my best impression of a linebacker in heels, I tried to keep my head up and look to the future. Hoping for a better day when I could do a better job of presenting in the world as my dream woman. Growing up in my male life, I was accused continually by my parents of never finishing a task. It turned out, working towards my dream of crossing the gender border was the first real project I never quit on. Take my use of makeup for example, I would not rest and kept experimenting until I got it right. I became so good that my second wife would break down and ask me for advice on how to do her makeup. I don’t think she ever knew most of my makeup knowledge came from the night I gathered the courage to take off my wig and makeup and have a true professional redo my face and more importantly explain to me what he was doing as he did it.

Those were my shallow days of thinking being a transgender woman just meant looking like one. As I was told many times by my second wife, I made a terrible woman because I had not paid my dues to achieve my own womanhood. The whole process set my dreams way behind because there was little to no way of me sliding behind the gender curtain to gain the right to play in the girls’ sandbox. How could I ever achieve my dream, if no one would let me in was the frustrating question which I had over and over again. In the meantime, I was stuck cross-dressing in front of the mirror and keeping my dreams alive and knowing deep down someday I would achieve my own unique transfeminine womanhood.

The main problem I had was gaining the confidence I needed to keep my dream alive because deep down I had doubts about whether I could ever make it. Because at the time, all I had were the annual Halloween parties I went to. Even the parties were a struggle on occasion as I needed to figure out my “costume.” I went from thinking that sexy was the way to go, all the way to trying to fool the other attendees into thinking I was a ciswoman who just got off of work. By the time several Halloweens had rolled by, I had achieved my dream of being mistaken for a woman but then was faced with the dreaded what then? Looking ahead at waiting another year for a costume party was unbearable and damaged my dreams of trans womanhood. I knew from my party results I was becoming tantalizing closer to my dreams but getting there still seemed like they were miles away.

As I finally began to leave my mirror and gender closet and explore the world, I began to understand what my wife was trying to tell me. I was a terrible woman out of ignorance as I tried to mold an entirely new person. All I had to work with was my appearance which was just skin deep when I needed to communicate with mainly ciswomen in their world for the first time. For my “sandbox” I chose the bar scene which I was used to and provided me with many unique situations. Many of which I don’t recommend. Along the way, I found myself as a single woman in a bar attracting unwanted attention until I built a group of friends to mingle with. Fortunately, the vast majority of those people who wanted to interact with me were women, so I did not have to worry about a bunch of drunk toxic men.

As I survived this stage of my life successfully, it was time to seriously consider where I would go next. Would I stay where I was at, afraid to go any farther, or would I be brave and take the next step which would be HRT or gender affirming hormones. Following much thought, I decided to seek the HRT path by going to a doctor. By doing so, I discovered what a huge portion of my life I was missing. My body took to the hormones so naturally that I felt I should have been on them my whole life. Just another indication to me of how close my gender dream had always been. I just needed to reach out and grab it.

Perhaps, you may have a similar dream for your life. Mine turned out to be a single-minded pursuit of me wanting to cast aside being a man and start being a woman. Regardless, the way I did it could be different from yours. I chose a “stairstep” method of my male to female femininization process. What I mean is, every time I was successful at one level of my transition, I needed to choose another gender project. If I wasn’t shopping for that new favorite outfit, I needed to figure out where I was going to wear it, is an example.

When I finally made it to the point of being able to live my dream, I certainly had paid my dues and had a lot of help from friends to therapy. They all helped to lift me from being a so-called terrible woman into a well rounded trans woman living her dream which was never far out of sight.

 

Did I Believe in Magic?

 

Image from Delphian Lacub
on UnSplash.

It is rare, but on occasion, I still hear the question of when I knew I had gender issues.

The truth of the matter is, I always knew I was transgender. I just did not know how to express it until I was older. It was after my early explorations into my mom’s clothes did, I realize the potential magic I was holding when I carefully tried on her clothes knowing fully it would not be long until I would outgrow all her wardrobe and I would be in never-never land when it came to finding feminine clothes to wear.

Somehow in the near future, I made do with stretching elastic girl’s clothes I found in the lost and found box at the school I went to. I had a short skirt I managed to squeeze into that I cherished forever it seemed. Around that skirt I managed to build the basics of my style with the money I earned from allowances and stray jobs I found. I delivered newspapers and even mowed a cemetery for a dollar a hour in the hot summer sun, just so I could sneak out to a store and buy more feminizing items. Through it all, I believed in the magic which made me who I truly was.

It was always difficult for me to hang on to my trans truth because at the same time I was experimenting with being a girl, my male self was actually able to establish himself successfully in the world. Which just served to tear up my fragile mental health enough. Until you must wake up in the morning wondering if you are a boy or a girl, you don’t know what I am talking about. I would not have wished it on my worst enemy.

On certain occasions, my magic was strong and I felt like a girl when I looked at myself in the mirror. On other occasions, life was hell when I could not find the time to sneak around and cross dress as the girl I was. It was during those times; I had to rely on just that small amount of magic to get me by. One of the problems was I was so envious of the other girls around me at school in their pretty clothes and admiring looks from all the boys. I dreamed of being just like them.

It wasn’t until I began to explore the world as a novice transfeminine person, did I finally realize what my magic was all about. All of the doubts I had on where I was headed in my life began to dissolve when I began to feel so natural in my progression. Life was a blur as I was going out to be by myself in the world as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was able to meet strangers who accepted me for who I was. For the first time in my life, I was able to shed the long shadow of the remnants of my male past.  Every night, I was able to find my way out to one of my regular venues, be it lesbian or straight, I never wanted to return to my male self at all and lose my magic.

It turned out, my magic never went away, it just became stronger. So much so that I made the move to forever give up my male ways and start gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones just reaffirmed and strengthened my belief that magic could happen and I could indeed be the transgender woman who could forever lose her male past and survive. I could change my life from being married, with friends, family and a great job into a much more mellow existence.

It just took me too long to realize how deep my magic went in my life, and how backwards I had my whole existence and how much pain it caused me. It was my fault because I did not believe in my own magic enough to do something about it rather than be a part-time cross-dresser. I always point out I have nothing against cross-dressers at all because I depended upon it to live my life for so long.

Did I believe in magic? No. Should I have, absolutely.

 

 

What is Chasing You?

 

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on UnSplash. 

As human beings, we all have something that is chasing us. As transgender women or trans men, that something which is chasing us may be more serious.

As we all know, gender is one of the most basic wants and needs for a person. At birth, we are put into a male or female box which is often very difficult to change. In my case, I was born into a very male dominated family as their first-born son, so changing anything with my gender was totally out of the question. In addition, information on gender dysphoria was difficult to find in the pre-internet days.

All of this set me up for a chase which would dominate my life for nearly five decades. Mainly because my male self-had a huge head start on the race to claim myself. He was born into male privilege that he just had to compete in the world to claim. Along the way, he managed to do quite well in the privilege race, which made it more difficult to give up his male life when the time came to do it.

As I became older and more settled into a routine, what was chasing me became more evident. I wanted to be a transgender woman more than anything else in my life. It all set me off in a collision course with changing jobs and moving from my native Ohio as I desperately tried to outrun what was chasing me. I thought each move I made would bring me closer to living the dream life I always hoped was possible. Examples included moving from a small conservative town in Ohio to the huge metro New York City area so I could be closer to a more liberal cross-dressing area. Even though that proved true to an extent, I found I still had the same restrictions on expressing my feminine self as I had in Ohio. So, I moved back to a very rural area where I thought I could hide my cross-dressing ways. Ironically, the best move I made was the next one when I moved back near to Columbus, Ohio where I could reconnect with the small group of diverse friends I had made before at crossdresser-transgender mixers I had went to.

Through it all, all my running was becoming increasingly exhaustive on my mental health. I was taking one step forward towards my goal of living a transfeminine life, while at the same time taking a step or two back when my public persona as a woman was discovered and I was crushed mentally. I kept going back to my gender drawing board until I got it right, or to the point where I could go out in public without the fear of abuse.

When I did reach that point, the feminine person chasing me upped her game and I needed to get better when I interacted with the world. What happened was people started to recognize me, so I needed to start building a whole new person. I needed to choose a new name to fit my personality and stick with it. Which also meant I needed to attempt the most difficult task of all for me, the time I spent communicating one on one with other women. I needed to throw my innate shyness out of the window and learn the basics of eye-to-eye communication which I learned was so big with cis women. Plus, I really wanted to learn to interact with women because I could learn so much from them while at the same time not coming off like a mean bitch.

As I learned to relax and interact with my new world, the inner female which was chasing me could relax a little too. At the same time, my male self-began to finally realize he was losing the race for dominance in my world. More and more, I felt the fear of giving up my male privileges fade away as the introduction of female privileges set in. For the first time in my life, I felt free of the gender struggles which had defined me. I remember vividly the night I sat by myself and added up all the pluses and minuses to the moves I was considering making. The end result was in my life as a novice transgender woman, I had never felt so natural and free. The decision was an easy one for me as I decided to take the next step and seek a doctor’s approval for gender affirming hormones or HRT. A move I considered for once and for all, end any questions about what was chasing me.

That decision brought all the exhaustive chases to an end in my life. The only problem was it took me until the age of sixty to face my inner truths and find peace in my life.

 

Fearing Change as a Gender Challenged Woman

Image from Joshua Gaunt 
on UnSplash. 

Gender change came so very slowly for me during my life.

First, I needed to free myself from the male bonds I was born into which I had no control over. Looking back, I think one of the main problems I had was fearing the changes I was looking to go through if I faced up to reality. From that point forward, life became a struggle as I feared changing it.

What I became was the best transgender procrastinator I knew. Any excuse I could come up with not to go through with living my dream, I clung to like a survivor on the Titanic. What I would do about spouses, family and employment were a few of the major questions I was asking. So, what did I do? I ran as hard and as fast as I could from the problem. I was running so hard, I even changed jobs very quickly so I would not be bored with my life as a transfeminine fugitive. Eventually, even though I grew tired of the pace, I found a stable good job and settled part of my life down. I say part of my life because during that time my gender issues were raging out of control.

Even though I was slowly becoming successful at blending my feminine self in with the world of cisgender women, I still had many fears to conquer. Just when I thought life was improving for me, I would hit another roadblock and send me running back to my cross-dressing drawing board. Which was crazily marked with clownish makeup until I got it right. The fear of applying skilled makeup kept me occupied for years it seemed. On the other hand, when I got my male ego out of the way and realized I needed to dress for other women and not men, did I begin to improve my overall look and the laughter I used to receive in public began to die away. When it did, I learned the most powerful force I had to combat gender change was having confidence in myself. Surely, I would never be the prettiest most beautiful woman in the room, but a lot of other cisgender women were not either and they were surviving and even thriving just fine. There were many layers to building womanhood and I just needed to find mine.

For some reason, the more success I felt as a transgender woman, the more fear I had. I guess it was because of my old male self-starting to panic because he was losing his dominance over my life. For years, what had seemed like the impossible gender dream was now looking as if it could become a reality. As he fought his new reality, the stakes towards living a successful life as a trans woman, increased dramatically. Every step I was taking towards my dream seemed to feel as if I was walking in quicksand since at any time, life as I knew it could be disrupted beyond repair in the little backwards town I lived in. I still lived in mortal fear that any day I could be discovered and the acquaintances I had built up over the years would realize I was living a gender lie. Which I was.

I finally made it to a point where I could not procrastinate my life any longer and I began to use every spare moment to explore the world as a transfeminine person. It all meant I accepted the challenge to finally go all in with making the final preparations for my new life. The bittersweet part of it all was part of my male to female final transition was built on tragedy. In the space of a couple short years, I lost my second wife as well as all of the friends I had built up over the years to death, and I had to start all over again. Sure, I was still afraid to do it but deep down I knew transition was the only way I could go. Suddenly it was up to only me to decide if I wanted to take the ultimate step and try to get a doctor’s permission to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was approved and then the changes I was hoping for began to really happen for me. The changes were so dramatic, I sometimes take an entire blog post to relate them to you.

What frustrates me now are the haters who say that because I took so long to transition, I am not trans enough for them. Normally, they are younger LGBTQ individuals who have no idea of what the world was like way back when I was growing up. We all have our own gender crosses to bear, and we need to understand each other’s journey.

Sadly, there are all those transgender women and trans men who can’t take the burden of gender change fear any longer and tragically try to take the self-harm way out. The suicide rate in our community is completely too high and could come down with proper help and understanding.

In my case, my excuse is I had a heavy dose of ignorance combined with fear and procrastination as reasons it took me nearly a half a century to come out of my gender shell and live freely in the world as a transgender woman. These days, if you can steer clear of all the online trolls and haters, you can still get valuable information on the internet concerning ideas on how to build a new life as a woman from scratch. Plus, fear for me was a powerful motivator and when I was forced into a corner because of my gender, I came out fighting because I believed I was right.

It turned out I was.

 

 

 

  

More Downs than Ups on the Gender Roller Coaster

 

Image from Pietra K. 
from UnSplash.

The gender rollercoaster of life was very real to me.

That is the reason I attempt to mention all of the ups and downs I have experienced over the years as I battled gender dysphoria. For me, the trip up the coaster was not often worth the trip down as my depression set in. Until I received the proper care for my depression, I would often not want to even get out of bed for days at a time. Of course, I could not do that, and life would have to go on. That life included an increasing interest in cross-dressing. When I was on an upswing, life was better and I thought I was even making strides towards possibly living my future dream of living in and competing with a world of cisgender women. All of which had a very large headstart on me towards possibly achieving their womanhood before I could.

All this turmoil sent me down the rollercoaster of life and right back to where I started from…deeply frustrated. It was not until I began to leave my closet or shell and explore the world, did I begin to experience any relief. In the world, I discovered that not everyone noticed me and it was true what my second wife told me that it was not all about me. I was relieved when I learned that most of the world was just living life on their own terms and outside of few haters, I could live my life too. It was when I discovered that I was able to ride the level part of my dysphoric roller coaster, for a while.  

It never failed that when I started to come off the flat spot of my coaster, I needed to fight my depression again. Nothing I was doing was good enough as a man or a woman. I was so involved in wanting a transfeminine future, I could not maintain a good solid relationship with my long term (25 years) wife. The only things I was doing was keeping my head above water at work as I carved out the beginnings of a new transgender life. While I did all of this, I managed to make myself miserable as well as those around me. If I could not live with myself, how could anyone else, was my main thought pattern as I rode the roller coaster of life. All I knew was, I needed to hang on tightly for the ride ahead.

Of course, you all know I did manage to hang on, or I would not be here writing this today. Many times, it was because deep down inside I had this unmistakable idea of what I was doing was right. I had waited a long time in line to ride this gender rollercoaster, and I was not ever going to give up my spot. Once I came to this conclusion, I was able to stand in line with other ciswomen and not be so intimidated. And they were less intimidated by me and the rollercoaster hit another exhilarating turn as it headed into a tunnel. This time though, coming out of the dark did not mean I was heading into so much depression. Still, I knew I had a lot of work to do before I could reach my goal or dreams of living a fulltime transgender life.

Every time I thought I had finished a ride on the roller coaster, I found I needed to turn right around and get right on. A ciswoman’s life was so much more complicated than I had ever planned for, there were more challenges ahead. I still had key decisions to make concerning how I was going to live my new life. Such as how I was going to support myself and what was I going to do about telling my remaining family and friends that all along I had been living a lie. Last but not least, I would take the major step of seeking out approval to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones.

Amazingly, each time I jumped on the roller coaster, my rides became shorter and less eventful. I had taken the time and effort to set myself up as a regular in certain venues I went to all the time, so I did not have to go out just to be alone. I was always a social animal as a man and now I was too in my new exciting feminine world. Most importantly, I was able to develop a small circle of ciswomen friends who unknowingly boarded the coaster with me. They showed me the final steps I would have to take to get off my lifetime ride permanently. Maybe the best part was they never knew what they did for me. Eventually, what came out of it all was my marriage to my third wife Liz. A lesbian ciswoman who was instrumental in kicking me off my roller coaster permanently.

Even though I was ultimately successful in reaching my transgender dreams, I am not so sure I would recommend how I did it to anyone. I took too many chances and consumed too much alcohol along the way. Often, I used alcohol to give me a false sense of security when I was riding a scary coaster. Those were the days when I had to internalize my emotions and fear and “be a man.”

Finally, and thankfully, the world around me changed and I stepped down off my roller coasters all the way to less intimidating merry go rounds. Even they didn’t last as I decided to leave the gender amusement park altogether. Truthfully, I never got much of anything which was amusing anyway, and on some occasions, bigots and haters even put me into the freak category. Sadly, I never won any prizes for the most rides on a roller coaster or had a chance to reach for the ring on the merry go round. I was at least a survivor. I did not have to be a man at all.

Did I Take the Easy Way Out?

Image from Nicloe Geri
on UnSplash. 

 Yesterday I wrote about the seismic gender changes I went through or could have gone through in my life.

After I did, I began to think about where I took short cuts or took the easy way out of my new life as a transfeminine person. Maybe when you read yesterday’s post, you noticed it was primarily about the men who briefly entered and influenced my life as I questioned my own sexuality.

The fact of the matter was, I was afraid of having sex with a man. Mainly because I had never considered it as I was always connected to women. I wondered as I transitioned farther would my sexuality eventually change. Especially when I started HRT or gender affirming hormones. I knew when I did that, I was sacrificing any way of having so called “normal” sex with ciswomen would be gone as long as I was on the hormones. To be honest, I had always looked at sex as a way to please a partner rather than myself, so losing my sex act would not be that big of a deal. Plus, in my mind, I always made love to a woman as another woman anyhow.

As I write about often, as I transitioned, men for the most part left me alone for any number of reasons. I always felt the primary one was they knew I was transgender and had left the men’s club for good and they did not trust me with their own frail male sexuality. Or maybe I should say, trust themselves. One way or another, I immediately felt as if ciswomen accepted me quicker and I had never had so much female attention in my life. I loved it, as I was able to learn about their world while they were curious about mine. I even went as far as Amy telling me to buy bananas to start practicing what I would do with a man. I never did go that far except for the one big burly, biker of a man I met coming off of his wedding debacle rebound in a regular venue I went to.

I also knew his wife who was a beautiful exotic dancer and I could not figure out the attraction except for looks. It turns out that I was right and the marriage only lasted one week and I felt so sorry for him while at the same time, the people around him were making fun of him. Instead of taking the easy way out this time, I was the only one to lend a sympathetic ear to his problems. In a short while, he began to look for me (and vice versa) when we were at the venue because I was normally alone. Looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had shown more curiosity about his Harley and would it have led to taking a ride with him. All I know is that I never did and he ended up taking a new job out of town and any possibility of me going any farther with a man sexually with him. From then on, it was back to women.

By women, I meant back to my new inroad into the lesbian culture and community which started when I began to frequent several small lesbian venues in the Dayton, Ohio area. Initially, I was just looking for a friendly place for companionship with other women. Out of the three venues I went to, I discovered they were all different in how I was treated. One of them hated me and did everything they could to keep me out of there, one was neutral and did not seem to care at all, and one was very friendly and welcomed my business. I even learned the bartender I saw several times was a customer in my restaurant with her friend. Her acceptance paved my way for several eye-opening experiences for me in the venue with other lesbians. Before I did, I needed to learn the social levels that other lesbians operated at. Everybody from super butch masculine women to more feminine lipstick lesbians who I more closely identified with. Along the way, I was hit on several times including the time I was forced to sing karaoke with a cowboy hat wearing super butch who wondered why my voice was lower than hers and another night when another butch told me she should take me home with her. Both were eye opening experiences.

What my dealings with the lesbian culture really taught me was that I did not need a man to validate my existence as a woman and there were many lesbians who might walk that fine line sexually to be with a man who was quite different than anyone they had ever known. It was my wife of over a decade now who decided to cross her lesbian leanings and attempt to build a relationship with a transgender woman. After a long courtship, I decided to throw caution to the wind and sell my house and move to Cincinnati to live with Liz. The deciding factor was she had briefly known my old male self and had completely rejected him. Telling me she had never seen any male in me at all.

With that major decision behind me, I was encouraged to proceed with HRT and give all my male belongings to thrift stores and live fulltime with Liz as a transgender woman. It was the biggest seismic change in life I could have ever made. Maybe I was taking the easy way out by never learning if I could live with a man because they were exceedingly hard to find. Ciswomen were not, I was enjoying myself and learning at the same time how I could reach my dream of living as a transfeminine person, so I never looked back. My world settled down, and I learned to live without all the seismic gender changes I went through.

 My path was never easy, but I ended up with a wonderful knowledge of the two basic binary genders.   

Is There Really a Difference between Genders?

 

Image from Pea on UnSplash. 

Yesterday, I briefly wrote about how I saw the world differently when I went out for the first time to view Christmas decorations at Clifton Mill, Ohio as my feminine self. I said something to the fact that my senses seemed to heighten as I viewed all the decorations and people around me. To me, the whole evening was brighter and more festive than when I viewed it as a man, wondering how it would be to do the same thing as a woman.

Little did I know the experience would prepare me for later life as I progressed along my gender path. Perhaps, initially, the new senses I felt were psychological in nature because I was still years away from actually changing my gender hormonal balance from male to female when I added HRT or gender affirming hormones to my system. Which means, I guess, if I was in some sort of a scientific gender study, I would not have needed the hormones to increase my femininity at all. Which would be good news to all of you who for medical or spousal reasons cannot consider HRT.

One way or another, I felt a real difference in my world when I entered it as a woman rather than a man. If I was cold, I could react accordingly and not have to be macho and try to ignore it is a prime example. Then, quite possibly, the biggest change of all was what I was going to wear. I had so many fashion choices I could barely make up my mind. It seemed I was only limited to what I could afford to shop for and buy. The sensory feeling of the clothes was wonderful, and I just loved the big, warm, fluffy sweaters I was able to wear because they were in fashion at the time and paired perfectly with my denim mini skirts I was able to find at my favorite thrift store. I discovered that I was perfectly comfortable when I wore a pair of tights or even leggings with my sweater/skirt combo in cool Ohio weather.

Even though the clothes did make a difference for me, the buzz quickly went away and the reality of what I was attempting set in. I have always believed that attempting to change the human gender is one of the most difficult things a person can attempt because there are so many roadblocks in the way.  Such as current misunderstandings of trans women or trans men’s lives. No matter how you cut it, it is just difficult to explain to a “civilian” what is going through our minds when we made the monumental decision to jump the gender border. What could possibly go wrong? Ha ha!

Sometimes, we end up surprising even ourselves with the gender changes we have to go through to be successful. As we begin to earn our way behind the actual gender curtain into woman only spaces, we begin to see and feel all the real differences there are. I know my first girl’s nights outs were real eye openers for me. I had no idea of how ciswomen interact with each other when there were no men around. The differences were real, and I cherished my chances to experience them. So much more than even my new one on one communication challenges with ciswomen strangers in the world.

As I approached the idea that I could actually take the opportunity to attempt to go on gender affirming hormones, naturally I knew it was a huge step forward in my transfeminine development. First of all, there were the health consequences of a sixty-year-old male starting to reverse the hormones he had lived with successfully for all those years Plus, back in those days, there were many naysayers preaching about the possible damage female hormones could cause on the body. Fortunately, I found a doctor who did not believe in all of that, and he approved my HRT. When I started the meds, I felt an almost immediate change. It was certainly what the doctor ordered, and I was rapidly increased to higher dosages of my precious new medications.

I felt great when my external changes such as breast development started to happen faster than I expected and was even more surprised at the internal changes I was feeling. Like the first night I visited the Christmas lights, when my world softened and became more perceptive, I quickly found myself in a world where I could appreciate everything more. Heat, light and sound in particular affected me more when I ventured out in public to my regular venues.

At that point, all I really knew was I never wanted to go back to the old male life I forced myself to live. I had found my new home.

I "Doesn't" Know It

 It used to be when I was asked why I preferred to be feminine over masculine, and I quoted a famous baseball announcer for the Cincinnati Reds and said, “I doesn’t know it.” At the time and continuing to this day, I can’t tell you why I identify as a transgender woman. I am just being me.

The problems began when I began my gender path and ran head-on into many obstacles I needed to conquer. I suppose it all started with the possibility my mom was treated with the DES medication to help with problem pregnancies. This was back in 1949, and she had suffered through three still births before I came along. Even though nothing was ever proven, DES flooded the uterus with the estrogen hormone in women and was suspected of causing gender issues later in life with the children under the treatment. Naturally, if I had my choice of being transgender and being alive, I would take the trans life every time because the life I have lived has been different and even more exciting than the normal persons I know.

So, if I cannot blame DES on my lifetime of gender issues, what could I blame? I doesn’t know it. Could I blame mom for letting me watch her apply her makeup before she went out, or my dad who set nearly impossible male standards for me to live up to. Since both of them were products of the “greatest generation” (survivors of the great depression and WWII). They were stuck in their ways, and I was left out when it came to any possible discussion of my gender issues. Plus, both of them have long since passed away, so why bother.

Even though I tried to come out to my mom after I got out of the Army, and was rudely rejected with the threat of psychiatric care, years later when I changed my legal name, I chose my mom’s first name as my middle name and kept my dad’s family name to honor both of them for the sacrifices they made to bring me into the world. I am sure with the lack of knowledge about gender issues at all, they would have honestly said they doesn’t know it when it came to me and my so-called problems which turned out to be anything but in the future.

As I cracked my gender shell and escaped into the world, I discovered two main groups of people to deal with. The easiest group were men who largely left me alone except on isolated circumstances when they tried to mentally abuse me for leaving the male club, I had been a part of. The only thing the abuse did to me was prove I had made the right decision. The other main group was the ciswomen I met. They proved to be very curious of what I was doing in their world and once they determined I meant no harm and was serious for the most part left me alone. The only thing I knew for sure was I was getting more female attention than I ever had in my life, and I needed to make sure I made the most of it. I needed to walk a delicate balance of when to open my mouth and interact, then shut up and listen and learn the basics of survival as a transfeminine person in the world. 

The gender learning curve was difficult, but I managed to learn what was offered to me unknowingly by the women around me. They never knew all they did for me, but I was amazed at the depth of the feminine world around me as compared to the male world I knew. At times I felt as if I was sinking in the new depths, I found myself in until the women I knew rescued me and made me stronger. Finally, I made it to a point where I did know it. I was following my gender instincts for a change and doing the natural right thing. It was time to take the next step and see if I could get approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. It turned out I made the right decision after quite a bit of thought.

The way my body took to the hormones gave me a whole new opportunity to experience a life I always should have been living. I doesn’t know it was forever replaced by a peaceful gender spirit I wished I could have experienced sooner in life. By this time, I was sixty and had lived quite the life to make up for, as a man. Now I had to make up for lost time and do the best to experience all the gender wonders I had discovered as a transgender woman. 

Gender "Muscle" Memory

 

Image from Jeremy Bishop
on UnSplash

Perhaps you have heard an elite athlete talk about having muscle memory when they play their sport. Especially professional baseball players who make a living off of hitting curve balls. Which has nothing to do with presenting as a transgender woman, or does it?

I remember the days when I was going through an unwanted male puberty, and I was so self-conscious of how I was walking as a man. I did not want to attract any bullies by thinking I was too effeminate. I must have been fairly successful because I rarely had any problems. I was just a boy who liked sports and cars and stayed under society’s bigotry radar.

Then, when I started to explore the feminine world, I needed to throw out all of my walk like a man training and start to mimic the distinctive walk of a woman the best I could. I took me a while to do it, but I finally came up with a transfeminine walk that did not look like a linebacker in drag. The problem became doing it enough to have it become muscle memory. Mainly because I was not doing it all the time. Spending a day as a transgender woman learning the world, then reverting back to being a man on a job which demanded control was literally mentally killing me. On the days I had to be a man, I felt as if I was in some sort of a gender fog as I could see and feel my dream of womanhood but could not quite achieve it.

What I did was try to practice my feminine muscle memory anytime I did not think anyone was watching. Big box stores later in the evening were my favorites because they were largely empty of other shoppers. Later I wonder if I made the store’s security cameras and they were amused by a man trying to walk like a woman. But, of course, I never found out because I was not doing anything wrong. At least I found out I was being a success as a novice woman when on a few occasions on my male days at work, I was referred to as a woman.

Finally, practice started to make a successful feminine presentation possible for me, and I started to relax when I was out of my closet and the mirror exploring the world. The only problem I ran into was when I became too comfortable and forgot what I was doing. Like the time I was walking through a mall not paying attention when one of my heels became stuck in a sidewalk crack and I twisted my ankle. Lesson learned as from then on, when I was wearing heels, to watch out for cracks in the sidewalks. Muscle memory the hard way.

Until I began to live my life increasingly more as a transgender woman was I able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. The pretty pictures I was able to take of myself were one thing but surviving in the world of cisgender women was another. Every time I thought I had learned all I needed to know, something else came along to shock me into going farther. I was growing increasingly frustrated and again my fragile mental health was suffering. Until I found a good therapist to help me face my truth. I should never had attempted to assume the male role I was in and all of the muscle memory which came with it. All it solved was making my life more complex when I tried to change it and enter the feminine world for good.

Especially with the help of the gender affirming hormones I was approved to take, my confidence as a trans woman grew and any resistance to losing my old male muscle memory went away. I carved out a new life and even found away to be happy in it. I was similar to the very successful baseball player who is winning the world series as my outward motion fit my inward feminine feelings. Even the HRT hormones enabled me to develop my own hips I was so envious of on other women. Anything I could do to come closer to my dream was welcomed.

Having the gender muscle memory from so long ago is something I still think about to this day. Even though I am highly immobile. It was the way I could get started towards another huge step in my male to female gender transition.

 

I Almost Waited too Long to Transition

 

Image from Lizgrin F 
on UnSplash.

I almost went too far when it came to not deciding to transition from male to female in my life.

During the previous half century of cross-dressing my life away in the mirror, I put off making my final decision so many times. One of the main problems was, I was sixty years old and was forced to consider my mortality, which I had always taken for granted. Plus, another issue I had was feeling just a little too comfortable with all the male privilege I had struggled to build up in my life. Often it seemed, destiny had stepped into my life to guide it a certain way because I was very self-destructive and selfish. So much so that my mom always said I had a guardian angel riding with me when I did stupid things behind the wheel. All along, of course, I was trying to hide the pain of hiding who I truly was.

On the other hand, I was basically an impulsive person who felt all rules were temporary and could be worked around. Such as my time in the Army when I was able to land a job with the American Forces Radio and Television Service (AFRTS), which was nearly impossible to do. In the meantime, I was facing the biggest struggle of my life as I needed to figure out what I was going to do about my gender issues. It was always the elephant in the corner of every room I was in.

What I decided to do was research as much as I could my dream goal of living a life as a transgender woman. When I did, my very real struggles began. Early on, nothing came easy on my gender path. I was being laughed at when I went out in public as a novice until I got it right. As I fortunately exited that portion of my life, I was able to see more clearly what I was up against, and it was daunting. I had very little idea of the layered lives ciswomen lead as compared to men. When I realized what I was up against, I needed to set my transition timetable back. And to make matters worse, my male self was becoming increasingly successful in his life. Building up a solid base of marriage, family, friends and job. How could I ever replace all of that and when could I do it.

The only recourse I had at the time was the worst one I could consider. Internalize my deepest gender thoughts and keep trying to attempt to do the best I could to survive a life caught between the two main primary genders. Three days as a trans woman and three days as a man was killing me and I tried to no avail to take the extra day off to relax. It turned out I could not because all I thought of on my supposed day off was what I was going to do the next time I went exploring the world as a transfeminine person. Which brings up a good point, during this time of my life, any thoughts I had that I was just a cross dresser were slipping away. Only to be replaced by the fact that I refused to accept. I was more a woman of my own making than I ever thought.

One way or another it was in my fifties when I began seriously researching the word transgender and what it meant to me. I was happy when I finally found the terminology which applied to me but again what was I going to do about it. I was not getting any younger. I still made the worst of all possible choices and continued my path of least resistance. At least that is how it appeared to the outside world which I was effectively hiding my efforts of femininizing from them. I had won my award as a strong male role model with a good marriage, family and job, and now I wanted to give it all back for a radical gender change into womanhood.

When my sixtieth birthday rolled around, I finally decided I needed to make a major change before it was too late. I went to a doctor and took the steps to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT and the real changes started. As good as I felt though, I could not shake the sorrow I had from moving permanently away from my male life. Even after my mental health improved.

Finally, I realized I had waited too long for the change and should have had the courage to do it long before I did. But at least I managed to make the major gender change I did before it was too late. And what about my elephant who was my constant companion? I set it free.