Leaving the Male Noise Behind Me

 

Image from Vinicius Amano
on UnSplash. 
 

I write often of the misadventures I had growing up as a gender I never wanted to be. Often my life seemed unbearable when I made a big error on the baseball field or missed a key tackle on the football field, causing my team to lose. When I did, the only thing I knew to do was to run home to my dresses and makeup and do my best to tune out all the noise of male failure in my head. If I could not be a good athlete, maybe I could try to be a pretty girl.

To make matters worse, the older I got, the more noise kept popping up in my head. Especially from my male side, who was increasingly watching any chance o a future he had slip away. Successes such as making it through the military, and job promotions did not help either.

As the probability of a male to female gender transition increased, the noise did too. Mainly because I noticed an increase in the male world, I was never have been a part of. Perhaps, it was because I was thinking about leaving it anyhow, so I was looking for sure if I wanted to.

One of the sounds I noticed the most were coming from the alpha-males who were posturing for a better place in the world. Since in many ways, my job forced me to be successful in my competition with the alpha’s (as well as my upbringing) I could listen to the noise and tell exactly where it was coming from and how I could compete. Which ultimately led me down a path I had no desire to be on.

The further I traveled along the transgender path I was on, the more I noticed the noise from both sides of the gender border increasing as I stopped to look around at one of the many stop signs I had along the way. Sometimes the screaming from both sides reached a pitch I could barely stand as each side was yelling, they were better. To make matters worse, my male side had most all the advantages which he used to his benefit when he stated his claim on my life. Afterall, he had been there from the beginning and had taken the time and effort to learn how the male world operated and how he could fit it. All my feminine side could do then was continue to cross-dress in front of my favorite mirror and dream of an uncertain future.

The one main thing she had going for her was she had the advantage of feeling natural when she was allowed to express herself in the world. It was a powerful emotion which at least kept the male screaming down to a minimum, for a while. What always happened was, I had a several days of gender euphoria after I cross-dressed which would sadly fade when I mentally and physically had to go back to my male world. Which was far from being a mellow existence. The gender headphones I was continually trying to wear in life never seemed to work well. Even to the point of causing so much guilt, I would purge (throw away) my feminine clothes and vowed to never wear them again. You know how ell that worked as my female side screamed louder and louder to once again be a bigger part of my world and I would be forced to give in.

The sad part about all the noise I was subjected to internally and externally by my gender dysphoria was wrecking my fragile mental health. I never bargained, ever having to deal with the stress of having to bargain with two of the main binary genders ripping my life apart. I only survived by taking advantage of finally listening to good therapists who told me that my gender issues would never just go away and would always be a part of me. I guess you could say that it was therapy which helped me cut through all the noise and essentially saved my life from being extremely self-destructive.

Finally, when the noise reached a fever pitch, I needed to take drastic measures to do something about it That is when I went on an aggressive all-out push to see what a ciswoman’s world was all about and better yet, could I ever be accepted into it. My so-called discovery tour took me out of the worlds of dark gay venues into the lights of straight places such as TGIF Fridays which back in those days was becoming a safe venue for single women to go to. To do what I wanted to do, I needed to put my extreme fear of discovery behind me and see if I could survive in Fridays. When I did, a portion of my noise suddenly made sense to me, and I realized what I needed to do to tune out the rest.

I was proving to myself that there was nothing wrong in what I was doing, and I was starting to ignore all the panic warnings I was receiving from my male side about what I would lose if I left him behind to follow a feminine road. The best part was, the more I started to listen to the feminine noise, it made me feel better about where my life was heading. Even though many of the things I was trying scared me to death, as I succeeded in each step, I was building a calm confidence I would never lose.

Of course, the more my feminine noise clamed me and made me whole, my male noise started to subside to a low whimper. Gone were the days of being lonely and searching for my gender identity when I discovered ciswomen lesbian friends who gave me mine. As they taught me more about validating my own womanhood than they ever knew they did.

Very soon I even healed from my destructive days of listening to all that male noise and was able to throw those old gender headsets aside and live my dream life.

Hey you!!!! Thanks for reading along with how I escaped my male gender noise and maybe it can help you escape yours too. In any case thanks for being here!

 

 

 

All Along I was Just Me

 e

Inage from Gayatri Malhotra
on UnSplash. 

It took me decades of living to realize the simplest of all realizations…just discovering who the true me was all about.

It turned out I was so much more complex than the friends I had around me in how I felt about life. Which often help me back because I could not express how badly I wanted to be a woman. What I did was, I took the natural male response I inherited and internalized all my feelings. Naturally, the male response did not work and all it did was wreck even further my already frail mental health. If I could not cross-dress my anxiety increased and when I did my paranoia kicked in when I thought, I was getting caught.

As I added years to my life, the complexity of being a gender dysphoric person grew with the years. What did I do? I tried to outrun my problems. It wasn’t until the Vietnam War years and beyond did I learn that I would have to stop being a victim and stand up to living a life outside of the shadows of being a man. The idea of moving my family around and changing jobs all the time until I finally landed a job I wanted in a location, I wanted to be. That meant I climbed out of fast food and landed in a full service, casual dining chain which served alcohol which was exactly where I wanted to be.

With my dream job in place, I could concentrate on my feminine side by beginning to go to the small diverse LGBTQ parties I used to go to in nearby Columbus, Ohio. At those mixers, I was able to meet transgender mentors who would define my future. From them, I learned a path to my dream may actually be possible. The me I had always dreamed of was finally beginning to emerge. Much to the chagrin of my long-time second wife who actually went with me to a few of the parties. Probably, just to keep track of me. One thing was for sure; my wife never liked the trans woman I was becoming. Back in those days, I was still trying too hard to dress to impress and my wife was right, my dresses were too short, and my makeup was too heavy for her liking.

As she normally was, my wife was right about my appearance, and I tried my best to tone it down when she was around. Most of the time to no avail. I was stubborn and had to live out my so-called adolescence years of cross-dressing before I learned how to dress to blend in with my wife and the ciswomen around her. As I always say, sadly she passed away before she ever got the chance to meet the mature transgender me. I know we could have not stayed married but maybe at least be friends.

The question became, what was I doing with my time when I was discovering who I really was. What I was doing was exploring as close as I could what it would be like to live a whole new life behind the gender curtain. For the most part, I was successful as I made my way from the relative safety of the gay venues I was frequenting and jumping into the more challenging straight sports bars I was used to going to as a man. By never causing any trouble, always smiling and most importantly by tipping well, I was able to establish myself as a regular in several venues which seemed unreachable to me just a short time before. Most importantly, I was able to bring my love of sports from my male life into my female life with no problems. Which was a surprise to me.

As I did, I discovered the true me was not that far removed from the old me. Basically. I had just changed my appearance and gave up basic male privileges such as perceived intelligence and personal safety, and the best was yet to come as I was able to begin to move around freely as the new me in a world run by ciswomen. Quoting my second wife, I didn’t “make” a terrible woman after all. Primarily because I was not “making” anything. I was becoming me. Sure, I knew on occasions I could have done a better job, but I never allowed myself to be a victim and moved on back to my gender path. Which was beginning to change dramatically because I was beginning yet another  major gender related transition in my life.

First, there were the two obvious mental transitions I went through including the initial once when I realized I was so much more than a weekend parttime cross-dresser which went all the way to that fateful night at a local TGIF Fridays when I had had enough of that thought pattern and went out to be with the other ciswomen just getting off of work at a nearby mall.

From that moment on, I knew I could never go back to my old unwanted male self. But still, I felt as if something was missing in my life. It was because I was still missing the obvious transition of all as I finally realized I was never a cross-dresser or a transgender woman; I was just me.

I wish I could take credit for being persistent and intelligent that I kept on pushing to find me but I can’t. That credit goes to all the ciswomen who I became close to over the many years of struggle I endured. And yes, my second wife is included because she was the first to say be man enough to be a woman and make life easier on both of us. As we all know, many women are good at reading small lights inside of a person (unless you are fighting an unsupportive spouse) which is a point for another blog post.

I can’t say enough positive about all the women in my life who helped kick me out of my male nest and into the world of women. They knew me better than I knew me.

 

 

 

Your Lines in the Sand as Gender Markers

 

Image from Sonnie Hiles
on UnSplash. 

For the longest time, I set new lines in the sand as I progressed along my path as a novice transgender woman.

Sometimes, the lines were very faint, and I had a difficult time seeing them. All the way to deep trenches I needed to leap across. It all depended on what I was doing at the time. For example, when I was just dressing in mom’s dresses and putting on her makeup, the lines were very faint and easy to cross. In my mind, I was a boy one moment and a girl the next. A very black and white way to view myself, or so I thought until I grew older.

Instead of growing away from my cross-dressing years, I ended up growing into them by finally coming to a better mastery of the feminine clothes I wanted to wear and maybe more importantly, the artform of applying makeup which was a very deep line to cross for me. If I had worked as hard on my studies and sports than I did on my femininization projects, I would have certainly made the dean’s list every year and starred on the school’s football team. I was mentally built differently because of my gender dysphoria and could not decide for the longest time which gender path I wanted to follow because the feminine path was primarily there for an escape. When my male life became too stressful, I could shave my legs, slide carefully into my pantyhose which I had purchased myself from jobs I had worked and put on a dress and feel better instantly.

Even though I did not want it to happen, I began to build male privileges from doing a good job raising my daughter as a father and working jobs I was promoted at. When I did, I knew I would have a lesser chance of having just a small line in the sand to jump across if I ever needed to. Little did I know, how much both of my efforts would come back to help me in my later years when I encountered severe gender obstacles as I went behind the gender curtain as a transgender woman. I should say finally went behind the curtain since it took me decades to do it.

The problem arose with drawing more and more lines in the sand that my life as a transfeminine person became more complex quicker than I ever imagined. Often, I have described what I went through as sliding down a deep slope grabbing onto whatever I could to maintain the male life that I had. Just to watch it slip away. It led me to falling off the deepest cliff I could have ever imagined when I put away all my male clothes for the last time, went on HRT or gender affirming hormones and put my male life behind me for the last time.

By this time, even my stubborn old male self was admitting he had made a mistake by holding on as long as he did. All the covering lines in the sand I was about to cross with his own ideas did not work, as I was able to negotiate all the challenges thrown at me by ciswomen in the new world I was in. In many ways, I had come full circle when I learned how valuable all the building blocks, he had given me, just gave me more resolve to be a better trans woman. The daughter I mentioned earlier came around to be my earliest and strongest supporter so all the time I put into being with her when she was young came back to help me. Then there was my employment in the restaurant industry which turned out to be very lucrative for me in several ways. The first was with money and the second was with the opportunity to work closely with groups of varied ciswomen. In many ways, I learned what they faced in their lives gave me insight into what I was going to face when I joined their world.

For example, I learned what alpha females meant to the group of women as a whole, and if I could gain their support after I transitioned and joined their world, it would be very valuable to me. In many ways I found that good strong alpha ciswomen from super butch lesbians on down could do to help me erase my lines in the sand. I can’t begin to say how much they helped me. Even my second wife who was an unapproving alpha woman to me was a role model and taught me more about her life than she ever knew. Before she passed away tragically at the age of fifty from a massive heart attack. So, she never got the chance to meet the mature transgender me after I had crossed all the lines in the sand I needed to cross to just survive.

From all sorts of ciswomen, I learned that women come in all shapes and sizes with various levels of support of the transgender community. Many support us from afar and it would be different if it was their husband seeking to make his own line in the sand and become a transgender woman. On the positive side, there is now more information available to spouses of trans women to understand what seemingly a glaringly selfish path is to go down for their husbands. Especially with the husbands who have gone to great lengths to hide their gender passions from their wives for many years. When I step back and look at all the relationships which have ended over the years because of gender dysphoria, I try to wonder what would have happened if my wife was the one who wanted to draw his line in the sand and said enough is enough. I can’t take it any longer.

Of course, now I am biased and think I would have accepted my former wife bringing home another woman to get to know. How would my old male ego react? I am ashamed to say it now, but my old male self would have had to force the issue and solve it once and for all in his favor. Drawing his own line in the sand.

If you are at the point of drawing a new line in the sand for yourself, make it an achievable goal so you do not get discouraged. Finally, stay flexible with your lines as you know some will be deeper than others. If you do, you will stand a better chance of success.

 

 

Who Got in Your Way

 

Image from UnSplash. 

Perhaps there was that special person or persons who stood in the way of you going along your formative gender path. In my case, I always tried to blame my second wife for being in my way of perfecting my male to female feminization project. My first wife was not a factor because I thought she was just along for the ride, no matter how bumpy it became and I always thought I could suddenly tell her I would be gone for several months because I was going to Thailand not to visit but for gender realignment surgery and she would say be safe.

That was all well and good until I met my second wife who I immediately fell in love with. I ended up divorcing my first wife and marrying my second in a fairly short time. Like my first wife, even though she knew I was a parttime cross-dresser when we married it was fine with her but unlike wife number one, she always resisted me going any further towards maturing into a transgender woman. Being as strong-willed as she was, I wonder how we made it through twenty-five years of marriage until she passed away.

Throughout the years, we somehow stayed committed to each other following many bitter battles over how I was wanting to live my life. She was much wiser than me over the years as she told me things such as I made a terrible woman (true at the time) and why didn’t I just go ahead and move away and live like a woman and save both of us the hassle. As I always point out, I did not know how to “make” a better woman because I had never been behind the feminine gender curtain to discover all the complexities of what I was taking on. As far as just going away and starting all over on my own, I was selfish or self-centered and wanted to maintain as much as I could of my male life which among other things paid most of the bills.

Through it all, faint glimpses of my transgender dream kept filtering into my life, and I did things like transvestite-transgender mixers and Halloween parties to experiment if I could make it at all. Once I received positive feedback from doing it, I was pushed forward to expand the boundaries of my marriage. Just to be met with an equal amount of pushback from my wife. The worst part about it was I understood where she was coming from as her marriage was unraveling right in front of her eyes at the hands of another woman. Who was me. I ended up resenting her in a couple of ways. First, because she was what I always wanted to be. Soft curvy body and all. And second because she stood directly in my path of achieving the same things that she took for granted, along with the rest of her ciswomen friends. Great makeup, hair and clothes could not hide the envy I felt for missing out on a feminine life I always wanted.

It took me awhile after she passed on at the age of fifty to realize who the real culprit was who was standing in my way of my male to female transition. All along it was all me who never responded the right way when my wife said be man enough to be a woman. As I said, I was too selfish to not want to give up all the male privileges I had earned over the years and wanted to live my life on dual gender impossible terms as long as I could.

I also tried therapy on the side to help the way I felt and even rejected their advice when essentially, they told me the same thing my wife told me. There was nothing they could do about me wanting to be a woman. She was a part of my inner self and only I could deal with her. When it came right down to it, I was scared of my inner woman and how she could ever carve out her own life in the world. It turned out, I just never gave her enough credit as over the years with help from strong feminine role models like my mom and wife, she was able to mold her own personality. Even though she had to keep it hidden for decades. Those same strong ciswomen showed her where there was a will, there was a way. Especially when you had to take the time and effort to get there.

Once I found myself firmly placed behind the gender curtain, the real work began to make sure I never “made” a terrible woman. I wanted to as much as possible, bring all the good feminine characteristics with me so I could do more than survive. I wanted to thrive as I made my way to my dream of living a transgender life. As I did, the major realization came to me that it was me and only me who was standing in my own way all those years when I was wondering what gender I was at all. Shame on me for not having the courage to face my true self in the mirror and not let my gender dysphoria get in the way. Worse yet, everything was screaming within me that I was doing the right thing when I approached my transgender womanhood. Freeing myself up to live was as if I was taking a ton of weight off of my shoulders.

Ironically, once I was approved to play in the girls’ club, the difference I had from the different upbringing I had made me a special sort of woman to the ciswomen who accepted me around me. Even though they knew I came with different baggage, the most radical advice I ever got was welcome to our world when I was complaining about hot flashes. As my body started to respond to the HRT or gender affirming hormones I was on that I had waited so long for. I don’t think the women ever realized how badly I wanted to be in their world.

If it was not for me being in my own way, I would have been in their world sooner. My proper place to be.

 

Finding Comfort in your Own Skin

 

Image from Ayesha Rosley
on UnSplash.

I believe the way to finding comfort in your own skin as a transgender person is having the confidence to do it.

Just think of all the time you may have spent in front of your mirror as you gathered the courage to take on the public and work from there. Like many of you, I experienced severe gender dysphoria every time I looked in the mirror and saw a man dressed as a woman and was afraid to go out into the world and face the public. To this day, on occasion, I still suffer from my lack of confidence in who I really am when I look in the mirror in the morning. I do my best to just ignore it and move on and take on my day knowing I am doing my best with what I have to work with. Or as a transgender woman friend once told me, I pass out of sheer willpower.

My willpower was tested during the many times that I failed in public and needed to start all over again. At that time, I had very little confidence that I was doing the right thing with my life. I had to go through years of trial and even more error before I began to build the confidence I needed to succeed in the world as a transfeminine person. When it came right down to it, many times I was excited about the prospect of going through another trial to learn if I could be successful. When I was a success as a trans woman, I wanted to do more on my transgender bucket list of things to try in the new exciting world I was in.

Most the major changes for me came when I began to really look around at what all the ciswomen in the world were wearing and I needed to put away the stubborn attitude of what I thought I should look like. As I began to successfully blend in with the world at large, my confidence began to rise, and I could relax and feel more comfortable in my own skin. It was the beginning of a life-changing gender experience which I discovered I was along for during a very bumpy ride.

In many ways, the ride to being comfortable was like my favorite roller coaster ride at a big nearby amusement park. Often the ride up was slow and uncertain to the top but was made up by the rush of going down the gender hill. It did not take me long to appreciate the rush of coming down my own personal coaster. Even though I feared climbing the heights I was climbing (as well as the threat of falling) the risk was worth it as I began to carve out a small life as a trans woman. Which I always wondered if I could do at all.

I found I could do it thanks to the welcoming embrace of several ciswomen I was introduced to. It was scary yet powerful when I began to receive invitations to special girls ‘nights out. Once I figured out what I was going to wear, then I needed to figure out what I was going to add into the conversation with the other women who I had never met. I desperately did not want to act standoffish and worse yet bitchy by not joining in with the other women who I had a chance to make friends with. Looking back, I think I was successful because outside of one woman who kept glaring at me, I was treated well by everyone else. All this sudden attention led me to a newfound confidence in being in my own natural skin that I never had before in my old male life where I always needed to be on the outlook for someone trying to take away the life I had. I was always competing for what I had earned in a what you had done for me recently world.

The reverse was true in the transgender woman’s world I had found my way into. As I became more confident and successful in just being the me, I always wanted to be, the only competition I ever felt was when I needed to use the women’s room in a venue, I was not a regular in. And even that began to fade when I learned the proper etiquette to use in the typical women’s rest room. There was no thrill in doing just what came naturally, just the relief of being allowed in women only spaces to do it. Taking away any sort of a transphobe’s argument against me using the restroom of my choice.

In my case, becoming comfortable in my own skin was a constant problem which started with the way I was raised. My parents were long on material support and short on any emotional needs I may have had. Which led me to be alone with my gender dysphoria. It was a very lonely, confusing place to be and left deep scars on my internal confidence as I had no deep connection to what my true gender skin really was. The male world I was forced to live in, and the female world I wanted to be in. So, for me, the process of gaining any sense of who I really was a difficult and time-consuming process. Plus. My confidence was so fragile that the slightest problem could send me back to my cross-dressing drawing board to look for solutions.

Over the years, I flat out wore that old cross-dressing drawing board out until I began to figure out my problems were right in front of me. All I had to do was have the courage to do something about them. One of the problems was  they were so much deeper than just trying to look like a ciswoman. I was tired of thinking I was fooling anyone into thinking I was a ciswoman and settled into trying to build myself into the quality new feminine me I wanted to be as I had earned my womanhood from a difficult, unique path.

I seized the opportunity to finally be comfortable in my own skin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hey You!!!! Meeting Myself in the Middle

 

Image from Adam Winger
on UnSplash. 

For me, meeting myself in the mirror was never easy to do. While the group of boys I grew up around were blissfully doing boy things without a problem, I was struggling with the idea that I wanted to be a girl.

Sadly, for the longest time, I thought that someday I would have the chance to outgrow what would become for all to call gender dysphoria. For me, I was just a kid with problems I had no idea of how to conquer. Through all this time of my life my favorite quote to pass along was when some adult asked me what I wanted to become when I grew up, I could never tell the truth and say a woman as I lied and said a doctor or a lawyer. The only thing with certain that I knew was I would get an immediate trip to the psychiatrist if I had ever told the truth compliments of my parents. 

As I always say, age entitled me to a chance not to outgrow being a cross-dresser but did give me the opportunity to meet myself in the middle and start to mature into the transgender woman I am today. Before I did though, I needed to come up with an understanding of what the middle of being me really meant. What made it all so difficult was that my male life when it was going well it was very good, but when it was bad, I wanted out immediately. As I ran to my makeup, dresses and heels for comfort in the mirror.

The middle began to be harder and harder for me to find when I left the home mirror, gathered my courage and headed into the world as a transfeminine person. Many times, I could almost see and sense my middle person in the public mirrors I was still using to build myself up in places such as clothing stores in the malls and changing rooms I had started to use in all the thrift stores I was shopping to discover the latest fashion item I could wear. I was never any good shopping for women’s clothes as a man, as my feminine self-wanted to do it all and make all the final choices for herself.

In addition to fighting for the middle with my male self, I needed to fight my second wife for the rights to her husband. Like my male-self, my wife was a formidable opponent to any idea of me transitioning any further into the feminine world I increasingly wanted to live in. In many ways, she held all the gender cards because she knew I was a cross dresser when we met but never/ever agreed to me going past that point as she said she did not sign up to live with another woman. For whatever reason she never liked the transgender woman I was becoming and passed away before she could meet the finished product I had become. I don’t blame her because she just got caught in the middle of me not wanting to admit to what I always knew deep down…there was actually no middle point to me, I was destined to eventually live my life among ciswomen as an equal transgender woman.

The problem was, getting to the point of realizing all of this was easy to write about and harder to do. The biggest mistake I made was thinking my gender balance between male and female was so good that I could live as both in the world. While I maintained a long-term marriage and a good job. Trying to go all in on both genders cost me my already fragile mental health as I was still trying to do my research in the public eye about which gender direction I wanted to go. Long story short, I found without too much trouble I could carve out a new feminine life without the world questioning anything about my old male life. As I surveyed the world suddenly, I could see gender possibilities opening for me that I never thought possible before.

During this time in my life, I think I met myself in the middle too fast and tried unsuccessfully to slow my progress down until I could figure out what to do about the rest of my life. Primarily my second wife and my very lucrative job. Plus, on the other hand, I had put this gender teeter totter in motion, and it increasingly looked as if I could not get off. I kept up the old male charade I was forced to live as long as I needed to, and with the help of a few ciswomen friends, I was able to find a new middle point in my life as a trans woman. Which seemed to work well, until HRT or gender affirming hormones came my way, and the balance of my life was changed forever.

I had always viewed the possibility of me taking the gender altering hormones as a line of demarcation of me never going back to my old male life and it was. From the obvious growth of my breasts and hair to the overall softening of my skin and facial lines the changes came fast and furious and again I was forced to move up my timeline to discard (or give away) all my old male clothes and set my sights on a new bright future. Away from all the uncertainties of going back and forth between the two main binary genders of womanhood and manhood. My lifetime of juggling identities went away, my mental health improved as I entered the world I had always dreamed of my entire life that I had finally earned my way into.

The “earn” word is important here because of all the trial and error (mostly error) I put into finally facing the reality of my true gender and forever stopped meeting myself in the middle. Was it worth it? Sure, because I ended up not having any choice after all.

 

 

 

 

It's Complicated

 

Image from Fa Barboza
on UnSplash.

About a month ago, when I was being admitted into a hospital with what turned out to be pneumonia, I had to go through a very complicated conversation about my gender with the emergency room nurse.

Complicating matters is the hospital I have been to before has my gender listed correctly as female, but the nurse had heard the emergency squad driver refer to me as “he” several times after he talked to me about my living situation. When I told him I was married to a woman, somehow, he automatically assumed I was a man. Which I did not care about at the time, as all I wanted to do was recover from whatever was wrong with me. Plus, chances are, I will never see him again (I hope.)

Anyhow, the admissions nurse waded right in with the complicated gender questions. She did ask how I would like to be referred to in the pronoun department which was nice after I needed to tell her I was born as and still was a biological male. Actually, none of the conversation bothered me as I told her I lived fulltime as a transgender woman and was even married to a woman. Where some of the confusion was coming in. She accepted all of that, and we moved on to more important matters such as my medical care. Since I had been admitted to that hospital in the past, I had all the confidence in the world we could move past the complicated part of my transgender self and get on to the real work.

Since I have now been out in the world as my authentic self for over a decade now, normally questions about me don’t bother me. Except in the case of a mammogram nurse, I had several years ago who enquired if I had any “surgeries down there.” Like it was any of her business. I was upset at the question and showed it because then she went ahead and did her job of completing the mammogram. I also consider myself to be an educational curiosity to many people who have never seen or dealt with a transgender person. They have been radicalized by the recent wave of anti-trans political ads and have no way of knowing we often lead similar lives to them and are not the flamboyant style drag queens again on the ads.

Seeing as how I chose a complicated life to live, I need to live it the best I can, and I must say, I have encountered very few haters of gender bigots in the world. Which surprises me. I judge my public gender success on the amount of “he’s” or “she’s” I get when I am out in public. Going back to the hospital, the overwhelming number of nurses and aides did not gender me at all. They did their job and just kept going. All except one day nurse I had for two of my five days who kept infuriating me by calling me “buddy.” As I was stuck with her, I saw no point in explaining how I was not her buddy, for several different reasons.

I have a lot of compassion for those people who don’t understand me if they are not evil about it or want to further take away my rights. Mainly because I try to remember how long it took for me to understand myself and even longer to do anything meaningful about it. If I don’t set my expectations of people too high, then I am pleasantly surprised when they reach my expectations of a good person who of course tries to understand complicated me.

I think too, that growing up with gender dysphoria automatically qualifies you to be more complicated than the average non-transgender person. I know for me, the daily conflict of trying to decide if I was a boy or a girl growing up was a pressure I would not wish on my worst enemy. Learning to live with it was a constant problem I needed to deal with for what turned out to be nearly fifty years before I came to my final decision on how I was going to live. What a relief it was to get the gender burden off of my shoulders and on with life. Knowing completely, I would be facing difficult, complicated life choices ahead on my path to my dream.

It turned out, my recent hospital visit was just a reminder of the life I was trying to lead. I spend too much time in my cocoon away from the public. When I do get out, I am fortunate to have my best ally Liz to lead the way. If anyone is on the fence concerning my gender, when she continues to call me she, it really helps to set the tone and pave the way for public acceptance, A prime example was the recent bus tour to Florida we took. All the interaction Liz had with the other travelers set me up for success.

If you are contemplating going down a similar path as I did, just be aware that it will be complicated but on the other hand (as Emma said to me in a recent comment, very interesting.) For whatever reason we choose this path to our dreams of living as a transfeminine person, when we keep in mind what the difficulty factor in doing it is, we are better off and well adjusted to the new world we are in. There are few human efforts as inherently difficult than crossing the male to female gender frontier. The gender euphoria is worth it though when the public reaffirms who you are and you can finally come full circle back to the person you were always meant to be. They will never understand how difficult and complicated your journey was.

When you make it interesting too, you really have been able to make your life a success. It is for you and only you to understand.

 

 

 

 

The Power of Fear

 

Image from UnSplash.

The power of fear has always been a major factor to be dealt with as I made it through life.

At the beginning, I always used to run from fear by heading home to my makeup and skirts. Then, when that did not work as well, I needed to find another way to deal with the stress my fear brought on. All of a sudden, the extra feelings I brought to the whole cross-dressing experience began to be intertwined with the fear I felt about having my deep dark secret discovered. Every time I was not discovered, the relief I felt was intense.

As I grew older, the stakes I felt grew bolder when I took my image in the mirror public and into the world. The more I attempted to do it in public, the more my fear of discovery grew right with it. I guess it was because at the same time, my male life was flourishing and it was becoming riskier to give it all up, no matter how self-destructive I continued to be. I operated with the idea that if I had nothing to lose in life, it would be easier if I was discovered and life as I knew it came to crushing down on me.

My prime example of turning abject fear into success came from the night I decided to try going into one of the big venues I had visited as a man but this time as a woman. Something clicked in my mind, saying I was no longer a cross-dresser, I wanted more, like a ciswoman in the world doing the same things I had done as a man. Before I did though, I needed to see if I could even cross the threshold in the TGIF Fridays I was going to, to try to find a seat at the bar. Sure, I could have chosen a table instead, but I wanted to go all out and try to look for more interaction at the bar instead.

As I sat in the car, before I went in, I was literally so scared I could hardly breathe. I don’t remember how many times I checked my hair and makeup in my car mirror. Finally, I had enough, hitched up my big girl panties, took a deep breath and headed for the venue’s entrance. Deep down I knew if I was successful, I was facing yet another major transition point in my life and I knew I could never go back. Spoiler alert, I worked my way through all the fear I was feeling and managed to have an enjoyable time with the rest of the women just getting off work at a nearby mall. Even to the point of ordering another drink. Plus, I was right, I found my life could never go back to the male existence I was forcing myself to live. I had discovered new transitions as a transgender woman in the world.

More importantly, I discovered fear of what I was about to do in my new exciting world just came with the territory. It became as much a part of me as a well-worn set of panty hose when I went out into the world. Eventually, I just learned to live with my misgivings about giving up all my male privileges I had earned in life. Another example came much later after I had completed my male to female femininization, even to the point of starting HRT, or gender affirming hormones.

It happened one hot summer day when my future wife Liz suggested we go to one of those auto junk yards where you pick your own parts. We needed a side mirror for one of our cars and it would be much cheaper if we could find one there. All of a sudden, my old fears materialized about going back into a male-dominated environment. Again, I remembered the old days when I battled fear all the time and I had to keep reassuring myself I was not back in the not so good old days, and I would be fine. It turned out, all the fear and trepidation I felt about going was wasted because the men at the junk yard barely noticed me as they went about their business and we found a mirror for our car.

These days, since I have been out in the world for over a decade now, almost all my lifetime fears and anxieties about being a woman have passed like I do most of the time now. Mainly, I pass now as old which there is nothing I can do about. There are times when I do miss the adrenaline flow of being afraid propelled me into the world as a novice transgender woman. I do think, however, that conquering my gender fears came from my days in Army basic training when everyday we needed to fight to make it through. Then somehow, I used it all to help me be a better woman. Before I became a better man at the very end before I transitioned because I was allowed behind the gender curtain to get a look at how ciswomen live.

The end result was that fear helped me battle through the conflicts I felt because of gender dysphoria. It sounds different I know, but that is the way it worked for me.

 

 

 

Nothing Easy but the Hard Times

 

Image from Anthony Tran
on UnSplash.

Finishing up yesterday’s post about having a medical appointment with one of my medicine providers Regina, my worst fears materialized. After years and years of seeing Regina, she is retiring and I am being shuttled to another provider at the Veterans’ Administration here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Now I have only one more time to see her before a significant part of my life begins to shift.

I think my shift will continue when I see my endocrinologist on May 7^th. She is the only remaining tie to my old providers in Dayton, Ohio VA where I used to live and this visit is ultra important because I will have to ask to have my Estradiol patches prescription renewed. As I said yesterday, I am thinking about changing from the hormonal patches to self-injections which is not a big problem with me, but will it be with the “new” VA I am beginning to experience. If I am told I must get a new endo doc in Cincinnati, what will I have to go through to get my HRT, or will I have problems, is my paranoia. Time flies when you are worrying and before I know it, the time for the appointment will be here. I guess I was born to worry, and nothing is easy but the hard times.

I guess worrying fits right in with being transgender. Early in life, all I did was worry about getting caught when I cross-dressed in front of the mirror. I had plenty of hard times as I worried about my slightly younger brother discovering my feminine secret and telling my parents who would have promptly sent me off to a psychiatrist who knew absolutely nothing about gender dysphoria back in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s. At that time, I was mistaken that several of my main worries would take care of themselves as I became older. One of course was me wanting to be a woman, and the second one was what was I going to do about the military and the Vietnam War. To make matters worse, I was worried about them on several different levels. One of which being I could just relax and both the war and my urge to be feminine would just disappear.

Needless to say, both of them never went away. The war went on and on for years, and my desire to be a woman just intensified as I had more public experience when I gathered the courage to leave the mirror and go out into the world. Which I was starting to do before I entered the military, which in many ways just made matters worse. Certainly, I felt nothing was easy but the hard times as I tried alcohol for the first time to dull my pain. It was the beginning of a long one-sided love affair with alcohol I had which fortunately I won before it was too late. I took me much longer to realize my desire to be a full-time transgender woman was not ever going to go away and I would have to do something about the hard times I was experiencing by acting.

Acting meant I would have to put my male side behind me for good and plan for a radically different feminine future. That is when I truly found nothing ever would be easy in life but the hard times. So, for the first time in my life, if I ever wanted to achieve my dream, the path was clearly there to do it. Like a runway for jumbo jets lit up at night. All I had to do was learn how to land the jet.

At that point, I was rather confident that I could do it. Afterall, I had spent all those years cross-dressing and perfecting my feminine presentation, so what could go wrong. It turned out plenty. As I was completely lacking in rounding myself out as a transgender woman capable of holding her own in a world full of competitive ciswomen. I discovered I was completely not ready to communicate in a world where I needed to be better than the next woman to be accepted at all. Just presenting better as a trans woman was just the beginning I found, and I started to worry all over again.

This time, all my worries turned to action as my new life became a blur as I started to carve out a new, more complete path to my transfeminine dream. I could not believe it was me becoming a regular in venues I used to go to as a man and had wondered how it would be to visit them as a woman. I used to blame my second wife for holding me back, but learned it was all my fault, and I was just being a victim.

I think being transgender automatically brings a lot of worry with it. We are subject to violence, job and medical discrimination among many other negatives. When you add all of those to already problematic everyday lives, that everyone has, it is no wonder transgender suicide rates are so high. Which proves my point that nothing is easy but the hard times when you are trans. Reality comes when the attraction to all the pretty clothes begins to fade and the daily life of a woman sets in. A woman’s life is a many layered existence and one you have to accept when you transition.

By accepting the challenge, you made yourself, you have decided to set out and build your new life from scratch. There will be many times when you think you have bit more than you can choose, but after you have been successful, you can feel the pride and for once knowing that the hard times were ever easy but somehow you made it through to living your dream of living and thriving in a feminine world. You should be proud of your accomplishment.

 

 

 

No Matter Where you Go...There you Are

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride, 
Three years ago.

I always thought no matter where you go, there you are was meant to be a humorous statement, until I lived it during searching for my transgender roots.

Often, I have written about the time and effort I put into moving myself and my family as I switched jobs flutily trying to find my dream of having a feminine future. Sadly, it seemed, after a short time, I was back to where I started. Spinning my tires and getting nowhere. That person I was looking at in the mirror just would not change. When that happened, I would start taking bigger and bigger chances with my future probably hoping someone else would discover my deep dark gender secret. No one except my second wife ever did to any extent, so I was forced again to face my gender dysphoria on my own.

The problem was I was not ready to face my truth as one therapist told me that I was the only one who could make the final call on my gender needs. Would I be a man or a woman was a dauting idea for me, and for the longest time, ran from my decision.

What I tried to do was research how it would be to be a woman in the world I was in. Again, hoping I would receive a magical answer on which way I should go. As close as I came was the days which I was able to pass as a presentable ciswoman. I started doing things such as specific duties such as going to the grocery store, for example, where I was able to literally melt a teen grocery bagger in my big fluffy sweater and mini skirt which was the fashion of the day. It was eye opening because it was the first time I had ever had that sort of a reaction from a male at all. Ironically, all it did was make me feel good about my feminine self for a short time as I prepared to enter the world. No matter where I went, there I was.

Where I was, was a spot where I needed to face reality. Was I going to listen to my wife and never go out explore the world as a woman or stay at home and pass the time drinking and dreaming of the next time, I had the courage to go out. Every time the call to go out came up I had to answer to save what was left of my mental health, and I hit the road doing slutty things such as flashing semi-trucks in my miniskirts. Somehow, I was under the mistaken impression it all gave me validation as a woman. It did not and I outgrew the temptation quickly and went back to doing weekly chores such as trips to the grocery stores.

It wasn’t until much later in my life when I started to truly understand where I should be in the world. I left the gay venues I was frequenting and started exclusively going to the lesbian and straight bars all together to see if I could make it in a world that I enjoyed. In those cases where I went, there I was and I liked it. The world was a blur of excitement and trepidation as I tried more and more venues to see if I would be accepted, and I found in some I was.

Before I knew it, and had the where with all to acknowledge it, I was moving from the transgender woman image I had of myself. I was slowly becoming the best version of me, and one I had dreamed of my entire life. Being just me meant that for once, no matter where I went, there you are meant something basic to me. Getting there was never easy and I took a lot of chances, but I made it through many storms and high winds to make it. Looking back, I don’t know how I did.

Being just me brought me deep satisfaction and allowed me to allow myself to let my feminine side rule my world. There was nothing I could do about always being a transfeminine person, but being a quality version of me was going to be a work in progress as I meshed all my virtues together. The problem then became recognizing exactly what my virtues were and what I could take from living on both sides of the main gender binaries, male and female. I needed to look at the process as a blessing that few humans get to go through rather than a curse that most haters and bigots said it was.

When I took my life firmly in control and was able to surround myself with strong allies, finding out where I was stepped out of the mist and into the sunlight. In the bright light, I found I could be a nice quality person that people responded to as me, not because I was transgender.

At that point, no matter where you go, there you are became very real to me because I had landed squarely where I wanted to be. Sure, I took a long winding path to get here, but now I am finally proud to say I am just me. Certainly, I would not recommend all the running and drinking I did to anyone else but hopefully you can find your own path which brings you to the stage of just being you. And sometimes, all the things we do to survive our gender issues make for a more interesting life than most people have. At least it worked for me as I made my way through the no matter where you go, there you are phase of my life. Which turned out to be most of it. Hopefully you don’t have to take fifty years like I did to have the courage to do what is right for you.

 

Gender Euphoria is Real

 

Image from Simona Todarova
on UnSplash. 

Looking back at yesterday’s interaction with the woman who referred to me as “she” when talking to her husband, I knew that gender euphoria was real.

When I talked to her, I was rewarded with being the total feminine package with no doubts including impostor syndrome to ruin the experience. In the past, I would have waited for something to come up to tip off I was transgender. Yesterday, as I said, nothing like that ever entered the conversation. Maybe it was because I got the ball rolling when I sat down beside her in the waiting room. Smiled and said hello. It is difficult for me to do with strangers because I am so shy. I guess finally I am getting the confidence to step out of my shell and do better socially. It helped too, because it turned out we had the same last name and originally came from the same hometown which helped us find something to talk about to pass the time.

All in all, it made for a very pleasant waiting experience as almost all of the people sit and glare at each other. It also made up for the essentially genderless experience I had at the coffee shop when the interaction did not seem to go either way with the young girl who was waiting on me. I was friendly and she was friendly and we both went on our way. If I had my choice, I would have preferred that the barista in the coffee shop would have referred to me as “she” also, but at least she did not use the dreaded “he” pronoun when referring to me. Or even worse, “sir.”  Which would have ruined my morning for sure.

The nice thing about gender euphoria is that it lasts for a long time, and I feel all the work I put into being a transgender woman was worth it. It seemed, despite my best efforts, someone in public would break my feminine façade and call me by a male pronoun. Which brings up the worst thing about euphoria which is so fragile and can be broken in a moment. Then it takes weeks to build up again.

It took me years to realize the power of confidence in my transfeminine life. Sometimes, I felt as if I could rule the room in my high heels, and other times, I just wanted to be left alone and disappear. Probably the same as any other ciswoman felt. In fact, I could see it in the women I studied. Some walked into a room with all the confidence in the world, while others seemed to be so timid. Of course, I did my best to copy the assertive women who I secretly envied because their gender euphoria was so real.

For the longest time, before my ankles gave up, all I wore was high heels because I thought the shoes gave the woman a sense of power with women and men. I knew men were conditioned to look when they heard the click -click of heels coming towards them on a hard floor. Women, on the other hand were forced to respect the woman wearing the highest heels if they liked it or not. Euphoria or envy runs deep with ciswomen it seems. Sometimes it provides a major point of competition between women if they are competing for men, or just appearance.

I am spoiled to have two powerful gender allies around me almost all of the time. My wife Liz and daughter are always quick to provide the correct pronouns for me when a stranger struggles. That way, when the stranger struggles to find the correct pronouns, they always have a reminder, and I leave with my gender euphoria intact.

One way or another, gender euphoria is as real and powerful as dysphoria and often provides transgender women and trans men with a brief flicker of hope when our closet needs a light to keep going in a world which is increasingly hostile to us.

Hopefully, that is you and even if you experience negativity in the world while you are on your gender path. That light ahead is a green light and you can keep going. Always remember, a transgender journey if a marathon, not a race. You don’t always know what is around the next corner but gender euphoria can help you get there.

 

 

 

What is Chasing You?

 

Image from Filip Mroz
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.

 

Did I Do It Right

 

JJ Hart

As I slowly made my way through the process of recovering in the hospital from pneumonia, I had a lot of time to think about the gender decisions I had made during my life.

The first time came as I was being checked in in the emergency room, I had a chance to watch the older ambulance driver flirt with the attending nurses in the hospital. As I did, I wondered how it would have been if I had not suffered from any gender dysphoria in my life at all. What sort of a male life could I have lived without all the distractions I had. I also knew as a male, I did my share of flirting with women too.

Then, when I was really feeling sorry for myself as I had to expose my male nakedness to the nurses when they took care of me in bed, I wondered if I had actually taken the measures to have more gender realignment surgeries. Did taking the easy way out come back to haunt me. Because I decided against having any surgeries at all. My gender was always between my ears and not between my legs as I had decided. Plus, I was successfully beginning to build a life as a transgender woman as I was, so why fool with success. Every turn I made on my gender path presented me with an opportunity to face a different challenge, even though most of them terrified me. As I moved forward into a feminine world, my main goal remained just to do it right. Humans rarely get a chance to do their lives over, and I better not screw up my chance at mine.

As I lay in the hospital bed thinking what I would have done differently, the answer came back to me loud and clear. Nothing I could have done different would have helped me except maybe coming out of my gender closet into the world quicker. But even that idea had strings attached because the world back then was a totally different place. In many ways, it was a softer, gentler place for transfeminine people to exist in but in other ways, just as difficult. Perhaps too, it could have been just my perception of the world because the whole process was new to me at the time.

Did I do it right? Who is to say what is right from wrong when it comes to a gender transition. Some have intricate surgeries and some don’t is just the beginning of all the differences in the paths we can take. And surprisingly there is no right or wrong answer. Which is the conclusion I came up to as I laid in my hospital bed awaiting my next challenge to my gender. Thankfully, most of the staff just didn’t seem to care. I was just another face in the crowd to them.

My next challenge is to totally rid myself of all the vestiges of this crummy disease. I am still fighting a bad cough as well as a stopped-up nose, so life could be worse. My blood pressure also has been running too low, so I am monitoring that.

Enough whining, I am happy to be home where I can truly rest. At least I know I did that part right.