I Could Never Say No

 

JJ Hart with two Special People who 
made it Impossible for me to say No.
Liz on left, daughter on right. 

I discovered early in life that saying no to cross-dressing as a girl was something I could never do.

I tried many times, but I was a miserable failure as the pressure would build to run to my makeup and wardrobe to look at myself in the mirror. I even went as far as trying to shave the ugly unwanted hair off my legs with my mom’s electric razor. When I did, the world seemed to come together for me…for a while. Like clockwork, I could almost predict when the pressure would start to build again to cross-dress. Like most of you, I even purged or threw out most all of my feminine belongings in a wild rush which felt so good at the moment, until my old urges came rushing down on me. Saying no was just not an option.

For a while, I thought being feminine to the point of living as a transgender woman fulltime was always going to be just a dream. At other times, I thought that some point in my life I would just outgrow my gender urges and revert to a fulltime male life, no matter what my brain was telling me. I guess you could say, sometimes I thought a permanent purge would be in my future. I was kidding myself. That permanent purge never came as I tried many times to no avail. It seemed each time I tried to say no, my urges to follow my transgender needs came back even stronger. This time fueled by the positive feedback I was receiving when I was able to present better going out in public as a novice trans woman in a world of ciswomen. Just entering their world was much more difficult for me than I ever thought possible.

One of the problems was my old male self and my second wife did not participate in my dreams. It was far from my wife’s fault because none of what I was doing was anything she signed up for when we got married. She tried to help as much as she could, but my dream was growing so fast I could not control it. I started out the marriage as a cross-dresser and now I was into a transgender woman, and I did not have the courage, or knowledge to explain it. I just knew, I could not say no to pursuing my dreams. I am sure all she saw was her man slipping away. Sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly and I understood why she did not like it.

As I said, I really always knew saying no was not an option in my pursuit of a transfeminine life when I really went out into the world and found myself in the middle of new friendships who knew nothing of my past. growing Just trying to look the part of a woman faded away as I always thought it would when I found myself at the point of wanting to be that woman. Doing my best to communicate with the world on their terms. As I continually searched my soul for guidance on the path I should take, the answer always came back the same. Follow your instincts and do what you need to do to feel natural. With input such as that, why should I ever say no to myself again.

Finally, I reached the point of no return in my life when I needed to look at myself in the mirror to see who I really was. With no makeup at all one morning, I had a chance to see the real me and the words my wife Liz said to me came through loud and clear. There was no male in me and for once everything with a “no” word in it made sense. Plus, I was mentally exhausted from fighting myself all my life. I had enough, and it was time to make my final decision.

When I replaced no with yes, my life opened up to new horizons I never thought possible. Yes, meant I could be the long-hidden self I could never find. If you are on a gender path of your own, I hope you can do a better job of facing your truth than I did. I kept saying no too long and missed a significant amount of my life trying to outrun myself. On the other hand, changing a gender is a huge move, and one that cannot be taken lightly. You have to get to the point where saying no is not an option to you anymore.

 

 

 

I Never Missed a Beat

 

JJ Hart

Once I started down or up my long gender path, I never missed a beat, even though on occasion, the beats were far apart.

The beat started when the first time I experienced the thrill of experimenting with my mom’s clothes, I knew I was hooked as much as the garters I learned to use way back then to hold up mom’s hosiery. From then on, I went in as many spurts as I could to try to achieve my ultimate dream of being a girl, rather than just looking like one. The problem was I was restricted to hiding my gender ambitions from a totally unforgiving world. Primarily, an ultra-curious slightly younger brother who seemingly was always around. Locking myself away in the bathroom away from him only had the chance of working so many times as the instances I had of being totally alone were rare.

Even so, I managed to perfect my makeup routines in the rare moments I had. Perhaps the days of watching mom put “her face on” did me good. At least I had a working knowledge of how makeup should work, even though I struggled to improve my efforts and not look like a clown in drag. I wanted desperately to look like the other girls around me I saw at school. So much so, I daydreamed my life away wanting to be them. Luckily, at the time, I did not know how many beats I would have to make to reach my feminine dreams.

It turned out the biggest obstacle to my transgender dreams turned out to be the looming possibility of military service in the Vietnam War. It lasted so long in my youth, I literally started to worry about it when I was fourteen. At the least, my worst-case scenario of being drafted and sent off to war would wreck any ideas of fast forwarding my gender goals for years. Three, to be exact when the worst case happened, and I did get drafted. Then I took the option of serving an extra year to try to work in an Army vocation of my choice. As destiny would have it, everything turned out the best it could. Even to the point of seeing the world and coming out to very close friends that I was a transvestite. Which, in the long term, set up another problem.

The problem turned out to be that I was not being honest with myself or anyone else. I missed a beat in the worst possible way. I was not so much a transvestite or cross dresser, I was something much deeper than just having an innocent desire to wear women’s clothes. Deep down inside of me, a little voice was beginning to be heard that I wanted to again be a woman in my own right. The clothes I resorted to calming my desires meant little to nothing to me in the long term of my life. Worse yet, I missed many crucial beats of my life, as I ignored the little voice which was threatening to grow into a loud roar.

All of it set me up to escape my gender closet and begin to seriously explore the world as a transfeminine person. I needed to see if I could make it at all. When I did, the beat of my life began to totally pick up and I discovered I could make it as a transgender woman…if I wanted it bad enough. Plus, I needed to figure out what was I prepared to lose if I made the major step and transitioned into my version of womanhood. A long-term marriage, family, friends, and job potentially could all be gone if I followed the beats of my heart.

In what now seems like a blur, I was able to put less than desirable transition decisions behind me and then struck gold. Which was my experience with on-line relationships. After being stood up on countless (dates) my wife Liz of over a decade reached out to me saying I had sad eyes, and we have been together since. Never missing a beat.

Needless to say, that inner voice I mentioned deserves praise also. When given a chance, she led the way into a new exciting world of ciswomen I had only dreamed about. Even though I had gone down such a long gender path to arrive where I am today, it still does my soul good when a neighbor calls Liz and I “ladies” on our walks when we meet up. After all, I am just making up for lost time and missing many beats.

 

 

 

Burning Bridges

 

Image from Marcus 
Clemens on UnSplash

Yesterday as I sat waiting for my wife Liz at one of her doctors appointments, I had a chance to pause and reflect back on my long and often difficult transgender journey. 

First of all I marveled on how I was accepted as me. Not necessarily as a woman or a man but as just me. The whole process to arrive took me over fifty years of my life to get here. A place where I could feel secure and relax with just being my authentic self. Then I started to think of how many bridges I torched to get here.

My main problem was my old entrenched male self. Even though he never wanted to be a part of my life at all, once he did, he never wanted to give up what he earned. So he fought completely to maintain his edge. He had an edge in what I like to call the "three F's" or family, friends and finances. He had built all three and was able to maintain a great job to support his other interests. In the meantime my feminine self was doing all she could to break out of the confines of the closet she was in.  She went as far as starting small and large gender fires designed to sabotage his very existence. 

The biggest bridge she tried to burn was the financial one. What happened was I began to stop at venues close to and even part of the places I was working at during the same period of time. My thought pattern was, they wouldn't recognize my feminine self as my male self. I was wrong and they did. Leading me to all kinds of potential embarrassments if anyone told my wife they saw me. The prime example of it almost happening one night was when the disc jockey (who also worked for me as a cook) played "Dude Looks Like a Lady" immediately after I showed up. Fortunately, my wife didn't notice anything but I most certainly did. I knew then, the world knew I was a cross dresser. 

Deep down, I thought if my deepest secret was discovered I would be relieved and I would have the chance to live the transgender life I had always dreamed of. Sadly I still had too much to lose such as the first two "F's" or family and friends. It wasn't until much later, when my friends and family started to pass away and I reached an age when I could retire on Social Security did I finally see a path forward to leading a transgender life. 

What a relief it was yesterday to know I had reached a point in my life when I didn't have to be so self destructive.  No more severe mental illness or thoughts of self harm. I could sit and be reassured I wouldn't have to burn any bridges anymore.