Most certainly living out a dream to change a gender requires a lot of passion. As a matter of fact, a life time of passion.
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| Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart |
Early in life I was guilty of living in the mirror and pretending I was a pretty girl but at the same time I knew I had deeper issues. Such as when someone asked me exactly what I wanted to be later in life, I dutifully answered a lawyer, or architect or something similar. My inner truth was telling me all I really wanted to do was grow into the woman I always wanted to be. Naturally, I kept the opinion to myself to avoid all sorts of potential problems. Little did I know my ultimate desire to live a feminine life would never leave me. It would just become stronger over the years as I learned my passion could indeed be achieved.
As I am finding out from more and more readers of the blog our pre-internet upbringing had more to do with holding back our gender growth than we could have imagined. In other words, our gender closets remained smaller and darker than they should have because we had very little ways to reach out to others with the same situation. As I remember it took me all the way until I was in my thirties (in the mid 1970's) before I met another transvestite. As we were called back in those days. Once I was able to meet others who lived fairly close to me, they fueled my passion to explore further if I could follow my goal to live more as a woman. Two of my acquaintances became role models of sorts when they went from so called cross dressers to undergoing genital realignment surgery in the several years which I knew them. I was fairly certain "going all the way" surgically wasn't for me but the fact still remained I still was fueled by my age old passion to live as a woman. To me, it wasn't so much about what was between my legs which was driving me as much as what was going on between my ears in my noggin.
As I took all of this into consideration, it became clear to me the path I had to take would become increasingly difficult. The more I learned about the new term "transgender" at the time, the more I felt it described me. The tough part was figuring out what to do about it. What happened was a series of disjointed often mis-guided steps towards achieving my goal of leading a transgender life. I found in order to do it I had to completely transition again. Somehow I needed to move from being a cross dresser and looking like a woman to being transgender and following my passion to live as a woman. After a series of successes helped me to accomplish my goal, I finally developed the courage to leave my male life and all the privileges' I had earned behind. Before I did, trying to live a life with one foot in each of the binary genders nearly killed me. I am sure others have been more successful than me trying to do it. I just couldn't.
Passion is a difficult creature. For some it is an all out driver to take on and achieve a goal while with others passion provides a more even path to success. Plus it helps also when you can savor a few successes along the way. On occasion I look back and think maybe a higher power was guiding my path and passion because of all the dark times I spent wondering if I was doing the right thing. Or all the times I "purged" (threw out) all my feminine possessions only to reacquire them again. I should have known following my first purge, none of the future purges would work either. Passion just proved to be too powerful.
