Was I being Selfish?

 

Image from UnSplash and
Brooke Balentine.

When I was a maturing cross-dresser, one of my wives made it a prime point of her argument against my cross-dressing at the time saying that I was just being selfish. The problem I had with her saying that was deep down, I knew it was true. Mainly because I was spending all my spare time thinking about or doing my cross-dressing activities. I felt guilty, but there was little I could do about it as I wanted to be feminine so bad. So, I went on with my daily activities ignoring the best I could what she said.

Sadly, my selfish problem only became worse the farther along I traveled up my gender path. I simply wanted more from my life than what I was getting and I was pursuing it. I thought to hell with the risk I was doing to my male world and life as I knew it if my secret was discovered as it almost was several times. Like when I almost ran head on into my wife’s boss going to a big box store in a small Ohio town we lived in at the time. I did not think he recognized me, but he did bring up seeing a a particularly “big” woman the other day when he left work to pick up supplies at a party we were attending at his house one weekend. Of course, I could not let on it was me he was talking about, but my wife knew and questioned me about it later. I don’t think she ever believed my denials, but life went on until I made it to the next level of being selfish.

When I was out in the world as a successful transfeminine person, just doing it a little bit was just not enough. Success bred success, and if I could not for some reason make it out into the world again, I grew angry and bitter with life and tried to take it out on the world around me. By doing so, I even almost lost jobs because of my attitude. Having a sullen selfish attitude got to be so bad, I even sought out gender therapy to help me from one of the few therapists in Ohio at the time who dealt with it. It turned out to be that she could not work miracles with my gender issues, but she did with my attitude which was influenced by being diagnosed with a Bi-Polar depression disorder. Following a few experiments with medication, I found one that worked and my life became better. Except for I did not magically quit my feminine ideas and remained on my selfish path to see if I could ever live my dream of going full-time in life.

What made matters even more frustrating was, even with all the mental energy which was going into my transgender issues my male self was still able to advance in his life too. Making it harder for me to think about moving along with my plans and even being selfish about them at all. Through it all, my guilt was building about why I was even cursed with being transgender at all. This was before I finally began to understand my gender problems were not a curse at all.

In the meantime, my wife and I were clashing every time she caught me being selfish and leaving the house as my feminine trans woman self. One time she was even mad enough to tell me why I wasn’t man enough to be a woman. If I was smart at the time, I would have listened to her advice. I should have faced my true self and started making plans for my ultimate male to female femininization project. I just was not ready for several reasons such I loved my wife very much and the life we had built together.

By now, you have probably noticed a theme here. I kept shooting myself in the foot by being supremely selfish when I set out to build a new life when I already had a perfectly good one with a loyal wife, good job and loving family. All of which helped to describe why I felt so much stress and tension during this portion of my life. All the therapy and medications in the world could not help me until I had the courage to face up to my true self as she looked at me in the mirror. She had been there all along, and I thought I needed to apply makeup to bring her out (which I did for the public) but one on one, she was very real to me. She appreciated all the outwardly things any ciswoman needs to survive but inwardly, she just needed to be recognized for the person she had the potential to become.

Ultimately, I outlived my second wife (and many family members and friends) which freed me up to not feel any selfishness at all about what I was doing with my femininization. I was just busy preparing my world for the truth I had so deeply known. I should have never been a male at all and was just a woman cross dressing as a man. Needless to say, it was an enlightening experience coming out of my gender shell and having the opportunity to live my feminine truth. Just having the chance to compete in a world of ciswomen on their level was an intimidating yet exciting experience which my true self was up to. After living life hidden away all so many years against her will. As with most all transgender women and transgender men, it is a major project to bring ourselves into the world and unfortunately, we must be selfish to do it. The good thing is, once we go through the selfish part of our lives, we have the potential to be good, loving partners. If we are destined to find that special someone to love.

Life dictates it is nothing but a circle, and we have to take the good with the bad. Selfish or not.

 

 

 

 

 

Transgender S.O.S.

Image from Micheal Held
on UnSplash.

What a mistake it is when a “civilian” says transgender women and transgender men have a choice when they decide to live a life they were destined for.

By destined, I mean ultimately, we had no choice but to transition and any attempts to stop it were going to be futile. Those of us who were forced into the male box at birth unfortunately learned the male way to deal with emotions and difficult circumstances, we just internalized them. Hoping they would just go away. I know with me, in my family, internalization was taught from a very young age. It was impossible to relay any sort of gender S.O.S. to anyone who had a remote idea of how to help me. Back in those days, gender dysphoria was treated as a mental disorder and at the least, I knew enough to know I was not mentally ill. I just wanted to be a girl.

What I did then was try to run and hide and attempt to be hyper masculine in everything I did which worked for years. But the damage from doing it was extensive, and my mental health suffered from the pressure of trying to be both binary genders. It became a balancing act which was impossible to put down.

Along the way, with urging from my second wife, I sought therapy to save our marriage. To do so, I found a therapist who advertised as a gender specialist in Columbus, Ohio. She was one of the first and I found her ad in a LGBTQ publication I was reading and decided to give her a try. After several sessions, she told me the truth which I only listened to part of. She said I was Bi-Polar which explained all the severe depression and ups and downs I had been experiencing. It turned out that it was the easy diagnosis she gave me because the second part involved my gender dysphoria. One session, she flat out told me there was nothing she or even me could ever do anything about wanting to be a woman. Somehow, I would have to learn to live with it or act on my desires. Her words shocked me and at that time of my life, I was still searching for my gender truth and was not ready to give up on maintaining all the comfortable male privileges I had worked so hard for.

My answer at the time was to go back to internalizing what she told me because there was no way I was going to tell my wife. Who then would have considered the entire use of therapy to be a waste. Since in many ways, I was just refusing to look at my true self in the mirror, I discontinued therapy and went on with my life. Even though my mirror was telling me I was a man, my mind had other ideas, and I still had no one to send a S.O.S to because on occasion, I felt as if I was sinking fast. I was fortunate that my new anti-depression meds worked well enough to keep my everyday moods stable which left me the gender problems to deal with on their own.

It took me years to finally figure out the gender problems were not going away no matter how much I tried to internalize them. In desperation I tried to start going out in public and attempt to interact with the world as a woman, transgender or not. My S.O.S. to the public was I was not trying to fool anyone into thinking I was a ciswoman, I meant no harm, and I was just trying to be me for once in my life with no internalizing. I can’t say it was always easy and I survived a suicide attempt when I felt I was cheating on my wife (with myself) but I made it through alive.

The best part was when I began to build a new transfeminine life completely away from the man I used to be. Ironically though, my internalization was still there but just reversed. No longer was I trying to hide the reality of my femininity, now I was trying to hide any of my old male self-slipping through and re-ruining my life I was trying to build.

The entire path I was on took me head on to the realization that no matter what the mirror was telling me in the morning, I could work past him and for once face the world as my true, authentic self. I did not have to send out any more S.O.S. pleas that went unanswered or internalized anything. I faced myself and was free to live.

To hell with never having a choice of which gender was right for me, and to hell is where I almost went thinking I was not man enough to be a woman. I had the choice all along no matter what society told me. I was just afraid to do it.