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| Image from Brett Jordan on Unsplash |
To live your truth as a transgender person, you first have to figure out what your truth is.
In many cases, accomplishing knowing your truth when in comes to gender is very difficult. Even though I had realized from a very early age I wanted to be a girl and strongly admired everything feminine, it was still a difficult journey until I could actually live my truth. I believe the earliest remembrances I had of being transgender was when I discovered just dressing up as a member of the feminine gender just wasn't enough. I actually wanted more. I wanted to actually be a girl/woman. Sadly, when I was discovering all of this, there was no internet or social media so I still felt isolated from the world. It wasn't until years later when I heard the term transgender for the first time.
As the years rolled by and I learned more and more concerning what a transgender person actually was, I increasingly felt the term described me. Primarily because I felt just cross dressing as a woman was just never going to describe me. Plus, I had for the first time encountered other persons who identified as trans and I just knew I wanted to learn more about their lives. It turned out to be the right move since two of the people in my circle made their journey's all the way to living full time as women. Right or wrong, they both became role models. Through it all, I wondered if I could ever follow in their footsteps and live an impossible dream as a transgender woman.
One of the main differences was neither of them were involved in a serious long term relationship with a strong woman who did not approve of a gender transition. Also employment wise there were major differences such as one of the women I knew was a fire-person and had served out her initial twenty years so she had a good pension coming. And, the other woman was a very successful electrical engineer. She knew she was in demand employment wise and would have no problems with securing employment. Also, to make matters worse for me (or better for them) they were both gorgeous. Here I was just doing my best to look the best I could while all the time knowing I would certainly lose my job and my wife if I transitioned. Living my truth during that time in my life turned out to be rather murky. I was considering following in my acquaintances footsteps but couldn't quite figure out how it was possible.
Through it all, I took my usual male sides approach and tried to hide my truth. Predictably, the entire process was ill advised and finally led me to a very serious self harm (suicide) attempt. To save myself and live my truth, it took a series of events in my life to do do it. Sadly, the biggest was when my second wife of twenty five years passed away when she was just fifty. Her passing, along with the fact I was quickly approaching retirement age led me down the path to being able to attempt a gender trnasition. It was during this time when I began hormone replacement therapy or HRT. The hormonal change propelled me even further to learning my truth...I always should have been a woman. My body just screamed for the changes it went through and it all felt so natural.
I realized in my early sixties, destiny was on my side and finally I would be able to live my transgender truth.
