The Winds of Gender Change

 

Image from Taylor Flowe
on UnSplash. 

Per normal, we have had a very windy spring here in southwestern Ohio USA. For some reason, I have never associated spring with my gender changes like I have during the fall season. I remember vividly the fall evenings I spent driving around feeling melancholy about the fact that I was stuck in my old unwanted male life. Seemingly, forever. Maybe it was because of the trees losing their leaves which set the fall off from the spring. I just knew it was happening.

Fall was especially bad when I was on a six-month delay to go to the Army basic training at FT. Knox, Kentucky. It marked the time for me that I knew I would have three years away from my gender cross-dressing activities which kept me sane at the time. I was afraid of going to basic infantry training as well as losing my ties to my feminine self for the next three years. The only reality to me was that I had no choice but let the winds of change take me away to a new uncertain future.

When I was in the service, my theme song began to be “Call Me the Breeze” by Lynard Skynyrd because of all the moving I was doing from the US to Thailand, to Germany, I was truly able to feel the wind thanks to the efforts of Uncle Sam and his military. I did it so well that I was even offered a promotion if I stayed in an extra year, which I turned down. Instead, I got out and resumed my civilian life at a small radio station I worked at before the winds of gender change got the best of me, and I started to follow my instincts and began to explore the world as a transgender woman. Which was becoming increasingly evident to me was where I fit in in the gender spectrum.

In the beginning, all I had was Halloween parties to express my femininity and even there, I was not doing a good job of doing it. I was stuck trying to do a trashy look when in fact, my inner woman was pushing for a more realistic approach such as being a professional ciswoman. What did happen was, I got the basics of what it would take if I ever threw caution to the wind and went across the gender border from male to female. It was at those parties that I found that all of a sudden, the other women wanted to talk to me while the men left me alone which would be a theme for my life as I transitioned.

Once I left all the Halloween parties behind me, I started to attend small diverse LGBTQ mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. When I did, it was as if there was one of those huge Hollywood movie fans at my back pushing me forward. From lesbians to transsexuals, all were there so I could judge where I would be if I moved forward in the world. Due to the fact that I was still solidly married and had a very good job, I needed to shut the fan off, or at least put it on a slow speed so I could catch my breath and figure it all out because of the gender complexity it all presented. Did I want to give up my life of male privilege to be a trans woman, at that point in time I was undecided.

It turned out, indecision was my worst enemy as I entered the world to explore it as a transfeminine person. Most of my ventures were ill-advised attempts to be accepted in gay venues in Dayton, Ohio where I was barely welcomed and when I was, it was because they thought I was another drag queen. Which was far from the truth. It was not until the winds of change blew me through the doors of the same sports venues I enjoyed as a man did my world began to turn around for the best. To my amazement, I earned my acceptance in those places easier than the gay bars I was going to, or the lesbian bars which were closing due to lack of business. Before I knew it, I was treated like a regular. Even with the restroom privileges I needed so badly.

I was flying high until the winds of change dictated a change and I crashed to earth when everyone dear to me began to pass away in a two year period. Including my wife of twenty-five years. I was in shock and so lonely I drank too much and took unnecessary chances with my life as the winds of change continued to blow strongly. Every time I thought the winds were receding, they would pick up again threatening to blow me off my high heeled shoes.

I was fortunate when I saw the name of a doctor who would check me out and then prescribe HRT or gender affirming hormones and I took immediate advantage to do something I had wanted to do for a very long time. Sync up my inner person with an exterior which was feminized. Even with the minimum dosage I had to begin with, I could feel and immediate change in several areas such as with my emotions and breast growth. When I began to see myself as a different femininized person in the morning mirror, I was becoming more and more excited over the winds of change which were pushing me ahead into a new exciting world.  

The only part of my being who was not surprised by all the changes was my feminine self who had been hidden away all those years with no way to express herself as when she was in the Army. If patience is a virtue; she had it all as my male self-put on a tremendous fight to maintain what he had earned as far as privileges went. Fortunately, the winds were blowing in the right direction, and she won the ultimate battle for my life. I discovered that without her, I would not have had a life worth living.

 

 

Pulling Your Gender Band-Aid Off

 

Image from Possessed Photography
on UnSplash. 

I am sure you have encountered a time when you just had to pull a band-aid off quickly from a tender area of your body. Even worse, maybe the band-aid was in a spot where your unwanted male hair was thick, and it hurt.

After I began to realize what was going on in
my life with my gender issues, my time to remove my lifetime band-aid was coming closer to being done. I could put it off no longer once I started to get out into the world as a transgender woman and begin to live. Sure, I was scared, but my whole new life felt so real and natural to me that I just had to keep moving forward.

What helped me gather the courage to finally rip the band-aide off was that I was becoming quite successful in carving out a new feminine life were no one knew or cared about the old male me. Even with the protests of my second wife and my male self, it just seemed possible that someday I could live my dream of being a fulltime transfeminine person. On the negative side, I knew I had a lot of work to do to be able to even think I could ever rip the band-aid off and move on with my life the way I always thought it should be. Courage was always my problem, along with the possibility of causing loved ones around me pain if I made such a perceived selfish move.

Until I arrived at the point of self-preservation, I did think it was selfish the way I was living. After all, I was spending every spare moment when I was not working either living as a woman or planning the next time I was going to do it. I was completely obsessed with making the next move up my gender path and could not wait to fill out the next chapter of my gender workbook. The problem was, ignoring my path was causing me damage to my mental health all the way to me trying self-harm to myself with a suicide attempt when I thought all was lost. Until I finally regained control of myself before I did more harm. When I did, my life began to go  full circle and the future seemed brighter. If you find yourself looking down at that dark tunnel of self-harm, please remember what might be true today, may not be true tomorrow and there might are people to help you on various hotlines. Especially if you are a veteran and have Veterans Administration health care.

I am sorry I digressed from my original topic of pulling off your band-aid into suicide, but it just so happened to me that suicide helped me to make the final decision to take the gender jump from a male to female life. Was there room for me after all behind the gender curtain I so desperately wanted to explore because I felt I belonged there. If I did not make the jump (or attempt to), what reason did I have to keep living, kept sneaking into my subconscious thoughts. At the same time, I wondered what was going on under the wound I was carrying around as I tried to live a successful male life. My habit of living half and half in both genders was just not working for me. I had always heard that if takes three repetitions in a row to form a habit, so what I was doing was completely wrong when I needed to go back to my unwanted male gender after spending three days as a trans woman leading my best life.

My life finally got to the point that even I could not ignore the ignorance of how I was choosing to live. I needed to face the truth of living the male life I had since birth was false and I needed to move on to a brighter future away from all the male influences I lived under. The band-aide which had become such an integral part of my life had to go away. No matter how much pain it might cause. I was fortunate in a way because I had most of the people in my life who had mattered to me, including most of my family. When I came out to my remaining blood family, my daughter wholeheartedly accepted me and my only brother rejected me. So, I earned a fifty-fifty split when the band-aid came off.

The next big problem was averted when I was able to take an early retirement, so I would not have to worry about working a new job as my trans woman self. I supported myself by selling collectables and with my Social Security.

I guess you can say, taking the hard way out and waiting as long as I did transition worked for me. Even though I had to go through enough anguish along the way to wonder why I did it. I was doomed to life of opposites. Gender being the main one, and honesty being the second one. If I had dealt with the second one first, maybe I would have saved myself a portion of the problems which were presented to me. Certainly, emerging into the world at an early stage would have not necessarily been ideal either, but if I had just pulled the band-aid off and did it, I would have had the opportunity to build a new life earlier. Probably in a new job and with a new family because my blood family would not have accepted me.

At least, if I had done it then, I would have had more years to adjust to the radical changes I would have to go through and figure out away to do it. One way or another, we can not go back in life, so we have to live with the consequences of what we have done or haven’t. Who can say which time would have been easier to join the public as a transgender woman, twenty years ago when I was seriously exploring ways to do it, or now with all the anti-transgender rhetoric which is going on as politicians use us as a scapegoat.

I guess we are doomed as transgender women and transgender men to have a giant band-aid to pull off one way or another. In my case, I should have just pulled it off and got on with my life.

 

 

Trans Girl on the High Gender Board

 

Image from Navy Medicine
on UnSplash.

I remember completely when I was a kid, intensely afraid of heights, and my mom made me jump off the high diving board at the swimming pool we were at. It was the last thing I wanted to do, and I still don’t know till this day how she convinced me to do it. But she did. I am sure she thought that once I did it, I could do it again, which I never did.

Perhaps, by this time, you are thinking what does this have to do with being transgender but of course I can connect the lines as always. Fast forward to the days when I was first gathering all the courage, I could muster to leave the house and attempt to explore the world as a woman. To do it, I needed to jump off that high diving board again and again. Plus, I would have to raise the diving board even higher every time I tried it.

As I did, I discovered little pockets of cross-dressing acceptance I could exist in. Such as the women’s clothing stores where almost everyone was nice to me. It took me awhile to realize the clerks who waited on me were not being nice just because I was another woman, they were being nice because I had money to spend. To them, my gender was not trans, it was green. Even though I took acceptance and built on it to other potentially mellow venues in malls such as bookstores and coffee shops. I was successful in them and was able to build my confidence from there and move up to a higher diving board and jump off. No matter how scared I was, I needed to force myself to climb and jump.

The next comfort zone I forced my way out of was by forcing myself to stop for lunch to see if I would be accepted. For the most part I was, because again, my money was green and I smiled and tipped well. The magic ingredients it turned out to be accepted into a challenging new feminine world. Or so I thought until I kept on climbing. It turned out the climbing part was the easiest. Once I arrived where I thought I wanted to be. I added “thought” in because once I made it to a higher board, the jumping part really scared me. Mainly because I was leaving so much behind me, along with all the male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. Such as fighting back when someone made fun of me for the way I looked. When it happened, the only recourse I had was to go back to my cross-dressing drawing board and try to determine what I was doing wrong.

Before long, my drawing board became quite littered with fashion mistakes I had made. Going through my cross-dressing adolescence was quite painful because I was a thirty-year-old male trying to do it before I learned otherwise. I was exhausting myself climbing up the high dive and then down when I discovered there was no water in the pool. Finally, I learned the hard way to cross-dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me because they ran the pool I wanted admission to.

It turned out that the pool was much farther down than I thought it was, and I had too much time to think about what I was trying to do before I hit the water. I had not made the time to build up the feminine muscle memory I would need to allow me admission to the world as a transgender woman. It did me no good at all if I vaguely looked like a woman if I could not move or communicate like a transfeminine person.

At that point, jumping off the high board became very real to me. I was rapidly coming to the point of decision about what I would do with my life. By this time, I was in my fifties and was beginning to carve out a respectable life as a trans woman. My new world knew what I was and did not care. About my present, or more importantly, my past as a man. I was able to bring what baggage I wanted from my male life without any interference. It made all the difference in the world to me when I needed support from wherever I could get it in the worst way.

As I lost my fear of the high dive, I began to consider other transgender alternatives such as taking advantage of therapy and HRT through the Veteran’s Administration health care system which I was already a part of. I wondered then what my mom would have thought (she had long since passed away), about teaching me to take the long and difficult path to the high board would come back to help me so much later in life. Especially when she was the one who was dead set about me coming out to her after the Army when I tried. Karma came back to help me when I needed it the most. I could jump off the highest diving board I could just to prove I could.

Of course, the final high board I jumped off was the one which saw me do away with all my male clothes and live life as a fulltime transgender woman. In reality, I was never a stylish swimmer or diver, but at least I made it to the point where I could make it in a woman’s world. A world which would prove to be much more complex and difficult for me to succeed in than I ever thought possible. Probably, because, for the most part (except for a few friends) I was filling out my gender workbook as I went along. Preparing myself for when I could achieve the ultimate goal, my lifetime dreams of living as a woman to the best of my ability.

At the least, I was happy I gathered enough courage to go ever higher on my gender diving board and more importantly jump.

 

 

 

Is Your Life Running Away

 

Image from Zac Ong
on UnSplash. 

Running more and more over the years described my life on so many levels. Most all because of my desire to be a woman. Over the years, I have moved many times, mostly because of a search for better jobs along with cross-dressing opportunities. I thought moving from my conservative smallish Ohio town to the huge metro New York City area would provide me with a more liberal base of people to work with. Which just wasn’t true, I found for the most part, I was still hiding my desire to go public in my skirts and makeup most of the time.

Mainly, it was a learning experience until I began to get older and all of a sudden saw time was moving away from me. Maybe you could call it my transgender biological clock. No one lives forever, and I still needed a chance to live out a chance to live life as a transfeminine person before I died. My new attitude added a certain importance into learning what I could about living as a woman. Or what I like to call, slipping behind the gender curtain to see how the other half really lived alongside a world of men who thought they ran the show. After several attempts of running straight ahead into failure in the public’s eye, I began to get it right with my presentation. Allowing me to explore more the true world of ciswomen who had carved out successful lives for themselves.

When I did all of that, I ran directly into communication problems. I will forever remember the first night when I attempted to add my thoughts to a group of men, I somehow found myself a part of. Suddenly, I found myself being totally ignored in the conversation and I needed to leave. There were pros and cons to what happened I found because the positive was I had presented as a woman well enough to be ignored but the negative was the whole affair marked the first time; I felt a major part of my intelligence along with my male privilege was being taken away from me. For the longest time, I felt the impact of running directly into a gender wall.

Happily, I did not receive any black eyes I needed to cover up with makeup from the running collisions I was having with the public as I set my high heels in motion to conquer my little part of the world. The personal stubbornness I had to succeed came back to hurt and help me when I moved forward in the feminine world of ciswomen. It hurt me when what was left of my old male self-tried his best to dictate how I should look for the world, which led to many fashion disasters. It helped me when I needed to pick myself up after getting knocked down again and again as I was trying to see what I would have to do to be a successful transgender woman. When I was able to put all my old self behind me was when I was able to finally see my future and run to it successfully.

The whole process of male to female gender transition was very exhausting as I tried to live in both major gender binary worlds for a short while. I always mention it to pass along a warning to all you who are thinking of trying it too. In the short term, painting yourself into a gender corner you cannot get out of is no fun unless for some reason you want it to be. For me, all it did was wreck my already fragile mental health situation. Since I already had been diagnosed as being Bi-Polar, I was already trying to keep one clinical depression controlled when I had another creeping up on me when I could not express my feminine self. I needed a lot of good therapy to separate the two potential huge problems. When I was doing it, I was still running as fast as I could to continue to chase my dream of living as a successful trans woman. Which would ultimately lead me back to just being me.

The frustrating part was the running target I was aiming for kept moving on me. Once I thought I had all I needed to play in the girl’s sandbox safely, I discovered another aspect of a woman’s life I never considered. Mainly because I was naïve and knew a woman’s life was different than a man’s, but I was not prepared to find out exactly how different. All the varying layers of a ciswoman’s life really got to me for a while until I began to get my gender workbook filled with relevant new ideas on how I was supposed to live. In other words, all the doodling in my workbook started to make sense and I could see all the running I was doing to catch up coming to an end.

Either way I was getting into shape from all the running I was doing, or I just began to give it all up as I began to become much more successful in the world as a transgender woman. At this point too, the HRT or gender affirming hormones I was approved to take helped to calm me down and sync up my internal and external selves. Internally I began to feel emotions I never knew I had and externally I was helped along by softer skin, longer hair and my own breasts. Among all the other changes the hormones brought about. I just wished I could have started HRT earlier in my life because the changes felt so natural and I would not have to spend my whole life running from an invisible foe, myself.

Now in my advanced senior years, I am finishing out my workbook on its final pages. My final transition is just being the true me I always was meant to be. Deep down, I was never meant to be a runner after all.

 

 

 

In Touch with Nature

 

Image from Brice Cooper
on UnSplash.

The “Ostara” ritual came off yesterday as expected with the usual suspects attending.

The weather cooperated with all the other plans, and it was a beautiful spring day here in southwestern Ohio. The only gender drawback did not even come because of me because there was a young very androgynous child there too. I could not tell the gender of the child and of course I did not pry. All went well until one of the other older women in the circle just could not leave the matter alone and said something to the child which elicited a loud response. Suddenly I heard “I’m a girl!”, and I thought the woman just could not leave it alone and had to go where she should not have been. Other than that, the woman sat next to Liz and I when we ate lunch and persisted on lighting up some sort of a cigarette after she ate which did not go over well with Liz and I who are confirmed non-smokers. The only good thing was after she smoked if was time for us to leave the ritual.

What I don’t think I realized was until after I received a comment from “Alex” who is transitioning from female to male was how much the opposite path of my gender male to female gender transition has meant to me. Now I can really feel the power of nature is a small example of how much more the Ostara ritual meant to me than I ever thought it could be when I was a man and too busy thinking about guy stuff such as work and sports to be overly concerned about my inner connections with Mother Nature. I credit the power of HRT or gender affirming hormones with unleashing a new appreciation for the world around me as I progressed with the hormones. All of a sudden, I was more in touch with the world around me with senses such as temperature and smell. I was very appreciative of permission I was given by the doctors I saw to go down the gender path I did, and I worry that the orange pedo in Washington and his followers will take it all away from transgender people of all ages today. Already it is happening here in Ohio, and I fear for my next estradiol prescription which is due to be renewed early in May.

It comes through the Veteran’s Administration health care system for me, and hopefully I still will be protected from outside political influence since I have been taking the hormones for nearly a decade now. Maybe I can fly under the radar at the VA and tie it all into my mental health (which is true) and something the VA is ultra-sensitive about. Fortunately, I have an appointment set up soon for a new psychiatrist who I hope will be sensitive to my entire situation. With that, maybe I can explain the power of the ritual I just went through on my overall mental well being and he will be behind me.

I think in many ways, getting back in touch with nature during “Ostara” takes me back to the innocent days of my rural childhood when my brother, friends and I had our run of the fields and woods around us. Growing up that way, with the freedoms we had, set in motion a lifetime of appreciation of nature that somehow got away from me as I grew into a false sense of manhood. Where “camping” out during Army basic training in Kentucky was as far as I got into nature. What a relief it was for me to make all the positive contact I had missed at least for a hour or so during the intense ritual experience.

I had no idea that my sense of gender was so intertwined with the world until I began to reach out to others and live it. And I am sad that mankind has managed to abuse the only world we have to call home, but that is another subject altogether. It all came back to me yesterday as I remembered the love I had for the woods which surrounded our house when I was growing up. I guess it took a jolt to my system which included a male to female gender transition, to bring myself back to a full circle experience with the world and back in touch with nature.

 

 

 

 

All Along, I was just Becoming Me

 

Image from Pea on UnSplash. 

As I always point out, becoming me was a very difficult concept to adjust to.

First of all, I needed to understand who the true me really was and work my way to the light out of my dark closet. Sadly, it took me decades to face the truth about who I really was. I was never the male I was seemingly born to be. I was born to be a feminine person, no matter what it took to get there. Which turned out to be the key term over the years, as I risked everything to discover who I truly was. As my male self was busy building a wall to his world by becoming successful in his job, my novice transgender self-needed to take a back seat and watch the clown show.

The problem was that often the clowns were not funny and just needed to stop before they caused complete damage to my life as I knew it. I was living the male dream in many ways with a good job, small family and a close knit group of friends and it was difficult to even thinking about giving it all up, but I did. Male privilege was very real to me and preparing to give it up was intimidating to say the least. Somehow, I needed to find the true me and quit being so self-destructive when my gender dysphoria hit me. In most cases, my morning mirror was to blame when I looked in it for the first time everyday and saw a woman lurking behind my male self-shaving.

I did not really begin to understand who I truly was, until I put my cross-dressing world behind me and started to explore the world as a transgender woman. Before I did though, I needed to draw an invisible line in the sand when I went out and see if I could cross it. When I did, I felt a deep sense of gender euphoria and wellness. When I did not I had to force myself to go back home, return to my cross-dresser drawing board and try again. Which I needed to do many times before I started to get it right. The important part is that no matter how down I felt on the days I was abused in public, there always seemed to be the slightest spark of hope which came from feeling good and natural as my feminine self. Suddenly, finding my true self did not seem to be so far away, if I could find the time out of my busy life to do it.

That is when I started to use every moment of my spare time in my transfeminine explorations of a terrifying yet exciting new world of cis women. Plus, if I was not exploring, I was busy thinking about it when I was working as a man. I wish I had back all the excess time I wasted in those days when I could have put the energy into my family, spouse or work. It would have made such a difference in my life. As it was, my life consisted of slowly sliding down a gender cliff. Not knowing what awaited me when I finally let go of my male self and headed towards a feminine world for once and for all. At that time, I did not realize I would have a team of gentle womanly hands to soften my fall. I still had a lot to learn about going behind the gender curtain.

Even though I was becoming accomplished as my authentic me, I found I still had many years ahead of me to continue my journey. I still had to round myself out as a new person very much from scratch. It was difficult to not automatically out my male self when I was talking to a new woman who turned out did not care about him anyhow. It was time to put him in the background and pick and choose the highlights of what benefitted me as a trans woman creating a new life. It was a different way to live and took a lot of getting adjusted to. Far beyond just worrying about my appearance and if I could use the right rest room. I needed to be on my toes all the time because just the wrong response about my past could give my whole male life away.

Once I separated the forest for the trees, I was allowed behind the gender curtain or rather followed my woman friends back there. For once, I was on the gender ride of my life. The same one I had paid so many dues over the years to be on, and once I got there, there was no way I wanted to give it up. So, as you can tell, I had a lot of help finding the real me. Women like Liz, Kim and Nikki showed me the way with their knowledge of playing in the girl’s sandbox. They all helped to bring out the true me in ways they never knew as my male past faded into my rearview mirror for good. It was the only time in my life that a mirror made the right call for me.

Needless to say, finding my true self after all those decades really opened the world up for me and made life so much more pleasant. Since I was not suffering from all the gender in-fighting I was going through, my mental health improved along with everything else. It did not hurt that the HRT gender affirming hormones I was on were making serious in-roads on how I felt internally as a trans woman and how I was viewed by the public. I felt better all around.

The only problem that I see now is how long it took me to come up with my own gender truth. If I had faced the facts long ago, I could have saved myself and the people I loved around me all the emotional stress I caused. Finding the true me cost me the most precious commodity I had. My time.

 

How Much Discipline do you Need

 

Image from Brett Jordan
on UnSplash.

One thing I learned the hard way in my transgender travels from male to female was that it took an intense level of discipline to do it. In fact, cross-dressing as a girl was the first thing I ever did in my life which took a large amount of discipline. School was easy enough and sports were something I always tried at but never excelled at.

Growing up, I was always under pressure from my parents to finish any projects that I started and do them right. That is when the struggle began. I have written fairly extensively about how I struggled with the makeup arts when I first discovered all the makeup samples my mom had stashed in a drawer beside her sink in the bathroom. Using the samples meant I would have less chance of discovery when and if she discovered someone was in her makeup.

The only parallel I always use was how I tried miserably to paint all the plastic model cars I put together. My cars never seemed to come out as well as my friends and I really did not want my makeup to be the same failure as my attempt at modeling cars was. For the first time in my life, I developed the discipline to do something about wearing makeup and I set out to become better at it. Which included being able to purchase the right supplies with the meager amount of money I had to work with. I was under a lot of pressure when I did my own shopping for feminine accessories, so I needed to make sure I did not make a mistake and buy something which made me look like a clown in drag going to the circus.

Little did I know, developing discipline in my feminine pursuits was just the beginning of a lifetime search for a transgender future. Every time I turned around, I faced a new challenge, it seemed like I first went out in the world of ciswomen. Where I needed to be better to just survive. A prime example was early in my life as a novice transgender woman, I had a difficult time of getting out of the mirror and putting a complete feminine image together for the world to see. It seemed as if every time I thought my makeup and fashion looked good, my movements and voice were totally off, and I would ruin the whole image. I just had to develop the discipline to do it all and complete myself as a transfeminine person.

Experience was the only way it happened. The more I went out into the world, the more I learned about if I could ever achieve my trans woman dreams. It was very important to me to explore all my options before I made such a huge and important decision in my life. Before long, I was sneaking out of the house every spare moment I had to live the new life I was carving out as a transgender woman. The problem was, the whole experience was terrifying while at the same time, it felt so natural. Further confusing me on which way I should go with my gender issues.

One way or another, I was developing the discipline to conduct myself in the world of women with my own set of standards. I learned to dress and makeup myself to blend in where I was going and more importantly how to communicate with others around me when I got there. It took tons of discipline to do it. Especially when I was making the mistake of trying to live in both binary genders at once. I needed to force myself to make sure I was projecting the right gender at the right time mainly when I was at my job as a successful man. I can’t tell you how many times customers tripped up and called me “mam” when I was going about my male business. Secretly I was pleased but could not show it. The bigger problem I always mentioned was that the gender ping-pong I was playing took a tremendous toll on my mental health. Switching back and forth was terrible.

The only positive was that I developed more discipline than I had ever had before. When I was a man, I knew I was temporarily holding on to a lifestyle I no longer cared about and when I was a woman, I totally had bought into where I wanted to go with the rest of my life. The only thing left to do was to seal the deal and do it. And learn the fine little nuances ciswomen know how to exist in their world. Like figuring out who the alpha female is and going after her approval. Through it all, I was building layer upon layer of confidence in myself. Which I would need later when the dark period of being extremely lonely set in. The intimidating thought of finding anyone remotely able to partner with again looked very dim until all of a sudden it was not. That is when I found my current wife Liz over a decade ago and she made a believer out of my self again and I could drop all my personal defenses to ever loving someone again.

It turned out that all the work I put into disciplining myself into being a totally different person worked out for the best. I emerged from my work with a newfound lease on life as the transgender woman I had always dreamed of becoming. I proved my parents wrong. I could take on a project and see it through successfully. Just not the one they had chosen for me. I tried once to come out to my mom and was rejected and never to my dad, so I doubt they would have ever approved of what I did. Even though what I did was save my own life by shattering my gender shell.

It took a lifetime worth of work to improve my feminine discipline. Mainly because I was blindly entering a world of ciswomen I knew nothing about as my gender workbook was blank when I started. After making up for lost time, I fairly quickly caught up and entered the world as myself.

 

Time is All I Had

 

JJ Hart, Trans Wellness Outreach. 

Time is a fickle beast which sometimes comes back to help us, and other times it comes back to haunt us.

Depending on how far you are in your gender journey, perhaps you can remember your first experiences with the clothing of the gender you desired so much. Then again, I have heard from several readers who started their explorations at a much later age. Either way, time became a concrete reckoning to be dealt with. Mainly because time is a finite way of restricting all of us during our lives.

Since I have been fortunate to have been given a long/full life to live (I am seventy-six), I have seen my life come full circle in several areas. I have seen the joys of gender euphoria which kept me going when I hit the deep depression of stop signs and blind curves on my gender pathway. Through it all, I tried my best to learn from all my mistakes and successes. Little did I know I would live long enough to take advantage of everything I had learned. Or much of it as for much of my life I was always second guessing the decisions I was making. Did I make the right decision on taking a new job, or more importantly when I started to go out in public as a transgender woman and risking it all, was I doing the right thing.

What I did not take into consideration I had no real choice in what I was doing. From birth I was destined not to be the male person I was supposed to be. I had bigger and better things ahead of me if I broke the mold and was able to do it. I had the time to finally decide which path was right for me as I diligently explored the world of all the cisgender women around me. Then, a major roadblock arose when I was not allowed behind the gender curtain. The only time I was really getting out in public as a trans woman in hiding was at Halloween when nearly everyone knew me as a man. I badly needed other escape routes into the public eye if I was ever going to have the time to achieve my dream.

It turned out time was cheap in the middle years of my life as they turned out to be a blur. More and more, I began to sneak out of the house and explore the world around me as my transfeminine self. It was only then that I began to be allowed to be behind the gender curtain to see if life there what was really what I wanted. Spoiler alert, it was very much what I wanted as I even though many times I was terrified (yet excited) when I explored. I thought I had forever to do it and took my time trying to find new things to do as a transgender woman in a woman’s world. Which at times, still had me baffled about how it worked because I was still carrying around too much of my old male baggage. His expectations for the most part of how a woman acted in the world were formed from stereotypes he learned growing up as he watched women from afar and for the most part putting them up on a pedestal.

What I did not realize was my indecision to go all the way into the women’s world I was immersed in, was costing me years later on in life that I wanted back. Like everyone else I had assumptions, and mine were that I had plenty of time to research the difficult layered life of  and being a woman, when I simply did not which led me all the way to the age of sixty before I made the fateful decision to throw gender paranoia to the wind, pursue HRT, and change my life forever. While I still had the time because all the people I loved and respected in my life were rapidly passing away around me. The finality of death became a very real reality to me and if I was ever able to live my gender dream of living life as a woman, I had better do it while I still had the chance to enjoy it.

All I had was time was quickly fading away with all the people around me and I had very few people to make my own gender reveal to. For the most part, except for my brother and sister-in-law, my gender reveals were successful with most people telling me they were happy to see me happy. I guess one way to look at it is, if you wait long enough for your reveal you can be the last man standing becoming the last woman standing.

Going back to a theme which has popped up around here recently, if you are transgender you have given up all your rights to be a second-class citizen. And at least all you have going for you is that your journey has been an interesting one. From the earliest days of admiring yourself in the mirror all the way to earning your way behind the gender curtain, you have done it all.

Even though it maybe took a few years to do it, you know how difficult it has been to do it and every step needed to be carefully planned. One false move could send you back down your path and sometimes even worse than that. Ridicule by spouse, family and friends can happen at the same time your gender privileges were revoked. You feel helpless until you get your feet back on the ground to where you can continue and begin moving to a place where you always have known you should be.

For me, the time was now or never when I decided to live full-time, I had taken working on my feminine presentation, as well as being out in as many situations (good and bad) as I could. Anymore and I was just wasting my time and kidding myself if I did not pull the plug on my male life and get on with my future which I felt could be bright.

I saw the light at the end of the tunnel and for once it was not the train. I had paid my dues and was ready to live my life the way I wanted. Even though I ended up taking so long to do it, I was happy when I did. Age turned out to be more than a number for me, it turned out to be the magic time of my life.

Thanks to all of you for taking your precious time reading along!

 

Living in the Real World

 

Image from Jacqueline Mungala
on UnSplash.

Living in the real world became a challenge to me as I transitioned from a male existence to a feminine world. The main problem I had was figuring out what was right and what was wrong as I followed my path through many blind curves and stop signs.

One thing I never thought of completely was how different my life would be if I had ever had the chance to live as a fulltime transgender woman. Sure, I was not totally naïve and thought my world would basically involve pretty clothes and being chased by boys. When I finally was allowed behind the gender curtain, I discovered how complex and layered lives ciswomen really live. Very quickly, trying to live in the real world as a novice struggling trans woman got me in over my head. I would be remiss if I did not bring up how I tried to present myself. I thought trying to look like a sexy teen girl was the way to go, and fortunately my time in that cross-dressing phase of my life went away quickly. Often with brutal consequences of being laughed out of any venue I was trying to visit.

In other words, I put what my male self was telling me about presenting as a woman in the real world behind me and started to look around to what I needed to do to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The challenge was not only did I have to be as good as the next woman, I needed to be better to survive in the real world I found myself in. With success, I brought confidence I could do more.

The next problem I faced was what was I going to do about my deteriorating (already fragile) mental health. As luck would have it, I was assigned a qualified therapist within the Veterans Administration who knew what she was doing and was able to separate my Bi-polar disorder from my gender dysphoria issues. She provided me with permission to begin HRT which is something I had always wanted and made the real world more livable for a transfeminine person like me.

At the same time, I was trying to take every spare moment away from work to explore different venues as a trans woman. I was attempting to accomplish trying out (as much as possible) everything I would have to go through if I ever followed my dream into womanhood. What was a ciswoman’s life really like and how was it different than what I had already lived as a man. I was entering the scariest yet most exciting time of my life as for the most part I was successful when I went out. The biggest issue which eluded me, was being able to communicate effectively with the world of women I encountered. Learning all the nuances of non-verbal communication women use was the biggest challenge for me. For the first time in my life, I needed to really listen to what was being said to me and watch the other woman’s eyes at the same time to see if I could catch a clue of what she really meant.

Through this portion of my life, I had a powerful motivation to succeed as a woman in the real world. My second wife of twenty-five years had unexpectedly passed away to leave me completely alone with my gender issues. I had no spouse to worry about how to tell my truth about wanting to be a woman. Yet another terrifying yet exciting time of my life. What was I going to do about my newfound freedom. Since you are reading this post, you know what I decided to do. I started making plans to finally make the leap off the gender cliff I had thought of for some time and throw caution to the wind for the remainder of my life. I figured why not because my confidence was at an all-time high with my small circle of friends I had built up. Along with factoring in all the time and effort I put in exploring the real-world ciswomen live in because for once, I had earned my way (or forced my way) behind the so called “sacred” gender curtain.

Once I had made it to this point, after another stop sign on my transgender path, I found I still had more learning to do to really be ready to live in the real world. That is where my ciswomen (lesbian) friends came in which is a subject of another blog post. I will say, they taught me how to be validated as myself in the real world. It was another main transition to go from thinking I was a transgender woman to knowing I was just me. Which took me from cross-dresser to trans woman, back to a secure me during my lifetime. A long, often brutal journey which had a happy ending. I learned the person I had been running from much of my life was not such a bad person after all.

Maybe, most importantly, I discovered the one aspect of my life I never thought I could experience and that was having the ability to be happy. I never had a chance to learn it from my family, and I spent so much time trying to deny myself any satisfaction I could have had from a successful career as a man, there was no time to ever be happy. It turned out that when I turned the corner back to just being the true me, I allowed happiness to be part of my existence.

I had survived all the lessons I had learned as I followed my path to a brighter, more authentic gender future. Living in the real world was not such a bad thing after all. My only regret is that it took me so long (all the way till sixty) to have the courage to face my truth so I could live as I truly was.

 

 

 

Not a Fetish...A Lifestyle

 

Image from UnSplash. 

I am still always amazed when a bigot or uneducated person thinks a transgender woman dresses as a woman as some sort of a fetish.

In my case, I realized the feminine clothes and makeup I was wearing were secondary to the real reason I was doing it. I wanted to be a woman, or as close as I could come to being one because I knew there were certain things I could never do such as give birth. As I progressed through the years, however, I found I could find my own path to womanhood and follow it. I would have no part of thinking I was involved in a fetish at all. I was different. Little did I know how different I would turn out to be.

Initially, I judged a ciswoman’s life from what I observed, since I was not allowed into experience more. When all you have is a one-sided view, all you get is a shallow result. All I could see was the pretty clothes, shoes and hair that the women around me had. Why did I have to be stuck in my same old shirt and tie when my cousins at Christmas got to wear their new velvet dresses, shiny black shoes, and creamy tights. I was always so disappointed when we left for the trip home, and I dreamed of the day I could be a woman.

For many reasons, I took my time getting to my dream world. It was almost fifty years later when my wife Liz and I took in a Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Christmas concert, and I was the one who needed to come up with the most beautiful semi-formal gown I could to blend in with the other ciswomen and enjoy the evening, I did as I thrift shopped diligently until I came up with an attractive, sparkly gown in my size. Happily, I brought it home and it worked well as I blended right in. Without a fetish in sight.

The only time I had to deal with being a fetish object was when I first came out into the public out of my closet and tried online dating. At first, all was pretty quiet on the dating front until I began to try the “man seeking man” sites. Since I never kept my transgender status a secret, I began to be flooded with men who wanted to wear my used panties or just meet up in a motel room some place. I even had a couple of men who wanted me to dress them up as a woman. Naturally, I turned down all those requests and was stood up often when I required meeting a man in a public location of my choice. Even though I was intensely lonely, I knew I was more than a fetish object and had to be safe in the new world I was in.

The longer I followed this route, the more I knew I was headed towards a complete gender lifestyle change. My dream was more than a dream and it could be a reality if I tried hard enough to reach it. But first I needed to change who I was trying to reach in the world. When I started out, I thought men would be my focus. All the way to having one woman friend tell me to get a banana and practice. (I will let your imagination do the rest.) As I progressed though, I discovered the opposite was true, in order to make it in life, I needed to first be accepted in the world of ciswomen. Who made it a practice of looking me over from head to toe when I went out in the world. They taught me how to be better, because I was certainly not a fetish object to them. I was locked into a scary, exciting new transfeminine lifestyle.

When I became a regular in certain venues, it helped me jump the gap I was experiencing when someone just saw me for the first time and thought I was a man in a dress. When they saw me for the second time or more, they began to realize I was a lifestyle, no matter what I used to be. The world opened for me, as well as the ciswomen around me who taught me I did not need validation from a man to feel good about myself.

As day-to-day transgender women, we do face the improbable battle with trans porn in the world. Men think we are all like women they see in videos, and magazines. When the men find out we are not the fetish objects of their desire, some react violently. Trans women have enough threats to face without the extra problems of trans porn.

As soon as the government leaves us alone and realizes we are just living our lives, not as fetish objects, the world will be a better place to live. Our transgender reality is what we are fighting for.

 

 

 

Outreach the Easy Way

 

Out with my wife Liz
on left.

Last night, I took Liz and her son out to a steak house for her belated birthday dinner. She is a big fan of a good steak. 

To show you how popular the place is, we needed to wait for an hour for a table. There were not even any seats in the waiting area, so we had to wait outside on a solid metal seat. Fortunately,  the weather was unseasonably warm and dry so all we had to do was watch the other customers come and go. By doing so, I was able to notice the amount of fancy pickup trucks in the parking lot. A fancy pickup truck in my mind will forever tell me the driver is a fan of the new president I dearly dislike so I wondered if I would face any negative feedback from being transgender in the restaurant.

Once we finally made it into the venue, the pressure was on to see what everyone else thought of me. My fears proved to be unfounded. Even though the other people in the lobby had nothing else to do but to people watch, nobody zeroed in on me. I was essentially invisible to the world which is what I wanted. Men, women and children ignored me as they fidgeted, all waiting for a seat.

To be sure, it was not always this easy for me. I went through years learning the art of makeup and fashion I needed to transition out of a male world and into a feminine one. I was stared at the least and laughed at the worst when I went out to eat. All along I was a woman on the inside just waiting to get out. I was in my own version of gender heaven and hell. It all paid off when I have experiences such as last night but sadly I still have scars from unpleasant past experiences. 

By this time, you may be thinking I am a person with a huge trans ego problem. My second wife was fond of  telling me my femininized life was not all about me. She in most senses was not wrong, I was going all out to be the best cross dresser or novice transgender woman I could be and I needed to watch the room and other people around me to judge how I was doing. There simply was no room for anything else in my life on most days. 

It took me years to learn to relax and enjoy my new transgender womanhood as I was too busy still trying to read the people around me. Last night was one of those rare evenings I could relax mainly because I felt I looked nice, sounded confident and even felt physically better which all contributed to a fun evening. A good night of transgender outreach to all those pickup drivers who saw us portrayed as monsters during the previous election. As I look to the future while I process my past. 

What did I wear? My The Ohio State University sweatshirt, jeans and tennis shoes to blend in with all the other Ohio State fans in the venue wearing their fan gear. However, I did step up my hair and makeup with eye makeup, foundation and lipstick. So I wasn't a total plain jane. 

Whatever it took, I needed to blend in with the masses at the steakhouse and I did, they were not interested in me which was good. Outreach invisibility at it's finest.

Take Your Pleasure Seriously

 

Ohio River image from the
Jessie Hart archives. 

For a gender dysphoric person, the scale seems to be balanced against experiencing any gender euphoria.

 In my case, destiny allowed just enough gender euphoria for me to continue down my gender journey. As I questioned what I was doing, the "why" of it never really came into question. I just knew deep down I was on a process I could not control. It would control me. Deep down inside, regardless of any doubts I may have had dissolved when I felt so natural when I was dressed as a girl. In other words, I was home when I was away from my unwanted heavy male self. 

Still I persisted and tried to find my way in the male universe, I was taking my pleasure seriously when I was dressed head to toe as a woman. I found following one dream (feminine) didn't mean giving up on the other (masculine.) I often wonder, if there was any help available to me back in the pre-internet dark ages would I have had the courage to seek it out. One problem was back in those days we who existed with gender issues were still considered to be mentally ill. Which I knew I wasn't.

The gender unrest I lived through and with was to continue until much later in life. Nearly a half a century to be exact, I gave up any hope of ever returning to a male life and never looked back. Riding a wave of gender euphoria was something I had never experienced before. Living as my authentic self was amazing and even though my male self was still fighting to be recognized. He was to be denied and my life went full circle back to the earliest days of wondering what gender I really was.

By going full circle, I had a lot of ground to cover. In many ways, the world caught up with me. I was able to follow the progression of a term which would describe me and in a very small way enabled me to be a part of a transgender community. Along the way many things changed. Primarily in the terminology which began with what was transgender anyhow and went all the way to the LGBT label which has grown these days to include other letters which includes other communities. Including gender fluid people which on occasion, described how I perceived myself all those years ago. 

During my full circle journey, I learned to take my pleasure seriously. Different than most transgender women and one I don't necessarily recommend, I learned the so called "ropes" of being a single woman (trans or not) in alcohol serving venues. All of the sudden, I found myself in situations where I was the single woman. The positive side of taking my pleasure seriously was when I discovered a small community I could thrive in. The negative side came when I was approached by intoxicated men not in control of themselves. Early on, when I needed some sort of protection, I used my cell phone. Making a big show of acting as if I was talking to another person on the phone who was coming to join me and fill the empty seat beside me. Of course after I gained my small group of lesbian friends, I was nearly completely insulated from the world of men. Also my ideas of sexuality were determined for good. I had way more interaction with women than I ever had as a guy.

Along the way, my new found gender euphoria as I learned to live as a transgender woman began to put my unwanted male life behind me, I had managed to live through the down points in my life and come full circle into a new day. I don't know if the ups have ever equaled the downs but at the least I was never bored.  

Beautiful...Inisde and Out

 

Image from the Jessie Hart 
Archives...

As I obsessed with looking the best I could as a novice transgender woman or cross dresser, all I could think of was how I looked. Little did I know there was so much more coming up in my journey to living fulltime as a trans woman. I needed to live my looks as well as just admiring myself in a mirror. 

This morning turned out to be a prime example. Today I tagged along with my wife Liz to her mammogram appointment. Before I went, I applied my usual minimal amount of makeup, brushed out my hair and was essentially ready to go. While I was doing it, I felt it was time for a change. I thought I have been in a rut I have been in too long. I have essentially stopped working on my appearance and then being shocked when I am mis-gendered. 

Of course, nothing negative happened morning when it came to the doctors appointment because there were very few people waiting to begin with plus no one was paying any attention to anyone else. Since I had a spare moment, I went shopping on my phone for a foundation specifically tailored for older women. A group I naturally fit into. I found their on-line site and decided to give it a try. 

Currently, I am relying on the skin effects of gender affirming hormones, so I don't have to use a foundation at all. Or so I thought. It's occurring to me now the hormones have been a crutch for me to quit trying as much as I did. I ordered the new foundation and I will let you know my feelings. 

The end result is I need to work harder to make my inside and outside match up again. I learned long ago, similar to many cis-women, I will never be the prettiest woman in the room. I needed to find other ways to survive in the world as a new transgender woman. Little did I know, my biggest positive as a new person was already within me. My discovery was my inner feminine soul was actually good people. Opening up to others turned out to be one of my biggest pluses. The world turned out to like me. 

Doing my best to be beautiful to others, inside and out, turned out to be one of the most beneficial things I have ever done. Now, I feel it's time to get out of my rut, have some fun and get back in the game. Maybe to the point of treating Liz out to get our nails done and then have some dinner out at our favorite restaurant

I need to get us both out of the house.  

From Dreams to Reality

 

Image from the Jessie Hart
Collection

Very early in life, when I was asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I never told the truth. I would fall back on the politically gender correct answer and say the usual such as a lawyer, doctor etc. The reason I say politically correct is because how I really wanted to answer was with the truth. All along I wanted just to be a woman when I grew up.

I do think, at the time, I did know what a difficult proposition being feminine was all about. Primarily against my will, all along I was becoming more entrenched in a male lifestyle I never wanted. When I was being the square peg being pounded or forced into societies' square hole, I hated it. Even then I put up a brave front and liked the popular male things such as sports and cars, in reality I wanted to be the kid with the new doll baby at Christmas rather than the BB Gun I was gifted. But, life went on along with a pending meeting with the military along with the Vietnam War. I outran the war as long as I could. Finally it caught up with me and I enlisted for three years in the Army, rather than being drafted and insuring me a sure date with Vietnam. 

I dreamed of pursuing a goal of pursuing my early career in the radio broadcasting business while I served my military service for my country. Sure it was all a long shot but the long shot suddenly became a reality with the help of a local congressman whose radio station I worked for. With his backing, I was able to work a year in Thailand for the AFTN Radio and Television Network and then against all odds, managed to end up in Germany working a year and a half for AFN or the American Forces Network Europe. In doing so I was able to experience new cultures on different continents while I tried to keep my eye on the goal I couldn't seem to lose, the desire to be a woman.   

As we approach Halloween season, it is important to note how important Halloween was to me. Primarily because the parties I attended in "costume" as a woman allowed me to experiment on how far I was advancing  my feminine presentation and more importantly could I exist in the public's eye as my dream  woman. I have plenty of posts I will be sharing as we come closer to the actual day of Halloween. 

Spoiler alert, of course I finally did overcome all my doubts of ever being able to live out my dream but found I still had a long distance to go on my gender journey. Every time I think I was making progress, I found I still had so much farther to go.  As destiny directed me, I painted myself into a gender corner I couldn't delude myself to continue. I was ready to take the final step and live my dream of being a full time transgender woman. No more of just thinking I was just a weekend cross dresser, I needed more.

When I did, the final step was till more scary and ambitious than I ever imagined. I still remember the day I gave what was left of my male clothes to the thrift store and resolved to never look back on my old male life. No more just hiding behind my cross dressing until I could escape back to my comfortable world of male privileges. Through it all, my HRT or hormone replacement therapy helped to alter my male body enough to help my difficult attempt to present convincingly as a woman. 

From dreams to reality, the long twisting gender experience was worth it. My lifelong dream was a true one and I learned I was not making anything up. I was living how I wanted. 

Confidence is your Greatest Accessory

Image from Alysha Rosly 
on UnSplash

In my post from yesterday about Ohio's vote, I didn't mention how much I appreciate being able to vote with my driver's license state ID which is gender marked with a "F". For female of course which I worked very long and hard to secure.

I am always proud to be able to vote and also proud to vote as my authentic self.  Yesterday when I voted. I proudly walked up to the first available poll worker and handed him my drivers license. I was surprised when I saw he was a younger person. Normally the workers seem to be my age or above. I was even more pleased when the man was very nice to me. It's been a long time since I have ran into a man who seemed at the least bit happy to see me. 

The reasons could be many. I automatically assume the men have read me as transgender and in some way think I am less attractive. Or some men just treat women as lesser citizens anyhow and they aren't treating me any different than they would any other woman. One way or another I try to approach situations with the public with as much confidence as I can muster. 

Confidence of course for a transgender woman comes as we progress from a novice cross dresser-transvestite all the way to living full time as your authentic self. If you are lucky (as I wasn't )  you will be spared the public humiliation of being stared at all the way to outright laughter. It is nearly impossible to build any confidence at all when you have to suffer through that. However, if you stick with the process you can slowly learn to apply artful makeup and dress yourself to begin to blend in with society. When any or all of the process begins to happen, confidence does also. 

Perhaps most importantly, confidence allows you to face the world eye to eye. Human's are like sharks and they can sense when something is wrong.  It took me years of trying before I gathered enough confidence to look at others with the idea something was wrong with them, not me. I also needed to learn the difference in dealing with other women or men. Women proved to be much more of a challenge to me as they were/are more discerning than men. Going back to the poll worker who was so nice to me, I wondered if he was somehow attracted to my appearance or was he in his own closet and his trans-dar was going off. Whatever the case, I am sure I relieved the boredom for him as he checked in people to vote.

Confidence is also a chicken or the egg type story. Did the perfect outfit (along with makeup) come before the confidence or was it vice versa when you achieved your goal of existing in society as a transgender woman...or what ever label you want to attach to yourself. One thing is for certain, you never know until you try to make your exit from the mirror and head into the world. 

You go girl!