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| Image from Maia I on UnSplash |
Along with my regular blog postings, I am writing I book about my life through a company called “StoryWorth.” My daughter purchased it for me, and it only goes to selected members of the family, so it is intensely personal and made to read in my opinion, after I have passed away. This week’s question was based on what I have done in my life, which was the most difficult to accomplish and what were the lessons learned and did they happen due to luck or destiny.
My answer was an easy one the two biggest accomplishments I
had in life which surprised even me were when I was able to be accepted into
the American Forces Radio and Television Service as a broadcaster during the
Vietnam War. And the other was when I finally kicked my old male self to the
curb and started to follow my dream of living my life as a transgender woman. For
the longest time, neither seemed to have any chance at all in coming true, but
the slimmest of hopes kept my dreams alive.
Along the way, I learned to not believe in luck during my
life, however I became a firm believer in destiny. I need to make the point
that destiny only found me because I made the effort to put myself out there in
the world and try. I would never have made it to AFRTS without all the time and
effort I took to write letters to my congressman, and I would have never made
it to a transfeminine existence without leaving my closet and experimenting in
the world. It was like I needed to scream destiny here I am, now find me. None
of it was ever easy as I was swimming upstream against what society said I
should or should not do. I should have quietly went about my way and let the
Army recruiters have their way without question or had done the same when I
rebelled against being in the restrictive gender box I was born into. I just couldn’t
do it.
By far, the greatest act of rebellion happened when I went
about seriously crossing the gender border. Presenting as a convincing ciswoman
never was easy for me as I had very few natural characteristics. Like many of
you, I have the prototypical male body with the thick torso and broad shoulders
which I needed somehow to cover up if I was ever going to make it in the world
as a trans woman. In fact, the shape of my body always threatened to derail all
the work I was doing with my makeup, hair and clothes before I ever got
started. I don’t think I ever would have made it without me finally taking the
time to look at all the different shapes and sizes of the ciswomen that were
around me. Like many of them, I would never be thin and attractive but just
maybe with the right padding and wardrobe, I could be a presentable thick woman.
By “padding” I meant I needed the right size of breast enhancements as well as
hip padding until much later in life, I could add my own “padding” through the
help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.
Then I started to realize that maybe I could do this and become
a fully functional transgender woman, if I worked hard enough at it. That meant
I needed to overcome the bumps and bruises I encountered along the way when I
refused to stop at stop signs along my gender path. To do it, I needed to build
up much deserved confidence in what I was attempting to do. Which was stop my
life and start it all over again. It was as if I was packing for a trip and
only had so much space to take things along. I had to decide what could stay
(if anything) from my male past. Again, I needed to look around at the ciswomen
I was close to and notice what their interests were. A major example was when I
began to think I would have to lose my passion for sports, I began to notice
many women with their favorite team jerseys watching games and drinking beer on
the big screen televisions in the venues I was going to as a man. It didn’t take
a genius to figure out if they could do it, so could I.
Destiny, in all its glory began to show me I wasn’t building
anything new when I crossed to going behind the female gender curtain. I was
just going to where I always should have been. I started to see that I could be
accepted in lesbian circles as a sports loving femme (or lipstick) lesbian and
I was relieved I did not have to institute some sort of a forced sexuality
change I never wanted to do. Even though I kissed several men to see if there
was any real attraction, there wasn’t so I happily moved on to where I was
comfortable.
Believing in myself was certainly difficult to come by and
took a lot of learning to do as I switched my life from a fairly successful man
to a new transgender woman. Because at times, I thought I was in over my head until
my confidence stepped back in and I started to move forwards towards my dream goal
once again. I just had to remember how far that I had come from that scared,
excited boy in a dress and make-up in the family mirror.
If I had it all to do all over again, I am sure I was given
a bad deck of cards when it came to dealing with my gender and for the longest time,
I played the victim card to delay the obvious. I was a male only because my genitals
told the world I was. It took a while for me to mature into the trans woman I am
today. But with the help of destiny, I put myself out into the world and made
it. There was no luck to it.
