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| Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash. |
It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s
clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I
found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one
day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What
was lost was now found.
Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender
dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and
wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who
I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was
lost in a life I did not want.
Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma.
But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror
and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It
was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I
actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a
transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored
the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a
world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find
humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are
just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings
with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to
head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were
holding me back.
What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in
with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me
to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention
to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I
was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from
there.
The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier
my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the
most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other
than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never
considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to
lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I
could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I
tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something
more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made
except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along
with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.
As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of
my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his
favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as
a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person,
not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost
always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a
bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.
The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who
I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in
my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure
packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female
transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major
problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job
when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my
knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I
was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over
the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women
compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.
Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and
even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably
because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the
time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential
problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of
being a transgender person.
Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had
ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to
learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at
being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new
feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would
have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.
