Gender Binges

 

Image from Andy Arjun
on UnSplash.  

Binge cross-dressing happened a lot to me when I was quite young.

Once I was able to scrape together my meager finances to put together a small wardrobe of feminine clothes that barely fit me, I could not stay away from wearing them more and more. In fact, I was able to come up with two main hiding places away from the prying eyes of my family and most importantly, my slightly younger brother. It was about that time that I really became involved with binging in my new clothes which I felt made me look like a pretty girl.

Very soon, regardless of the risk involved with me cross-dressing as a girl, I was doing it as much as I could get away with. I think now that my mom had to know something about my cross-dressing but was either afraid to say anything about such a complex subject or thought it was a phase that would go away. Obviously, the joke was on her. My wanting to be a woman never did go away; I just matured into it. Plus, back in the late 1950’s and early 1960's, there was very little good information about gender issues to deal with, so we were on our own as gender issues were called mental illnesses. Which even I knew at such a young age was not true. For all I knew at the time, I really liked experimenting with mom’s clothes and makeup and binge dressing was becoming routine.

As I said, once I began to mature into being a more accomplished cross-dresser (even before I considered myself transgender) I managed to dress more and more. I was even able to buy a beautiful long blond human hair wig that she hated and I loved. Finally, after I changed girlfriends, she went away and I kept the most important part of the relationship to me which of course was the wig. It brought me to a whole other level of cross-dressing away from Halloween wigs into the real deal. Back in the 1960’s when miniskirts were in, I could not wait until I could find a chance to slide on pantyhose and miniskirt and top it all off with my blond wig. Yes, I did binge any chance that I got!

Sadly, my binge dressing needed to come to a complete halt during my military years in the Army. Instead of worrying about how short I could wear my miniskirts, I had a more immediate and important problem of how to deal with weapons and drill sergeants in Army basic training. How I survived was that I put all my fond memories of cross-dressing in the back of my head and daydreamed about the future I knew I could have shaving my legs again and binge dressing as a woman.

After I served my time in the military, the only immediate release I had from all the tension I felt to be feminine at all was with all the many and varied Halloween parties I went to. During that time, I went from being a French woman with my blond hair, black outfit, tights and beret, all the way to professional woman one year when I was mistaken for a ciswoman just getting off work. The good news was I was learning a lot, and the bad news was Halloween only came about once a year. I needed desperately to find another way to binge with a purpose and express myself as a transgender woman. A term I was beginning to accept as my own.

Once I began to accept who I was, I needed to set out to prove it to myself and the world that I could live my truth. It was then that my binging took a whole different direction from where I was before. Thanks to the basic acceptance I gained from successful Halloween parties, I had the confidence to know I could look the part and blend in with society as another ciswoman. Little did I know then, the hardest part of my male to female femininization project was yet to come.

It took me finally getting out of the gay bars I regularly went to for some sort of validation I never received and into being accepted as a regular in many of the straight venues I went to and enjoyed as a man. My validation as a regular gave me the confidence to keep trying to improve myself as a transgender woman rounding out her life in the world. As I achieved goal after goal I set up on my trans bucket list, I really binged out every chance that I got which put me into a direct collision with my second wife who did not want to live with another woman and my male self who was dead against giving up his life all together.

By all out gender binging, I had set myself up for an internal war I was fortunate to survive. It took me all I could do to keep all my lives together as the years progressed. All I knew was I was able to carve out a dream existence as a transfeminine person. No one knew of my male past, and I loved experiencing every moment of my new life. Deep down, for once I felt I was fighting my self when I was binging as a trans woman and expressing my true self.

By turning back, the clock the best I could, I tried to take the best that I learned from my male life and apply it to building a solid base for my female life. I think it worked because I was able to decide which of my male baggage was important enough to bring along and I benefitted from being blessed with a long life, so I can see a number of important things come full circle (which is another blog post.)

The bottom line is I have always been an impulsive person which helped me all the times I just had to binge to satisfy my needs. Dealing with my gender issues was just an integral part of that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Want...or a Need

JJ Hart Discovering her Needs
I am in the first row on the left.

When a want turns into a need, sometimes you can feel it. Other times, not so much as if it sneaks up on you from behind.

As I began to wear dresses and makeup as a young boy, for the most part, it was because I wanted to do it. Cross-dressing just relieved the pressure of my unwanted everyday male world. It did not take me long to figure out my want was much more than just a casual appreciation of women’s fashion and makeup.  I did not know it then (and the term had not yet been widely used) that I was transgender more than a cross-dresser. I could not feel the change because I did not have the gender knowledge to do it.

Life began to change for me when I started to cross-dress for the thrill of it and attend Halloween parties. The parties ended up teaching me the basics of being a woman in public around people I knew, and I wanted to take it a step further by not having to wait another year to try again to get out of my dark closet and into the world. That is when my story turned out to be dark as I was not met with many positives by the public as a novice trans woman, cross-dresser or whatever you would like to label me as. To too many people, I was simply a man in a dress and clown makeup. I learned the hard way to get back to my drawing board and work harder on my feminine craft to find out if I was ever going to be able to succeed at all at my dream.

I also learned that if I was ever going to find success on my gender path, I was never just going to make it by just thinking it was just a want. It had to become a deep-seated need. I went back and dieted, worked on my skin and did everything I could to improve my testosterone poisoned body. All it really taught me was how much deeper I needed to travel along my gender path to make it at all and I needed to do it very badly. As the pounds melted off, I was able to find more stylish feminine wardrobe items to fill out my fashion needs and dress for success to blend in with the rest of the ciswoman crowd. Who I learned the hard way, were the people who ran the world I was attempting to be a part of. Or I could go casual if I needed to and a more polished business look when I needed to upscale my appearance. Fashion-wise I was learning that looking the best I could and blending in with the public at the same time was a definite need not some sort of a frivolous want just to justify something I wanted.

The more I tested the world as a transfeminine person, the more I needed to do to help myself along in the learning process of just belonging in the world I always should have been a part of to begin with. It was a real chore just to put the mirror image I thought I had perfected into the public and into motion to see how it worked. For the most part, I was improving to the point where I needed to start trying to communicate with the world as a more complete trans woman. As I always point out, the communication challenge to me was immense because I had always been a lazy communicator in my life. By that I mean, I had never really had to listen closely to what another man was telling me. I knew instinctively how to respond to another man but was clueless when it came to woman to woman talk. Which I always had known was different but how different I did not know until I was made aware of it. For example, for the first time ever in my life I needed to really stop and listen to whomever was talking to me. Were they trying to point out danger to me or just being friendly as a ciswoman who was curious of me or a toxic man who just viewed me as some sort of a fetish object.

Quite possibly, the communication aspect of my male to female femininization need passed my desire to be as attractive as I could as a transgender woman in the world. Instead of just wishing and wanting to be accepted as an equal by the other ciswomen I met, I needed to make it a priority. I even swallowed my pride and took female vocal lessons to make the process easier. It was difficult, but I think I gained enough confidence to help with my overall presentation and life.

I was helped too when the pressure to succeed was relieved here and there by the new success I was having in the world carving out a new life which on one hand to be terrifying and on the other feeling so natural like I was coming home to the self I always should have been.

I found I did not discover all my true self until I could step away from me for a minute to look at how far my gender path had taken me. After years of experimenting and trying different things, I finally achieved my need to be allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox and I was not disappointed with what I found there. Even though I had to put up with the occasional hater or TERF who wanted me out, but the majority of women made me feel welcome in their world and that was all that mattered to me.

The sandbox provided me with firm lessons and reassurance in what I was trying to accomplish in life. The want I always felt was always a hidden need which took me years to realize was my true problem in life to solve.

I hope you can realize your true wants and needs on your gender path also and life becomes easier for you if you are searching like I always was.

 

 

 

  

It's a Lonely World

 

Image from Jarle Johnasen
on UnSplash.

It is a lonely world for many transgender women and transgender men as we journey along our dark gender paths.

As I always point out, like so many of you, I got a late start on filling out my gender workbook on how I was even going to begin a transfeminine life. Before the word was even invented. I was not invited to any overnight stays with the girls I admired so much to take advantage of early make-up tips and even feminine peer pressure on the clothes I was wearing to do a better job of looking the best I could in front of the mirror. Ironically, I was probably ahead of most girls age-wise when I started wearing makeup and shaving my legs, but I did not know that because I was not allowed behind the gender curtain to play in the girls’ sandbox.  

Looking back, I thought for a while there was always a chance I was going through some sort of a phase and I just could not be the only boy in the world with a strong desire to be a woman someday.

To make matters worse, I was always exceedingly shy back in those days which made me an introvert, and I had a tendency to not trust others. That would manifest itself much later in life when I had a very difficult time making close friends. Especially with other men. Who I thought would never understand my deepest darkest secret which by then I knew was no innocent phase in life I was going through. Not surprisingly after a while, I lost most of my shyness around ciswomen and enjoyed my time with them even more. Even though my true motives were never revealed that I just wanted to be like them in the worst way possible and I was just trying to see what it took to live their lives.

Even though I was still married to a couple of very different women through this portion of my life who knew of my cross-dressing desires and did the best I could to surround myself with other women, deep down inside I was still lonely. It never occurred to me why and what I could do about it for years. I just never realized for the longest time that I was living much of my life completely backwards. I was never meant to be a man and was forced into it by a cruel twist of fate I could do nothing about. Being a woman trying to live as a man put a terrific strain on me and caused me to constantly dwell on what I was doing wrong to feel so lonely.

When I finally made it out of my gender closet and into the world, my loneliness amazingly began to go away when I started to interact with other women. While men shunned me, ciswomen were curious why I was in their world. When they found out I was not some sort of fraud and a honest human being, it was OK to talk on a shallow level. Which was fine with me because I was so lonely after my second wife unexpectedly passed away. Her death taught me to never take anything for granted again and I set out to live more deeply as the transgender woman I was becoming. Just breaking down the gender barriers I was doing was never enough to get behind the gender curtain. I needed to do more.

Primarily, I needed to learn all over again how to talk to people. Mainly women but also men. Women I found came at me from all different directions and practiced a lot of nonverbal communication. I needed to practice the art of passive aggressiveness also when I found a smiling woman was not necessarily a friendly one. Until I proved to be up to the gender communication challenge, life became very interesting. Perhaps you have noticed that for the most part I left men out because for the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me, because with most of the men I did encounter, all I did was soothe their ego. Payback I guess from all the time I spent in the male world.

By this time in my life, I was looking at being sixty directly in the eye and could see very few avenues available to me to combat the extreme loneliness I felt at the time and had just figured I would have to spend the rest of my life by myself. As someone once said, the darkest hour is always right before the dawn and that is what happened to me. I already had my casual lesbian friends who met with me several times a week to watch sports and drink beer until my current wife came along online of all places and we cemented a wonderful relationship. Firat of all, Liz made me a believer in myself again. A confidence I had always had as a man but never as a trans woman.

Unbelievably, destiny had worked its magic, and I found someone to love in the world again and we lived close enough to make a romance work. As long as we are together (over twelve years now), we will not have to experience any lonely days in a cold world ever again.

For those of you who want to know more about how I did it was the only way I made it out was putting myself out there in that same cold world. I had to battle my fears by going out in big straight sports bars and becoming a regular. And, beat all the long odds to find a romantic partner on an online dating site. My big break came in the sports bars when a bartender I knew as a regular set me up with her single lesbian mother who I am friends with to this day. My moral to the story was I needed to put myself out there before I could reap the benefits, but I know the world has changed and you have to be careful.

One way or another, we transgender women and trans men live in a potentially very lonely world which is a shame because we have so much more to offer than the average human because we have seen so much in our lives.

Thanks for reading along and contributing with claps and comments! Hopefully I can come up with something meaningful to you.

 

It's Your World to Live In

 

Image from Gabriel Silverio
on UnSplash. 

When it comes down to it, it is your life to live and no one else’s. But life comes in the way.

The problem is often for transgender women and transgender men, it is easier said than done to live our own lives. Especially for those of us who had to wait until later in life to go after our dreams of transitioning into a feminine world. Perhaps, you were like I was and called selfish for my one-sided obsession about even seeing if my male to female dreams could ever become a reality. My second wife was fond of telling me my cross dressing should not be all about me.

The longer I pursued life on my new transfeminine gender path, I realized she was right. In order for me to move ahead in a world which felt so natural to me, I had to be selfish. It was the only way I could make the difficult decision to take a leap of faith and try to jump the gender border.

Back in those days, the only thing I could hang my pantyhose on were the annual Halloween parties I was going to dressed in my feminine finest. During these early parties, I learned a few of the basics I would need to survive as a trans woman later in life. Such as how visibly trained the human animal is to the genders, and if I was to go to the feminine side, everyone (male and female) would be noticing me. My new visible role in the world took some time and effort to get used to, but I did finally do it when I learned to dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me. It was my life to live, and I was coming closer and closer to deciding how I wanted to live it.

Before I did, I discovered I still had a whole lot of living to do before I made my decision. The problem was my male life on occasion was not that bad. Which gave me false hope that I could save it. All it did, as I juggled two genders at once, was to make my life a mental health hell as I struggled to maintain any sort of life I wanted. On one side, I had the increasingly financially successful male self-making it harder to give up all that he had earned and the male privileges which came with it. Struggling with my feminine side which felt she was in a more natural position to thrive. The end result was whatever decision I made just had to be the right one. With so much at stake in my life, I needed to go back to being very selfish with myself to make it.

In the meantime, I went into a heavy experimentation period of my life as a novice transgender woman. My goal was to try to live every moment that I could discover what a ciswoman has to go through in her life. So, I could tell if I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to be more than the “pretty, pretty princess” that my second wife always called me when she was trying to make fun of my femininity to learn what she was really talking about. It was a struggle, but eventually I did by setting up my own version of a transgender bucket list of things to do. What did a ciswoman know that I did not became my main goal in life when I shed my male clothes and went out in the world as a trans woman. Overall, my plan worked well for me except the times I tried too hard and ended up in redneck bars where a single woman should have not been to begin with.

I did so much, I wore out my bucket list of obvious things to do and began to examine the difference between male and female privilege in society. Losing my male privilege brought about no real surprises such as having my intelligence challenged and learning to be more careful with my personal safety. While the main feminine privilege I felt was the freedom to be myself in the world and went way past just having doors opened for me by men. Needless to say, I was in love with the whole path I was on as a transfeminine person and could not wait to get back to it anytime I had to leave and go back to my increasingly unwanted male life.  I was stubborn but then again, I slowly realized I could never go back to the life I had lived before. No matter how successful it was.

As I reached the age of sixty, I could put it off no longer no matter how stubborn my male self-had become. When my second wife passed away from a massive heart attack, he was left with no allies in my life to fight with and was done. I had paid my cross-dressing dues by doing the best I could with what I had to work with appearance wise and had gone out of my way to experiment with how ciswomen live by putting myself in actual situations in life which I could expect to happen. After all of that, I just needed the final push off my gender cliff, and land in a world of my own choosing. Without a perpetual balancing act.

In other words, I guess you could say I went too far in paying my own dues during the approximately fifty years it took me to lead a life to discover who I always was. I decided long ago tt was too late to cry over what I did or did not do and to look forward to the time I have left in the world. At the least, I found living a life on both sides of the binary gender border was as scary as it was interesting. How many other humans get to experience what a transgender women or transgender man gets to see in one lifetime.

Sure, we experience our ups and downs but so does everyone else and we can have such an interesting path to claim a life which was always meant to be ours.

HEY YOU! Thanks for joining me in my journey and commenting or clapping for my posts. You make it all so worthwhile.

 

Dreaming in "3-G"

 

Image from Amin RK
on UnSplash.

Dreaming in “3-G” seems to be coming natural for me these days.

Somehow, I have skipped the old two gender dreams I was having and replaced them with a more complex series of dreams I can remember in the morning when I wake up. I call them three gender dreams.  It’s kind of like going from black and white movies back in the day to full color masterpieces.

Here is an example. Recently I was having a dream that I was a guy but later became a woman complete with a new bag of lipstick. I wondered at the time how the lipstick got there but I had no answer as the dream moved on. Also, I have noticed recently that my dreams have been shifting out of my old male world and into my relatively new feminine world. I suppose I was expecting miracles when I thought fifteen years of fulltime transgender life could replace sixty years in the male world. In my subconscious.  

All my gender dreams can be traced back to my earliest days of life when I had vivid dreams of being a pretty girl and being very disappointed when I woke up in the same body every morning. But as I remember, my dreams were all in “2-G” and involved me in one of the two main binary genders, male or female.

I find it interesting that some transgender women or transgender men who I happen to talk about concerning their dreams say they are always their authentic gender self when they dream. When I have always been a mixture. I suppose that it is another complexity of what trans folk go through. The only constant in all my “2-G” or “3-G” dreams I have had over the years is that from most of them I was having a positive experience that I wanted to continue. Such as in my early years when all I really wanted to do was present well enough to make it in public as a transfeminine person. Who could blend in with ciswomen everywhere and not cause any extra attention.

What confused me was when I was starting to successfully lead a trans woman’s life, why it didn’t it follow me more into my dream world. I took what I could get and kept moving on with my own male to female femininization program. Dreams were just an integral part of keeping my gender sanity along the way. They helped with dispersing all the pressure in life I was feeling from juggling two genders. Plus, I have considered too that the anti-depressant and anxiety medications I am on may contribute to the vivid dreams I have been having.

I also find it strange when I have a “3-G” rare negative dream. I would have thought that with all the success I finally had on my gender path, I would not have an ugly dream about someone pulling off my wig in public. Especially since I have not had to wear a wig in almost a decade and never had anyone try to pull mine off when I did. It is my own version of a nightmare-cross dresser style.

At the least, when the “3-G” dreams don’t turn ugly, they are cheap entertainment and I wonder how I got here. When I do, the answer always comes back loud and clear that I made it to the place in life where I always should have been. And my dreams just are a reflection of that.

Maybe too, my dreams are finally transitioning to my current feminine self. Which is currently making the transition to just being the me I needed to be. “2-G” or “3-G” dreams should not matter anymore as they are just a needed respite from the real world we transgender individuals must put up with.

No matter where your dreams lead to, I hope they find you in a good place in this sometimes-negative world we live in today. We need all we can get to lead a quality life away from all the gender haters and bigots and a little daydream of how your future could be can never hurt anyone.

This is just a little shorter post than you are used to seeing from me today as I have to get mentally prepared for my Veterans Administration assigned psychiatrist virtual visit. I thought it would be a fun time to write about the effect dreams of all kinds have on our lives as trans people.

Good night!

 

 

 

 

I Could Never Take my Trans Life for Granted

 

Image from Jeffrey Clayton
on UnSplash.

I learned early on in my life to take nothing for granted.

Especially when I was experimenting with my mom’s clothes and makeup. I needed to use every instinct I had to not get caught cross dressing as a girl. Which I tried to do as much as I could, so I had to never take it for granted I would never get discovered and sent off to see a psychiatrist. My paranoia ran deep back then of my parents sending me to a stranger who would tell me I was mentally ill. Which deep down, I knew I wasn’t. I just wanted to be like the girls around me.

My parents, from the “greatest generation” of the WWII and Great Depression years of our country’s history always made sure I took nothing for granted also. If I got B’s on my report card, where were the A’s I should have been getting. Was how I was raised. The only other real aspect of my life they thought they had to worry about was my interest in sports of all kinds. I was never the athlete my brother was so I was left on my own to do what I could athletically in the small rural school I went to. Even when I did manage to make the football team, I couldn't keep my mind on practice when all I wanted to do was be a cheerleader in their fancy short skirts and be admired by all the boys in school. I admired them too, just because of how badly I wanted to be just like them, and I never took it for granted that I couldn’t. It just frustrated me when I never did.

The years went by; in a hurry it seemed and even I was able to improve my feminine femininization to the point where I wanted to get out of the mirror in my closet and try out the world.

It was a good thing that again I should take nothing for granted that I would have no problems when I went out for the first time. Even though the mirror at home told me I made my male testosterone poisoned self into an attractive woman, why was I getting laughed at by mainly teen aged girls in public. I was stubborn though and kept going back to my cross-dressing drawing board to make any attempt possible to improve my appearance. What I finally learned was I needed to quit dressing the way my old male self was telling me to do and start dressing to blend in with the world of ciswomen around me. To do so, I reversed my fashion course from wearing clothes for teen girls when I was in my thirties and start concentrating on doing my thrift shopping to develop a more realistic fashion approach. That helped me overcome my thick male body with big shoulders that I had been cursed with by male puberty.

I had a dreaded inverted T body shape with broad shoulders, no hips and narrow legs to deal with. I took nothing for granted and set out to attack my fashion problems with better fashion choices. Since I was told I had good legs at the Halloween parties I went to, I built up from there while at the same time, keeping my legs not being a total focus to my look. As I built up from my legs and I wore Demin skirts often, I used foam pads under my panty hose which gave me the illusion of having hips. With my size, breasts were always a problem because I always wanted to be proportioned correctly and have the right wiggle to them. But not too big and look like a clown in drag. I struggled to find what I wanted until a cross-dressing friend of mine gifted me a set of silicone breast forms when he purged his extensive collection of cross-dressing materials. Then I could finish hiding my broad shoulders with longer straight hair wigs which fell loosely over my body.

Speaking of my body, you may have noticed I did not mention anything about restrictive shapewear. I always disliked the feel of being restricted in any way other than panty hose and padding, so I took the diet approach to losing my male stomach and did not have to worry so much about all the potential problems which might happen when I used the women’s room, do my business, wash my hands, smile sweetly and move on.

The one major accessory I was still lacking was confidence that I could present effectively as a transfeminine person in a world where ciswomen ran the show. In my mind, I was still the frightened cross-dresser leaving my closet and mirror for the first time and getting laughed at by the public. Out of sheer willpower I kept on taking nothing for granted until my life as a transgender woman became realized and I began to feel better and enjoy myself in the new, exciting feminine world I was in.

My ultimate goal was to someday have my own “padding” or curves thanks to HRT or gender affirming hormones. I was fortunate that in my later years in life when my testosterone was on the decline anyway (at the age of sixty) I received a doctor’s approval to start the hormonal program and all the changes which happened. Over the years, I was able to develop my own breasts, hips and soft skin as I have never taken the hormones for granted because I know not everyone has the health to do it.

I even went through the efforts of getting approved by the Veterans Administration health care system (which I was a member of) to get approved again for my hormones and take nothing for granted. I guess in many ways, the paranoia of the kid looking at himself in a dress in a mirror all those decades ago never left me. Deep down I still fear for those younger than me in the system having to put up with all the extreme transphobia in the world today.

We can never take anything for granted when our basic lives we value so much are at stake. Be safe out there.

 

 

 

It Is the Fourth of July and are We Better Off?

 

Image from Ben Maher
on UnSplash.

It’s the Fourth of July and a time to celebrate the first two hundred fifty years of the United States.

I don’t want to be negative, but I am wondering what there is to celebrate if you are a transgender woman or transgender man. Making my point was the recent crooked Supreme Court decision which rejected helping trans athletes around the country by denying the request and sending it back to the states where they know the heavily gerrymandered Republican legislatures will keep rejecting our rights. Here in my native Ohio, the ruling was the kiss of death for the very few transgender athletes who could have benefitted from it.

Then there is the ongoing dilemma of what to do about our rapidly decaying dementia ridden convict/traitor in the White House he is trying to destroy. What will he try to do next is the problem when it comes to the LGBTQIA+ community as a whole.

As I always say, his effects cause harm to current out and visible transgender people as well as potential future harm to those of you in the closet who are seeking a way out. The most immediate way out is to NOT stay home and get out and vote for your freedom in November. You may desperately need those rights when you decide it is time to come out of the closet.

It is a difficult road we have chosen to live and holidays such as the Fourth of July spotlight the good and the bad that our country has chosen to do over the years such as take away the native American lands and build some of the new country on the backs of slavery. Certainly nothing to be proud of.

It all brings back remembrances of the T-shirt I wore to several Pride celebrations so long ago which said: I am a transgender veteran who fought for your rights to take away mine.

I just hope that none of the bleak scene I have painted is not too far gone to repair and my Social Security benefits continue to be there when I need them, and my transgender grandchild will be able to still work towards a bright future that they have.

I have every hope in the world that the old dinosaurs will fade away and a new generation can come along and right the ship before it is too late.

Finally, I am sorry I cannot come up with a more positive post on such an important day in our country’s history. But it would be dishonest of me to break my tradition of writing from the heart as the basis of doing this at all.

In the meantime, I still proudly display the flag I served in the past and hope for a better future.

 

 

 

The Best Advice I Never Got

 

Image from Frame Harriak
on UnSplash. 

The best advice I never got came from no one.

There was no one there to tell me anything about what I was doing when I was doing my best just to be feminine. No one to tell me my skirts were way too short and tight and my makeup looked like I just left a circus clown drag show. And better yet, no one to tell me I was heading along a gender path which would ultimately ruin my life if I kept it up.

The only person who was screaming in my ear initially as I cross dressed in front of the mirror was my male self-telling me to hurry up and get done before I risked discovery and the end to the world as I knew it. This was the time too when my feminine side was lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl. Maybe I could see some of my femininity in my pre-male puberty years but quickly faded with my bodily changes.

As life progressed as it always does, I witnessed the battle of my voices as once again my male side was telling me to stop cross-dressing and never do it again and my feminine side saying keep on trying and things will get better. Even though it was difficult to listen to the best advice I never got I kept deciding to pursue my feminine side and see what would happen,

At that time, I was stuck in a series of Halloween parties where I could dress as myself and not fear reprisal. Plus, I could judge how I was doing with what I wanted to wear and with how far I had come with my makeup skills or lack of them. I was aware that I was at risk for stirring up potential risks of being discovered when someone would ask who shaved my legs and applied my makeup. I just said I shaved my own legs and did not mention who did my makeup because my second wife did not wear any. I was normally Ok because it would take another ciswoman to question my makeup because if a man did, I would figure he may be part of my femininization club. I learned so much from the Halloween parties I went to that not going to them dressed as myself was the best advice I never got.

I think it is ironic that that almost everyone has advice for everyone else except when it comes to transgender women and transgender men. It seems, our situation is so unique that the only advice someone can come up with is just not do it. They have no understanding of what we are going through, and it is so much deeper than just wearing clothes of the opposite gender. Maybe that is why I never got any advice from anyone except one of my self-proclaimed gender therapists who told me there was nothing she could do about me wanting to be a woman. Like a dummy, I ignored the only good advice I could have received at the time.

It wasn’t until I started reading certain on-line computer sites did, I really encounter advice as transgender “Nazi’s” as we called them. Who continually did battle with many cross dressers, who received little or no respect from the transsexuals as they were called then. Being the cynic that I am, I enjoyed quite a few of the comments as the gender battles raged on. Seemingly, respect from some on the site was only gained by how many gender surgeries you had gone through. Why I needed to wait to receive advice I did not want from an internet site which should have been welcoming to all but wasn’t.

By the time I hit my experimental stage to judge where I should be in the world as a man or a trans woman. I was not in much of a mood for much advice, and it was the best advice I could ever get. I was very much on my own in the world as a new transfeminine person and loving it. If someone had told me to stop what I was doing, I would have said hell no as I was having the time of my life.

I think other ciswomen sensed my confidence in who I was and mostly just interacted with me out of curiosity and at the same time, without knowing it showed me the way behind the gender curtain. I needed their help to achieve my dream, and not much advice. As the curtain parted and I learned what I needed to exist in a world I had only dreamed of, the best advice I got was none because I did not seek it out.

I cannot say I did not need advice when it came to making my final gender decisions. Primarily the day when my future wife Liz saw me mentally struggling again with my gender issues and flat out told me she had never seen any male in me. Go ahead and transition into a feminine world. In all fairness, I heard the same thing from my second wife years before but could not figure out how to do it. This time I could do it and received a doctor’s approval for HRT gender affirming hormones and major changes to by external and internal body was underway.

It turned out to be the best advice I ever got. Especially when my stubborn self-listened and decided to change my life for good. To the place it should have always been. Making my way in a world of ciswomen. Now I want the time back that I lost, but it is too late. I will just have to take my own advice and make the best life I can with the time I have left.

Thanks to you all who read along with all my experiences. Hopefully they will help you with yours and of course I will offer my own advice from all that I learned when you comment. Without all of you, none of what I do would be meaningful to me.

 

 

 

I Was Afraid of the Truth

 

Image from Brett Jordan
on UnSplash, 

It took me a while to understand that facing the major truth in my life was not possible early on for me.

As I cross-dressed in front of the mirror in my early years, I could not believe it would be a part of my permanent existence. Even though, it was screaming at me that it was. I learned quite early, just looking like a pretty girl (or so I thought) for just a quick moment in time never held up and very soon I would be wondering what it would be like to live among the girls around me as one of them. In other words, I did not know I was much more than a casual cross-dresser attracted to feminine makeup and clothes, I was so much more. Later I would learn I was a transgender woman when the term began to be popularized.

Even when I realized, for the first time in my life, I had found a term which described me, I did not totally accept it. My truth still evaded my consciousness.  I was afraid to face it and lose all the male privilege I had built up.  All along, I resisted building up those benefits, but then again took them when they were offered. Which deep down made me feel like some sort of a gender hypocrite. Regardless of my guilt, I needed to work my way through my gender issues all alone and I had no gender workbook to follow. No all-nighters with girls my age to learn what it meant to play with the essentials of makeup and clothes all the way to learning the foundation of what it would take to build me into a mature transfeminine woman someday. If I worked hard enough on my goal.  

I was frustrated even more when I got the tiniest bit of gender euphoria when I was able to go out in the world for the first time as a trans woman and do my own clothes shopping in women’s clothing stores. Even to the point of being emboldened enough to use the changing rooms to make sure my selections fit me as well as could be expected before my weight-loss program. Increasing my shopping confidence was the fact that the clerks did not really care about my gender as much as they did about my money. Another truth I needed to learn the hard way and not be so naïve.

The deeper I got into the world of cisgender women, the more I wanted to stay. As my time behind the gender curtain was beginning to feel so much more natural every time I did it. Sometimes, the whole process felt so good, I almost panicked because I did not know if I was ready yet to give up all my male existence. I had too much vested in him to just give him away, so I continued to explore my new world as a transgender woman.  

My bottom line at that time was again what was I going to do about an unapproving spouse who was still my best friend and major problems about what I was going to do about finding work as a new trans woman. I was intimidated and forced to deny my gender truth for many more years. I tried all sorts of ways to do it. I tried everything from therapy, to trying to drink it away, to trying to outrun my truths by changing jobs and moving my family many times. Of course, none of it worked and still I refused to face the facts that were staring me down in the mirror every morning that I was not meant to be a man at all. It was like life was playing a cruel prank on me because on occasion I could still be a success in a male life without really wanting to. It seemed that every time I did enjoy myself as a man, my woman self would come along and do him one better.

Finally, I had reached the point of no return and just had to begin the series of moves I would have to make to put my male behind me forever. Tragically, my wife passed away leaving me alone to do whatever I wanted, and I was old enough to retire early and sell collectibles online to scrape up enough money to survive, so destiny all of a sudden was opening doors for me to live my inner gender truth. And to make matters even better, I even gained approval from a doctor to start on HRT, or gender affirming hormones that I had always dreamed of taking. The changes I went through under the new hormones proved to be miraculous for me. As all the external and internal emotional changes took effect were worth the wait. Even though I waited until I was sixty to start them.

Perhaps the HRT hormonal shift was the final straw in me having to face the biggest truth of my life. I was a woman pretending to be a man all along.

Truth was always hard to face for me as I did my best to run from it or just ignore it…it never went away proving my transgender womanhood was the only way could go if I wanted to respect myself in the end. Plus, the end of my life was not getting further away at my age. If I was going to act, it was a now or never situation.

One night when I was out to be hopefully left alone in one of my favorite venues to watch sports and drink beer, the blinding realization that my male life was over came to me. The only future for me could be feminine if I was going to be able to live my truth. It was when all the disastrous gender wars I had lived with over the years came to an end and I all sudden, was on the right path.

Most importantly, I had worked hard to know it was the right one.

 

 

Dealing with Stress as a Transgender Woman

 

Image from Ksenia Berjoz 
on UnSplash.

In the male world I did not want to be in, I had a difficult time responding to pressure except where I worked where oddly enough, I thrived.

I suppose the gender pressure I was under started very early in life when I needed to struggle mightily to even find the private time to even try to be the pretty girl I wanted to be in front of the mirror. From my early cross-dressing years, instead of growing away from feeling the pressure I was feeling, I grew into it. On one side, I had the fond thoughts of gender euphoria dominating every spare moment that I had and on the other side I had the reality of having to compete in a world I never wanted to be in. Football was a prime example of me trying to overachieve and ended up breaking two bones doing it before I just quit.

Moving forward to the time when I left my closet and started to discover the world as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the pressure was on more than ever before to succeed as neither of my egos were taking getting laughed at by the public well. My feelings hurt, and the pressure as I said was building to do something about it.

The first thing I knew I could do was go on a diet which quickly slimmed my body so I could find and wear more fashionable clothing and started to take care of my skin better everyday after I shaved. All of this helped me to feel better about myself, and I kept on trying to perfect my makeup techniques to improve my public presentation. With all of this, it still took me quite a while to build my fragile confidence to a point where I could go out in public again.

Then I found myself in a spot where pressure was coming at me from different angles. On the days I thought my makeup and clothes were at their peak of success, the pressure would set in about how I was moving as a transfeminine person in the world. I needed to concentrate on two things, not moving like a linebacker in drag and making sure I put a pleasant look on my face. Replacing the male scowl I had perfected for so long. If I was enjoying my new life, I would have to make sure I showed it to the world.

As I did all of that, my inner pressure began to change once again as I began to free myself from the drag atmosphere of the gay venues I was going to (where I was considered as just another queen) and into the straight world I was used to where I could at least have a fighting chance of being treated as another woman in the world where the ciswomen ruled the scene I wanted to be accepted into. For the most part, I discovered that most ciswomen did not notice me, or if they were, they were just curious why I was trying to play with the girls’ club and leaving the universe of men.

At that point, I nearly panicked from all the pressure I was under as I desperately tried to maintain what was left of my male life which included my wife and job and at the same time try to allow my feminine transgender side to flourish also. My main reason to panic came when I needed to learn immediately how to communicate one on one with other women. To relieve the pressure, I went all out and even took feminine vocal lessons and I had to focus for the first time in my life on really listening to what someone else was telling me because I found that ciswomen were the masters at non-verbal or passive aggressive communication and used both methods to by pass the men around them. Which was the main reason men said they could not understand women. The women had set it up that way.

I did maintain that life as long as I could before the pressure increased again until the forms of relieving it, I was using, just did not work any longer. On top of that, I was becoming more and more self-destructive, and I kept putting my life in danger. Fortunately, before anything severely happened to me because of the pressure I was feeling nothing severe happened to me and I began to build a new exciting life out of the ashes of the male life I used to live. I took what I could from him and added it to my new transfeminine life I was beginning to carve out for myself.

Magically then, much of the pressure I was feeling about my male to female femininization started to drain off me. I can’t take all of the credit because I fell into the open arms of so many ciswomen who had problems of their own and took the time and effort to help me with mine. All their efforts reinforced why I wanted to be allowed behind the gender curtain to start with.

After the pressure was released, it was like the sun came out to me on a cloudy day, I can’t say how much weight was lifted from my shoulders when I finally saw the sunlight and decided to put my male self in my past and begin HRT or gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s supervision.

I can’t say before then I had any knowledge at all how to live a life without experiencing gender pressure. As I matured into a confident transgender woman, I finally realized I did not have to live that way, and I had the built the confidence to change it.

Certainly, living under pressure is no fun, and I would not wish it on anyone. Also, I know everyday humans have stress in their life, but I am biased, but I think transgender women and transgender men have more than their fair share to deal with. How we are able to handle it can define our lives.

 

 

 

Swimming Upstream as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart. Pride image.
Ohio River in background.

I was very stubborn as I hung on to my male persona as long as I could. In the meantime, the struggle between my two genders was monumental.

Since I started life as a biological male, he sprinted off to an unfair advantage over my feminine self. Mainly because, like it or not, being male brought with it a series of benefits I would come to call male privilege. Even though it was hard to do, each time I was moderately successful as a boy I was rewarded. Even though, deep down, I did not want to be because I knew someday, I might have to give up all that hard earned male baggage to lead the life I always dreamed of, as a  transgender woman. Full time without any restrictions.

Along with being stubborn concerning my chances of ever living my transfeminine dreams, I was also very naïve when it came to having a grand plan on how it would ever happen. When I looked at the stream that crossed my gender path, at times it would become a river that was hard to cross to get to the feminine side I wanted to be on. There were times too, when I miscalculated the depth of the water upstream, I would have to face to get to the other side.

As the water subsided, and I could try to get out of my home mirror and into the world, I ran into new situations which would define parts of my life, and I would not know it yet. Such as the Halloween parties I went to as a woman and were immediately shunned by my male friends who were there also. Little did I know that later in life when I began to explore the world as a transgender woman, men shunning me would be a common theme. Ironically, at the same time, I was learning the opposite would happen with women. Particularly lesbian women. For the first time, the stream was busy pushing me in a way I never thought possible. It happened one of the nights I was a guest at the LGBTQIA+ diverse Columbus, Ohio parties I always went to.  That night a lesbian I had never seen before showed up with a friend and the attraction between us was real. We ended leaving and going to a big lesbian venue to see what was going on and we spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other, but I was still married at the time, and nothing ever came of seeing the first lesbian who was interested in me.

All I knew at the time was I was treading water as fast as I could just to stay afloat in the dual gender world, I was trying to live in. One big life jacket which was thrown at me was the attention I was receiving from gay and straight ciswomen. It meant I would never have to approach the potentially unpleasant situation of exploring my sexuality and I never had to go past the point of kissing men at all since most of them did not want to approach me. At any rate, I always thought I was never attractive enough for them, but when I reached an island as I was swimming upstream, I had the chance to pause and realize I did not need a man’s validation to make me a complete transgender person anyhow. There were plenty of fish in my sea and I needed destiny to lead me to one. Which it did with Liz who I later married and have been with well over a dozen years now.

Another thing my stream taught me was to never feel totally comfortable and rest much at all because something would come along and knock me back into the deep water. The problem was I was still catching up on the life that ciswomen grew up living, and it was very complex. I knew it would be, but sometimes I was just caught off guard and think did that really happen.

On the other hand, when I finally was able to relax with all that I had accomplished in my gender workbook, I was so much happier in life. I finally began to realize that I was never a man at all, just a woman trying to live her life from a totally different perspective than most anyone else. Then, it made sense to me why my life was always such a struggle because I had two powerful influences battling each other. The most powerful one had to finally win out, and my inner femininity won out.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have to tell myself to follow my instincts and stay out of the water before swimming upstream became exhausting and I almost went under for good.

I know I have many readers on different parts of their gender journeys looking for any guidance possible. All I can say is that at some point you need to be honest with yourself and decide to take the most natural path you can take. Maybe you can cross-dress enough to keep one foot in the stream and one foot out and that is OK too. I just could not do it that way, but that does not make it right or wrong for you.

For the most part, I still think society is still set up for men to succeed but that is changing. And, when you are a trans person continuing up your gender path, just consider the world is still in flux and the future is feminine no matter long the old white male dinosaurs hang on. Regardless, either way you must make your own way in your own gender stream, and you will have to expect at some point to swim against the current. It is just the nature of the beast we transgender women and transgender men must face in life.

Just be very careful and follow your true gender core and you can make it.

 

 

 

 

 

Exorcising my Demons

 

Peaches Grille, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Yesterday I went back to my hometown to pick up copies of court paperwork I needed on my name change so long ago.

By so long ago, I mean I finally had to sit in front of a judge who I knew to be very conservative to get my final name change signature. It was one super Christmas present as it all happened December 23, 2015. Even “Mr. Conservative Judge” himself said Merry Christmas when he signed my long overdue paperwork. As I remember now, I had many hoops to jump through such as posting a notice in the local newspaper and waiting for thirty days to see if anyone would object to the change. Then I needed to petition the court for the actual name change. My future wife Liz was with me when all of this happened, and we were on cloud nine when we received the final documents.

The only mistake I made was not getting enough court copies of my change due to poor planning and I ran out. So, the only thing I could do was make the hour and a half trip back to the court clerk for more certified copies that I needed to change one of my insurance policies names over from my old name to my new name. My only advice to those of you who are going through the legal name change process is to plan ahead and get plenty of copies and then get more.

By now you may be asking which of my demons did I exorcise. The first major demon was not having to see mail from my insurance company showing up with my previous male name on it and knowing it was not their fault but mine because I did not do anything about it. The second demon was even going back to my hometown (where I was born and raised) at all. It is an old industrial town which has had its heart ripped out a couple times by companies downsizing or even moving overseas. Setting all of that aside, I remember the rejection I received there from certain friends and family members when they discovered my deep, dark “gender secret”. It seems each rejection was burned into my soul.

So much so that I could not sleep the night before Liz and I went back to the city that I think never forgot about me. Even though that is a self-centered idea because it has in almost every way possible. My ex-brother still lives there who I am separated from and is another good reason to dread going back. To take the pressure off a little bit, I tried to meet up with my daughter and son-in-law in nearby Yellow Springs, Ohio which has always been a real treat to go to and has been referred to as the gayest town in Ohio.

My daughter could not be there because they were going to Maine to see my oldest grandchild who works up there as a nuclear engineer. Liz and I’s disappointment in not seeing daughter and son-in-law was short-lived because Yellow Springs was all decked out in its Pride finest as it was all going to happen the next day. We ended up stopping for lunch at a place called “Peaches Grill” for a great light lunch before we resumed our trip. “Peaches” was promoting their after-Pride party and was all decorated out in preparation. It was also the venue where I ended setting next to a “Debra Winger” look-a-like complete with the black “Urban Cowboy” movie cowgirl hat. It was a fun evening and no, she did not ask for my autograph (ha-ha). All in all, Yellow Springs is the direct opposite of my hometown which is only ten miles away.

Now, since I think I have all the papers I will need for any future demands put on me to vote by the Republicans, I am not envisioning any need to go back to my hometown since years ago now, I even sold the two properties I had left there. I don’t know why I have such a deep-seated fear of reliving all the bad moments that I had, I suppose it is just the vestiges of the life I had coming out into the world coming back to haunt me. And it speaks to the amount of suffering a transgender woman or transgender man can go through just to live their lives the way they need to.

I know too that I am one of the fortunate trans people who can get around freely in public since I present as just old now and can get by with my wife’s Liz help. I just have my age-old demons to harass me like I just went through. I dislike my old hometown so much, I even don’t want to mention it by name, but it is the one that the orange Russian in the White House keeps mentioning again when it comes to deporting the Haitians. I will let you fill in the blanks from there.

All in all, my demons are tough critters and the only survivors which still exist from my old male days. They play into my anxiety issues of always worrying ahead for seemingly any occasion. But as always, my feminine side has stood the test of time and has been successful in exorcising my demons. I guess you can say she has always had my back when the times were the darkest in the days when I was visiting Yellow Springs as a short-haired Army soldier when I desperately wanted to be one of the long-haired hippie girls I saw in their bell-bottom pants. It took me awhile, but I exorcised that demon who kept telling me I would never make it.

Most importantly we made the trip safely, even with a police detour set up on a rural highway for what looked like a potential swat situation as well as heavily pouring rain which hit us on and off. We made it past the demons and that is the important part.

 

 

 

Luck or Destiny makes a Trans Girl Tick

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.