I Needed Help

 

Image from Kelly Sikkema on UnSplash.

Starting at the very beginning of my long gender journey, it seemed I needed help at every turn.

For the longest time, I thought any ciswoman could help me improve my major concern of just looking as feminine as I could. When it finally happened to me in my college days, I was so practiced in the art of makeup, I thought I could still do a better job than the woman who was working on me. I was truly disappointed and all I ended up doing was out myself as a transvestite (or cross-dresser) to someone who would hold it against me later in life. Lesson learned and it took me years to trust anyone at all with my secret. Ironically, my secret carried over all the way to the transgender-crossdresser mixer where I had the courage to take off my wig and makeup and experience the makeup magic of a professional artist. “He” was able to work wonders with my appearance and even explain what he was doing. More than any ciswoman had ever been able to do for me. So it wasn’t a woman at all who helped me initially, it was a man.

As the years flew by though, the next help I tried was therapy. I needed it to help save my long-term marriage to my second wife who was always against me leaving the house as a transfeminine person. Several times, when she caught me, I volunteered to go therapy to hopefully solve my “problem”. It turns out, therapy ran the gamut for me from very good to very bad. But overall, the good was very good and outdid the very bad, where the therapist did not know anything about gender issues or even care to learn by listening to me. I even went to the extent of driving a long distance to one of the only practicing gender therapists in Ohio at that time. She was good and even was the first therapist to diagnose my Bi-polar depression at a time when I had to fight a major battle just to get out of bed and go to work.

On top of that, she gave me the best advice that I have never listened to. That she could do nothing about me wanting to be a girl. Only I could fight that battle, if I chose to. As I said, I chose not to listen and went on to fight a losing gender battle for years which turned out to be a waste of time and energy.

The next therapist of note that I had turned out to be a match made in heaven by such a place as the Veterans’ Administration. When I applied for gender affirming hormones under VA’s new program way back then, I had to go through therapy to be approved. It ended up working so well that not only did my new therapist pave the way for HRT, but she also ended up producing the paperwork I needed to change my legal gender markers within the VA and in the outside world too. I was with her for years before she moved on to another hospital and now the only therapy, I need is the LGBTQ support group meeting I attend most every Friday.

As you can tell, therapy has been a mixed blessing for me. At times, it is a total waste of time and energy but at other times a real-life saver. Perhaps it was my own fault because I did not understand you can only get out of therapy what you put into it. Being the self-contained, stubborn person that I am, it took me a while to understand what I was trying to accomplish.

As I backed off therapy as my major impact in my male to female femininization process, I began to rely on my dealings with the public to get me by in life. I still needed major help, but I needed to find different places to find it. That is where my socialization process as a transgender woman became so valuable. Since I had become a social person as a male before my wife and close friends had all passed away, I was intensely lonely with no where to turn except to my inner feminine self.

She guided me slowly to a spot where I still needed help but could hide it. What I mean is I could learn from every social interaction I encountered. The small group of ciswomen I socialized with became my teachers and even my protectors without them even realizing it. I was going through a master’s class in gender at such a rapid pace I could not believe my good fortune. For the first time in my life, other women were coming to me for help as a transgender woman. They sensed my background in both the major binary genders could prove to be valuable lessons for them as women with men.

It felt good to me to be able to pay forward in any small way I could any of the lessons I had learned the hard way. Being with therapy or any other help I could give. It is another reason I decided to start blogging about my gender dysphoria so many years before. It is interesting to read any of those ancient posts and see how many of them just revolved my appearance as a cross dresser before I transitioned into a full-time trans woman.

Sometimes too, help can come in ways when you least expect it. From a supporting spouse, all the way to finding your whole new LGBTQ community, there are many ways to find help. Hopefully, you can find your own help. No matter how large or small it could be. Just be ready to accept it when it is offered.

 

Did I Believe in Magic?

 

Image from Delphian Lacub
on UnSplash.

It is rare, but on occasion, I still hear the question of when I knew I had gender issues.

The truth of the matter is, I always knew I was transgender. I just did not know how to express it until I was older. It was after my early explorations into my mom’s clothes did, I realize the potential magic I was holding when I carefully tried on her clothes knowing fully it would not be long until I would outgrow all her wardrobe and I would be in never-never land when it came to finding feminine clothes to wear.

Somehow in the near future, I made do with stretching elastic girl’s clothes I found in the lost and found box at the school I went to. I had a short skirt I managed to squeeze into that I cherished forever it seemed. Around that skirt I managed to build the basics of my style with the money I earned from allowances and stray jobs I found. I delivered newspapers and even mowed a cemetery for a dollar a hour in the hot summer sun, just so I could sneak out to a store and buy more feminizing items. Through it all, I believed in the magic which made me who I truly was.

It was always difficult for me to hang on to my trans truth because at the same time I was experimenting with being a girl, my male self was actually able to establish himself successfully in the world. Which just served to tear up my fragile mental health enough. Until you must wake up in the morning wondering if you are a boy or a girl, you don’t know what I am talking about. I would not have wished it on my worst enemy.

On certain occasions, my magic was strong and I felt like a girl when I looked at myself in the mirror. On other occasions, life was hell when I could not find the time to sneak around and cross dress as the girl I was. It was during those times; I had to rely on just that small amount of magic to get me by. One of the problems was I was so envious of the other girls around me at school in their pretty clothes and admiring looks from all the boys. I dreamed of being just like them.

It wasn’t until I began to explore the world as a novice transfeminine person, did I finally realize what my magic was all about. All of the doubts I had on where I was headed in my life began to dissolve when I began to feel so natural in my progression. Life was a blur as I was going out to be by myself in the world as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was able to meet strangers who accepted me for who I was. For the first time in my life, I was able to shed the long shadow of the remnants of my male past.  Every night, I was able to find my way out to one of my regular venues, be it lesbian or straight, I never wanted to return to my male self at all and lose my magic.

It turned out, my magic never went away, it just became stronger. So much so that I made the move to forever give up my male ways and start gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones just reaffirmed and strengthened my belief that magic could happen and I could indeed be the transgender woman who could forever lose her male past and survive. I could change my life from being married, with friends, family and a great job into a much more mellow existence.

It just took me too long to realize how deep my magic went in my life, and how backwards I had my whole existence and how much pain it caused me. It was my fault because I did not believe in my own magic enough to do something about it rather than be a part-time cross-dresser. I always point out I have nothing against cross-dressers at all because I depended upon it to live my life for so long.

Did I believe in magic? No. Should I have, absolutely.

 

 

A Little Success Goes a long Way

 

Hair by JJ Hart. Bead Work
by Liz T Designs

In the life of a novice transgender woman or man, a little success can go a long way. Mainly because very few of us are blessed with the natural gender characteristics of the gender we feel is truly us to get us started.

At that point, we must feel our way along. Sometimes submitting ourselves to abuse from the public as we go forth in the world for the first time. In my case, I make no secret of the many times I headed back home in tears after being laughed at to my face in public. Somehow, through it all, I was able to catch and enjoy brief moments of gender euphoria to keep me going to a distant dream of possibly living a life as a full-time transgender woman. Of course, I did not have any idea that I actually could do it.

I was fortunate that practice made perfect (or close to it) as I was able to improve my makeup and clothing skills to where I could survive in public when I left my mirror. Which I discovered was one of my biggest problems because it had the tendency to lie to me when it came to my overall appearance as a woman. Too many times, I went out thinking I looked great and then had the world slap me down in laughter because of the mirror. Plus, my male ego was giving me the wrong impression of how to look as I attempted the sexy look when I was in my thirties not in my teens. There could be no shortcuts in being able to present myself well as a trans woman, I would have to concentrate harder on my makeup and wardrobe than anything I ever tried before. Just because I was trying to dress sexy and show too much skin would not work in the real world if I was to blend in with the other ciswomen around me.

Finally, success did come to me as I haunted the thrift stores in my area for just the right fashion to attempt to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. It turned out I could not attempt to test my success until I left the gay venues I was going to and tried to go straight with my public excursions. The gays did not care how I looked and just viewed me as a drag queen any how so I was wasting my time until I discovered how I could make it or not in the big sports bars I was used to going to as a man. When I followed my three-step method of acceptance, I had no problems being accepted. My three steps were to put my fear behind me and smile, never cause any trouble and tip well earned me the right that every regular had. Especially the one I cherished more than anything else, the right to use the women’s restroom.

With my success came responsibility. I needed to be on the alert for other strangers who wanted to talk to me. Especially ciswomen who were curious about why I wanted in their world. Success in my communication skills led me to learn more about living behind the scenes as a ciswoman than I ever though I could. My primary example I always use is how women use the power of nonverbal and passive aggressive communication to get by in the world. Especially when it comes with dealing with men. It was very difficult for me to learn the basics women use to live but as I did, a whole exciting new world opened to me. Perhaps the best part of it all was that it felt so natural, so I knew I was on the right gender path in my life for the first time.

My success then began to go a long way when I discovered a small circle of women friends I could socialize with on a regular basis. I was always a social person anyway, so the fit seemed fun and natural to me as I gained the confidence I never had before when I was a solitary, lonely cross-dresser. And the best part was, I was having the opportunity to learn from the other women around me about knowing how it really was to interact with the world as a transgender woman rather than how I always dreamed it would be. Needless to say, I learned a lot.

I looked at my whole experience as paying dues as I went from being laughed at in public all the way to having my own set of ciswomen friends to socialize with and even marrying one later in life. Ironically, it was my wife Liz who convinced me once and for all to put my male self behind me, give away all my male clothes and start gender affirming hormones. Which I had always considered the next logical step in my male to female gender transition. It turned out, hormones would be the great “aha” moment in my life as the femininization process took hold. It was as if I should have always been on the hormones because the process felt so natural. The changes went way past the external softening of the skin, breast and hair changes all the way to all the internal changes such as emotions and more.

For me, success took a long time coming, and early failures at passing in public made me very timid. Once I made it through all of that, success came more naturally to me. All the way from just leaving the house cross dressed to HRT, my life became a blur of changes. Sure, the battles I needed to fight came at me fast and furious because I was so embedded in the male culture but I was able to fight my way through them and be successful as I discovered a little success went a long way and kept me going along my gender path towards a life I had only dreamed of.

Time Flies When you are a Crossdresser

Image from UnSplash. 

Since now I have been blessed with making it to the age of seventy-six, I spend a lot of time wondering what I did with my life.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I spent much of my time running from myself by changing jobs and moving my family. At the same time, I was doing all of that, I was busy cross-dressing to keep my fragile mental health together. I started the same way most of you with gender issues did by trying on my mom’s clothes and moving on from there. The urge was so strong that I even went out and got a newspaper delivery route (back when newspapers were relevant) so I could make extra money to buy my own makeup, panty hose as well as other feminine items I could afford. Before I knew it, I was becoming fairly proficient at applying my own makeup. So good that the first time I talked a ciswoman into making me over into a woman, I thought I had done a better job with my makeup.

Those were during my college days which were split in two by my military duty during the Vietnam War and all cross-dressing activities were brought to a complete halt. When you are younger, years are more precious and the time away from my makeup, dresses, and wigs seemed impossible to face. Somehow, I made it through and even discovered the magic of attending a Halloween party dressed as a woman while I was in the Army. The good news is I did it but the bad news was the time was very limited, and I had a lot to go over in my mind including Halloween was then another year away. What would I do in the meantime to help solve my cross-dressing dilemma.

What I tried to do first was to drink my gender problems away, which only partially worked because when I sobered up, my issues were still with me and sometimes potentially worse when one night in the Army I told three close friends I was actually a transvestite and like to wear women’s clothes. Not just at Halloween. I was lucky, the word about my gender issues never got out to my higher ups and I went on to serve out my time with a honorable discharge.

When I rejoined civilian life, I had the chance to seriously consider making the gender jump from a male life to a female one. Following serious consideration, I felt the leap would just be too far to make, so I reluctantly chose to stay on the cross-dressing path I was on. To do just enough in front of the mirror to maintain my sanity.

Nothing changed until I began to leave my mirror behind and experience life in the public eye as a novice cross-dresser. Or so I thought. All was good, until the night something clicked in my mind when I was getting ready to go out to the straight venues I was visiting when I left the gay spots behind. As I examined myself in the mirror, I stopped and said what I was doing.  I suddenly felt empty and needed more and then concluded I had taken just dressing as a woman as far as I could. I needed to experience the next step which was actually interacting one on one with other women as an equal. Even though the idea scared me to death, I needed to hitch up my big girl panties and transition again into a full-fledged transgender woman. The venue I chose was TGIF Fridays I was familiar with as a man and I knew if I could make it past the hostess stand with no extra attention, I had a good chance of finding a seat at the bar with the other women who were just getting off work at the nearby mall. Amazingly, my plan worked to perfection, and I made it to the bar and claimed my seat. The bartender waited on me without showing any signs of gender disgust and I even ordered a second drink to celebrate my successful major transition in life. From serious cross-dresser to novice transgender woman. Even saying the word felt good to me.

By the time, time was flying by as I was trying desperately to build a new transfeminine life while at the same time maintaining a long-term marriage and successful job. I found I was not too successful as a juggler because the same time I was feeling good and natural as a trans woman my male life would sneak back it and ruin it for me. Eventually, it all became too much for me to handle mentally, and a suicide attempt followed.

Maybe I spent too much time in my life obsessing over my feminine appearance which I attribute into being a very serious cross-dresser. Certainly, all the successful public appearances I made as a woman were not helping me with my ultimate goal of living my dream. In the long-term, I never bargained on going through two major male to female femininizations to even come close to discovering if I could find my true life and live it as a successful trans woman. Maybe I was too shy or scared to go too fast. One way or another, it is too late now to cry over torn panty hose. Life gives us only one chance to get it right.

Wherever you maybe in your gender transitory journey, I hope you can steer clear of the major roadblocks’ politicians are attempting to out in our way as transgender people. May your path be as smooth as possible as your own time flies by as a cross-dresser or transgender woman.

  

What is Chasing You?

 

Image from Filip Mroz
on UnSplash. 

As human beings, we all have something that is chasing us. As transgender women or trans men, that something which is chasing us may be more serious.

As we all know, gender is one of the most basic wants and needs for a person. At birth, we are put into a male or female box which is often very difficult to change. In my case, I was born into a very male dominated family as their first-born son, so changing anything with my gender was totally out of the question. In addition, information on gender dysphoria was difficult to find in the pre-internet days.

All of this set me up for a chase which would dominate my life for nearly five decades. Mainly because my male self-had a huge head start on the race to claim myself. He was born into male privilege that he just had to compete in the world to claim. Along the way, he managed to do quite well in the privilege race, which made it more difficult to give up his male life when the time came to do it.

As I became older and more settled into a routine, what was chasing me became more evident. I wanted to be a transgender woman more than anything else in my life. It all set me off in a collision course with changing jobs and moving from my native Ohio as I desperately tried to outrun what was chasing me. I thought each move I made would bring me closer to living the dream life I always hoped was possible. Examples included moving from a small conservative town in Ohio to the huge metro New York City area so I could be closer to a more liberal cross-dressing area. Even though that proved true to an extent, I found I still had the same restrictions on expressing my feminine self as I had in Ohio. So, I moved back to a very rural area where I thought I could hide my cross-dressing ways. Ironically, the best move I made was the next one when I moved back near to Columbus, Ohio where I could reconnect with the small group of diverse friends I had made before at crossdresser-transgender mixers I had went to.

Through it all, all my running was becoming increasingly exhaustive on my mental health. I was taking one step forward towards my goal of living a transfeminine life, while at the same time taking a step or two back when my public persona as a woman was discovered and I was crushed mentally. I kept going back to my gender drawing board until I got it right, or to the point where I could go out in public without the fear of abuse.

When I did reach that point, the feminine person chasing me upped her game and I needed to get better when I interacted with the world. What happened was people started to recognize me, so I needed to start building a whole new person. I needed to choose a new name to fit my personality and stick with it. Which also meant I needed to attempt the most difficult task of all for me, the time I spent communicating one on one with other women. I needed to throw my innate shyness out of the window and learn the basics of eye-to-eye communication which I learned was so big with cis women. Plus, I really wanted to learn to interact with women because I could learn so much from them while at the same time not coming off like a mean bitch.

As I learned to relax and interact with my new world, the inner female which was chasing me could relax a little too. At the same time, my male self-began to finally realize he was losing the race for dominance in my world. More and more, I felt the fear of giving up my male privileges fade away as the introduction of female privileges set in. For the first time in my life, I felt free of the gender struggles which had defined me. I remember vividly the night I sat by myself and added up all the pluses and minuses to the moves I was considering making. The end result was in my life as a novice transgender woman, I had never felt so natural and free. The decision was an easy one for me as I decided to take the next step and seek a doctor’s approval for gender affirming hormones or HRT. A move I considered for once and for all, end any questions about what was chasing me.

That decision brought all the exhaustive chases to an end in my life. The only problem was it took me until the age of sixty to face my inner truths and find peace in my life.

 

Innocence Lost

 

JJ Hart

Looking back at my long life, I reflected on the more innocent times, or were they?

One of the many things that amuse me about a certain political movement that pretends to want to make America great again, was when was it great? Was it the pre-civil rights era struggles of the 1950’s? Or the seismic changes of the 1960’s when the Vietnam War raged on. Plus, it is easy to forget how much of this country was built on the back of slavery.

During the 50’s as I was watching the plethora of westerns on our new television, I was also running to cross-dress in front of my mirror and pretended I was the pretty girl I saw on television being saved by the handsome cowboy. Totally ignoring the fact that the native Americans fighting the cowboys and Army were fighting for their land which was being stolen from them. But I stayed innocent behind my skirts and makeup until the Vietnam War caught up with me. Which made it impossible for me to remain neutral anymore. What the hell were we doing as a country fighting a losing war in a southeast Asian country anyhow?

It was about that time that I had to draw a line in the sand and reject the beliefs of my “greatest generation parents” who had survived a great depression as well as WWII. I just could not accept their thoughts about life any longer which included my ideas about my gender. Which were developing quickly. I knew for the longest time that something was wrong in my life, I just couldn't tell completely what it was.

Again, it was the military which covered up my desire to be feminine. Going away to Army basic training proved to the most dedicated people watching me that I was nothing more than a so-called normal male. All my time in the military did was strengthen my idea of who I was as a human and give me the extra ability to take advantage of who I truly was as a transfeminine person. Around this time also, was when I discovered the power of the internet which led me to a whole wide world of information and people to know. The people were the first I ever met who shared the same transgender desires than I did. My innocence was forever lost.

As I became more active in the world as a transgender woman and transitioned from being a serious cross dresser, I found I did not have the same rights as the typical American was supposed to have. For awhile under a previous President, our trans situation was better such as transgender military members being allowed to serve their country. Today, all that has changed of course under the current regime in Washington. I can’t say any of my innocence was lost because I could see all of this happening years ago when he was elected for the first time.

Even though, we transgender women and trans men make up a very small portion of the population we have to bear the unrestricted hate and bigotry of one of the political parties which is heart breaking to me. Especially when I need to take into consideration the transgender youth in the country who will have to fight these unfair laws forever it seems. Their innocence never had a chance to start before it was disrupted.

How do we truly make America great again? Try to restore the basic goodness of people everywhere. While I was in the hospital, I had several nurses tell me how mean the public has become. So, it is just not towards transgender people at all. It all starts at the top in Washington and works its way downward into society.  At my age of seventy six, my age of innocence was lost years ago when I first glimpsed myself as a girl in the mirror. Even then I knew I needed more than clothes to succeed in life as a feminine person. I just wish I had acted on my desires earlier. Other than that, I fear we have lost years of developing a creative nurturing society that we need to help all of us. Including the small but vibrant transgender community. Who can’t afford to take many more shots.

I wish I could be more positive about our lives, but I am just looking at my life as I see it and comparing it to my past. I just hope together we can all make it. Innocence or not.

 

 

Is It All Competition

 

Image from Gavin Allenwood on 
UnSplash. 

As I began to follow my gender journey, I did have some sort of an idea on how cis women compete in the world and how it differs from men. The one mistake I did make was thinking women somehow operate in a kinder/gentler world when it comes to competition.

Once I was allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox and get into a couple brief but intense scuffles with other women, I learned the hard way that women were into it as much as men when it came to what was important in their lives. The difference being was what was important. Men of course, compete in athletics and business while women tend to build their lives around family and home. And let’s not forget the influence of appearance with women. While it is a shallow existence, some women have a tendency to make friends and socialize with other women who fit in with their appearance. I remember quite clearly trying to watch my pre-teen granddaughter try to socialize with and fit in with a much prettier girl at a birthday party she was at. This extended with me all the way to a lesbian mixer I was at one night when a friend of mine wanted me to approach a very pretty femme lesbian for a date for her. It turns out that both my granddaughter and lesbian friend were both out of luck.

Not unlike when men try to date beautiful women and get rejected. I know when I started down the path of getting out in public as a novice transgender woman, I was only concerned about my appearance. I felt I was working to compete one on one with the other women in the world I met. How was my makeup, hair looking and did all my accessories match the rest of my outfit was all that was important to me. It took me awhile to go through this portion of my life as a cross dresser and emerging as a wiser more mature feminine person.

It was also about this time when I started to really engage with other women. Which was a real challenge because I was so timid. What would I say and how would I say it became I bigger priority other than just how I looked. I discovered too, the power of the submissive compliment to start a conversation. An example was when another woman would come up to me and compliment my earrings to start a conversation. When in reality, she was just curious to find out what I was doing in her world. In particular, I found out that I needed to beware of the you look great compliment because it could be tied into a compliment such as a man dressed as a woman.

It turned out, when I built my own circle of ciswomen friends, I did not need to worry as much about competition in the world anymore. When I was approached, it was when I was part of a group of out-going women who without thinking, shielded me from any negative people. The process worked wonders for me because I could set back and learn how to act from the other women around me and only step up and out when needed to secure my place in the group.

Slowly but surely, my competition turned to confidence that I could live the dream life as a transfeminine person I never thought I could be. I began to join writer groups with my wife Liz which in turn helped build further my new life because these people never knew anything about my previous life as a male. It all separated me from my old unwanted life and propelled me into a future I so wanted.

Furthermore, I did not have to compete in the world with other women. If they had a problem with me, so be it. It was their problem not mine. I did not have to please everyone was a powerful moment in my life. But without all the gender competition I went through, I would have never made it to the point I am today. I learned from how men compete with each other as well as women from both sides of the gender spectrum. Typically, men don’t compete well with women at all, and I knew that going in. So, I knew what to expect. With other women though, I did not have any idea at all. It took me a long time to learn feminine competition and how it worked.

As I said, once I did learn to compete in the real world as a trans woman, my life changed for the better and I truly began to live the life I always dreamed of.

Gender Hide and Seek

 

Image from UnSplash

On occasion, I look back at my decades long journey to live as I really wanted to live as a transgender woman as a roller coaster sort of ride, which had its share of major ups and downs. For a time too, I looked at where I was going a something like a drug addicts plunge into despair. When I was sinking deeply into the lost feeling of my gender dysphoria.

What happened was, the pendulum always swung back after I had another satisfying session in front of the mirror admiring the pretty girl I had conjured up in my mind. I became so good at doing the routine in front of the mirror that I could count the days when the pressure built up to a boiling point and I would have to come out of hiding and cross-dress my body again. If I could go back and do it all over again, I would have recognized I was much more than just the average cross dresser, I was trending towards being a transgender woman, way back then. Years before the term trans was even invented and used.

The older I got and had finished my military obligations; I grew more complex on how I played hide and seek with my gender emotions. Particularly, when I began to go out in the public’s eye more and more. In fact, my entire gender focus began to shift from just admiring my self in the mirror, all the way to beginning to forget about my male self all together. It took me years to arrive at the final conclusion my life was leading me to, but I did it. I was never a man crossdressing as a woman; I was a woman doing my best to cross dress as a man and failing miserably at it. Even though I did make small strides towards becoming a man my family could be proud of, my life as a guy just was never enough.

My major problem was I was pulling too much attention away from my male life and I was beginning to not hide it well at all. to live as one of the main binary genders just kept increasing to a point where I could not take it any longer and I tried to punish myself through a series of self-harming events. The hide and seek game I had played so well, began to collapse around me. I felt like the incompetent juggler who kept dropping everything he was trying to juggle and when it did, the pressure increased to a point where my mental health could not take it any longer and I felt the only way out was through a series of severe self-harm events like taking my own life. I guess you could say, the ultimate game of hide and seek when it came to my gender issues.

Looking back, playing a lifetime of hide and seek was no fun when it came to dealing with my gender dysphoria. Knowing for sure which gender I was when I woke up in the morning was a benefit, I never had the chance to appreciate in my life until I was in my sixties. For years though, if I had had the courage to face who I was, I would not have had to play hide and seek at all. It was like I knew what was behind door number one all along and was afraid to choose it.

Now I know why I never liked games at all.

 

 

Invisibility as a Trans Girl

 

Image from Lindsey Feanzke
on UnSplash, 

Another major realization I had during my wife Liz and I’s vacation journey was how invisible I had become as a transgender woman.

It was not an easy realization to come by since I have been out in the public eye full time for over a decade now. During that time, I went through all the stages of going from sheer panic all the way to suffering from impostor syndrome when I found myself in a feminine world for the first time. Along the way, I had heard the term stealth applied to the impossibly feminine transgender women I had seen who had passed the public perception of beauty easily. A standard I never thought I could reach with the testosterone poisoned body I had to work with.

In many ways, I found I never could but then I began to look around me at all the other ciswomen in the world who did not achieve a high standard of classic beauty either. And they found a way to lead successful fulfilling lives as women. When I realized they had a path, I knew I had one too. I could be secure in my own womanhood even though my path was different than most of the world. The only real problem I had was dealing with the late start I had dealing with my realization that I was a transfeminine person all along. I was blessed with having the advice or criticism from moms or peer groups to help me out of my gender shell. I only had a mirror which was highly capable of lying to me on my feminine presentation. Even though I looked like a clown in drag because of my poor makeup skills, my mirror friend kept telling me I was pretty.

It was not until It began to have the courage to use the world as my mirror did life begin to change for me. I needed to pay closer attention to what the ciswomen around me were wearing so I could blend in with them and not create unwanted attention to myself as a transgender woman. In other words, I did not know it yet, but I had my first lessons in being invisible in the world as the person I had always dreamed of becoming.

Little dd I know, the more I was out in the world, the more lessons I would have to learn to just survive carving out a new niche in my life. It was one thing to talk to myself in the mirror and a whole other to communicate one on one with another woman n the world. Early on, before I gathered much courage in what I was doing, I would lay back and let the other person (normally a woman) take the lead in any communication efforts she wanted to do. I found it was the best way to go as I learned what the gender I so desperately needed to be a part of operated behind the gender curtain which men could only guess at. I became comfortable in women only spaces such as restrooms and parties where men were not invited. In doing so, I was making myself more invisible as a trans woman and more visible as a well-rounded person.

All of this brings me back to what “stealth” as a transgender person means to me. For the longest time, as I said, I thought the word applied to only the upper echelon of transsexual beauties I saw online back before anyone could use filters to make themselves look better. Back in those days, feminine facial surgery was the way to go to re-arrange what you were born with in the appearance department. Seeing how I could not afford any surgery and was still working as a man, I was stuck with trying my best to improve my looks through the miracle of makeup.

By this time in my life, I was approaching my sixties and had managed to carve out a nice little life with affirming women friends, I decided to take to heart again what my trans friend Racquel had told me years ago. She profoundly said I passed out of sheer will power and I took it as it was intended. That I would never be the most attractive woman in the room but I could survive anyhow as I found my path as a transgender woman beyond the point of ever living a male life at all and I was now invisible to the world as my former self. After all the decades of attempting to live as a mix of the two main genders, I had made it to the point of just being me. More importantly, I was able to show the public around me who I was too. Now, it could be when one ciswoman on the trip came up to me to tell me how much she respected me coming along on the tour, it could have been she was referring to me making my way with my walker on wheels, or the she sensed I was transgender. One way or another, I respected what she said.

It turned out she was not alone. To my surprise, I had several other couples tell me the same thing and they were the ones I least expected to do it. Which teaches me once again not to prejudge people ahead of time. Shame on me, because I hate it when people prejudge me.

I guess becoming invisible for me came the same time I learned to just be me and I my life’s journey just happened to include being transgender. Now I need to keep trying to adjust to my new realizations. Since it took long enough for me to do it.

 

 

The Return Home

 

JJ Hart, on a chilly
Florida beach night.

The return home from a rather lengthy vacation always presents a bittersweet time for me. While the trip to Florida went well and for the most part exceeded my expectations, our return to our home in Cincinnati and to our very lonesome cat was welcome. Similar to being able to sleep in our own bed again.

During this trip we played hide and seek with several major weather systems. In order to stay ahead of the foot of snow, which was heading for our native Ohio, the bus tour company decided to leave a day early and take a different route South to Florida. It proved to be a masterpiece of planning because we faced just a tiny piece of snowy weather around Knoxville, Tennessee and none of the dreaded ice. Which went Southeast of us.

By nature, I have become a worrier in my old age, so on top of thinking about all of the weather issues we would be facing, I had to put the restroom anxiety I always feel in the back of my mind. Which was a good thing because outside of a few startled looks I received from other women on the tour, I had no problems with my choice of restrooms I used. In fact, the biggest issue I faced was trying to wait for a handicapped accessible stall to use which really helped me with my mobility issues, I was able to not use my cane at all and rely heavily on my walker with wheels.

Past the restroom issue, I had to adjust to using my most feminine voice again. An issue because I don’t have to think about it as much around home because I don’t interact with strangers much. Day one proved to be more challenging on my part because I was so shy with the others on the tour, and I was afraid I was coming off as unfriendly or bitchy. I was fortunate in that we had two experienced tour guides who helped me find handicapped accessible ramps and restrooms.

As past trips and experiences have taught me, when I take the first step with a smile and friendliness on my part, most people respond the same way. So, by the time the tour of Florida was over, several of the other travelers made it a point to tell me how nice it was to meet me. I couldn't believe how good it made me feel. It was enough to warm me up even in the record Florida cold spell they were suffering through.  It was so cold and windy for them that they canceled one of the Everglades boat tours we were on. It all worked out for the better for Liz and I because we got extra time to explore the beach which is why we went in the first place. Plus, the leisure time helped me to recover from all the days we spent which required lots of walking. In fact, one day when we went to the Hollywood Beach area of Florida, we ended up walking over seven thousand steps, well over what I was used to.

Overall, I had a very good time on this trip even though it was to a part of the country I don’t agree with as far as politics are concerned. But my native Ohio is rapidly trying to become just as backwards as far as transgender rights are considered.

What did I wear? The whole trip was casual themed and all I took along was my best leggings and jeans, along with a solid pair of tennis shoes for walking. Other than that, I wore sweatshirts. With a daily shave and a liberal dose of my favorite foundation powder. I was ready to go for another day of cold Florida.

As I said, we made it home safely and had a good enough time that my wife Liz is planning the next trip which may include something to do with train travel. Plus, I will be writing more about other in-depth events on the trip.

Staying Calm

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride

Many times, staying calm as you traverse your gender path is easier said than done. For example, take the early days of exploring your mom’s clothes to see what still fit and how well you thought it made you look in the mirror. Just the sight of your girlish self-brought a palpable change to your excitement level that you would never forget. Then the disappointment set in and your calm was shattered when you knew you had taken the last little bit of time you had to take off the makeup and clothes and return to the boring male world you were forced into.

At that point, as you grew up, it became evident that taking the time to cross dress as a girl anytime you could calm you down and made life easier…until the pressure built up and you could cross dress again. In my case, before long, to stay calm in my life, I needed the effort I put into looking like a girl. If I did not, all I would worry about was the next time I could apply makeup and a dress and look at myself in the mirror.

For some reason, when I was young, I thought age would temper my urge to be feminine. Then the internet came along (with social media sites) and I discovered there were others with like interests in femineity. I also learned new terms such as transgender which for the first time, I thought applied to me and the gender dysphoria I was suffering from. The whole on-line process took me out of the printed confines of “Virginia Prince” and her “Transvestia” publication and into a world I could communicate with. Suddenly, my calm was shattered again as I needed to sneak around my wife’s back on our computer to see what I could learn and wonder if I could ever achieve the attractive beauty of some of the cross-dressers I saw. I even discovered a contact relatively close to me that I was conversing with until my wife caught up with me and I needed to stop to retain the uneasy calm we had in the marriage.

As luck or destiny would have it, staying calm became increasingly complex for me. I had started to explore the world as a transfeminine person with some success. So much so that I could not keep my mind off what I was going to do next as a novice trans woman when I went out in public the next time. The pressure to balance a life in two genders was tremendous and the only time I ever remember being calm was when I was out living my new life as a woman. But again, the feeling of calm was fleeting as I had to hurry home and change back to no makeup and skirts to my male work-a-day world and at the same time hiding my true transgender self from my wife and most importantly myself. It took me years and years to understand the true basis to all my jittery problems, I was fighting a male gender the whole time I should have never been born into.

When I gradually began to understand what I was up against as a gender conflicted person, I turned to therapy as a solution. As with anything else in life, I suffered through bad therapists and benefitted from good ones. One of the good ones was the initial gender therapist I went to in Columbus, Ohio when I saw her name in an ad in a LGBTQ newspaper I was reading. The sad part was that in true male form I refused to listen to her advice when she told me there was nothing she could do with me wanting to be a woman and I would have to decide someday what decision I would make. If I had listened to and heeded her advice, I would have been able to build the calmness of choosing my dominant gender long before I did.

The next two therapists I tried were terrible and knew little about gender issues at all, so I kept searching for another good one which I found in all places like the Veterans Administration. She had a great basic knowledge of the LGBTQ community and was willing to help me through my Bi-Polar depression issues also. The luck of the draw, again went in my favor as she even helped me in the legal change documents, I needed to change my gender within the VA and out in the world. During this time, it was difficult to remain calm because of all the positive changes I was going through, and my life was so exciting.

When I really calmed down was when I was approved for HRT or gender affirming hormones. The HRT took off the remnants of my testosterone poisoned personality. Or I should say, took the edge off all my feelings of aggression and panic. Very quickly my whole world softened, and I could see a future again. It was a true calmness of existence that somehow, I had always craved but had no idea how to achieve it. Little did I know, I was on the right path the whole time and did not know it. Worse yet, my path led me to being addicted to stress in pressure packed jobs on top of my gender issues. I just did not know how to be calm and slow down and enjoy the present.

Our lives come at us quickly, so that is my excuse for living mine the way I did. Looking back, I do think I was able to use the basic building blocks of my male life to build a stable future as a transgender woman. I equate it to going back to school and getting credit for courses you already took. Life around you changes but certain basics always stay the same. The best advice I could have had for myself is you only have one life to live. Try to sit back and stay calm so you can enjoy it.

 

Her Way or the Highway

 

Image from Joshua Rondeau
on UnSplash. 

Very early on, it became evident to me that my feminine self was very demanding. Who knows, maybe she took after my mom who had to be strong in a very male dominated family.

Wherever it came from, I always felt a strong push from her to be let out into the world to live. Even so she would have to wait years and go through constant trials and tribulations to do it. The gender journey I was on proved to be much longer and challenging than either of her competing souls thought possible. Nearly a half a century of trying before I got it right.

To make matters worse, my male self never was one to give up easily and he fought every move intensely along the way. Making everything even worse was that he was fairly successful in carving out a life he never really wanted as a man. The more baggage he accumulated, the more difficult it became leaving it all behind in a male to female transition situation.

Even more stressful was the fear of the unknown which followed me everywhere. It started with the feelings of not knowing if I was a boy or a girl when I was growing up and continued onward from there. Seeking gender answers always took a lot of energy out of my life that I wished I could get back. Of course, that was impossible and I needed to learn to live with the way I was with my gender dysphoria until I hoped I could do something about it. What I did do was get out of my closet/mirror and began to see what the world would be like for a transgender woman like me. Would it be her way or the highway after all. Following a rough start with my public presentation, I lost nearly fifty pounds of weight and began to perfect my art of makeup. I put a tremendous amount of work into my feminine presentation, more than anything else I had ever done in my life.

As it turned out, all my effort was rewarded and my transfeminine self-began to emerge and live her life. The days of just going out to be alone in the world subsided as I was able to make new social contacts for the first time as a trans woman. For the first time in my life, the gender teeter-totter I was on began to favor my feminine side which proved to be a real problem for my male side who still was working fulltime in the world and bringing home a good income. I was actually ahead of my timetable in how I wanted to work out the gender issues in my life and increasingly it was becoming her way or the highway when it came to my life.

The pressure to change became enormous and wrecked my mental health leading me to alcohol abuse along with self-harm (suicide) attempts. I drove too fast and took too many chances hoping something would come along and put me out of my misery. Nothing ever did until I realized the answer was screaming at me all along. I should have never been born into the male world that I was and now would have to overcome the testosterone poisoned past I had lived to do something about it.

Her way became a real reality to me when my second wife passed away unexpectedly from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. I was so disappointed that she never did anything about her health until it was too late that I never properly grieved the loss of someone I had been married to for twenty-five years. Instead, I turned to the waiting arms of my feminine self for comfort in my times of severe despair and loneliness. She was all I had as I sleepwalked through my life, and her highway began to look better and better. My new timetable of a possible jump across the gender border dramatically increased when suddenly the greatest barrier to stopping my leap had been taken away.

Before I knew it, the new highway I had dreamed about living on was upon me and it was fast and smooth since I had worked through most all of the bumps and potholes earlier than I had experimented. For once, I was not frustrated with all the time it took me to make my final gender transition decision. I always compared the road I was on to the Autobahns I drove when I was in Germany which were always well maintained and built for high speed. I even had to be careful that I was not going too fast as I had to figure out who was left to talk about my authentic self. My daughter came first, which went exceedingly well and then my brother which went exceedingly bad. Then I moved on to what was left of the very few friends I had left or just began to not see them anymore as I built my new life.

I am very glad now that it was her way or the highway in my life. She kept telling me it was the way life should have always been and the brief moments of life I saw which were so fluid and natural were only the beginning. Maybe I had been too cautious for my own good when I tried to take the back roads towards becoming a full-fledged transgender woman, but it was the only way I knew. Hiding who I was started so early in life, I never saw my way out of it for so many years until it was too late. I was stuck in a habit I could not get out of. Until I woke up to the fact that her way or the highway was a realistic path my life should take. I have enjoyed the highway ever since.

I was more like my mom than she ever knew.

 

Setting New Traditions

 

JJ Hart bottom row, left. 
Girls Night Out Birthday Party. 

Establishing new traditions or routines can be difficult when you decide to finally live as the gender you were always meant to be.

In my case, the biggest moment of change was when my regular invitation to the family’s Thanksgiving feast was rejected by my brother and sister-in-law who did not have enough backbone to stand up to her rightwing Baptist family. The excuse I was given was, what would the kids think. I was fortunate that my dramatic change was by my daughter and my future wife Liz. Both of them invited me into their family gatherings with open arms and I ended up having an even better time than I would have had with my brother.

Other traditions I was invited into were girls’ nights out for various special occasions such as birthday parties. I cherished the chances I had to go behind the gender curtain and see how ciswomen interact with each other when there are no men around. Sure, I was terrified to go at first but quickly calmed down and warmed up to the experience when almost all of the women there treated me as an equal. Surprisingly to me, I ran into no problems except for one woman who acted as if she was mad at the world anyway. Plus, my most important lessons were if you take men out of the picture, women are looser acting around themselves and the only real difference in the conversation is the lack of sports and job talk. The bulk of the conversation was built around family and spouses.

I took these new learning experiences with me and ran with them into my everyday life’s interactions with other women. I subtracted any talk of employment and my major interests (sports) unless I was asked about something specific. Which surprisingly I was not and my private life which I had not merged at that time, stayed mine. No one pried, and I did not offer. Which worked well for me.

As I slowly began to build on the experiences I mentioned, life became more fluid and natural to me, and I knew I was on the right path. I felt better after spending a night with the ciswomen than I ever did when I was busy posturing with other men. It just took me time to establish new traditions, and I came to expect the occasional invitation to join other women in their celebrations. I became my own woman, just from a different background than the rest of the group. As I learned so much, most of the women never knew how much they benefitted me by just allowing me into their lives. Including the lesbian experiences, I had which went such a long way towards shaping my future.

From the earliest days of going to diverse mixers in Columbus, Ohio and ending up leaving with a lesbian I talked to, all the way to attending lesbian mixers with Kim and Nikki in Dayton, Ohio years later, I again was able to learn so much about the sort of woman I wanted to be. As many of the transgender women around me were stressing about finding a man, I learned I did not need a man’s validation to be me. It really helped me to not needing to change my sexuality while I was building new traditions in my life. I had always appreciated the company of women around me and nothing changed.

If you are considering, or are building new ones, as you know it is a major deal and one that can take a while. My advice is fairly simple, pursue as many avenues as you can and be prepared for the occasional rejection you may receive. Especially from men who may perceive you only as some sort of fetish object. And of course, be safe and meet strangers in public places initially.

Sooner rather than later before you know it your new traditions will become established and second nature to you. That is when the woman who has always been a part of you can emerge and live the life she always imagined. Jumping the gender border may be something you were always destined to do but never dreamed you would have the chance to do it like I did. I needed to wait for decades as I experimented with my gender but finally the doors opened wide for me to find myself in a do or die situation. Either try a male to female transition which was always a female-to-female transition in my world or forget it and move on with my life at the advanced age of sixty. It would have been easier just to do what I always had done and live a life with one foot in each of the binary genders.

I took the hard way out and decided to pursue the next step in my transition (it was a big one) and seek a doctor’s approval to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. It was a huge step for me and one I did not take lightly. My body took to the new hormones like why did I take so long to do it? It fit right in with the rest of my life of waiting too long to do what was right. Establishing new traditions in a life I always should have known was just the beginning.

 

 

 

 

Merging your Past with your Future

 

Image from Sammy Swae 
on UnSplash. 

We speak a lot around here about merging your life’s past circumstances with the future of what you may be facing.

Depending upon the number of years you have spent living as your birth gender, you may have an incredible amount of baggage to bring with you from your past. Including the input of spouses, family, friends and jobs. What to bring with you to merge with your new lifestyle as a transgender woman or trans man is often an agonizing decision. One thing is for certain you can’t bring all of your past life with you. However, no matter how you may want to cut it, the basic building blocks of your life remain. Such as how your parents raised you. My parents raised me to be a contradiction from the beginning. I was expected to stand up for what I believed to be right, as long as it did not interfere with what they thought was right. So being a childhood cross dresser was being an individual in my mind but an embarrassment in theirs. So, I had no chance of winning my gender battles.

On the other hand, I was taught the difference between right and wrong but not enough that I could bring it with me when I needed to face the biggest battle of my life, what was I going to do about my unwanted male life. Deep down inside, I knew the right answer then just refused to face it.

For the longest time, I was guilty of putting ciswomen and girls up on some sort of a pedestal as I viewed their lives from the outside looking in. Basically, all I saw was they had the chance to wear the pretty clothes and be pursued by the men or boys in school. I so wanted to be the cheerleader on the sidelines rather than the defensive end I was on the football team. Without seeing all the work, it took to being a good cheerleader. In fact, I never saw any or all of the work needed to transition from being a female to being a woman which I found to be a huge difference. Females are born; women are socialized in the world which means not all women ever make it. If and when you are attacked by a TERF about how you were born, rest assured she has problems if all she could come up with was a so-called birthright.

Getting back to how you merge your past with your future, the first thing you have to remember is not to forget about your present. Your present is so important as you live a daily life, often between two powerful genders, male and female. Your present is often the time when you are working hard to see how your gender dreams will impact your life in the future and how much has it done for your past. In my case, all I had really learned about being in the world as a transgender woman was to apply makeup well enough, so I did not look like a clown in drag, and I learned to shop in thrift stores to find the right fashion to flatter my testosterone poisoned body. I knew nothing about putting my new improved feminine image into motion in the world.

Once I did get serious about looking around in my present-day world back then, I wondered how I was going to ever merge my past with my future. After I determined how badly I wanted to.

My main concern was how one sided my interests were. I was mainly a sports addict with the usual male preoccupation with my job. Most certainly, I would be sacrificing my job if I male to female transitioned but what about my sports hobbies? It was then I became very serious about looking around to notice who all was watching sports at the big venues I was in and I was pleasantly surprised that all those years, I had been missing the number of women who were involved. It turned out that unless I was trying to talk sports with a man, my baggage was safe with other ciswomen, and I was not out of place in my favorite team jersey. To make matters even better, when my wife Liz and I got together and began going to “Meetup” groups, I was able to go to writers’ circles to interact with a whole new set of people. I highly recommend groups such as that to expand your social horizons as a transgender woman or trans man.  The only negative experience I ever had was with a lesbian social group who refused to accept me because I was trans. Which was their loss, not mine.

Then I began to look at my future as just downsizing my life. I was leaving friends behind who did not accept me all the way to going from two wardrobes to one. As Liz once told me, it’s not often a human gets to stop a life and rebuild it, so don’t mess it up. With me, I was fortunate to have help in merging my past with my future. When I was with my new circle of women friends, I just had to learn what to needed to omit from my past which would inadvertently out me as a past male. I was able to talk about my family because I had a daughter, which was a good example, I just could not share birth stories. But in reality, I was in the room, just not doing any of the work.

Any way you cut it, when you do make the decision to cross the gender border, you will naturally have to leave part of your past behind. Just be careful, you do not leave any of the basic building blocks behind which make you the person you are. From there you can build a new and better you as your authentic self maybe you never thought you could be.