Five Million

 

Original image. 
JJ Hart writing.

Recently, I reached a milestone as far as my blogging “career” goes.

This week, I reached and went over my five millionth hit to the blog which was amazing to me when I considered the humble way this all got started. I actually started blogging a long time ago when I barely even knew what the term meant. And I did it mainly because of the discussions I had with “Connie” an online transgender woman friend I had met from Seattle. Along the way, on another site we were on, we discovered a mutual dislike for what we called “trans-nazi’s” or transsexuals who based their worth on the number of gender operations they had undergone. Somehow, they felt better than the rest of us and were not shy about letting us know it.

From there, I had started to relay the experiences I was having as I initially began the trip out of my closet and into the world. “Connie” thought my experiences would be worth sharing and here we are so many years later. In many ways, both of us share the same sarcastic sense of humor, so we matched up well.

On a much deeper level than just harassing the “trans-nazi’s”, I hoped sharing what I went through in my lifelong gender journey would be a great way to pay forward my experiences and help others. Every time I receive a comment or two from a person in need of guidance as a beginning cross dresser or transgender person, I feel honored that they reached out to me. While all our trips are different, at the same time we are similar and have all have the same opportunities to learn from each other.

Five million hits later, I now realize the strain of finding subjects to write about on a daily basis really takes it out on me until I run across a comment or two which keeps me going. It fulfils the original idea I had when I started writing something I did not know I could keep on doing for any length of time. When the comments kept rolling in, I knew I was on the right track because I thought the audience I was writing to represent is a very narrow part of a potential audience. Then I thought, if I was reaching just one person out of the vast majority of readers on the internet, I would be doing my job. I learned to be more satisfied with being more of a niche blog, designed for the transgender audience or those that were questioning being trans and would their life look similar to mine. Because switching your main binary gender is so difficult and intimidating to do.

The bottom line is, I would not have all those hits if it was not for you and I cannot comprehend how many of you come from around the world to visit the blog. My deepest thanks go out to all of you no matter where you are.

Even though now I write on two separate platforms, I still write for free because I feel it is the right thing to do. It just makes me feel better.

Once again, I cannot thank you enough for joining me in my gender journey and I should do it more. Just be assured, it means a lot to me when you read along and even take the time to comment!

May we continue on to many subjects together in the future. 

 

Shadow Man

 

Image from Stormseeker 
on UnSplash

For years I have struggled to describe most of my gender journey from being a semi successful man to living as a fulltime transgender woman. 

Finally I came up with one idea. During the male moments of my life I was merely a shadow man. Even though I acted as if I was in the moment, I wasn't really all there. I was just looking for a way to survive the lie I was living. In order to do it, many times I needed to overdue my put-on macho image to hide my true self. I don't believe I was a toxic man but I certainly hung out with the macho guys even though I was still in the shadows. 

Perhaps it's the reason I had so few male friends. I was so afraid I would slip up and friends would see my true feminine self. It's also possible it is also the reason keeping so few people close to me meant I would have fewer people to tell if and when I came out of the shadows. With me, tragically the plan worked when most all of my close male friends passed away within several years of each other. So I don't recommend the path I took at all. 

Over the years in the shadows I also learned well the male privilege's I came to expect as I led the life of a white male. Perhaps the only drawback which turned out to be a positive was my time in the Army. The three years I served led me to very male pursuits such as learning how resilient I really was. Lessons which would serve me well when I became a father as well as other as surviving other male dominated areas such as my job. In many ways, I could go in to a room of my peers and hold my own. I didn't especially want to but at the time it was great to have a back up plan for my shadow man.

Perhaps, once I seriously started to complete my Male to Female gender transition, I began to realize how my gender life was directly backwards. Instead of being a feminine crossdresser or transvestite, I was a female cross dressing as a man. My dominate gender increasingly turned out of be feminine not masculine. Which meant my shadow man left the spotlight and retreated ever deeper into the background of my life. All in all, the deciding factor turned out to be was how natural the process turned out to be. When I subtracted out all of the moments I was totally terrified when I suddenly was losing all of my male privileges. Life was suddenly much fuller and exciting. What a shock it was the first night when I learned I had suddenly lost a significant part of my intelligence when I unknowingly was involved in a male dominated conversation. To add insult to injury they were discussing a topic I knew quite a bit about but it didn't matter. 

As it turned out, my path was illuminated when I finally gave up on being a shadow man. When I embraced completely being a transgender woman, I finally was living my truth . She had waited years and years to let any sort of light come in to her very dark and lonely gender closet. Once she was out in the light, she was determined to make the most of the opportunity and with the help of several close friends, she made the jump into the real world. 

The shadow man was exposed to the light and disappeared. Never to be seen again.