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| Image from the Jessie Hart Archives |
What a huge relief it was when I finally decided I was living a lie barely surviving as a male person. I remember the evening vividly when I made the decision years ago.
Even still, It took awhile for my male self to gave up and concede all along my feminine self was cross dressing as a man and not the opposite. His ploy was he was cross dressing as a woman to relieve stress or whatever the current excuse was, because there were many. Such as was I just pursuing a fetish or some sort of a hobby such as golfing. Needless to say, in a short amount of time I discovered I had mush deeper issues when it came to dealing with my gender dysphoria. My desire to seek out the truth kept me searching for nearly fifty years.
The search also wrecked my fragile mental health along the path I was pursuing and I regularly sought out therapy for answers. On occasion, I felt better after visits with my therapist but overall my feelings never really improved. Mostly because I was not facing the truth I had always known but was afraid to face. I never was the man I pretended to be.
Life became especially difficult for me when I grew older and friends, family and spouses began to pass away. When each death happened, it was like my feminine self was asking when was it going to be her turn to live before it was too late. Still I kept on searching, unwilling to totally give up on the male life I had built. Finally, when I was living my life torn between the two prime binary genders, it all became too much for me to bear. Either I needed to end it all and indulge in self harm or in a sense give up and do the right thing. Which was begin to live a full-time life as a transgender woman. What a HUGE relief it was. As I gave complete control to my inner woman, it was as if she had been watching and learning from the world the entire time I tried to hide her.
It turned out, all the days and nights I was so paranoid about facing the world turned out to be unfounded because I relaxed and let her take charge. The more my old male self stayed out of her way, the better she did. The prime example was appearance. She followed the basics of establishing a fashion sense which blended with other women around her and made life so much easier. The more she did, the more I wondered why I waited so long to give her control.
Perhaps the biggest change was in my mental health. It improved so much, for the first time in years, I was able to leave my therapy behind.
All in all I was fortunate in how I was able to transition into a new gender life as a trans woman. I already had a circle of supporting cis-woman friends who never knew much of the old male me, plus an accepting daughter and future wife who were pushing me forward into an authentic life. I read of so many other transgender individuals who were not so lucky. I can never not give all my friends and family I often mention, enough credit for helping me to restart my life. The entire process of sliding down the male hill into a soft female landing was such a huge relief.
