Transgender S.O.S.

Image from Micheal Held
on UnSplash.

What a mistake it is when a “civilian” says transgender women and transgender men have a choice when they decide to live a life they were destined for.

By destined, I mean ultimately, we had no choice but to transition and any attempts to stop it were going to be futile. Those of us who were forced into the male box at birth unfortunately learned the male way to deal with emotions and difficult circumstances, we just internalized them. Hoping they would just go away. I know with me, in my family, internalization was taught from a very young age. It was impossible to relay any sort of gender S.O.S. to anyone who had a remote idea of how to help me. Back in those days, gender dysphoria was treated as a mental disorder and at the least, I knew enough to know I was not mentally ill. I just wanted to be a girl.

What I did then was try to run and hide and attempt to be hyper masculine in everything I did which worked for years. But the damage from doing it was extensive, and my mental health suffered from the pressure of trying to be both binary genders. It became a balancing act which was impossible to put down.

Along the way, with urging from my second wife, I sought therapy to save our marriage. To do so, I found a therapist who advertised as a gender specialist in Columbus, Ohio. She was one of the first and I found her ad in a LGBTQ publication I was reading and decided to give her a try. After several sessions, she told me the truth which I only listened to part of. She said I was Bi-Polar which explained all the severe depression and ups and downs I had been experiencing. It turned out that it was the easy diagnosis she gave me because the second part involved my gender dysphoria. One session, she flat out told me there was nothing she or even me could ever do anything about wanting to be a woman. Somehow, I would have to learn to live with it or act on my desires. Her words shocked me and at that time of my life, I was still searching for my gender truth and was not ready to give up on maintaining all the comfortable male privileges I had worked so hard for.

My answer at the time was to go back to internalizing what she told me because there was no way I was going to tell my wife. Who then would have considered the entire use of therapy to be a waste. Since in many ways, I was just refusing to look at my true self in the mirror, I discontinued therapy and went on with my life. Even though my mirror was telling me I was a man, my mind had other ideas, and I still had no one to send a S.O.S to because on occasion, I felt as if I was sinking fast. I was fortunate that my new anti-depression meds worked well enough to keep my everyday moods stable which left me the gender problems to deal with on their own.

It took me years to finally figure out the gender problems were not going away no matter how much I tried to internalize them. In desperation I tried to start going out in public and attempt to interact with the world as a woman, transgender or not. My S.O.S. to the public was I was not trying to fool anyone into thinking I was a ciswoman, I meant no harm, and I was just trying to be me for once in my life with no internalizing. I can’t say it was always easy and I survived a suicide attempt when I felt I was cheating on my wife (with myself) but I made it through alive.

The best part was when I began to build a new transfeminine life completely away from the man I used to be. Ironically though, my internalization was still there but just reversed. No longer was I trying to hide the reality of my femininity, now I was trying to hide any of my old male self-slipping through and re-ruining my life I was trying to build.

The entire path I was on took me head on to the realization that no matter what the mirror was telling me in the morning, I could work past him and for once face the world as my true, authentic self. I did not have to send out any more S.O.S. pleas that went unanswered or internalized anything. I faced myself and was free to live.

To hell with never having a choice of which gender was right for me, and to hell is where I almost went thinking I was not man enough to be a woman. I had the choice all along no matter what society told me. I was just afraid to do it.

 

  

For Better or for Worse

 

JJ Hart. 

In this case, for better or for worse should not be totally applied to the state of a transgender person’s marriage. Although, it often is.

In this case, I am talking about what happens when we attempt to break out of our dark, lonely gender closets and enter the world. I write long and often concerning the struggles I had when I first tried to come out of my mirror and appear in front of the public as my authentic feminine self. By doing so, I quickly learned I was in over my head as a novice transgender woman or even a cross-dresser. Even worse, I had my second wife telling me I had no idea of what it was like to really be a woman. Even though I was stubborn and did not totally believe her, I set out to discover what she was trying to tell me. The worse part when I tried to find out more about cisgender women was, I was not prepared to go behind the gender curtain to find out what was going on. In reality, I was years away from having the experiences of knowing what my wife was talking about.

At that time, I was still obsessed with how I made my male to female transition appearance wise. All I need to do is go back through all my old blog posts to see how vain I was about how I looked like a cross-dresser and how it dominated my life. As I focused on every little aspect of my appearance. At first, it was all great fun before I began to focus on a higher goal. Something kept telling me I was going to have to do more than just look like a woman to ever satisfy my gender dysphoria which would not leave me alone. As I wiped the makeup off, I sadly knew my male life awaited me again. I so badly wanted off the gender merry-go-round I was on then get on with my life.

It helped a little bit when I finally came to the conclusion, I was more than a weekend cross-dresser and fit the definition of a transgender woman perfectly. All of a sudden, my life had some sort of a meaning it had been lacking. I began gaining access to cisgender woman spaces I had been denied in the past and I was able to see what my wife was talking about. Or I was paying my dues to achieving womanhood on my terms. The better of for worse began to sneak in when I found all the negatives I would have to learn as a transfeminine person. Primarily when my male privileges were taken away and I lost all my personal security I had taken for granted my entire life. And the easy access I had to just going to the rest room as a man. Going as a woman, was such a different experience I could (and have) written complete blog posts about my experiences.

The better part of all of this was, I did not have to put up with the male drama that most ciswomen go through in their lives. I was a prime example of a terrible male partner for my wives to live with. Time and time again, I tried to not be selfish with my desire to be a woman and have it destroyed our entire relationship. The worse of the better or worse was when I became completely jealous that my wives could live as women and I could not. I just could not help myself. Plus, when I came out fully and transitioned I did it in the company of ciswomen who I was used to and did not ever have to adjust to male drama again. I am now married to a ciswoman lesbian who I have been with happily for over a decade now.

I was fortunate when my best transition plans worked out as well as they did. I love it when a plan comes together and even though it was a blind plan, somehow it still came together. It helped when my feminine inner soul was able to take over and run my life. She had been waiting for years, not so patiently wanting her turn to live. She provided the backbone and comfort I needed to move forward in the latter stages of my male to female gender transition.

What I considered a burden, and the worse part of my life, turned into the best part of my life when I was able to experience my impossible dream of living as a transgender woman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sealing the Final Deal in my Gender Struggle

 

JJ Hart. Key Largo last year.

Sealing the deal on my male to female gender transition was the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life.

It is the main reason I kept putting it off until I was nearly sixty years of age and could take the pressure no longer. The only way I kept what sanity I had was to cross-dress my way along until I could take bigger, more substantial steps.  One of the problems was, I had learned that cross dressing was not nearly enough to solve my gender issues and sooner or later, I would have to face the truth of who I really was. Also, I was very naïve and thought I could balance the influence of two genders in my world as I grew older.

As I set out to build a reasonably successful male life, at the same time, I was trying to fill out my feminine workbook with absolutely no help from other women. I was stuck being on my own for years, until I progressed to the point where I could leave my closet and explore the world as a novice. After brief successes (and a lot of failure), I was able to see portions of my future and judge if I could ever seal the deal and live my dream of being a fulltime transgender woman. Even though I was still progressing, I was still hitting roadblocks on my path to trans success and had to keep working my way forward through failure.

All I could see in my future was a life I would have to live alone with no way to support myself as a transfeminine person. My sexuality did not change, and I wanted basically nothing to do sexually with men, and I knew how incredibly difficult it would be to find a ciswoman who would accept me the way I was. I had pulled off some other seemingly impossible things in my life but accomplishing this and sealing the gender deal was too much to hope for.

Then, as I lived my new life as a trans woman, I learned that maybe my dream was not too much to hope for and one thing was for certain, if I did not try, I never would know if I could make it. I expanded my explorations with men and managed to have a couple real live dates when I enjoyed myself but nothing sexual happened, so I set my sights in lesbian bars for a ciswoman who wanted a woman with a little bit extra experience in the world. Amazingly to me, I was moderately successful in one lesbian bar where they accepted me. Which brought me so much closer to thinking I could seal the deal and live my dream.

Now I was to the point where I had to really see where I wanted to take my life. I was an executive general manager of a large casual dining restaurant which I had put in years of hard work to arrive at. If I transitioned, all the work I put into my career would be gone (along with the money) and I would have to start all over again. Behind the world as a transgender woman. Naturally, the whole situation was a major roadblock.

It finally came to the point where I faced sealing the deal like I was jumping off a cliff into nothingness. At that point destiny set in for me and made my final decision so much easier. Tragically, I lost my second wife and almost all of the close friends I had to death and could start with a clean slate in life. Plus, the restaurant I owned was failing and I was losing it also, leaving me a couple of years to work before I could retire early on Social Security which would give me enough income to get by. As You can tell, the doors to transition were opening wide and I would have been a fool not to walk through them.

Most importantly, my mental health was suffering and my self-worth as a man was at an all time low, so it was time to end the torture I was feeling and jump off the cliff and seal the deal. It was during this time too, that the Veterans Administration health care system, which I was already a part of, approved veteran’s care for gender dysphoria with mental health counseling and HRT if approved. I was quickly approved and ended up taking another giant step towards achieving my dream and sealing my lifetime goal.

What did I have to lose? I was leaving a male life I never really felt comfortable in to jump off a gender cliff and land in accepting women’s arms as I joined their world. When I did, I tried to take every little bit of advantage I could from all the learning experiences I put in over the years. Landing on my feet in high heeled shoes was a challenge but I managed to make it in fairly good shape. I came out fully at the age of sixty when I finally decided to seal the deal and never looked back. I could not take balancing two genders any longer and took the easy way out into the world of women where I should always had been.

As always, thanks for reading along, and any comments are welcome! I always do my best to respond.

 

Transgender Dreams

 

Image from Felipe Delgado
on UnSplash

Obviously, we transgender women and transgender men do a lot of dreaming when it comes to the ultimate results of our lives. For example, when I was very young, I could never speak truthfully when an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Saying I wanted to be a woman would have never been acceptable and would have rewarded me with a visit to a psychiatrist. So, I said something more acceptable such as a lawyer or a veterinarian.

I had to save my ultimate desires to be feminine for my dream world and often went to sleep thinking of how it would be if I could wake up as a pretty girl. Of course, I was never able to take advantage of such a thing happening to me and I needed to make the best of what I had to work with. Which was about ready to radically change for the worse when I went through male puberty. As I started my growth spurt, I rapidly outgrew all my mom’s clothes I had tried to squeeze into and had to rely on my meager allowance added to my newspaper route delivery money to try to sneak out to stores and buy my own clothes and makeup.

Through this portion of my life, my mirror was my friend and helped me to bring dreams of being a pretty girl to life, no matter how I really looked. It wasn’t until I began to experience the public’s reaction to me did, I finally get a fair and accurate reaction to how I really looked. I desperately dreamed of being more than a clown in drag. After tons of work and trial and error experiences, I finally made it to where the public at least knew I was being serious about achieving my dream of being a woman. Little did I know, the real work I would need to do to achieve my dream was about to begin.

The more I explored the world as a novice transgender woman, the more I found I had to do to survive in the new exciting feminine world I had dreamed of being a part of. When I was in the public’s eye, I found I attracted the attention of ciswomen as never before and as I did, I needed to get radical and do things such as talk to them. Initially, I was very shy and completely unprepared to take such a big step, but I was way past the point of ever turning back. For the first time in my life, my dream appeared to be within reach, if I kept learning what my new world meant.

I found I was stuck in some sort of a gender never-never land. Ciswomen instinctively knew I was not Cis but on the other hand, wanted to be in their world. Fortunately, I found most of them let me into their worlds and showed me a path to being successful, if they knew it or not. I did not care how I received the help and guidance; I was just trying to achieve my dream of living as a successful transgender woman. As I tried to point out in yesterday’s post, I went past the point of trying to be trans all the way to just being me. Which I think the women around me accepted because of my honesty. By now, you may be thinking what about the men around me? For the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me. I wanted out of their club and wanted nothing to do with going back if I had anything to do with it. I was successful and never did. My dream increasingly appeared to be reachable, and destiny opened her doors for more success for me. Primarily when it came for time to consider going down the path of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

I knew first, I needed to find a doctor to approve taking the hormones and I found one in one of the Dayton, Ohio LGBTQ publications. He had openings and I was able to get in for a checkup and then receive my precious prescriptions for initial minimum dosages for estradiol and spiro to get started on a new path towards achieving my dream as never before. After I began the minimum dosages, I had no adverse reactions and in fact the opposite was true. I felt as if I should have been on the meds for my entire life. They made me feel so good.

By this time, I felt as if I was living proof that transgender dreams come true if you pay your dues such as I did. The dues I paid were certainly the best investment I ever made.   

 

Completing Myself

JJ Hart doing Transgender Outreach Speech

I knew very early on in life that just cross-dressing as a girl in front of the mirror was not going to complete me in many ways. There just had to be more if I was risking my life as I knew it as a boy to dress as close as I could as a pretty girl.

Sadly, I had to ignore my gender truths, went on living life as a boy successfully and learned how to internalize my gender dysphoria. It all came back to haunt me later in life when the effects set in to my already frail mental health. Especially when I had started to go out more and more in public as a self-proclaimed transgender woman and I really put off hiding who I was to the most important person to me who was myself. I refused to make the changes needed to make myself whole for the first time in my life.

In the kindest words available, gender dysphoria was hell for me in my life. What made it so bad was when I applied my makeup correctly, I could actually see what could have been possible in life if I had not had to struggle with my gender identity. What made matters worse was when those brief moments of gender clarity were ripped away when I needed to go back to my male world. In other words, I never allowed myself to be made whole in my life until much later.

What had to happen first was the all-out decision made to do it. I was very cautious in the moves I made because I had so much at risk in my life. Losing my wife, family and job all weighed heavily into my decision. All the time and effort my male self-put into building a successful life would be wasted.  In so many ways  I was in a bad space which I think is humorous for anyone to think I ever had a choice in my battle with gender dysphoria. It was stopping me from being whole and living my life to the fullest.

While all of this was going on, I was attempting to learn as much as I could about living as a transfeminine person. I was going out every spare moment I could in the world to see if I could make it at all. And when I did, I knew I felt increasingly natural, and something was going to have to change in my life if I was to go on living. What happened was I loved the feminine world I was in and even though I experienced several rough spots, I knew I wanted (and needed) to learn more about my own form of womanhood. As I like to say, I was essentially starting from point zero and had everything to learn about feminine existence. Especially an existence where not everyone accepted me. Amazingly most everyone did and I was able to ignore the rest.

As the challenge of turning my life over to my feminine side and living a fulltime transgender existence, again the stress on me increased. Should I go through the process of being approved for gender affirming hormones of HRT was a major hurdle to cross. It would represent to me a final step in making me whole. If the hormones did what I thought they would, and everything I read about also. Even though I knew I could still go off the HRT is something went wrong, nothing ever did, and my body took to them like I should have been born this way.

It did turn out to be the final big step I took to combine my inner Yin and Yang gender selves and make myself a whole productive person. When I found out what I was missing, I had wished I had tried to make myself whole years before I faced the reality of my life and moved forward. Now I know what I did but it is way too late to make up for lost time for me at my advanced age of seventy-six.

Now seems to be the time to (no pun intended) transition into some busy work I have to bring up. The first is, there will be no blog post tomorrow because I am going to my trifecta of medical appointments. Tomorrow is my hematology appointment at the big Cincinnati Veterans Medical Center. It is my yearly visit when they check all sorts of blood related issues such as my all-important estradiol. I just hope it comes out as good as the last major trip to the vampires and my recent eye appointment last week. My eyes were the same as they were several years ago and I did not even need new eyeglasses. The third part of the trifecta won’t be until February when I go for my annual mammogram. So there is a lot going on. When I made my life whole. 

What Makes You...You

 

JJ Hart

Recently, I have taken an informal poll with my wife Liz. We walk a lot and stop to talk to our neighbors quite a bit. Just once I would like to ask the neighbors, we see what makes them, them. Just kidding of course, I can’t imagine doing such a thing in our neighborhood. If I did, I would guess that they would all take for granted their gender and they would look at me as if I was crazy.

Predictably, the women who live on both sides of us are very friendly and the men are rather standoffish to me which brings me to my point of what is up with the men in the world today. First of all, as difficult as it is to being a woman today, in many ways, being a man carries its own set of potential problems. Primarily, having a very fragile idea of their own sexuality. Plus, men are still expected to be primary providers in many families which is added pressure not to lose your job.

For me, growing up, my gender became an early issue, but my sexuality never did as I was attracted to all things woman. At least, in my mind, I had one constant to hang on to about what made me, me.

As I started to grow into myself, I began to understand the differences in what I was facing which were different than the mass majority of the other men around me. When I inwardly did not embrace the male culture, I was born into of competition and posturing, all it caused was extreme mental conflict. Which I am or was sure the other men around me did not have to deal with. Most of my stress was caused by the pressure I put on myself in the highly competitive restaurant business I was in. Even though I was outwardly very successful, inside I wanted to run and hide as my increasingly transfeminine self. At the same time, I wished I could just be like the other men around me and not have to carry around the gender issues I carried. I was resentful either way I turned by not being the ciswoman I wanted to be or the man I always was.

At the same time as all of this was happening, I went exploring in the world as my exciting yet terrified new feminine self. The first move I made was to transition for the second time in my life from being what I perceived as an innocent guy who just liked to look like a woman, all the way to a guy who wanted to be a woman and see if she could interact one on one with other cis women when I was out. Which took me to the fateful evening at TGIF Fridays when I finally decided I had enough of what used to make me, me and wanted a change. As frightened as I was of losing my male privileges, I went ahead with the move, was successful and knew my life would never be the same again.

As I continued my explorations into the new me, I had glimpses of how my life as a transgender woman could be and could not get enough of the learning process, I was a part of. I made it a point to try new situations as a trans woman that I always wanted to be a part of when I was on the outside looking in as a man. I tried gay bars, lesbian bars and even the big sports bars I was familiar with as a guy before I settled into a venue where I was accepted and felt comfortable. In other words, I was involved with learning what made me, me. Something I had been missing my entire life.

I do believe if you are starting your gender journey from scratch these days, you may feel the same sort of resentment I felt when I started, which was something like why me? It was not until I embraced who I really was and learned the benefits of being able to see and live out both sides of the binary gender spectrum. In my case, I needed to put the feminine image I saw in the mirror to the test in the public’s eye to see if I could really pass the public’s scrutiny. Until you get out of your mirror and prepare for the bumps and bruises of your gender path, you will know the truth about yourself. There is absolutely nothing wrong with going back to being a cross dresser in your closet or a transfeminine person in the world.

As gender challenged transgender women or trans men, we face many uphill battles that other women and men don’t have to face. Such as the basis of our gender at all. It is one of the basics of human nature that we take our gender for granted, but what if we don’t? Then the search starts for who you really are and what makes you, you.

 

 

 

 

Playing the Short Gender Game

 

Image from Jayson Hindrichsen
on UnSplash.

During my life, I always have taken the easy way out and thought about important things such as my gender as a short-term issue.

I write often of my love for the mirror when I was young. I hated seeing my male self-reflected back at me but completely enjoyed it when the mirror came to life and I was cross dressed as a pretty girl. Perhaps it was then that I started to think of my life as a short-term basis. Would I eventually outgrow my desire to be a girl when I became older, or if I did not, what would happen to me then. To make matters worse, the Vietnam War was ramping up and I had the constant threat of military duty to think of. Normally when I did, and the coast was clear, I ran back to the mirror and escaped behind a dress and makeup.

As I wrote about yesterday on Veterans’ Day, military duty finally caught up to me when my draft lottery number was fifty-two, so all the short-term thinking and worrying I did was a waste of time. I was going to have to put all my love of being feminine behind me and survive the best I could. It turned out that all the worrying I did about my gender issues and sexuality was wasted too. As I stayed very short-term in my cross-dress thinking, destiny took over in my life, and I started to do more and more in the world to express my new feminine self. Even though I found myself living on the edge more than once, I learned to live there until the next challenge came along. These were the years of changing jobs and moving my family way too much.

As I frenetically moved through life, I was moving too fast to slow down and see what the real issue was. It was gender, and sooner or later I would have to deal with it one on one. Until I did, I would be living a lie and a very messy one at that. Out of the one transgender woman I personally know who told me she was never gender dysphoric, I would guess she would tell me also that she never encountered any messy moments in her life when she transitioned. If she did not, she is one of the few that I know who didn’t.

Many of my messy moments stemmed from me being selfish and wanting to maintain my twenty-five years of marriage to a woman I really loved when she was against me going any further as a transgender woman and starting gender affirming hormones or HRT. By attempting to have it all in my life, my mental health suffered, and I made many mistakes as I tried indirectly to out myself to the world. The biggest one was when I insisted on going into my own restaurant dressed as a woman and being immediately recognized which I could have been fired for.

By this time, I was in a downward spiral which I could see no way out of. It all led me to a suicide attempt and more dissatisfaction with life. Through it all, I had a little voice within me saying everything would be OK someday if I just followed my transfeminine instincts. But before I did, I was stubborn and had a lot of life yet to live. Just when I thought I could not go any lower, I did. I lost my wife and three out of the only four male friends I had to death. Which sent me even lower into depression. I was at a point the experts say with drug addicts who must hit bottom before they can start the path upward. Just change the wording to my male self was at the bottom of his journey and it was time to give my inner female a chance to live. Because, at this time, there was no longer time for short term solutions, my male self just had to be done.

Fortunately, I was able to salvage all the years of practice and learning I put into my femininizing projects and did not have to start from scratch when it came to working on my presentation as a transgender woman. I could look at the long-term benefits of my male to female gender transition. It was such a relief to be able to finally change my thought processes around and not play the short-term gender game at all.

United States Veteran's Day 2025

 

Female Service Person
from UnSplash.

Today is Veteran’s Day in the United States. The day we salute our numerous numbers of military veterans who served and serve our country. Especially those who made the ultimate sacrifice with their life.

As most of you know, I am a veteran myself and survivor of the Vietnam War conflict. Plus, I know I have plenty of other veterans who read and respond to the blog. To all of you, I would like to thank you for your service to our country.

In all my Veteran’s Day posts, I always make it a special point to mention all of those who were serving as they were in the closet or questioning their own gender issues when they lost their lives. It is suspected that there is a higher percentage of transgender people who try to serve but can’t or just hide it and go deep into their closets. I can’t imagine what that would feel like.

In my case, I have a couple of different positives which came from my time in the Army. First, infantry basic training taught me how to have a deeper respect for myself and the pressure I could endure. Secondly, I was able to travel the world on the military dime and learn how other cultures lived. Thirdly, I was able to come out of my gender closet for the first time and admit to close friends I was a transvestite after a Halloween party I went to as a woman. And perhaps the most important positive I gained from my time in the military was the chance I had to meet my first wife who was in the “Woman’s Army Corps” in Germany. She went on to be the mother of my only child (my daughter) who turned out to be one of my huge support systems in the future, and now. The gift that has kept on giving from the Army.

While I am on the topic of gifts, my continuing use of the Veteran’s Administration health care system has been a tremendous help in my life. It initially came at a time when I was financially broke and could not afford to buy my depression medications and gave me life giving hope especially when I sought out hormone replacement therapy and mental health help. So, as you can tell, I have been repaid many times for the service I gave to the country.

I am but one example of what is possible for veterans, but the fact remains that too many veterans young and old are suffering from PTSD or are homeless on the streets. If our country can afford to fight wars, it can afford to take care of those who fight them.

On this Veterans Day, please pause for a second and remember (or more importantly thank) those around you who have served our country or who are serving.

The Yin and Yang of Gender

 

Yin and Yang from Gabriel Vasiliu 
on UnSplash. 

You might ask why I would write a post explaining why I was in such a hurry to transition into my womanhood when it took me nearly fifty years to come out of my gender shell. I finally discovered I was in a classic war between my yin and yang personalities.

Today, I am writing to explain the two forces I faced as I decided when and how to transition. My own personal yin and yang of gender. I guess it doesn’t matter which of the two forces I had to deal with, or if my yin side was feminine and my yang side was masculine because both were prominent parts of my life. Yang flourished because he had to early in my life and yin did the same when she finally had a chance to live and exist. I found this description from “Wikipedia” which backs up my theory:

“In Chinese creation theory, the universe develops out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. "Yin" is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to "yang" that is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive.” It described me completely.

Yin and yang caught me chasing my tail as I would run back to the mirror as quickly as I could to put on a dress, make-up, and convince myself how pretty I was. It was yang’s primary form of escaping any potentially troublesome situations. As I always explain, coming to terms with all of this caused great torment, and now I wished I had someone to at least discuss it with except the one good therapist I was fortunate to be placed with at the Veterans’ Administration in Dayton, Ohio. She was understanding and even had a basic understanding of the LGBTQ community, so I did not have to educate her at all. However, we did not ever get into the clash of my yin and yang genders. On the plus side of our therapy, she never tried to equate any of my bi-polar depression issues with my need to express my yin side of myself.

Ironically, I think my yang side was very active and expansive in pushing my yin into the world. He provided the life lessons I needed to get out and push my gender envelope by learning new things. Without him, the initial exploratory trips to the regular venues I established myself in as a novice transgender woman would have never happened. So many nights I sat in my car for what seemed like forever before I summoned my courage to go inside.

On the other hand, it was yang who did his best to ensure his male world would never be taken away and he made a strong, experienced adversary. The problem became was how I was ever going to join my yin and yang together and form hopefully a good transfeminine person. The answer was I never had to really give up all the life which yang brought to the table. It turned out, I still was able to follow my love of sports, all the way to keeping my sexuality when lesbians took over my life. Altogether the entire process of joining my yin and yang proved to be easier than I thought. I just needed the courage to do it.

It would be too easy to say all transgender women and transgender men suffer from yin and yang gender problems, but the idea may go along way towards explaining what we feel to an outsider. It is far out of my pay grade to predict what anyone may do when confronted with such complex gender problems a trans person has. In fact, when I go back to “Wikipedia”, it even mentions gender in this form:

“When pertaining to human gender, yin is associated to more rounded feminine characteristics and Yang as sharp and masculine traits”.

I don’t know about you, but the whole definition works for me, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to stumble upon it in my research. In some ways, yin and yang reinforces my idea that transgender people deserve a special place in the world. Not one of scorn and discrimination. Maybe the average person just needs to know more about us on a regular basis and not what they hear from politicians. But they can’t even govern well enough to keep our government open, so I can’t see much chance of that anytime soon.

Do "It" or Die

 

Image from Claudia Love
on UnSplash.  

I find it humorous when a gender bigot or some sort of other hater thinks transgender women or trans men had a choice when they decided to transition into the gender they should have always been.

The haters conveniently overlook the fact we trans people spend a lifetime of discontent over our gender dysphoria. In my case, the dysphoria invaded my already frail mental health and nearly destroyed it and me. I suffered from being born into the pre-internet “dark ages” where information on gender issues in particular was very hard to come by. It took years of my life before I was formally diagnosed with dysphoria and even worse, a bi-polar disorder.

It all started when I spent my days off work in bed, not wanting to move at all and forcing myself to work to keep my job. Of all people, the first real gender therapist I had diagnosed my problem when I brought it up in a conversation we were having. She ended up telling me she could prescribe medications for my depression but not for me wanting to be a woman. I should have listened to her and took more action than just cross dressing when she told me that. I was still stubborn though, and my male side thought he could conquer all. Setting up an internal war I would fight for years. I was fortunate when the prescribed medications worked with my depression but not so fortunate when they did absolutely nothing when it came to me wanting to be a woman. In other words, my gender therapist was right.

In the meantime, as my gender war raged on, I was out of my closet exploring the world to see if I could survive at all. As with any other novice, I had my good days and my bad days but something deep inside kept telling me to keep going because my survival was at risk. How much so, I still had not fully grasped.

As with anyone else, the years seemed to fly by and regardless of the unlikely idea I could ever achieve my dream of competing in and surviving in a transfeminine world successfully, I slowly was making it. Ironically, many times when I did make it, the trip up was not worth the trip down mentally. A prime example was the night I went to a cross dresser-transgender mixer on Long Island, New York and was forced to show proof I was actually a man before I was admitted to the mixer. Of course, I was on cloud nine for days after that before I crashed back down into my unwanted male world. I so badly wanted to take the next step in my transition but was afraid to do it which created extra pressure on me. Sadly, I took the pressure out on my second wife who I perceived as a problem when she did not understand what I wanted to do.

It turned out, I needed a ciswoman in my life to challenge me to do more than just look like a woman. She forced me into searching for the elusive lives’ ciswomen lead, and why they were so different than men. Still, I was stubborn and thought I had already put that research in until my path took me to a whole different gender world which I was never allowed to visit before. Until I tried and finally let in to see what my wife was talking about.

By this time, I was reaching the point in my life when all my explorations into womanhood were taking me as far as I could go. I was staring ahead at reaching my sixties and knew I was not getting any younger. It was time to try to be approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT and take the next big step towards my dream life. If I did not, I may never have the chance to do it again. Plus, I was coming off the darkest moments in my life when everyone dear to me died (including my wife) and the only comfort I had was my inner feminine self. At that point, she showed me the reality of where I was in life.

As the pressure mounted to choose which direction my life would take at the age of sixty, I chose female and closed the book forever on my male self. At that point, I never looked back and took the pressure off myself. Finally, a wise move and somewhere I could hear my second wife saying I told you so. She did but I just did not listen. And, by the way, I still suffer from depression and from dysphoria but now I have learned to live with both of them by living the way I was born to be.

I did it before I died.

 

 

 

 

 

Following the Gender Breadcrumbs

 

Image from Elena Moshvilo
on UnSplash.

Following the gender breadcrumbs in my life meant finding the brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced and running with them.

Even when the mirror provided me with euphoria with the rush I felt when I saw myself as a girl, the feelings seemed to be exceedingly short and frustrating. I had yet to figure out my longing for the feminine clothes I was wearing meant very little to me. What was more important was, could the cross-dressing process ever take me closer to my dream of living a transfeminine womanhood.

Along the way, there were times when the breadcrumbs almost disappeared totally, leaving me completely lost and back into my closet. In despair, as I looked around, I did find enough crumbs to keep me moving because I was slowly learning, failure was not an option. I could take many of the hard-earned lessons I learned in the male world, adapt them and use them in my new exciting feminine world. For example, I learned that even though men compete differently than women, there was an equally intense competition going on between the ciswomen in the world that men knew very little about. Way past just being concerned of another woman looked better than them.  Since I did not have to worry about that, it took one more problem away from me. I never thought I looked better than any cisgender woman and I was not that shallow anyway.

I had more important problems to worry about as I searched for breadcrumbs to guide me along the path, I was on to transgender womanhood. Afterall, I was seeking to accomplish one of the most difficult tasks a human attempt to do which is change one of the most basic needs a person has, and that is their gender. Starting all over and carving out a new life was daunting for me, and I needed all the help I could get. For some reason, I found myself with ciswomen who spread the gender breadcrumbs for me. I could sit back and observe how they conducted their lives, good and bad. From them, I could see not all was peaches and cream as a woman then decide if I still wanted to do it. Then structure my life the best I could. My biggest problem was throwing out and ignoring all the hard-earned male breadcrumbs I had accumulated. In fact, I had almost put together the entire loaf which I kept trying to break up and throw away.

The most positive aspect of my life became the nights I went out with my lesbian and transgender woman friends, and we actually enjoyed ourselves so much we began to do it more and more. My breadcrumbs became easier to follow because I was different to my friends. I was not quite a full-fledged ciswoman as they were, but on the other hand, I was far from being a man they stayed away from. I was certainly baking my new loaf as a transgender woman with the help of my inner self who had been with me all the way and was just waiting to be set free.  It seemed most all of my dark lonely nights were finally behind me again in life. This time, on the side of the gender border I so long had waited for to open.

Wherever you are on your gender path, I hope it is lit well enough for you to see your breadcrumbs and have enough gender euphoria to get you by until you face another learning experience. I know, at times, the entire experience will seem overwhelming and hopeless. But the light at the end of the tunnel does not have to be the train and again I point out what a difficult path you are trying to follow. Risking, spouses, families, friends and jobs are never easy and is intimidating to say the least.  That is why if took me till the age of sixty to take the leap of faith I always wanted to do…live as a woman on my own terms.

It is important to note, you are doing the search on your own terms and the nay-sayers who like to point out you will never be a ciswoman are right. You can’t, but you can reach a womanhood of your own making.

Best wishes to finding all of your breadcrumbs along your path, and reaching your dream.

 

 

 

It's Halloween Season

 

Image from Andrea Li
on UnSplash.

It is finally here, the season that all cross dressers and novice transgender women dream about, Halloween. It is the magical day when we can be ourselves without all the paranoia of being caught and exposed as a man wanting to be feminine. The time when everyone has a chance to cross the gender line and be themselves.

These days, since I sadly don’t participate in Halloween much anymore, I don’t write much about it. But back in the day, I was fanatical in my Halloween preparations. Without fail, I would begin thinking of my “costume” the first of October and change my mind several times before Halloween itself. I always felt a transgender woman had the right to change her mind. Would I try to be sexy this year or try for a more authentic “costume” such as a professional woman look. Major decisions I needed to make with the added pressure of knowing it would be another year before I could take advantage of the parties again.

Ironically, the “costumes” I chose followed in many ways my progression as an early transgender woman. In the early days, I would try to dress sexy and get away with the shortest mini dresses and highest heels I could find. Of course, then, I would give myself away as more than just a casual “jokester” at Halloween by shaving my legs, wearing a long sexy wig, and having great looking makeup. Which my wife took credit for when she wasn’t and didn’t wear any makeup at all. Even the most casual ciswoman observers at the parties I went to could tell how serious I was about looking my best as a woman.

As I said, I quickly grew out of my sexy/trashy Halloween costumes and began to dream of being accepted my mistake as a “real woman” at the parties I went to. That began my era of actually being mistaken for a woman just getting off work and coming to one of the parties I went to. I was professionally dressed in a dress and heels and ended up surprising other guests I had known for years. For the evening, I went with another woman other than my wife and had to sadly turn down a request to go with another couple to a different party. Later on, I learned that the man was a politician who was elected to Washington, so my political career was quickly ended by saying no.

Outside of that party, there was only one other party I went to when I was dressed in a moderately sexy “costume”. It was during my stay in New York and another night I got out of the house without my second wife going with me, for some reason. This time, my invitation came from one of my female managers where I worked, so I looked forward to what the evening had in store for me. It turned out my sexy “costume” hair and makeup fit it perfectly with the other women I ended up meeting for the first time.

I ended up meeting everyone in my manager’s house and they were all there when I arrived. I will never forget the delight I felt when I saw they were all dressed like me, so unknowingly I had dressed to blend with them. Also, I will never forget the hush that fell over the room as the other women looked me over from head to toe. I ended up tagging along in my heels, hose and mini skirt with all the other women who were almost as tall as I when we made our way to a close by neighborhood bar where the party was taking place. I had my misgivings about how I would be treated there, but after I was in the bar for a while, there was no indication from anyone that I was not anyone different than I appeared. I was even asked if I wanted to dance by a man. All I know was the night flew by in a hurry and my wife did not speak to me for days because she saw my “costume” before I left.

Even though my Halloween highs were very high, sadly they were accompanied by very lows I needed to suffer through. I became very depressed and mean and tried to make everyone around me feel the same way. My problem was only ultimately solved by getting out of my dark gender closet more than just once a year.

In order for me to exist in a life I was discovering I needed, I had to set Halloween aside as just another day. Which ultimately took all the fun and drama away from it. But sacrifices had to be made for me to live as a transgender woman and Halloween was just one of them.

 

Taking a Break from the Elephant?

 

No more Elephants! JJ Hart,

Taking a break from the elephant? I guess finally I am.

This morning, with groceries running low in the house, my wife Liz and I decided to run out in the rain to our nearby coffee shop to grab coffee and a breakfast snack. Since I was not anticipating meeting anyone else in the world, I just grabbed my purse and headed out the door with Liz. No makeup or anything since we were just going through the drive through. When we returned home and in a dry space, it occurred to me that I had retired the elephant in the closet of my life.

Excuse my language, but that damn elephant has always been a part of me for as long as I can remember. It was somehow a part of every decision I made. I could not take a break if I wanted to. If I was on a vacation with my second wife, I could not relax because I was thinking so much how I would feel if I could do it as a woman. Usually, after the vacation was over, I just wanted to get back to work to take my mind off the elephant in the room…my transgender issues.

I finally came to a point when I quit worrying about who I was gender-wise. I was just me and that had to be good enough. Surely though, I needed a lot of help to make it to that point in my life. I was deeply insecure about my transfeminine self and needed whatever public reassurance I could get. More than not, the reassurance came from having no feedback at all when I was out in the world. No laughing or staring to ruin my entire experience. I just could not take any sort of break until I became better at my public presentation all the time. I was still two people trying to come together.

All of this extended over to my writing which at this count is over seven thousand posts over ten years on one platform I write on. On occasion, I go back through my earlier posts to see what if there were any changes there were.  When I did, I was amazed at how centered in I was on my feminine appearance and not much else. I still had not learned what the elephant in the room was trying to tell me, there was so much more to being a woman than my appearance. I could not take a break until I learned that ciswomen lead a more difficult, layered life than men, and I needed to adjust and do better if I was ever going to really succeed.

I don’t think I truly conquered all of my fears of merging my worlds together until Liz and I began to take bus tour vacations to various parts of the country. Primarily, when I needed to stand in line for the first time in many years with other women waiting to use the restroom. The entire process tested my new outlook on the world in a space which was considered a women’s only environment. I remembered what I learned from all my past experiences, did what I had to do, washed up and left. With no adverse feedback from any potential haters or bigots. I was just me using the restroom.

With all of that behind me, I began to relax even farther and enjoy all the new scenery the trip had to offer, for the first time as me. I was on my own and to hell with the elephant which had taken up so much room in my closet. Another chapter in my life had been closed. The only break I took was from my daily writing routine, to allow myself a chance to recharge my batteries and hopefully do a better job which I had never been professionally trained at. I just started writing to hopefully help others with similar issues.

These days, since I have retired from my elephant and am still taking a break from all the problems and commotion he caused, sometimes I don’t know how to act. After all, I needed years to rebuild the damage he caused. Taking a break, now, means a lot more to me than just taking a vacation. I am sure before the next adventure we take; I will still feel the same residue from past gender world mishaps I needed to overcome and move forward, but at least I don’t have to ruin my days worrying about it.

It is much easier to pack for a trip for just one person. The only person which really mattered all along which makes taking a break much easier to do.

 

 

If I was a Betting Person

 

Image from Jeshoots.Com on 
UnSplash.

In my life, I have never been much of a betting person at all.

In addition, there were many times I would have bet against myself when I thought of ever making it to my dream of being a fulltime transgender woman. I had a real problem remembering all the negatives I encountered when I first left my closet and went out into the world. As I always mention, my gender woman’s workbook was totally blank when I started my life. The only fact which was rapidly becoming sure to me was that was I positive something was wrong with me.

Probably the only thing I would have been certain of was the gender issue I dealt with was deep and very complicated. Had I known how to bet on it, I would have. The only thing I would never bet on was I had my life completely backwards. Since I was born into a male world, I stayed there way too long. Staying on course to be the best man I could.

For awhile I thought I was successful in my male life as I held the bullies at bay by playing sports and working on cars. The proof was when I finally did work through my issues and transitioned, the very few people who knew the old male me were totally surprised when I told them. Proof I hid my true self very well, often sadly. I was hiding myself too well and, in the meantime, hurting my already frail mental health.

By this time, my male self was betting against any idea I could ever come out into the world as a transfeminine person. In fact, he did not know what the term meant. Following the adversity I went through coming out, he found out what perfecting our new life was all about. It was about going out as much as I could and exploring an exciting, yet scary, new world. It was about buckling up and staying the gender course I was on, when the times got rough. Which was often. I never had any of the feminine attributes a few cross dresser or transgender women had, so my path was often difficult.

As I became better at my feminine presentation, I began to think my dream was possible after all. I could even bet on it. For once, the optics of gender were working for me. Controlling the optics took a lot of work when I was rejected as a woman for so long. I would have pulled my chips back off the table and headed home. The big difference now was, I was able to outbluff others around me and stay in the game. I am sure no one mistook me as a cisgender woman, but on the other hand, no one was mistaking me as some sort of a bogus person trying to fool the public as a beginning drag queen. Betting on myself as an authentic person turned out to be the best move, I ever made in my life.

A good plan went a long way as I was able to carve out a new life in a relatively short time. I was not as shy as I was as a man and the world opened for me. After many false starts, success began to happen. I was staying out of my own way as a trans woman and letting my inner woman run my life.

I also learned where I was welcome to be a betting person in the world. For the most part, cisgender women accepted me in their world and let me play. Men, on the other hand, never wanted to bet me on anything. Which I quickly learned was not important to me after all. As long as other women validated me, that was all that mattered and again, my life improved.

Pushing my chips to the middle of my life’s gender table and betting I could make it to my dream I always wanted to live was all that mattered. Doing away with my conservative past helped me immeasurably during this portion of my life. I did not view myself as being any sort of courageous person. Just a person who had to do what she had to do to survive in a challenging world. The question became how fast I could learn the new rules of being a woman on my own terms. Decoding the difference between male and female privileges was the biggest challenge.

At that point, the betting game I was playing became closer to a game of mental gender chess. As an excuse, I kept telling myself I was not betting at all. Just playing the odds, I was right when it came to gender. When I expected I would make it as a transgender woman I did. I finally was right when I bet on myself.