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.

 

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.

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.

 

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

Following your North Star

 

Image from Heidi Fin 
on UnSplash. 

I define my own personal “North Star” as the basic direction I had to go to be truthful to myself. Many times, I found how valuable my star was when I was lost in my own transgender woods and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Along my path, there were many times I lost sight of my North Star and needed to regain it before I could continue. As I did, I spent many a very dark night searching for my life’s truth of wanting to shed my male existence for a feminine one. I would not recommend what I went through to anyone because it was a long, lonely journey. Even still, I was fortunate in that I seemed to always have just the right amount of gender euphoria to propel me forward. It did not matter if I was just gazing at my image in the mirror and thinking I was a pretty girl, or shopping for groceries in our local market, something possibly positive came along for me to see my star and wondered if it was still within reach.

Sometimes, life was cruel and dealt me roadblocks which kept me from following my dreams such as the unplanned birth of my daughter. Which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. At the time of her birth in 1976 I was very much out of control and needed something to ground me. Much more than the excessive amount of alcohol I was drinking at the time. All the beer did was help me to lose sight of my North Star until I could regroup and find it. I did not learn until much later how alcohol was a depressant and did not mix well with my already depressed personality. Even though I was dazzled by the miracle of birth and the rapid growth into a little person by my daughter, life was still not good as I was sliding by in a haze most of the time and losing track once again of my North Star.

Somehow, I was able to emerge from this part of my life on my feet and ready to search for my truth again. But not enough to accept what I was finding. Even though that bright light of a transfeminine existence seemed close enough for me to reach out and grab it, I just kept denying its existence and taking the route of least resistance and was existing the best I could as a part-time cross-dresser.

When I changed professions and entered the professional restaurant business, I developed a love/hate relationship with what I was doing. I loved the extra money and advancement it brought me but hated the hours and extra pressure the job brought with it. I guess the good part also was that the new profession cleared the way for me to reset my existence and locate my North Star again.

Once I located my star, I had to finally face the reality of where it was leading me. Gone were the evenings or days of going out into the world thinking I was nothing more than an innocent man trying to look like a cisgender woman. In, was a new reality that I wanted much more than to look like a woman. I was a woman and needed to see if I could live my truth, I knew all along but refused to face. Even though I was terrified of doing it, I was advancing down my gender path, and the skies were clear so I could see my star and have an idea of where I wanted to go. Better yet, once I was passing my gender mileposts of very much socializing with cisgender women as an equal in my mind, there was no going back.

As I did it, I made certain I was trying to cover all my basics such as what I would do to live in a new transgender world I dreamed of and in reality, had never seen. Such as how I would support myself because I knew my current male job would never support a mid-gender stream male to female transition. At that time, I was still several years away from an early Social Security retirement, so I needed to be careful of what I decided to do. What I decided on was a low impact non pressure job I could work just to get by for the time I needed until I retired. I found that was impossible and I had to backtrack into fast food again and work a job I hated until I could quit and pursue my star.

By this time, I had paid a lot of dues playing in the girls’ sandbox and I had a very good idea of what I was facing if I went full time into a transgender world. I don’t think it is possible to ever capture your North Star, but I do think you can come close to living it. There are many paths to get there, and no one is right. Some transition on their own while others have help like I did. I was always a social critter, and my process happened to work for me but yours could be different. Plus, destiny can often alter your path to following your personal star. Do not panic until you find it again and revive your journey.

Remember, you are in uncharted gender territory, often without a compass. When it happens to you, you need to just hitch up your big girl panties and do it.

 

 

 

Who Won the War

 

I call this a fake image of me.
Pre Hormonal padding and hair.

Relax, this post is not another of my political rants!

As my life enters its senior stages, I have the luxury of looking back and wondering what the hell happened. Or, who won the gender battles and who ultimately won the war.

Even though the cards were stacked against her to start (and continued for years), my feminine side managed to hold her own enough to survive. Which was amazing when I looked at the beginnings of our life and what she had to put up with. To start with, I was born into a very male dominated family with a highly competitive nature to contend with, so I always had to be ready for a battle of some sort. For the longest time, I would have to accept defeat at the hands of my brother who was always the better athlete and I would quickly run and hide behind my dresses and makeup. When I did, my feelings were soothed and I was ready to try to compete and win.

One way or another, I found the only winning I was doing was when I was a girl in front of the mirror. The mirror kept telling me I was pretty, and that kept me going. I was far from winning any gender war within myself, but I was managing to tread water and stay afloat…barely because I had no where else to turn. My desire to be a girl was shutting me off from the world. What happened then was, I grew tired of just presenting in front of the mirror and wanted to test how well I did in front of the world. The whole scenario forced me into major battles once again.

This time, I found amazingly I could compete in the world as a transgender woman and I did not have to accept defeat every time I went out in public. Maybe I was finding my home gender after all. I think at this time too, I was battle hardened from all the defeats I had sustained in my male life, and it was easier for me to continue to move forward.

As life started to change, I wanted to explore the consequences of what I was doing more and more. Then my battles became more serious and far reaching which led my male self and my second wife to panic. They suddenly realized I was becoming a more accomplished trans woman and could possibly make it after all to my dream of living a full-time life as a transfeminine person. For her part, my wife kept telling me I made a terrible woman, which I learned later was true. Simply because I had not spent enough time behind the gender curtain to claim my womanhood, yet, but I was coming alarmingly close enough to find out what she was talking about to set her alarms off. And my male self, not to be outdone was doing his part too by relaying all the new jobs and moves he was making into a personal success story.

Between the two of them, they made formidable gender foes, and I needed to become better at exploring who I really was. Whenever I could get off work, I attended cross dresser-transgender mixers, both large and small to determine if I could do what I saw other successful people living on the gender frontier. By doing so I could see my major battle lines being drawn up ahead, and I was like a runaway train headed for them. Major decisions were coming up in my life if I like them or not because I had spent too much time and effort in my explorations to turn tail and run again. I had nowhere to go this time because I had blocked all my exits. All my skirts, dresses, heels and makeup were ready for action.

By this time, my male self was in pure panic mode knowing that his ace card of military service had backfired on him. He thought somehow an ultra-macho experience that Army infantry basic training would make me more of a man when in fact, the whole experience made me a stronger person and believer in myself. When push came to shove and the times were darkest, I could make a decision and live with it. Even if was the decision that would effectively be his final battle and win the war for his feminine counterpart.

Also, I was coming up with a clearer idea of why I had struggled with who I truly was for all those years. I had blindly followed the idea that I was a man cross dressing as a parttime woman when, in fact, I was a woman cross dressing as a parttime man who happened to be married to a strong ciswoman. Plus, he was the primary wage earner in the family. Covering all those gender tracks was exceedingly difficult and put a tremendous strain on his mental health but he kept on fighting the gender battles against all odds. Out of some misguided idea that he had to. It was such a relief when he surrendered and gave up the remainder of his clothes to a local thrift store. The only thing he saved was his Army uniform which had taught me so much about life and winning,

When he realized he had lost, there was no time for wild celebrations. Only time for serious contemplation of what was next and how my victorious trans woman would react. It turned out, she took her win quietly and set out to build a life she always knew was possible. A life which was enhanced even further when she was approved for therapy and HRT through the Veterans Administration. Finally, she had the help she needed to match her internal needs with her external appearance. Which is the subject for another blog post altogether.

Regardless, victory was sweet as my old male self-faded into the past. She lost many battles, but ultimately won the war.

 

Earning my Way into the Sandbox of Women

 

Image from Juli
Kosalapova on
UnSplash.

I call being accepted in the feminine world of ciswomen around me, as being able to play in their sandbox.

Getting a chance was similar to living a dream and very difficult for me to do. To begin with, I needed to lose whatever weight I could off of my very male dominate frame and take better care of my skin, so I could use less makeup. I desperately wanted to be pretty but accomplished it as naturally as I could. Motivation to do both came easily for me because I was obsessed with doing something very well in life that I cared so deeply about. Surprising even myself, I was able to shed nearly fifty pounds as well start moisturizing daily after I shaved. Obviously, the weight loss helped more dramatically when I could shop for a better selection of stylish women’s clothes in my new size and the decrease in makeup I needed spoke for itself when I presented better in the world.

Even with those positive results behind me, I was still very naïve and had very little knowledge of what I would have to do to be let in to play in the sandbox by the alpha female gatekeepers. As my second wife was always fond of telling me after major fights, we had that I made a terrible woman. Then she added she was not talking about appearance. Which was good since I had just had situations where I was mistaken for a ciswoman to back me up. Then I was confused, if it was not my feminine appearance holding me back, what was it? What would make me a better woman after all.

From that point on, I set out on a mission to understand what she was telling me but I had a major drawback…I was still living the vast majority of my life as a man and as such, ciswomen would not allow me back behind the gender curtain. For the most part, I was stuck in my part-time cross-dressing ways until I could find a better way out. The sandbox remained a faraway dream.

The main problem remained. My male ego would not easily let me pull down my male defenses to see and learn what really went on in a women’s world which operated quite nicely with or without male influence. For the longest time, he (me) refused to listen to women the best he could to learn what they were really saying when he was stuck playing the game behind the gender border. I felt as if I was in East-Germany behind the Berlin wall of gender. I knew I wanted to escape but did not have the willpower to do it. I was a victim to my newly discovered transgender hopes and dreams. At that point, I still had not realized how far behind my gender dreams being a victim made me and I still felt sorry for myself because of all my gender dysphoric issues.

As I always point out, it was not until I began to experience my version of womanhood in the public’s eye did anything begin to change for me. All the effort I put into my appearance came back to help me get my high heeled foot in the door with other women. Then the real work began when I needed to communicate and interact with them. What happened was many other ciswomen were encountering me on a regular basis in the venues where I always went, so I needed to develop a stable feminine persona to go with my appearance. What would I call myself and what wigs would I wear every time I went out are prime examples of what I am talking about. I was getting to the point where I was staring my forties in the eye and I knew I was not getting any younger and in the back of my mind, I had a sneaking suspicion that I had lived my life all wrong up to this point.

Rather than bemoan all of the mistakes or missed opportunities I had as a male, I needed to face the fact I was wasting my time as a male anyhow because I was always meant to be female. I went home and wrote in my secret diary that I was not a man cross dressing as a woman; I was a woman doing her best to cross dress as a man and build a life on a house of cards.

The realization of my true gender status enabled me to be my real self to the public and ciswomen responded well to my truthful gender identity. Even if they were curious what I was doing in their world and why I wanted to play in their sandbox and work my way into coveted woman only spaces. Finally, I was coming to the point where I could think I achieved my own womanhood, just in a different way than most ciswomen. I was still relevant to the world and should be allowed to play in the sandbox.

Another big lesson I learned was that once I was in the sandbox, I needed to work harder to stay. One slip up back to my old male self, and I would be labeled an impostor and barred from the box. Faced with the task of starting all over again. To the best of my ability, all of my feminine mannerisms, interactions and vocalizations had to be perfect. I was so afraid most of the time until I finally began to relax and have confidence in myself.

The best part about the entire process was I survived to write about it and hopefully to inspire others in this very trying, difficult time to be a transgender woman to make it also. We all have differing yet similar paths to make it to the women’s sandbox. Just don’t expect the process to be all positive and you can make it by hopefully finding ciswomen who knowingly or unknowingly help you along. Those minor claw marks you might receive like I did down my back were just learning marks and helped me along. More than the women scratching me ever knew.

They helped me to earn my way into playing in the women’s sandbox. The claw marks just equated out to the stripes I earned when I was in the Army.

 

 

 

 

Staying in your Own Gender Lane

Image from Earnest Tarasov
on UnSplash.

Staying in my own gender lane may have been more difficult than I had ever imagined. Of course, it all started when I was externally born male. Then when I started to understand something was dreadfully wrong with my male existence, I needed to figure it out.

My first indication of what the problem might really be came when I discovered the thrills of wearing my mom’s clothes, since I did not have any sisters to beg for clothing off of. Sadly, even though I was thrilled to see my version of a pretty girl in the mirror, deep down I knew it was just not enough for me to stay in my cross-dressing lane.  I wanted to pull out and find myself in a more comfortable gender lane where I more than ever before to being feminine.

Before I could do that, I needed to define what being feminine meant to me. I knew just acting effeminate would get me nowhere except bullied to the point of beaten up and on the home front (which was very male dominated) I would probably earn a trip to a psychiatrist if my small stash of girl’s clothes and makeup was ever discovered. I was trapped in a male world I wanted nothing to do with, and worse yet, I was pressured to perform well in that world. I needed to be in a passing lane around as many other males as I could.

The problem was, I wanted nothing to do with that world and could not show it. And in the pre-internet era I was growing up in, I felt so all alone with no one to talk to about what I was feeling. I just knew I did not feel the so-called mental illness that gender issues were being referred to back then. All I knew was, I was having a very difficult time staying in the gender lane which was assigned to me when it felt so natural. Plus, when I woke up in tears after having such a realistic dream that I was a girl impacted my life terribly until I could get centered again where I was “supposed” to be.

Somehow, I made it through those very confusing gender days and finally made it out into the world to discover if I had any future at all in a world ruled by cisgender women. When here I was, a novice in their world trying to survive. I equated it with driving on the Autobahn in Germany. I quickly discovered when you were driving a VW Beetle (like mine) and ventured into the outside lane then you saw a car in your rearview mirror flashing its lights, you better get out of the way. My life in those days often felt that way. I was learning lessons about where I wanted my transfeminine womanhood to go but I always seemed to see lights warning me in my rearview mirror.

Through tons of trial and error, I learned I could change my gender lane to the one I dreamed of. From as young as I could remember all I really wanted to do with my life was live it as close as I could to being a woman. Of course, that meant putting all my safe male privileges behind me and set out to build new ones in my gender lane with new life experiences. Like the Autobahn I found there were no speed limits on what I could learn or experience in the new gender lane I was in. More importantly, I had no one except my old male self to tell me to slow down before it was too late and I wrecked. Here is where I make the excuse of why it took me so long to transition because I was overly cautious that I did not wreck.

As I was in the gender lane I wanted to be in for a change, it w as nice to finally wake up in the morning knowing I was coming closer to my dream of living life on my terms as a woman and not having to keep falling back on my male self for last minute support. I was one and she was me for good.

But just when I thought I had it all in my new gender lane, I discovered many small nuances the ciswomen around me use that I needed to learn and put into practice. Such as the powerful use of nonverbal communication and passive aggressive behavior. For the first time in my life, I needed to look intently at other women when I talk to them and search their eyes for what they were really telling me. Which extended into the passive aggressive areas of behavior I encountered. There were many times I fell for a smiling face or non-threatening comment which turned out to be a knife in the back when I let my guard down. They were all lessons I learned the hard way as I earned my ability to stay in my gender lane permanently.

The best part was that the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn about the lane I was in. Even my biggest naysayer, my male self, had to finally give up and get out of my way. I was in my lane for good and there was nothing he could do about it. I had served my feminine apprenticeship I was walking the path I always was destined to walk and in the short and long term I got out of the way until I could salvage was left of myself and move forward. 

Survival as a Trans Girl

 

Image from David Gavi on UnSplash.

If you are a transgender woman or transgender man, you are a member of the survivor tribe. You have earned your spot through too much trial and error that a “normal” human simply would not go through.

I know there are many of you who are early on your gender transition paths that really need a survival pep talk. My pep talk would be…to try to stay on the bumpy path you are on because it will be full of sharp curves, stop signs and steep walls in your way. What is that old saying? If it doesn’t kill you, it will only make you stronger sadly happens in record numbers to the trans population. In fact, I tried to kill myself several times due to the amount od stress and depression I was feeling through my gender dysphoria. Fortunately, I was unsuccessful at my self-help attempts and lived to talk about it.

Even to this day, I still have to keep a close eye on how I am feeling mentally, and I still take meds for depression and anxiety which have very little to do with my gender issues. I suppose we all have our own weight to carry through our lives, and that one is mine. I am also fortunate in that I have mental health and LGBTQ support groups to attend virtually every Friday at the Dayton, Ohio Veterans Administration. In the group, we have a diverse set of survivors with different experiences to share, and the moderator always starts the session with what good things have happened to each of us every week. It is so successful that anytime now I think the henchmen from the orange crook in Washington DC to catch wind of it and have it cancelled. So far though, it seems to be OK. All I can say is, I have been in many support groups over the years with little to no positive results, so I hope this one lasts.

If you are feeling lonely and need like minded individuals in the LGBTQ community, seek out local groups in your areas. I know it is difficult for those of you in isolated areas but maybe you can do it virtually online. And, if you are jaded like me, don’t expect too much too soon from the groups you are in. Often, these are highly insecure individuals in the group who are reluctant to share until they know you better.

Then there are the ultimate survival tests such as spouses, family members and jobs. Each one of you will have to face your own challenges in these areas and the only thing I can say is, you have to be patient and try to use common sense when telling the world about your seismic gender changes. In my case, my second wife knew I was a cross dresser from day one of our marriage and never stood in my way but totally refused to have anything to do with me going on HRT and being transgender. She told me there was no way she would live another woman, and I understood what she was telling me. My second strike came with my employment. I had a very successful high energy job I worked hard to get and knew there would be no way I could transition on the job. At that point in time, I did not know what I was going to do to survive and continue my dream of living as a transfeminine person.

Perhaps you are blessed with a more understanding wife, and I would suggest a sit-down talk with her before appearing cross-dressed in your best feminine clothes. That way, you can tell what she is going to do and will she ever come to accept you. Then you can make plans for your survival.

Remember too, there are various stages of development as a transgender woman. First of all, you have to accept you are much more than a cross-dresser who can survive on fewer days a month dressed. Even though I had free reign to dress a couple days a week from my second wife, it was never enough to satisfy my need to go behind the feminine gender curtain and learn more. Even though it doesn’t sound like I took a slow and cautious path to my own form of womanhood, I certainly did. I wanted to make sure I could survive when I came out for good.

The amount of introspection alone makes you a better person and more of a survivor than the normal person. To have the chance to experience intimately both sides of the main gender binaries is the reason why some shallow people will never trust you. At some point to survive, you have to learn to accept the fact that you have reached a point where you are better than them. Plus, if you happen to be a person who thinks change is good, you are in for the most change a human can attempt.

When you are a survivor, you will join an elite tribe of humans who have walked an incredible path and lived to talk about it. If you are considering taking the path, just try to reach inside your inner soul to determine if the path is right for you. In my case, when I did, I came up with the answer that it was the only direction I could take and if I did not my life would not be worth living after all. My life then went full circle and a ciswoman who accepted me picked me up and made me the person I am today. I made it through all the self-harm and destruction I tried on myself just in time to transition into a transfeminine world in which I could survive. Hopefully, you can too.

 

 

When a Trans Girl is Serious

 

Image from Bruce Mars
on UnSplash. 

When I first came out of the closet, I wondered how I was ever going to convince the world I was serious about jumping the gender border into my transfeminine world.

Probably, before I started to convince any strangers of who I was, I needed to totally convince myself. Was I a cross dresser, accomplished drag queen or what. The last thing I wanted to come off as was some sort of a clown putting on a dress and makeup for laughs. I think, all the time I spent practicing in front of the mirror attempting to learn the art of appearing as a woman paid off. Because in a fairly short time, I was presenting as a convincing transfeminine person in the public’s eyes. I was far from being the most attractive woman in the room but at least I was making do with what I had to work with and getting by and the public perceived me as being serious also.

At that point, I was not getting the negative feedback I used to get when I left my male self and traveled to the feminine side of life. The worst that was happening to me was when other ciswomen gave me a knowing smile. Showing that they knew I was attempting to play in their sandbox or world. Even better was when I began to see the same people over and over again and they knew I was serious about where I wanted to be in their world.

As I gained more experience and began to understand all the layers which existed in a ciswoman’s life, I knew I had a long way to go if I was ever to be successful in pursuing my gender dreams. Then I purposely set out to try to experience new situations as a transgender woman because my feminine workbook was given to me blank. I did not have the same benefit other women had by growing up out of a female birth into a woman. I was doing it exactly opposite as I was trying to leave my male birth rite behind. Something that I had never asked for. Each time I successfully conquered something new in life I tried to experience, I looked for other things to do that I had never done. An example would be, once I conquered just going to bookstores and searching for books on gender, then I gathered the courage to stop at their coffee shop for a cup o joe. After that, I took it a step further and used the women’s room to wash up and check my makeup.

By now, you probably are getting the point of how I was branching out and expanding my life as a new trans woman. The world was becoming so new, exciting and scary that I was like a kid in a candy store and could not stay away. Even if I wanted to, which on certain days I did when I felt all my gender issues were out of control and my male self along with my second wife were aligned against me pursuing a transgender life any farther. The problem was that my inner woman was telling me the path I was on felt so natural and deep down I knew it was the right way to go.

Still, I tried to stick it out and try to maintain a presence in both my old male world and my new transfeminine one. By doing so, I certainly did myself and those around me more harm than good. Very simply, the stress was too much for my already frail mental health, and I took it out on myself and those around me. I needed to figure it all out and get very serious about how I was going to run my life before it was too late. Internally, I was out of control while externally I was just trying to hold on to my wife, job and family as I knew it. I would have not wished what I was going through on my worst enemy.

Thankfully, destiny stepped in and showed me the way.  My wife of twenty-five years tragically passed away leaving no major hurdles for me to move ahead with my plan to start gender affirming hormones or HRT. Amazingly, at the same time the Veterans Health Care System which I was/am part of approved a program of affirming hormone therapy along with a therapist to go along with it. Which I took advantage of immediately. Under her care, I became ultimately serious about the direction my gender transition should take, and I even went to my therapy visits as my authentic self. Even better, my therapist helped me change my legal gender markers within the VA and provided me with the documents I would need to change my other legal markers such as my driver’s license.

Changing my legal name and gender markers finally proved to myself as well ss my inner female how serious I could be about my future. Even still, with all I was doing with my life, a little voice kept telling me I should not have taken the easy way out and tried to get serious earlier in life about who my true self really was. Of all people, my second wife told me to do it on several occasions during the fights we had about what I was doing along the way on my gender path. It turns out I was going to travel it with or without her and it was my duty to make the call that I had to do it alone.

Sadly, I think most transgender women and trans men have a lonely path to follow before they are fortunate enough to find someone to share their path with. It is surely difficult to negotiate alone, and you certainly have to be serious enough to do it.

 

                                                                                                                                                       

Tiny Ripples of Gender Hope

Image from Rosie Kerr on UnSplash.

During the overwhelming sense of darkness I felt when I began to come out of my gender shell, were moments of gender hope and euphoria. More than anything else, they kept me moving slowly towards living my ultimate dream. All I could think of was the possibility of living as a woman later in life.

Having to run and hide my small “collection” of feminine clothes and makeup every time I tried to get in front of the mirror and cross dress did not help. I resented the fact I could not be free to do what I wanted, no matter how radical it was…like being a girl. I could not imagine the pain and suffering I would have if I was caught. What saved me was the vision of a pretty young girl which came peeking on through when I was able to be alone and try on my precious clothes. Even though I was depressed I had to go back to being a boy, the brief moment of femininity carried me through the dark days and gave me a ripple of hope.

Fast forward through the difficult days of puberty and adolescence everyone goes through, I needed to deal with my gender dysphoria also. There were so many dark days when I just went through the motions of life that I did not know what was going to become of me. When I did, I desperately needed to find refuge behind my dresses and makeup to give me hope. Perhaps the only good thing which was happening was that I was slowly perfecting my use of makeup. When all my friends were showing off their painted model cars, I was stuck not being able to show off my new eye makeup. I had to internalize my feelings of hope and euphoria when I saw my new pretty eyes. Sadly, I needed to become good at removing all traces of the makeup so my brother and parents would not notice.

I guess you could say I was in the dark through my college years and beyond until I began to be able to enter the world for the first time as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. These were the days of attending transvestite mixers and small parties in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Being around like minded people who were searching for their gender answers almost made my search seem normal for the first time in my life. I was so protected from the world in the pre-internet days that I thought I was the only one like me stuck in their own personal hell. I was experiencing ripples of hope for the first time in my life on a scale I could appreciate. I even upped my appearance game when I went to Columbus from trashy woman to hopefully a passable ciswoman. One of my favorite outfits to wear was what I called my knit black out. I paired a loose fitting black wide knit top with a black leotard, shorts, tights with a pair of black flats and my red wig and was ready to go. After makeup of course.

For me, the whole outfit helped me to tone down and refine my look and it worked so well that I had my first ever encounter with a lesbian from the party when we left and went to a big lesbian venue for a break. I learned many valuable lessons that night which provided me with ripples of hope for the future. Mainly, if I could not be as feminine or beautiful as the transsexuals who were there, I still could be attractive myself to have a good time and most importantly, learn to be just me. Developing the future, me gave me real hope for the future as I learned it would be possible to achieve my transgender dreams if I worked hard enough. I had to learn the new transfeminine me meant so much more than the ripples of hope I had gained in the past went way past how I looked and into how I acted.

Suddenly, acceptance became my main goal, as my interior feminine self-stepped forward in my life. I knew who I wanted to be but still was not quite sure how to get there. For example, I knew for sure I did not want to be like the “Trans Nazi’s” as we called them or the bitchy trans women who thought they were better than anyone else simply because of their appearance or the number of gender surgeries they had undertaken. I suppose I should owe them a debt of gratitude for showing me what not to do to be a gracious, friendly transgender woman.

All of this came together for me when I began HRT or gender affirming hormones when I was sixty. I had spent enough life in the dark to appreciate the light and grasp a ripple of hope when I saw it. The hormonal medications proved to be a natural success when I began taking them. My body seemed to be saying again what took you so long. But on many levels I don’t think even I understood the basic limits I went through back in those days to salvage my life through the brief ripple of hope I received way back in the days when I lived for the mirror.

More importantly, I found myself in a situation where I could pay forward my experiences to helpfully help others. Especially those of you who are struggling to find answers on how to escape your dark gender closets and find your own ripple of hope. 

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.