Is Purging Just a part of a Trans Journey we Need to Go Through?

 

Image from Shayan Rostami
on UnSplash. 

I received several wonderful comments to my “Purging” post yesterday including people such as Jeanie who has had gender issues for years such as me.

Here is the comment and we will go from there: “I just purged last Thursday. I wanted to see if there was a strong enough "desire to reacquire". I'd go months with the stash behind insulation in the basement under a bay window without dressing. It might be I was too chickenshit”.

Thanks for the comment! And it got me to thinking about all the ways we cross dressers or novice transgender women went to hide our small collection of feminine wardrobe and makeup from our family. As a kid, I even went as far as hiding my stash in plastic garbage bags in a hollowed-out tree in a neighboring woods. Where I hoped no one would ever discover it. In addition, I had two other small hiding places in the house I could go to if I was suddenly free to cross-dress in front of the mirror. The entire process added to hiding my gender issues in plain sight. Almost, as all along, I was desperately trying to escape being caught and being sent on an unpleasant trip to a psychiatrist who would have most assuredly pronounced me mentally ill. Which was the norm for mental health professionals back in those days.

Since I never completely purged my feminine stash ever, maybe I was too chickenshit to do it (as Jeanie said). Or, as I struggled throughout my life with gender issues, my own “desire to reacquire” would return to rule my life. As it turned out, I was never strong enough to purge totally. Which looking back should have given me a clue to who I really was, a woman cross dressing as a man. Deep down, I knew, every feminine item I had worked so hard to acquire could not so easily be thrown in the trash. It would ultimately come down to me wondering how much different I would look in the mirror if I had not thrown out my previous stash.

At first, it all got worse before it got better when I entered my strong going out in the world as a novice transgender woman with my second wife. Fortunately, when I was restoring the old house, we lived in, I was able to build in a closet we rarely used. So, I found a place to hide the many thrifts store finds I had made and purchased. Also, by this time I was in a place where I did not care what my gender foes thought. I was building my future public persona, so I needed to look my best. Essentially, I entered the “don’t ask, don’t tell” phase of our relationship when my wife never said a word about my increasingly large wardrobe. She knew, I knew I was never going to purge again. Which turned out to be not true.

Just before she passed away, I decided to throw away “most” of my wardrobe and makeup and even went to the extent of growing a beard. Which I considered the ultimate purge. Even as I did it, something told me to keep my favorite outfit, wig and shoes because I never could be sure when I would need my old friends again. Tragically, six months later I did when my wife passed away and I turned inwardly to my feminine soul for comfort. When I did, I was able to shave my beard and hit the ground running towards a new life. Or, should I say, heels on the ground.

One way or another, I was happy I was not strong enough to totally attempt to purge away my feminine life. It was time to open a new chapter, even if I was sixty, as a transfeminine person. It seems many of us, with gender issues are doomed to a life of denial. We try to sooth our transgender or cross dresser sides by trips to our mirrors until we are caught, or in a relationship which even makes it worse. We begin to feel guilty about many things such as forsaking our ingrained male habits, all the way to feeling selfish for wanting to do something as radical as changing our genders for ourselves.

A lifetime of purging falls right in line with all the other pitfalls we encounter on our gender journeys. We must be strong enough men to make it to transgender womanhood and purging is just another experience we have to go through.

As always, thanks for reading along with my writings and experiences! Your comments mean a lot to me also. They help me to know if I am headed in the right direction. Please keep them coming!

 

 

Kicking and Screaming.

 

My trans friend Racquel
with her fur-baby.

Sometimes I am asked why I waited so long to finally make the serious transition into a transfeminine world at the age of sixty.

The partial answer is I did not want to face up to my truth of who I really was. Instead, I internalized my gender desires as long as I could. Another reason was, I had a powerful male self who did not want to give up all the white male privileges he had fought to gain. Every bit of ground he lost to his transgender sister was hard earned. Plus, he had a powerful ally with him in my second wife who wanted no part of me to progress any further than the cross-dressing stage I was in when I met her.

My excuse is for not transitioning sooner goes past just ignoring the obvious. I just did not factor in the other major changes I would have to go through just to see if my dream of living as a trans woman was even feasible. Maybe I could never make it at all was a fatal flaw in my thinking because I needed the inner confidence to live. At that point, I opened my gender closet door and began to look around and my male self was dragged kicking and screaming into the world. Early on he was being laughed at in drag when he went out which hurt his male ego. Until he summoned up enough skill to stop the abuse.

All of this led up to finally realizing (for whatever reason) I was more than a cross-dresser. I was a transgender woman. It all led up to the scary, magical night when I decided to change my mind set when I went out for a drink in a venue, I had frequented many times as my male self and had always wondered what it would feel like to do it as a woman. As I said, I was scared to death, and sat in my car for what seemed like forever adjusting and readjusting my hair and makeup before I went in. I knew from previous visits, when the nearby mall closed, the bar would fill up with single professional women who just socialized with each other. As I steadied myself to go in, my male side was still screaming no as my feminine side was excited to finally get a chance to live. That night, for the first time, she had won the battle because I had a great time and even stayed for an extra drink just because I could.

Little did my feminine side know, winning one big gender battle would only make the war seem further away. Following the evening out, she wanted more which caused severe problems with my marriage and life. Deep down, I wanted to experience the thrill of feeling natural in my skin for the first time, and when I could not do it, I became depressed and downright mean to the world around me. Internalizing my gender issues became less and less of a way to run my life. As a result, I started to sneak out from the house any spare moment I had to attempt to reinvent myself as a transgender woman.

I learned I could and began to slowly carve out a new life for myself with people who knew nothing of my past male self who was still strongly resisting every move I was trying to make out of my closet. Sure, I had my ups and downs with what I was doing but my overall trajectory was up, and I was proud of myself. I had come so far from the early days I had admiring myself in the mirror. Even the kicking and screaming from my male self was beginning to fade. But I found not to be too confident because I still had a long way to go on my gender journey to be a full-time transgender woman. Since my trans woman friend Racquel always told me, I passed out of sheer will power, I always had to work harder to make it in the world. I would forever have a testosterone poisoned body my male self-had left me to work around since I did not have the finances or will power for expensive facial femininization surgeries like Racquel did.

So, I did the best I could and managed to build a small tight knit group of women friends who accepted me while at the same time instructed me on the finesse points of being a woman. All of it brought the final curtain down on the kicking and screaming of my male self. I just wish he had not been such a formidable opponent. On the other hand, his interaction kept the bullies away from me for the most part and allowed me to get through the military in one piece, so all was not bad.

The end result was, he never felt as if he was the most natural person for me to be. That distinction always went to my feminine side who never gave up winning my own gender war. She ended up just ignoring all the kicking and screaming until it finally went away and the lack of extra noise in my life was a welcome change.

 

Purging

 

JJ Hart from back in Ed's and Michelle's
time.

For many transgender or cross dresser women, rarely have we lived a life when we never wanted to go back to our male selves. A common term for the practice is called “purging.”

Like many of you, I have experienced my share of trying to purge away my gender issues. About the time I thought I was entering a high-profile stage of my feminine life, I began to feel guilty and wanted to throw it all away. Then, I learned there were different stages of purging. For example, when I was purging, I never could seem to throw out or give away all my hard earned, cherished feminine wardrobe and makeup away. Deep down I always left the door open to my closet for a return to cross dressing as I called it back in those days.

Then there was Ed, an acquaintance I had who really defined purging to me. Ed was a frustrated cross dresser who at the least was having problems with his family and at the same time dealing with several very serious health problems. Before he reached a crisis point with his health problems, he decided to give away all his cross-dressing items. With Ed, that meant a lot. He needed to empty out an entire storage unit he rented to hide his wigs, wardrobe and makeup from his family. I turned out to be on the receiving end of his gifts. He gave me a nice set of silicone breast forms he purchased as well as a plastic tackle box full of expensive makeup.

What ever happened to him I will never know, the last I heard from him was decades ago when he was increasingly becoming more and more negative concerning a transgender friend of ours. Michelle was very beautiful and was headed towards gender realignment surgery, and I think Ed had developed deeper feelings for her than just friendship. He never confided in me if that was the case which leaves me to yet another unclosed mystery in my life. Along with what my deceased wife would have thought of me if she ever knew me as a more complete transgender woman.

Even as I continued to progress along my transgender path, I found myself to be a contradiction of terms. I did not know for the longest time how I fit in on the gender spectrum. I had an idea I was more than a casual cross dresser such as Ed was but was I as serious about becoming a fulltime woman as Michelle was. Being in the middle as always tortured my frail mental health as I did not know which way I wanted my life to go.

Initially, I decided I could take the pressure no longer and purged my feminine fashion and makeup…almost. I compromised and did not throw out my favorite wig, sweater and Ed’s silicone breast forms. So, I had left the door wide open to return to a life I had always thought deep down, I could never leave behind. Slowly but surely, I rebuilt my wardrobe, added another wig and purchased new makeup to fill Ed’s tackle box I still owned.

That was the last time I tried to purge my physical belongings, helping to calm my transfeminine longings down. Following the many times in life I attempted to purge my life away from my deep-seated gender desires, I finally learned that I could not easily throw my real life in the trash. I also lost track of Ed and Michelle long ago and the last I heard from Michelle was she had gone ahead with her gender surgeries and was living with a lesbian in nearby Columbus, Ohio.

I just wish I had the foresight to understand how close purging was to my overall wellbeing than the obvious. All along, I thought I was trying to rid my feminine self of her external possessions when in reality, I was proving the futility of trying to deny the person I was always destined to be.

In a full circle moment, I was able to grow my own breasts thanks to gender affirming hormones or HRT and donate my silicone breast forms Ed gave me to a swap out at a transgender-cross dresser support group meeting I attended. As I mentioned, he had very serious health issues, and I doubt if he is still alive today. In a moment of clarity, I remembered his full name and searched for it on Facebook to no avail.

One way or another, I view purging yet another unique sideline of following a gender path. As far as I was concerned, I not so slyly resisted completely throwing away all of my wardrobe, shoes, wigs and makeup I acquired. I never knew when I would go back, I just knew I could.

Gender Trauma or Dysphoria?

 

Image from Dominic
Swain on UnSplash.

When you spend a life dealing with gender dysphoria, often, gender trauma comes along with it. Interestingly, I have encountered some in the transgender community who claimed they had no dysphoria at all.

One of those encounters I had, happened one night at a transgender-cross dresser support group I was attending. I mentioned my struggles with gender dysphoria and the moderator stuck her nose up in the air and said she never had experienced any dysphoria at all. I recovered from her statement by simply saying she was lucky. I would have not wished what I went through with my gender struggles on my worst enemy. As a sidelight, I wondered later if the moderator knew what gender dysphoria was anyway. Since that time, she has gone through gender realignment surgery and has married another transgender woman. What I consider a remarkable journey for someone who never had experienced any gender trauma supposedly at all.

My trauma started quite early in life when I knew something was wrong with me but just could not come up with what it was. In fairness to me or my parents (if they knew), the information on gender dysphoria was completely missing in those days when I was young. In fact, I don’t think I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria until I went to a Veteran’s Administration therapist. Which would have been sometime in my thirties and allowed my therapist to prescribe gender affirming hormones to me and start the paperwork towards all my legal gender change documents. So, it was very important.

Along the way, I had the public to blame for furthering my gender trauma, which made my ordeal of coming out of my gender shell even worse. I was insecure enough until I made it to the ordeal of having the police called on me because I simply had to use the restroom. To make matters worse, I was kicked out of one of my regular venues. That was the place where the crew came down to a nearby venue I was going to and invited me back. It turned out, the manager who told me to leave was fired for drug abuse and stealing. I had my revenge, but my gender dysphoria remained.  

It turned out, my newfound success in the world as a transgender woman was followed by extra pressure to do better. I wanted to be better at my art of makeup and fashion. I wanted to be able to blend but do it better than the average cisgender woman. I wanted to be respected but at the same time not threatening the world. I had my setbacks such as being called a pervert by another woman in a restroom. I got even with her too when I found out she owned a hair salon, and I reported her to the local powerful LGBTQ center.

When something like that happened, I desperately needed points of gender euphoria to balance out the bad spots. It seemed for every gender bigot I encountered; I ran into another nice person who was genuinely curious about me. Many times, even better, I was able to learn as much from the other women I met as they did about me. For weeks at a time, if I was lucky, I grew confident in my presentation and my gender dysphoria subsided. Not completely, as there was always a new obstacle on my path to being a full-time transfeminine person. On the plus side, I spent less time stuck in reverse on my transition journey.

By being out in the public’s eye, I spent less time dwelling on what I was going to do about my future. Was I going to keep pursuing a part-time male life until the wheels came off or was, I going to take the actions necessary to make progress towards my dreams. As I put off deciding on my life, my gender dysphoria simply would not go totally away. Every day and time I looked in the mirror, I struggled because sometimes I would get a glimpse of my real feminine self but on others, I could not shake the old male image looking back at me. No matter how much change was occurring from the gender affirming hormones I was on. Disappointment ran deep with me as the transition wheels fell off when I saw him in the mirror.

Sheer willpower, as well as elation when things were going right kept me going through the dark days of dysphoria. In fact, to this day, I still suffer from gender duress when I look in the mirror. I have made it to the point where I am not as bad off as the mirror is telling me I am or as good as the mirror is suggesting. I am tired of fighting and the world will just have to take what it gets from me.

 

 

Life is too Short

 

Image from Brian Wangenheim 
on UnSplash.

Time is a precious commodity and life is too short.

Days, weeks, months and years are especially precious for many transgender women and transgender men. Mainly, if you waited until later in life to break out of your gender box and transition. Which is what I did.

I could and did look at my cross-dressing years as practicing for the big event of coming out as a transgender woman. While I improved my overall skills in wardrobe and makeup basics, there always seemed to be something I was missing. Actually, there were two main things I was missing, not just one. The first one was the realization I had my idea of cross-dressing backwards. I was never a man cross-dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross-dressing as a man. The second major realization was I would have to go through several transitions to meet my goal. An example was, I needed to transition from being a cross dresser to being a transgender woman if I was ever going to make it to where I wanted to go as a transfeminine person.

To accomplish my dream, I needed to take my second wife’s advice and set out to learn what a real woman went through in life. There was so much more than just being the “Pretty, pretty princess” as she called me. The problem was, she was always my feminine gatekeeper when I tried to explore the new and exciting world I was seeking. She did not want me to make it. She was a strong person and made it tough on me to progress in any way on my gender path but still I persisted.

Time went on and the years passed me by as I went to transgender-crossdresser parties and mixers to see what I could learn. Even then, when I hit my forties, I had a sense of desperation as time went on with me, and nothing major was happening on my gender front. It was during this time of my life when I started to escape my closet and explore the world. Mainly, I was carving out a totally new life where people knew nothing of my old male self. I was free to be the new me I wanted so bad.

After I went through the darkest period of my life when I lost nearly everything and everybody who was near and dear to me, did my life come full circle, and I began to notice the light at the end of the tunnel was not the train. My guess is I had paid my dues, and destiny was opening its doors to me. Among other things, it was about this time that the Veteran’s Administration health care system approved providing gender affirming hormones for veterans such as me. I jumped at the idea of taking advantage of less expensive HRT medicines and free mental health care. Even though I had already set up my hormonal medications through a civilian doctor.

By this time, it was becoming increasingly evident to me which direction my life would have to take before it was too late. I was in the middle to late fifties of my life and if I ever was going to ever have the courage to jump off the gender cliff, I would have to do it. One thing I did not want to do was continue to live the part-time gender existence I was already living. Plus, I was rapidly nearing the point in my life when I could take early retirement. Which would preclude me from having to go through any ugly transition on the job scenarios. I worked in a very male dominated profession, so switching genders on the go could have been quite challenging.

Finally, one night when I was out to be alone, I decided I was enjoying myself so much, I needed to end my gender turmoil forever. I decided to forsake all my male privileges I had fought to earn for decades and seek out my dream life as a transgender woman. It was not a decision I took lightly as I sent all my male clothes except my Army uniform to the thrift stores which were so beneficial to me when I was first acquiring my transfeminine wardrobe and fashion.

By this time, I was sixty and I figured I would never have a better chance to transition again. I took advantage of all the feminine “practice” I had done over the years. I was able to hit the gender ground running and never looked back.

 

Buckle Up! Now Entering Gender Comfort Zone

 

Image from Andraz Lazic 
on UnSplash. 

Around here, in Southwestern Ohio at least, we have been in orange barrel season on the roadways for months now.  As we drive through the new road construction, it is time to be ultra cautious and buckle up your seatbelt for safety.

As I always do when I travel, my mind drifts towards the transgender side of life when my wife Liz does the driving. This time, I equated all the orange barrels we were driving through to my life as a transgender woman.

Even if I had ever had a choice (which I did not), I wonder if under the old if I knew then what I know now if I would have ever embarked on the gender path I took. Initially, it was fun playing in my mom’s clothes and makeup, until suddenly it was not. It seemed too quickly I passed through the stage of wanting to look like a girl, straight to wanting to be a girl. To hell with the mirror, I wanted more out of life. Very quickly, my new attitude was causing problems which I needed to buckle up to and attempt to tackle.

Sadly, there were many times when I swerved when I should not have and hit several orange barrels throwing me back into my mirror to attempt to learn what I was doing wrong. What happened was, I simply needed more time and experience to be successful with a very complex move I was trying to make. Change genders as a human being. All along, I knew women were different, but I did not know how different until I was allowed behind the gender curtain. Plus, just being allowed behind the curtain required special navigation skills to get around the orange barrels. Not only did I need to appear as a woman, I needed to move and communicate as a woman also.

Putting the image from the mirror into focus and into the world proved to be very difficult for me. Since I was trying to live a life spanning both main binary genders, living one day as a trans woman and one day as a man was literally killing me mentally. The pain I was suffering I would not have wished on my worst enemy and worse yet, I was veering off my path and hitting many barrels. Fortunately, after a failed suicide try, I righted the ship and was able to continue towards my dream of living full time as a transgender woman. Without taking out any more orange barrels.

As I became better at being a confident woman from a different background, I began to see life differently. I was able to look other women directly in the eye and tell a lot about what they were thinking. As I took lessons from other cisgender women on nonverbal communication. From then on, my life began to improve markedly as I began to buckle up for more gender challenges. Such as, losing all my male privileges I fought so hard to gain. I nearly had major collisions when I did not plan on losing all the security privileges I had as a man. One night I had a big problem with a large man I could not fend off at a party I was at and needed my wife to rescue me and on another night, I was walking alone on an urban sidewalk after leaving a gay venue when I was approached by two men wanting money. They took my last five dollars and went on their way. Lessons learned from both evenings. One way or another, these two near misses made the loss of my intelligence when I talked to men seem to be very petty.

The next set of orange barrels I needed to navigate came when I began gender affirming hormones. The first major hurdle I had was finding a doctor to prescribe them at all. Back when I was looking for hormones back in the 1980’s in Ohio. Once I had passed the test of being on a minimum dosage for a period of time, I was allowed to take bigger amounts of HRT, and the changes really started to happen. Then, I had a whole different set of barrels to drive around. Such as, what would I do about my rapidly developing breasts and softer facial angles. The entire process moved up my transition timeline into the transfeminine world.

I finally had had enough with the whole gender dilemma, gave my male clothes to charity and set out to build a new feminine life at the age of sixty. Being a late transitioner had its benefits to me because I had more than a little idea of what to expect. Mainly from the time I spent navigating around all the orange gender barrels I saw on my path towards a future I so dearly wanted. As I always point out, it was never easy, and I needed to buckle up to make it.

 

 

No Easy Way Out

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Outreach Work. 

Like many of you, I struggled for years to escape my dark, lonely gender closet.

As I beat my head against the closet walls, I stared longingly into the mirror, dreaming of the day I would find an easy way out. As I did, it became increasingly evident to me that there would be no such escape from my dominating male self. He would make life miserable for years because of my indecision.  One day I wanted to be a boy and the next I wanted to be a girl dictated how I lived.

After years of despair over my gender dysphoria, I began to see a sliver of light in my closet when I briefly opened the door to look out. At first, I was getting the door slammed back into my face when I went out in public. Too many people were laughing at me to my face or worse yet, I could hear their comments behind my back. I was sent home early many nights in tears, wondering what I was doing wrong with my feminine presentation. Following intense introspection, I discovered what was wrong. I was letting my old male self-make my fashion decisions and dressing for men instead of women who were for the most part controlling my destiny as a transgender woman. Without the support of women, I would have never made it out of my closet at all.

Even as I learned my lessons on presentation, I still found there would be no easy way out of my closet. I discovered the more walls I scaled on my path to transgender womanhood; the more walls would appear to challenge me. Mainly because I was out in the public eye so much more, and I was challenged to find the proper wig to wear all the time as well as find better fashion to augment my wardrobe. There was no way I wanted to wear the same outfit day after day when people began to recognize me. To offset the extra attention, I needed to increase my visits to area thrift stores to find bargains I could afford, and more importantly, fit me. I was obsessed with outdoing myself when it came to my feminine presentation.

It turned out, the public was noticing as I lost nearly fifty pounds and started taking better care of my skin. If I behaved myself in the world, and was friendly, I crossed the line into communicating with other women. Of all the walls I needed to climb, communication skills were the hardest to scale. The change was dramatic because I needed to change my communication from direct male to indirect female as I learned women often talk with their eyes. Thus, I needed to get better in looking another woman in her eyes when I talked with her. Often doing it as a man was a threatening option, while doing it as a woman was not optional. I needed to learn to do it. By doing so, often I could see what they thought of me. Did they think of me as a woman or sort of a man seeking admittance into their world.

Mostly what I received back was curiosity. What was I doing in their world? And I think they understood my interest in being admitted to the girl’s sandbox went far beyond just putting on a wig, dress and makeup. One way or another, the process was extremely challenging and kept me guessing every night about what I was going to experience because some nights I was tired of climbing walls. I kept looking for the last one to climb, but found I was not even close. Mainly because the gender club I was seeking to join was so complex. On the other hand, the process of totally leaving my closet and male privileges behind was still quite scary and I needed total confidence in what I was doing before I made the final jump.

My introduction to HRT or gender affirming hormones gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. Suddenly the hormones helped me to sync up my external feminine self with my internal one. It was the final shove I needed to get out of my closet and live a new life as a transfeminine person. It turned out there was an easy way to escape if only I possessed the inner strength to look for my truth. Once I did, my fragile mental health improved, and I set my sights on enjoying my family more since a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. In the end, it was all worth it, but it was never an easy trip to go on, or I could find no easy way out.

 

 

 

 

Can You Ever Enjoy the Ride?

 

Image from A. C. on UnSplash.

Lately, it has occurred to me how often I did not pause to enjoy my gender journey.

Perhaps it was because for the longest time I experienced very little gender euphoria for two reasons. The main reason was, I was never raised to feel any joy in my life. Nothing was ever good enough. So, when I entered the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, life was very tough. The other main reason was, I was approaching my life from the exact wrong way. Deep down I knew when my “buzz” went away so soon from merely dressing up in feminine clothes in front of the mirror, I was doing something wrong. I did not know then my gender issues ran much deeper than just a love of fashion and makeup.

Before I knew it, I was in a vicious gender circle in my life when I needed to dress up rather than wanted to. There was a huge difference. When I needed to cross-dress, I had the tendency to take more chances and jeopardize my life as I knew it because I knew there was no way my parents would ever understand how their son was really their daughter. Plus, there were many other distractions too, such as not being able to afford my own wig until I was well into my college years. I hated running around with a towel on my head fantasizing that I had a full head of luxurious girls’ hair.

There was always something I was reaching for which ruined my present enjoyment. Such as a better dress, shoes or makeup which could help me look better as I had neared an impossible ideal of attractiveness. Facing my reality of appearance when the only feedback I had was in the mirror. As we all know, the mirror has a tendency to lie to you if you are not careful, and I needed a way to test my presentation as a transfeminine person in the public’s eye. Easier said than done, when I was busy living my own down low in a male life I was frustrated to be in anyhow.

Very quickly, I learned the mirror had been lying to me as I was rejected by the public. To succeed with my dream, I needed to pause my life and attempt to find out why I was having all the problems I was having. Almost immediately, I determined I needed to get my male self out of the way. He was dictating how my fashion presented itself and it was all wrong. For any number of reasons trying to dress sexy in the wrong places was getting me into trouble. My guy was dressing me for other guys when I should have been dressing for other women. Once I figured out, I was not a teen aged girl, my public life became decidedly better.

So much better, I was even able to enjoy several of the solo nights out I went on to be by myself. Even though I knew I was a transgender woman, I was just being me, and the public (amazingly enough) was accepting it also. My mirror even came back into play, and I used it more often in places such as women’s rooms to adjust my hair and makeup.

Life then began to roll on very fast. All the way to the point I was having a difficult time keeping up. I was learning so much about the feminine side of life, it was too late to turn back then and more and more, I was discovering how much I loved this new side of life I had always dreamed of.

Also, my life was reaching a new level of complexity as I was shutting down the male side and giving full access to my female side who had waited so long to be free. My problem was I was still trying to live part time in both genders as I transitioned, and I was afraid of what would happen when I lost all my male privileges. Finally, my mental health could take it no longer and I had to jump off the gender cliff I have written about.

As I jumped, the ride down was scary but fun in its own way, not unlike a big rollercoaster at an amusement park, the ride up in many ways was worth the ride down. All the fear and terror I had experienced when I had come out to a close family disappeared when I was accepted by my daughter and my wife Liz and a warm set of relief sat in. I could not wait until I could get back in public and live my true existence out of the closet. I was creating my own universe for a change and not relying on someone else to do it.

I began to build my own female privilege and thrive in it. It continues till this day and is the topic for another day. In the meantime, I often try to pause my life and enjoy where I am in my life.

 

 

Writing your Own Script

 

Image from Prophsee Journals
on UnSplash. 

I never found it easy to write my own script.

Sure, I could blame my gender issues on my problems but not all. I discovered very early in life I did not possess many of the dominate male traits to be a complete success as a man, so where was I to go. For example, I could not blame my lack of athletic prowess on my being a cross dresser. I was just not that good of an athlete. When I was on the football team, I wanted to be a cheerleader. They seemed to be having all the fun while I was getting beat up by a faster and stronger opponent.

Rather than setting out to write a new script as a cross dresser or young transgender girl, I internalized my script which turned out to be the worst move of all. I had nowhere to go or no one to turn to for help with writing my girl’s workbook. No sleepovers with other girls my age for ideas of how to be feminine.

I was stuck. I could not live either life I was in. I made a less than adequate male as well as a cross dresser who had nowhere to go in public. Plus, it would be years before I could go out of my closet and test the world. Once I did, I was very much a dismal failure. My earliest attempts at Halloween glory ended up with compliments on my legs but not much else, and the biggest problem was I needed to wait a whole other year before I could escape my gender closet again. I kept dropping my pen when I was trying to write. All I really knew was I was a male by default. Having been born into a gender I never liked.

On the rare nights I was able to escape and sample the public, often I could not read or follow the notes I had hastily scribbled down. And another problem I had was I was making a deep dive into being a transfeminine person so rarely, I could not remember what I was doing right or wrong. Even still, I did the best I could as I still obsessed with the brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced. Occasionally, I could see my gender dream was possible and I kept on writing. Chapters began to appear such as presenting as a woman with confidence and communicating with the world as a new me.

I was pleasantly surprised when I could read and react to the new chapters and attempt to keep them from invading my everyday life. It was impossible for me to walk around the majority of the time wondering how it would be to experience the world as a transgender woman. I was never good at self-control, and it was showing if I was not careful. Primarily with my wife who knew I was in my gender zone and resented it for the most part. She was too smart to listen to or believe my excuses about what I was really thinking about. As time moved onward, I became better at hiding my writing from her. Or so I thought. In reality, she saw our life slipping away to another woman (me) she could not control. In return, I resented her for being a strict feminine gatekeeper who would rarely let me behind her gender curtain by telling me I was not ready.

She was right. I was not ready at that time, but I was gaining fast regardless of her misgivings. In the midst of many ill-advised moves which jeopardized our long term, twenty-five-year marriage, I was making other moves which were proving I could make it to my lifelong dream of living as a transgender woman. More importantly, I was reading my writing clearly and the results felt so natural.

I also discovered writing your own script could be very messy and selfish to do. Many times, my wife and my male self-ganged up on me with fear tactics on what could happen if I transitioned. Many fights later, I finally prevailed by default when she unexpectedly passed away, leaving me alone with my writings. I cleaned up my mess and prepared to live out the rest of my life as a full-time transgender woman.

I think my lifetime of experience writing a new gender workbook for myself proved to be a worthy accomplishment. Once I understood where it was coming from. There was nothing wrong with me as I learned to navigate a new world I was just getting used too. It just took me awhile to catch up with the rest of the cisgender women who had a head start on me. I just achieved my womanhood from another path which is the topic of another blog post altogether.

 

 

Staring off The Cliff

 

Image from Anton Luk
on UnSplash 

When I reached a point where I saw the real possibility I could live a life of a transgender woman, I found myself staring off a deep gender cliff.

The biggest problem I had was wondering how I would land if I threw caution to the wind and become (as my second wife called it) man enough to be a woman. As I slid down the slippery slope towards my cliff, sometimes I was fearless and other times scared to death. I can’t tell you the number of times I sat in my car adjusting my hair and makeup before I went into a venue. At times, I considered bringing an oxygen tank along in case I hyper ventilated. I did not because I thought it would ruin my outfit.

Another problem I encountered was alcohol. When I drank, I became much more fearless but to get to my arrival, I needed to be brave and walk into a venue to order a drink. It took me awhile to put the alcohol in my rear-view mirror and get on with my life, but I did it.

Along the way, I cannot stress enough about all the bumps and bruises I had when I slid down a very slippery gender slope towards a very steep cliff. I was facing losing everything I knew, owned and loved to be a transgender woman, so I wanted to make sure I was doing my slide right. For the most part, I did good except for impromptu visits from the police after I used the rest room of my choice and another night when I was asked to leave a venue after I was doing absolutely nothing wrong. I mended faster than I thought I would and chalked the experiences up to what I needed to go through to transition in the straight world which I was trying out for the first time.

The main thing which kept me going was the deep feeling I had I was doing the right thing. I had spent too long in front of a lonely mirror to turn back then. I needed to face the cliff and decide how and when I was going to jump because it was becoming increasingly evident to me, I would need to.

After my second wife passed away, I went into another lonely dark period of my life when the only thing I did was go out in the world as a transfeminine person and watch the occasional sporting event with my brother as my old male self. What did happen was, I felt the time I was spending as a man was being increasingly wasted. Even my male self was seeing the beginning of the end to his life.  If my brother did not accept me (which he did not), he would have to go away.

What really helped me to overcome my fear of the gender cliff I was looking at, were the ciswomen friends I was developing. The give and take I felt when I was invited to girls’ nights out or even lesbian mixers was propelling me forward to making the ultimate choice in my life. Ultimately, I started gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s care and made my decision to jump off the cliff even easier to do.

It turned out, my women friends knew me better than I knew myself. They saw no traces of my old male self and helped me with the nuances of living in a feminine world. Many times, all I was doing was going along for the ride. Never had I ever experienced so much about a new world I desperately wanted to be a part of in my life. It all made my fear of jumping off my gender cliff so much easier.

Another example would be, I had taken the time to do my homework and build a solid base before the slippery slope claimed me. I waited for two extra years working at a job I hated to make sure I could retire on Social Security and not have to worry about transitioning on the job. During that time, my gender universe opened a little more when the Veterans Administration health care program I was in approved gender hormone therapy for veterans which gave me access to mental health care and cheaper medications.

It all turned out to be time well spent and came back to help me when I finally made the jump down my gender cliff. My experiences and friends made the landing so much easier. I ended up wondering why I had waited so long doing my preparation.

 

Unlearning LIfe

 

JJ Hart

Over time, I spent so much time and effort unleashing my male past, I cannot remember it all.

As soon as I could think about myself, I knew something was wrong. I just did not know what. Primarily, I did not know I was trying my best to survive in a male world I wanted very little to do with. Perhaps the biggest problem came when it was time to unlearn all the male life I was forced into. I was the proverbial round peg in the square hole, and I did not like it, even though I was rewarded with white male privilege when I was successful.

By choice or not, it seemed I was always fighting myself or the world for my gender dreams or goals. Very early I knew somehow, I wanted to be a woman someday, a deep dark secret I needed to keep to myself. Overall, I was deeply conflicted about where my life would end up because it seemed as if I was on a runaway gender train I could not get off.

A prime example was when I entered male puberty. I watched in shock as my body grew angles, and I needed to walk like a man. I am sure I was a comical sight, but I tried. I did not want to be referred to as a sissy and bullied in school and I was successful. Until it was time to reverse it all. When I left the cross-dressing mirror and entered the world as a novice transgender woman, there was so much to do as I was busy unlearning my male life. First of all, there was that male walk I needed to get rid of. There was no way I could overcome the positive feminine presentation I had succeeded at doing, if I was going to continue to walk like a man. Plus, I had the challenge of doing it in heels.

When I learned to walk in heels, I learned the inherent power of female privilege. Suddenly, my legs looked better, and men paid closer attention to the clicking of my heels. I just needed to match the rest of my fashion to blend in with my shoes. Since I loved my boots, the first thing that I did was try to save up for a pair of nice, heeled boots and find them in my size. Thank goodness for Payless Shoes. For the most part, I did good in my heels except for the time I got a heel stuck in a sidewalk crack in a mall I was walking in and the time I fell on a wet spot in one of my regular venues I was in. I survived and learned I needed to be more comfortable.

Another major gender response I needed to unlearn was to always look another woman in the eye when I talked to her, especially in bathroom situations. Eye to eye contact was normal in women’s rooms and totally not in men’s rooms. The new rules of the “room” I needed to unlearn and relearn if I was to survive as a transfeminine person.

Another major point of contention I write about often, is the difference between male and female aggression. I needed to unlearn the old male aggressive ways of coming right at you. On the other hand, I was clawed many times when I failed to recognize the passive aggressive intentions of a woman I was dealing with. Often behind that smile was a sharp pair of claws waiting to take a shot at my back. I needed to keep my head on a swivel and always be careful when I was dealing with other women in the girl’s sandbox. Lesson learned and I moved on as a better transgender woman.

Finally, all these lessons began to come together in my life, and I started to become a whole human being again. But this time, a human I wanted to be. No more unwanted male who I still needed to fall back on in times of duress. Afterall, I had to live with him for nearly fifty years, so there was some good to remember. I found I could relate to both binary genders better and understand where they were coming from. Of course, men were the simpler of the two genders as I suspected and women were more complex, and they led more layered lives.

None of it mattered to me as my world opened in ways I never imagined. Going to the extreme of unlearning my old life was radical but then again, I was able to make it work in my own way. If you are searching, just be aware everyone’s journey is different but maybe you can make it too if you are careful. There are huge inherent problems when you decide to forsake your male privileges and enter a new gender world.

 

 

Did I think Life Would Turn Out this Way

 

JJ Hart.

Did I think life would turn out to be this way, I would have said NO!

In the earliest days of just exploring my mom’s clothes and admiring myself in the mirror, I never thought life would have become as complex as it did. For years, I thought my cross-dressing urges were an innocent hobby which hurts no one. I was entertained and it was all that mattered in my selfish world.

Little did I know, all I was going through was just the beginning of my life I would have to adjust to if I was going to survive. I was embarking on what turned out to be a very unique life as I had the opportunity to live life in two of the main binary genders.

To put it all together on a timeline, I was in my thirties when I first read the term transgender for the first time, and I thought I had finally found a term which described me. Or, at least put words to my gender dream of possibly living a transfeminine life. Up to that point, I had only experienced the other gender variant people I met at various mixers I went to. When I attended the mixers, I met everyone from cross dressers in cowboy hats barely covering their masculinity all the way to impossibly feminine transgender women who were on their way to surgery. I certainly did not think the mixer I went to would turn out that way. I was expecting to attend, meet people like me and come away with new answers about myself. Of course, it did not turn out that way, and I came away with more questions than answers afterwards.

Primarily, I found myself on a sort of a gender balance beam. I was very clumsy and became well versed in playing both sides of the gender spectrum. At times I was good at my games and at times I was very bad, and I suffered. Through the bad times I needed to keep my eye on my gender dreams, be selfish and do the best I could. Perhaps the worst part was, I still did not know how any of it would turn out.

It was only when I managed to escape my dark, lonely gender closet and explore to learn if my future transgender dreams were possible at all. I was in a long-term marriage with a woman I loved, in a successful job and outwardly living a good male life. Why would I want to sacrifice any of the white male privileges I had earned. I did not think on occasion that I ever could.

What changed everything for me was the further I went on my journey, the more natural I felt. I began to think more about my life was meant to be this way. When I was selfish in my gender choices and I did my best to be a chameleon with my life. These days, I would be known as being gender fluid. Another term not known in those days, instead I thought of myself as an androgynous person. Especially when I started gender affirming hormones or HRT. What happened was, I really started to play with fire then. I had given myself a loose timetable until I made the final transition from male to female but could not keep it when the changes to my body became much more noticeable than I had ever imagined.

I never had thought in a million years, my life would turn out this way and I needed to arrive at a point where I needed to be selfish again and give up on my male self. My longer hair, softer skin and budding breasts were giving me away. It was time for a change. In fact, way past time for me to face the inevitable, I should have been living a transfeminine life all along.

All the torment and balancing acts I put myself through were no more than tormenting myself needlessly. Perhaps the final clue was how quickly my body took to the new feminine hormones. There was no negative to the process at all and the calm I suddenly felt led me to feel I was in the right place.

So, no, I never thought I would be in the spot I am in today. I am living as a transgender woman with a wife who supports me totally. The only slice of life I lost was my brother’s acceptance which was overcome by my daughter’s. It has been over a decade since I have spoken to him and truthfully, I haven’t missed our interaction. I am sure I had a few lucky breaks along the way, but for the most part, I think destiny was leading the way. Along with my stubbornness to continue my journey. It does not matter as it all worked out.

 

 

You Said What?

 

Image from Thomas Park
on UnSplash.

When your life is made up of a series of no, you can’t do that, you tend to find the nearest rock and crawl under it.

In my case, that no sent me into a deep dark gender closet I hid in for years. I even sought refuge behind the dresses and makeup I was wearing. Afterall, girls did not have to face the same challenges I was facing. I was too naïve to think the girls had separate gender challenges of their own to conquer.  It wasn’t until much later in life when I learned the truth from the women I was around about their life.

The word “no” ended up serving two purposes with me in my life. I found out relatively early that the people telling me no had any real control over me. An example was when I earned a spot-on American Forces Radio and Television when I was going into the Army during the Vietnam War. Being slotted into AFRTS was extremely rare and difficult to do and I did it with help from my congressman (back when they did anything). I learned there were ways around no if you were able to find them. I served my military duty but, in a manner, I wanted to.

My gender life was another subject altogether. I was still struggling and had a huge NO above my head for years. With a largely unsupportive family and no means to support myself as a transfeminine woman, I did not know what to do except to keep treading water and hope I did not sink. Plus, I had no money or insurance to cover any expenses incurred with gender surgeries of any sort. I was on my own and had to internalize my feelings.

Again, I found I could find my way around totally internalizing my feelings by attending local transgender-crossdresser parties where I could learn from others. In the meantime, I was doing my best to survive in a male world where I was becoming successful in. In other words, the rock I was under had more inhabitants than ever before but just as dark for me. Then I found a way to put electric light under my rock or in my closet. It was when I forced myself out into the world which was very unforgiving for years until I gained my footing and on a very slippery gender surface. It seemed my new high heels were more difficult to walk in than I ever imagined.

More than ever before, it was during this time, my gender tables began to turn for me. I was climbing a major mountain and still did not know how steep it was going to be. On the nights I was rejected by the public, I needed to go home and resolve myself to never take no for an answer. Somehow, someway I was doing something wrong and if I corrected it I could survive as a transgender woman. That was when I improved my fashion and makeup, along with losing nearly fifty pounds. All the improvements to my feminine presentation along with having the chance to communicate one on one with cisgender women I met, helped me to ignore the no button and keep moving up my gender path. I even was internalizing less.

Through it all, I need to point out, most of my progress towards being a transfeminine woman was not easy and hard earned. There were still too many, one step forward and two steps back moments to mention. At times, it seemed I was destined to learn everything a cisgender woman knew about life before I would be allowed behind the gender curtain and be invited to girls’ night outs etc. The only regret I ever had was never being invited to a bridal shower or bachelorette party. But it never happened.

Since I often learned the hard way what no meant to me in my life, I sometimes feel as if I am the worst person in the world to be writing about it. Sometimes no does mean no when you find yourself in a dangerous situation and you don’t have your old male personal safety privilege to fall back on. You must take the good with the bad when you are a transgender woman. Especially today with the current anti-transgender political climate. The republicans are not letting up at all with their gender lies, at least here in Ohio where I live and it is disgusting.

The more I see of their lies, the more I am resolved to never say I give up and keep on fighting for the truth. A big NO to the gender bigots.

 

 

Emerging as Your True Self

 

Image from JC Gellidon 
on UnSplash. 

Emerging as your true self after a lifelong gender struggle is often very difficult.

It starts very early in life when you discover you are in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time. Whatever the case, your struggle to find yourself begins. In my case I began with explorations into my mom’s clothing which lasted until I could no longer fit into any of her clothes. If you had suggested to me my final emergence into the world would take as long as it did, I would not have believed you. It was a long journey until I finally took the transition step to live as a full-time transfeminine person at the age of sixty.

Some of you may ask why I waited so long or since I did, why couldn’t I just wait for it a little longer into my senior years. On the other hand, I felt if I did not do it then, I would never have the chance. So, I pulled the plug on my old male life and emerged new as a transgender woman. It was never easy, but I made it.

Others may ask why I never opted for any gender surgeries of any sort. I did not because I was on the borderline to being able to present well enough as a woman to get by and I did not have the insurance or the finances to do it. Plus, I was superstitious about having any operations on my body since to this day the only surgery I have ever done was getting my tonsils taken out. I decided to set my gender dysphoria aside and work with what I had or pass out of sheer willpower as a transgender woman friend once told me.

I can’t tell you how many times my willpower was challenged before I made it to the point of emergence in the world. The seemingly endless times I was sent home in tears when my cross-dressing plans went wrong. Fortunately, I was stubborn and kept on moving towards my dream of possibly living fulltime as a woman. I replaced my willpower with confidence since in most cases, I was following my path in the most difficult way possible, without the help of any facial feminization surgeries. For the most part, makeup art was my way around having no expensive, painful operations until I could begin gender affirming hormones.

For me, the hormones worked miracles inside and out. Outwardly, my skin softened along with my facial angles of manhood, and I could use less makeup. Also, on the plus side, my hair grew quickly and fully since I inherited no male pattern baldness which made wearing any sort of a wig a thing of the past for me. What really changed was my overall view of the world. Suddenly, my view softened as my senses heightened. I felt emotions such as I had never felt before, and I learned how women complained they were always cold (except during menopause) because I was in my second puberty and cold all the time.

During this time, emergence became a slippery slide for me. The HRT hormones were quickly making it impossible to go back to my male life because I did not want to. Why would I want to trade in all the work I put in to travel my long gender path for anything? I finally gave up on all the resistance I was putting into retaining any of a life as a male I never really wanted. The only remaining reason turned out to be me losing all the white male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. For that reason, I put off emerging and attempted to briefly live a portion of my life in both binary genders. Something I would strongly suggest not doing. For me, trying it wrecked my mental health and nearly my life. My male side was hanging on and very materialistic while my female side was discovering a magical life is the best way I can describe it. Afterall, I could see my best-case dream life within reach.

Through it all, I think being approved by a doctor for gender affirming hormones was the biggest moment of my emergence as a fulltime transgender woman. With the help, I was able to carve out a new life and put the old one aside. I was able to see a new world with the help of new friends who never knew the old me. The essence of emergence when someone else could enjoy the company of my new feminine self. HRT was just a kick start to make it to where I wanted to be. I needed to take it from there and make my emergence complete.

 

 

 

The Second Act

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Wellness Outreach. 

Will the second act of life be better and more successful than the first? How many people even get a second chance?

That is the question I needed to answer when I finally shed my male life and entered a transfeminine existence. Since I did it at the age of sixty, I have had plenty of ground to catch up with. Many times, it seemed I never would. My internal gender clock was moving one step forward and two steps back as I attempted to transition. I had times when the picture was clear in my mind, and I was able to put it into motion. Such as the night I took myself out to see a major Christmas light display in a nearby village and was warmly accepted in my soft bulky sweater, leggings and boots. Then, as I rode the wave of gender dysphoria, I would do something wrong such as how I was moving. I am fond of saying, I looked like a linebacker in drag.

The problem was, if I relaxed at all going into the second act of my life, I had the tendency to fall back into old habits. I was learning the hard way over and over, to take nothing for granted in my new life. Many times, I tried and failed not to be too hard on myself since I was making up for a first act in my life which lasted so long, and I had to concentrate so much on it just to survive. It was around this time when my male self really began to set up roadblocks on my gender path. Suddenly, he began to see that this road I was on was not a phase or joke and I was deadly serious.  He started to ask questions such as how I was going to live in my second act with no job and how I was prepared to do it without the wife I dearly loved and had been married to for nearly twenty-five years. To be sure, all very real and very scary questions.

I put off deciding my life as long as I could as I attempted to learn if I could really live a transfeminine life at all. Were the obstacles insurmountable or not. Through it all, the one overriding feeling which kept me searching was the deep down feeling I was doing the right thing. I was headed in the direction I should have been going in my life all along and I kept going through the ups and downs of transitioning into my second act.

Once it was clear I was successfully transitioning into my second act, I needed to make sure I was doing it correctly. It turned out I had all the help I needed. In addition to the cisgender women I always mention, there was one important person I don’t mention enough. That person turned out to be very real and important to me. She was my inner feminine person who had been waiting for all those years and decades for her chance to fully come out into the world. Once she finally did, she knew completely what to do and what was ahead for my second act of my life. Mainly, all the nuances of life as a woman if I really wanted to go there. She knew the best part of my life was yet to come.

More importantly, I had finally made it through the bleak years when often I thought there would be no tomorrow. Or at least my dream of living a feminine life would never be realized. Often it set off a series of insecurities in myself which set back my life. Act one was bleeding because I could not get to act two.

When I finally made it to my second act, it was as if I had lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, and I came to a point where I needed to be more understanding and approachable in the world. I could not get away with the old male ways of internalizing my feelings and start living again. If I did try to hide as a transgender woman, I would never have a chance to provide myself with a positive outlook to other women and not come off as an unfriendly transfeminine woman which was the last thing I wanted or was.

Since I was one of the few humans who ever had the chance to stop their life and begin again so there was no way I could mess it up. I needed to enjoy life and live it the best I could.  

Build the Plane before You Fly It.

 

Image from Miquel Angel
Hernadez on UnSplash. 

Early in my life I learned to build my gender plane before I tried to fly it.

When I was simply admiring myself in the mirror, life was easy, or so I thought. I could apply my makeup and put on my mini-skirt and journey to the mailbox, hoping the neighbors would not see me. Through it all, the mirror lied to me and said I looked wonderful even though I did not even have a wig. Even still, I kept going. Mainly because we lived in a very rural area and no one saw my mailbox adventures.

I suppose, during those days, I was merely experimenting with clothes and makeup, the same way any other young girl would do. The problem was, I had no one in my peer group to criticize me and help me to learn what was correct with make-up and fashion and it showed. I was attempting to fly my gender plane before it was fully built. The mirror never did any of it for me. It was simply there to tell me how good I looked.

It was not till much later in life, did I begin to replace the mirror with public feedback when it came to early adventures going out in the world as a transfeminine woman. I vividly remember all the nights I quickly returned home wiping the tears away after being followed by someone and laughed at. Mainly from teenaged girls. Somehow, I needed to keep taking my plane back to the drawing board to attempt to see what I was doing wrong. The good news is, I did begin to figure it out. I was dressing for the wrong gender. Trying to please men, when I should have been trying to please women. Out went the sleazy, ill-fitting clothes. Replaced by more sensible clothes as I did my best to cover my male poisoned body.

It worked as I began to blend into the world, as I gave myself the chance to experience my reality for a change. I was similar to the Wright Brothers during their first flights; I was not going far but I was doing it. During this time, my flights grew dramatically longer. I was finding my way out of the clothing stores where all they cared about was my money, all the way into restaurants where I had to interact with staff on a one-on-one basis. I was discovering how well my plane was built or not. Surely, I was still experiencing my ups and downs, but I was having more of the positive side of life.

The problem was, on my male side, he was still having success in his world with a very successful job. So, he wanted no part of helping to build a new gender plane. I was forced to build around him. Which made for a very shaky foundation. Especially for my already frail mental health. It hurt me deeply when I was flying high and he brought me back to earth with a crash. He even took me as far as an ill-fated suicide attempt.

In the short, and long term, I survived him and continued to build my plane, every time I thought I was done, there was more to do as I studied the nuances of living a transfeminine life. Adjusting to being passive aggressive alone to other women was a big adjustment, not to mention the communication issues I faced in the new world I was in. Other women were very curious about me and wanted to know what I was doing in their world. Very soon, my air space became very crowded with new people, mostly all women.

Many times, starting all over in life became a major challenge for me. I needed my plane to provide me with a better view of what was really happening in my life. I had too many fake, mean people to beware of. Even after all these years, my plane was still very fragile. Before I moved ahead any further, I just had to build in the inner strength I needed to pursue my dream of living fulltime as a transgender woman.

To accomplish my dream, I needed the friends I had found in my new life to do it. I always mention the Liz’s, Kim’s and Nicki’s of the world who helped more than they ever knew. It was all of them who finished building my plane more than I did and I will be forever grateful for them coming together to save me.

Growing up, I built plenty of model cars to look at and even race, but nothing helped me to prepare for the greatest building experience of my life. A gender transformation project which took me decades to complete. In fact, I am still working on it to this day even though I have been fully out for over a decade now. There was more building than I ever thought possible to start all over again with my life.

 

Painting a Picture

 

Image from Vinicus Amix
Amano on UnSplash.

During my life, I have never been accused of being an artist. In fact, I would mess up drawing stick figures.

The best thing I could do was connect dots. Which I needed to do quite often in my gender conflicted life. Basically, the main dots I needed to connect were, was I a boy or a girl. It ended up taking me far too long to finally connect those dots and attempt to draw my gender picture.

When I began to experiment with makeup, I learned the basics of facial artwork and even I could make myself look better in the mirror. Mainly, though, I struggled along until I summoned the courage to request a makeover from a professional makeup person at one of the transgender-cross dresser mixers I went to. He did a miracle job and transformed me into a woman who I only had dreamed of. Most importantly, he was able to explain to me what he was doing in a step-by-step format that even I could understand. I looked so good, I was invited along by the “A” listers, as I called them when they went out to explore other venues after the mixer was over. I even got the last laugh over all of them when a man tried to pick me up in a venue we were in, and they were not.

Sadly, the success I felt from the mixer did not last long when I had to go back to the real world, I was a part of. When I did, I became mean and nasty to my wife and others around me. All the way to almost losing jobs because of my attitude. No way to paint a picture. Somehow, I needed to get better before I self-destructed my life.

I hung on until I did get better when I had the chance to leave my closet more than once a year for Halloween parties. I was aided by the fact that my artwork with makeup and clothes continued to improve until I looked better than some sort of a circus clown in drag. I simply had to if I was ever going to have the chance to live my dream. Through it all, it did occur to me how difficult the process was going to be. I was painting two pictures at the same time, one as a transfeminine woman. One as a successful man. The stress of doing so nearly killed me. Being a man was easier because of all the white male privileges I had gained but being a transfeminine woman felt so exciting and natural when I painted her.

By the time I had gotten this far, I found I had painted myself in a corner. I could see the finish line for a change, while at the same time, I had a wife I loved, a family I loved and a good job to protect as a man. Decisions, decisions were wearing me down. Primarily because it was so frustrating to me to have worked so hard throughout my life to paint two pictures, only to have to finally choose between the two. What I did was let the public choose which picture they preferred. Since my transgender woman had an unfair advantage, she won the contest easily. She got to start all over again and learn from all the mistakes her male counterpart made and go from there. Time and time again, the public picked her.

Putting the finishing touches on my feminine portrait proved to be easier said than done. First, I needed to come out of my closet to what was left of my blood family. I received a 50/50 reception when I was accepted by my daughter and rejected by my brother. By this time both of my parents were deceased. Predictably, both coming out events were scary and quickly resolved. My daughter wondered why she was the last to know while my brother did not have the courage to stand up for me to the rest of his extended family. We have not spoken now in over a decade. Sad but true, he never wanted to see my finished portrait. Conversely, my daughter and I are closer than ever.

But then again, are our portraits ever finished until we die. Shouldn’t we always be making small upgrades the best we can? Plus, age should put us in a better position to do it. Sure, painting two completely different gender portraits at the same time was difficult and at times required tons of skill to keep one hidden. But somehow, I was able to gain the artistic skill to make it happen.

The powerful draw of an overwhelming dream was all the motivation I needed to become a better artist and provide the background I needed to live a life as a transgender woman.

The Big Risk

 

Image from Joshua Rawson Harris
on UnSplash.

When you jump from one of the main binary genders to the other. In my case of course it meant leaving all my hard-earned male privileges behind and move into a largely unknown world.

The risk was tremendous the farther I went along. Mainly because I was accumulating an increasingly amount of male baggage. Such as family, house and good job. At the same time, I was perfecting my transfeminine appearance, which encouraged me to move forward in the world. To be sure, I was involved in being tested with a double-edged sword. Or which way should I go? I spent many wasted hours trying to obsess over my future, which was still very vague. At that point I did not even know if I could even exist in a fully transfeminine world. On nights I was accepted by the public, gender euphoria told me I could. Then, on the nights I was rejected by the public, I thought there was no way I could ever live my dream, and it would remain just that…a dream. A dream which never would go away. 

Through it all, the idea of risking all my existence remained with me and naturally scared me to my bones. I was hiding away my biggest secret and even though I did internalize it well, it was a drain on my mental health. Which is a side story I tell often because it is something I think more transgender women and trans men can learn from. At least I hope so.

Something else, I don’t think the average person understands about us, is this is not a casual joke to us, and we just cannot stop putting on a dress on a whim. We are ready to risk it all to live an authentic life as our true selves. Free from our closets. The problem was at the end of a day out, most of us must go back to our old unwanted male selves (or female selves for trans men). For me, it was always a heart-breaking experience as I tried desperately to maintain my male façade for my wife and work.  The only alternative I had was to attempt to live part of my life as a trans woman and the other half as a macho man. It tore me up.

The entire process just became worse and worse when I began to carve out an all-new life in a feminine world. The more success I felt, the less I wanted to go back to my old life and began to research the prospect of living my lifetime dream. In fact, all I can remember all I really wanted to be when I was young was, I wanted to be a woman. Which of course, I needed to keep to myself. I was miserable as I felt as if I was the only boy in the world who felt that way. It took me years to learn I was not the only male in the world who wanted to be female and was prepared to take the risk to do it.

I was able to find a couple of real live acquaintances who took the risk, almost, so I could judge what it meant for me if I decided to follow in their footsteps. I say almost because one the transsexual women I knew was a very attractive retired firefighter in Columbus, Ohio and had a very good pension to live on. The other trans woman I knew was even more attractive in her own right and a very accomplished electrical engineer and would always find a job. I had a good job but not one which would carry over to a gender transition. So, I had much more to consider, not to mention neither of the women I mentioned were in a serious spousal relationship and I was. Right in the middle of a twenty-five-year marriage. I would later come to know how similar yet drastically different our transgender community is.

The pressure I was feeling to take the final risk continued to build. Aided by the success I was having in dealing with the public, I was encouraged to take the final risk in my life. At this point, destiny stepped in to show me the way. My two major stopping points were my second wife and what I would do for an income after I transitioned.

My wife tragically died, leaving me with one to speak of to object to me leaving my old life behind and beginning a new one. Then, by that time, I was in reach of being able to retire on early Social Security income plus what I could sell online. In many ways, the lightning did come right before the rain for me and then the sun came out. When it did, I could see my dream life had arrived and I could live how I wanted to.