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| Image from Abbas Tehrani |
Throughout our lives transgender women as well as trans men suffer from everything from intense anxiety to full out gender dysphoria.
Along the way we never consider none of being transgender was ever our fault. We were destined to be this way. Also, history tells us transgender people have been around since the beginning of time, so no whatever pressures society in some areas put upon us will not work. The transgender tribe will find a way to survive. How is the question for many of us locked in our dark and very lonely gender closets. If you are similar to me, I started by hiding my cross dressing from the world and then slowly expanding out into the world. Slowly but surely I was leaving my old boring male life behind as I was following my life's destinies.
I can't say much of the process was ever easy because I was so entrenched in attempting to live a macho male life. Through it all, I kept trying to refine my femininity until I finally was able to blend in and exist in the world as a transgender woman.
What I never factored in my life I was facing was I never had a choice to begin with. Every now and then, I write about the possibility of my Mom being on the "DES"" medication which was routinely prescribed to mothers who had the problem of poor pregnancies' which often resulted in mis-carriages and still births. My Mom suffered through three still births before I came along. My research into "DES" says it was a synthetic form of estrogen which was later banned because it caused cancer in young girls and women. In addition, the medication was prescribed between 1940 and 1971 and I was born in 1949. So, the question remains for transgender women is was the extra estrogen prescribed to our mothers while we were in her womb contribute to our gender issues later in life.
As my life went by, I was fortunate in that I was able to barely satisfy my desires to explore the world as a transgender woman . Even when I reached the suicidal depths I suffered, a little voice kept telling me to keep trying and learning because everything was going to be alright. And it was.
All of a sudden, the years of gender rejection turned around. Often for all the worst reasons. Within a couple years time nearly all of my small group of friends passed away including my second wife of twenty five years. By this time, I was mostly alone in the world as I was faced with rebuilding my life. The negative was I had to do it at all but the positive was I could do it as my long neglected feminine self. She seized the opportunity and never looked back. In addition, she was helped along by the new acceptance of VA (Veterans Administration) of transgender veterans. All of a sudden I had access to relatively inexpensive care for my hormone replacement therapy.
It seemed all the long closed gender doors were opening for me. Destiny was calling and all I needed to do was seize the opportunity. I couldn't believe it was all finally happening.
