Living in the Real World

 

Image from Jacqueline Mungala
on UnSplash.

Living in the real world became a challenge to me as I transitioned from a male existence to a feminine world. The main problem I had was figuring out what was right and what was wrong as I followed my path through many blind curves and stop signs.

One thing I never thought of completely was how different my life would be if I had ever had the chance to live as a fulltime transgender woman. Sure, I was not totally naïve and thought my world would basically involve pretty clothes and being chased by boys. When I finally was allowed behind the gender curtain, I discovered how complex and layered lives ciswomen really live. Very quickly, trying to live in the real world as a novice struggling trans woman got me in over my head. I would be remiss if I did not bring up how I tried to present myself. I thought trying to look like a sexy teen girl was the way to go, and fortunately my time in that cross-dressing phase of my life went away quickly. Often with brutal consequences of being laughed out of any venue I was trying to visit.

In other words, I put what my male self was telling me about presenting as a woman in the real world behind me and started to look around to what I needed to do to blend in with the other ciswomen around me. The challenge was not only did I have to be as good as the next woman, I needed to be better to survive in the real world I found myself in. With success, I brought confidence I could do more.

The next problem I faced was what was I going to do about my deteriorating (already fragile) mental health. As luck would have it, I was assigned a qualified therapist within the Veterans Administration who knew what she was doing and was able to separate my Bi-polar disorder from my gender dysphoria issues. She provided me with permission to begin HRT which is something I had always wanted and made the real world more livable for a transfeminine person like me.

At the same time, I was trying to take every spare moment away from work to explore different venues as a trans woman. I was attempting to accomplish trying out (as much as possible) everything I would have to go through if I ever followed my dream into womanhood. What was a ciswoman’s life really like and how was it different than what I had already lived as a man. I was entering the scariest yet most exciting time of my life as for the most part I was successful when I went out. The biggest issue which eluded me, was being able to communicate effectively with the world of women I encountered. Learning all the nuances of non-verbal communication women use was the biggest challenge for me. For the first time in my life, I needed to really listen to what was being said to me and watch the other woman’s eyes at the same time to see if I could catch a clue of what she really meant.

Through this portion of my life, I had a powerful motivation to succeed as a woman in the real world. My second wife of twenty-five years had unexpectedly passed away to leave me completely alone with my gender issues. I had no spouse to worry about how to tell my truth about wanting to be a woman. Yet another terrifying yet exciting time of my life. What was I going to do about my newfound freedom. Since you are reading this post, you know what I decided to do. I started making plans to finally make the leap off the gender cliff I had thought of for some time and throw caution to the wind for the remainder of my life. I figured why not because my confidence was at an all-time high with my small circle of friends I had built up. Along with factoring in all the time and effort I put in exploring the real-world ciswomen live in because for once, I had earned my way (or forced my way) behind the so called “sacred” gender curtain.

Once I had made it to this point, after another stop sign on my transgender path, I found I still had more learning to do to really be ready to live in the real world. That is where my ciswomen (lesbian) friends came in which is a subject of another blog post. I will say, they taught me how to be validated as myself in the real world. It was another main transition to go from thinking I was a transgender woman to knowing I was just me. Which took me from cross-dresser to trans woman, back to a secure me during my lifetime. A long, often brutal journey which had a happy ending. I learned the person I had been running from much of my life was not such a bad person after all.

Maybe, most importantly, I discovered the one aspect of my life I never thought I could experience and that was having the ability to be happy. I never had a chance to learn it from my family, and I spent so much time trying to deny myself any satisfaction I could have had from a successful career as a man, there was no time to ever be happy. It turned out that when I turned the corner back to just being the true me, I allowed happiness to be part of my existence.

I had survived all the lessons I had learned as I followed my path to a brighter, more authentic gender future. Living in the real world was not such a bad thing after all. My only regret is that it took me so long (all the way till sixty) to have the courage to face my truth so I could live as I truly was.

 

 

 

I Could Never Say No

 

JJ Hart with two Special People who 
made it Impossible for me to say No.
Liz on left, daughter on right. 

I discovered early in life that saying no to cross-dressing as a girl was something I could never do.

I tried many times, but I was a miserable failure as the pressure would build to run to my makeup and wardrobe to look at myself in the mirror. I even went as far as trying to shave the ugly unwanted hair off my legs with my mom’s electric razor. When I did, the world seemed to come together for me…for a while. Like clockwork, I could almost predict when the pressure would start to build again to cross-dress. Like most of you, I even purged or threw out most all of my feminine belongings in a wild rush which felt so good at the moment, until my old urges came rushing down on me. Saying no was just not an option.

For a while, I thought being feminine to the point of living as a transgender woman fulltime was always going to be just a dream. At other times, I thought that some point in my life I would just outgrow my gender urges and revert to a fulltime male life, no matter what my brain was telling me. I guess you could say, sometimes I thought a permanent purge would be in my future. I was kidding myself. That permanent purge never came as I tried many times to no avail. It seemed each time I tried to say no, my urges to follow my transgender needs came back even stronger. This time fueled by the positive feedback I was receiving when I was able to present better going out in public as a novice trans woman in a world of ciswomen. Just entering their world was much more difficult for me than I ever thought possible.

One of the problems was my old male self and my second wife did not participate in my dreams. It was far from my wife’s fault because none of what I was doing was anything she signed up for when we got married. She tried to help as much as she could, but my dream was growing so fast I could not control it. I started out the marriage as a cross-dresser and now I was into a transgender woman, and I did not have the courage, or knowledge to explain it. I just knew, I could not say no to pursuing my dreams. I am sure all she saw was her man slipping away. Sometimes slowly and sometimes quickly and I understood why she did not like it.

As I said, I really always knew saying no was not an option in my pursuit of a transfeminine life when I really went out into the world and found myself in the middle of new friendships who knew nothing of my past. growing Just trying to look the part of a woman faded away as I always thought it would when I found myself at the point of wanting to be that woman. Doing my best to communicate with the world on their terms. As I continually searched my soul for guidance on the path I should take, the answer always came back the same. Follow your instincts and do what you need to do to feel natural. With input such as that, why should I ever say no to myself again.

Finally, I reached the point of no return in my life when I needed to look at myself in the mirror to see who I really was. With no makeup at all one morning, I had a chance to see the real me and the words my wife Liz said to me came through loud and clear. There was no male in me and for once everything with a “no” word in it made sense. Plus, I was mentally exhausted from fighting myself all my life. I had enough, and it was time to make my final decision.

When I replaced no with yes, my life opened up to new horizons I never thought possible. Yes, meant I could be the long-hidden self I could never find. If you are on a gender path of your own, I hope you can do a better job of facing your truth than I did. I kept saying no too long and missed a significant amount of my life trying to outrun myself. On the other hand, changing a gender is a huge move, and one that cannot be taken lightly. You have to get to the point where saying no is not an option to you anymore.

 

 

 

When Gender Calls

 

Image from Brooke Cagel on UnSplash. 

When I was very young, when I listened closely, I could hear the faint sound of my true gender calling me.

Please keep in mind that very early on I could not quite understand what the voice was trying to tell me. I just knew something was not right. As I grew older and started experimenting with Mom’s clothes (even to the point of shaving my legs), did I have a basic understanding of what the voice was trying to tell me. From the first view of myself in our full-length hallway mirror, I had an idea that I had arrived in the right place as I stared at the pretty girl that I had a hand in creating.

It was then that the real gender work began. The first problem I had was trying to find the private time I had to cross-dress. And once I did, when would I have the time to do it again as the gender pressure built on me every time. What I did not understand and wouldn’t for many years was that I was much more than someone who just wanted to wear pretty feminine clothing. My true gender was calling and would never be satisfied until it was properly expressed. Even though I did not fully understand the path I was on and would have to accept it over the years to come. Especially all the blind curves and stop signs I ran into. I was not prepared for all the trials and tribulations I would have to go through to even try to pursue my gender dreams which always had to do with living a transfeminine life. At that time, the phrase had not yet been invented or used, so all I knew was I wanted to be a woman with all the perceived benefits which came with it.

Jumping ahead, the benefits of living as a full-time trans woman were there but just vastly different that I thought they would be. I still had the joy of selecting and wearing pretty clothes which changed with the seasons. It turned out, some of the enjoyment was taken away when I needed to pick out an outfit every day when I gave away all my male clothes and the reality of my existence set in. I guess you could say the novelty of dressing like a woman became a necessity when my gender called.

Speaking of my gender calling, I needed to learn how to accept it when it was trying to get through in my busy life as a man. I knew who was calling all of the time, I was just afraid of facing the reality of me answering it. I ran from it until I could run no more and I had myself painted into a feminine corner of reality I could not get out of.

What I am referring to is all the nights I went out as a trans woman to be alone and ended up socializing and carving out a new life faster than I ever thought possible. Suddenly, my gender phone was ringing off the hook and demanding more and more attention. The conversations became deeper and deeper as discussions about spouses, family and jobs took center stage. At a crucial point, I needed to lose all my fears of debating the pros and cons of gender change and consider the future which increasingly looked feminine to me. I respected the world of ciswomen from all angles, and I wanted to explore my desire to fit in more and more.

Finally, my gender voice became mildly abusive and challenged me to think deeply about the life situation I was in. What was I doing by constantly fighting a situation where I felt natural and good at. For once, I put my stubborn male self behind me and listened. Sure, there were bound to be bigots and haters still on my path, but I would have to ignore them and stand up for myself. The availability of gender affirming hormones or HRT helped me a lot because the hormones softened my skin and harsh male facial angles and made it easier to present a feminine face to the public. Which in turn, gave me more confidence. For the first time in my life, my external and internal features came close to matching.

At least now, my gender voice could quit screaming and calling me stupid for the way I was trying to run my life. Then perhaps, I could answer my gender phone and think about more pressing issues such as how I was going to run my life as a successful, happy transgender woman since happiness was something which eluded me for most of my life.

During a classic “if I had known then what I know now” moment, if I had known way back in my past how deep my gender issues ran, I was so much more than someone who enjoyed wearing feminine clothes. I wanted to be a woman as my ultimate goal in life. It would have been nice too, to have other guidance to help me along in my gender dysphoria struggles. In those days, not only were there not any qualified therapists to help, but there also wasn’t even internet to refer to for information so our closets were very lonely and dark.

Certainly, the one thing missing in my closet was a phone so I could talk when gender called. Maybe it would have saved me a great amount of stress and turmoil. I say maybe because of who knows, I would have had the maturity and courage to lick up the phone and have a honest and far-reaching discussion with myself about who I really was.

Maybe, when your gender calls, there will be a real person such as a supporting spouse to talk to about your life. So many transgender women and transgender men don’t have that luxury. One way or another, pick up the phone and talk. It could be the best therapy for you.

 

 

 

No Matter Where you Go...There you Are

 

JJ Hart, Cincinnati Pride, 
Three years ago.

I always thought no matter where you go, there you are was meant to be a humorous statement, until I lived it during searching for my transgender roots.

Often, I have written about the time and effort I put into moving myself and my family as I switched jobs flutily trying to find my dream of having a feminine future. Sadly, it seemed, after a short time, I was back to where I started. Spinning my tires and getting nowhere. That person I was looking at in the mirror just would not change. When that happened, I would start taking bigger and bigger chances with my future probably hoping someone else would discover my deep dark gender secret. No one except my second wife ever did to any extent, so I was forced again to face my gender dysphoria on my own.

The problem was I was not ready to face my truth as one therapist told me that I was the only one who could make the final call on my gender needs. Would I be a man or a woman was a dauting idea for me, and for the longest time, ran from my decision.

What I tried to do was research how it would be to be a woman in the world I was in. Again, hoping I would receive a magical answer on which way I should go. As close as I came was the days which I was able to pass as a presentable ciswoman. I started doing things such as specific duties such as going to the grocery store, for example, where I was able to literally melt a teen grocery bagger in my big fluffy sweater and mini skirt which was the fashion of the day. It was eye opening because it was the first time I had ever had that sort of a reaction from a male at all. Ironically, all it did was make me feel good about my feminine self for a short time as I prepared to enter the world. No matter where I went, there I was.

Where I was, was a spot where I needed to face reality. Was I going to listen to my wife and never go out explore the world as a woman or stay at home and pass the time drinking and dreaming of the next time, I had the courage to go out. Every time the call to go out came up I had to answer to save what was left of my mental health, and I hit the road doing slutty things such as flashing semi-trucks in my miniskirts. Somehow, I was under the mistaken impression it all gave me validation as a woman. It did not and I outgrew the temptation quickly and went back to doing weekly chores such as trips to the grocery stores.

It wasn’t until much later in my life when I started to truly understand where I should be in the world. I left the gay venues I was frequenting and started exclusively going to the lesbian and straight bars all together to see if I could make it in a world that I enjoyed. In those cases where I went, there I was and I liked it. The world was a blur of excitement and trepidation as I tried more and more venues to see if I would be accepted, and I found in some I was.

Before I knew it, and had the where with all to acknowledge it, I was moving from the transgender woman image I had of myself. I was slowly becoming the best version of me, and one I had dreamed of my entire life. Being just me meant that for once, no matter where I went, there you are meant something basic to me. Getting there was never easy and I took a lot of chances, but I made it through many storms and high winds to make it. Looking back, I don’t know how I did.

Being just me brought me deep satisfaction and allowed me to allow myself to let my feminine side rule my world. There was nothing I could do about always being a transfeminine person, but being a quality version of me was going to be a work in progress as I meshed all my virtues together. The problem then became recognizing exactly what my virtues were and what I could take from living on both sides of the main gender binaries, male and female. I needed to look at the process as a blessing that few humans get to go through rather than a curse that most haters and bigots said it was.

When I took my life firmly in control and was able to surround myself with strong allies, finding out where I was stepped out of the mist and into the sunlight. In the bright light, I found I could be a nice quality person that people responded to as me, not because I was transgender.

At that point, no matter where you go, there you are became very real to me because I had landed squarely where I wanted to be. Sure, I took a long winding path to get here, but now I am finally proud to say I am just me. Certainly, I would not recommend all the running and drinking I did to anyone else but hopefully you can find your own path which brings you to the stage of just being you. And sometimes, all the things we do to survive our gender issues make for a more interesting life than most people have. At least it worked for me as I made my way through the no matter where you go, there you are phase of my life. Which turned out to be most of it. Hopefully you don’t have to take fifty years like I did to have the courage to do what is right for you.

 

More Euphoria

 

Image from Marcus Winkler 
on UnSplash.

Yesterday, I wrote a post describing the joys of gender euphoria and promptly received this comment from “Joey”:

“Hello JJ! I am Joey. I discovered your blog today from a link on Stana's blog, femulate.org I am a crossdresser who presents male while wearing tasteful, feminine outfits. I do feel some euphoria, primarily when I have been out in normal life while dressed pretty for a couple of hours, and all of the stress hormones go away. Only my wife and a few other people know about this side of my life, so it is stressful when I go out in public every week or two. But after the stress, it is very freeing and happy!”

First of all, Joey, welcome to the blog! Hope you enjoy it. The feelings you described were similar to mine too. I know I could not wait until I could shed my male clothes, wear something pretty and sample what the world had to offer for me that day before I had to go back to my old boring stressful male existence. Sure, I felt stress going out as a transgender woman when I first started to do it, but it was nothing compared to my male life. When I was mistaken for a ciswoman, my heart literally sang with joy, and the best part about it was, it all felt so natural. What a homecoming!

My only caution about seeking out more of the male to female femininization process is, it led me to take premature chances with my life. I did not understand all the layers that went into a woman’s life and the only way to gain understanding was by doing it. It was only then that I was given the opportunity to look behind the gender curtain to see what really went on. As I did, I was surprised to learn that many things were the same and women learn in their lives to keep certain things secret from men. Which is why both genders have such a difficult time understanding each other. For example, ciswomen have developed two basic ways of negotiating their lives which have to be understood by any novice transgender woman.

The first is the use of non-verbal communication. Women often give information to other women through their eyes and bypass men all together. I can’t tell you how many silent warnings I got from other women when I was in potential danger from a toxic male.  The second major lesson I learned was how to operate in the new world of passive aggressive women. I needed to have my head on a swivel to look for some other woman coming after me after she initially was smiling and was nice to me. I looked at both of these major changes in my life as just another way of playing the game, and the only problem I had was switching gears when I had to go back to my male life. I had built a career of being aggressive in my business and the change was often difficult for my mental health.

Even though the path went quite slowly for me several times in my life, on occasion, it sped up. Almost to the point of being out of control. My male self-had a unique way of saving his existence when it was on the brink of being taken away. Which made matters worse in my convoluted gender world. How could he continue to be so strong in his resistance when my gender euphoria was so strong when I was successful as a trans woman? I am sure you can understand my dilemma and perhaps have even been there yourself. Somehow, someway, I needed to arrive at a point where I did not define myself as a transgender woman. I defined myself as just me.

Sadly, that point did not come for many years in my life. As my male self-fought long and hard for his right to live on in the world he was successful in. Many times, I good old shot of gender euphoria was all I had to keep going if I was ever going to have a chance of reaching my feminine dream of attempting to live full time. Fortunately, for my life-long dreams, my gender euphoria turned out to be strong too, in its own way. Far past the feel of hose on shaved legs and the sound of my high heels when I walked, all the way to having the confidence knowing who I was. Acquiring the ability to look and another woman eye to eye and communicate on her level was so important to me as I needed to break the communication gap I had with the world when I started to live as a transgender woman.

I am aware that gender euphoria can be different for all of us as we follow our gender paths. Referring back to “Joey’s” comment that she enjoyed being tastefully dressed when she went out. That became so important to me too when I was able to begin to blend into the everyday world as I knew it. Out went the too short miniskirts, replaced my more tasteful denim skirts was a prime example. I was told my legs were always a fashion positive for me so I wanted to show them, but I learned moderation was the best way to go when it came to my male to female femininization process. When I did, my moderation led to a different kind of gender euphoria when I searched for the best way to find my dream.

Euphoria, I found, is also joy of living in a feminine world. Where I always dreamed, I could be. More importantly, once I got there and was living my dream, it was everything I thought it could be and I started to wish I had not waited so long to do it. Of course, thinking that way was just wishful thinking because we are given only one life to live.

I learned I had made the best choice I could and living as a woman was the way to do it.

 

 

Just Stay Out of My Lane

 

Image from Navid Solrabi
on UnSplash.

One of the many delights I encountered when I set out on my male to female femininization project was the amount of attention I was receiving from the ciswomen around me.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, I received very little attention from men, probably because I was not attractive enough. Even still, there were the occasional experiences when I let men into my lane out of pure curiosity. I wondered how it would be to be treated as a woman by a man on a date.

Curiously, my first date to dinner was from a lesbian who went on to transition into and live as a trans man. Later on when we talked, he always chided me about how scared I was that night. I never told him, but one of the reasons was I felt he could physically overpower me if he wanted to. One way or another, the evening was so different that I never forgot it.

Other men I ended upgoing out with in my exploration days mostly ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time to ever get serious. Take for example the big, bearded man who I grew close to after his ill-fated wedding to another exotic woman I knew. While others in the group we were a part of either shunned or made fun of him, I was the opposite, an understanding shoulder to talk to. It was so new and different to me and it felt so natural and good that I could react to a man that way. Before I knew it, he transferred out of town on his job, and I never saw him again.

The only other man of note that I enjoyed my self with was Bob, who I was able to go out with only one time because again I was in the wrong place at the wrong time to seriously get involved. Since he lived far away and was just traveling through where I lived in Ohio, we were able to set up a date in a regular sports bar I went to near Dayton, Ohio. Long story short, I let him in my lane and for the first time in my life felt like a woman on a date she enjoyed. We talked, laughed and he even sang karaoke to me. All too soon the magical night was over, and we went our separate ways after a long passionate kiss, never to meet in person again.

For some reason, I continued to be drawn to ciswomen, and them to me. I primarily think it was because most women were curious about me. What was I doing in their world and how different was I. Since women are fortunate to not have the sexuality hang ups men have, I found all but the most hard-core lesbian haters were intrigued by me. I think too, the honesty I portrayed in my life helped my appeal with the women I met who had encounters with men in their lives such as having kids. What worked for me was, I did not have to consider changing my sexuality around and I was used to the specific gender drama I would be facing with women, not men. Who of course I understood too but they did not want anything to do with me, so why bother. I was much more than a fetish object.

I was also having the time of my life as I escaped the extreme loneliness I was feeling after my wife passed away by going to lesbian mixers with my friends. I found that often I was the one doing the mixing as sometimes I was the one out of three of us who was hit on. I was in the lane I wanted to be in for sure. Plus, in many ways, I am still in that lane, as I formed a long-term relationship with one of the lesbians I met and we are still happily married to this day.

From my wife, I have been able to fill in many of the blanks I had in my gender workbook growing up as an unwilling boy. I learned not everything was pleasant as a young girl when I learned the reality of what went on in life with parents and friends. Not being allowed behind the gender curtain when I was young really took a toll on me. It took me years to catch up to what all cis women already knew, and they always made gentle fun of me and said welcome to our world. What they did not know was how badly I wanted to be in their lane.

Now that I have been in their lane for years, I have grown quite comfortable and confident in my surroundings. In fact, I feel as if I have spent my entire life here and most of my male life was a bad dream that I needed to live through to arrive at where I am today. And even though I struggled through much of my male existence, he still taught me how to be strong when I needed it. To maintain the strength to keep my lane the way I wanted it in a transfeminine world.

Even though I had many close calls and bumps and bruises along the way, my interactions with women and men let me choose the lane I wanted to be in. I consider myself to be fortunate in that I survived one of the most difficult transitions a human can undertake. Changing one’s gender is a basic human need and is never easy to change. Before you know it, you can find yourself in a bumper car-like zone and need to get out. I was especially successful when I finally chose my lane and stayed there. No more switching back and forth which was hard on my already fragile mental health. Plus, I felt good when I had the confidence to keep others out of my lane so I could experience it on my terms with no more blind curves and huge hills to climb.

 

Innocent until Proven Guilty

 

JJ Hart

In many ways, this post is an extension of yesterday’s article. It involves the constant gender dance my second wife of twenty-five years and I had through in our marriage until she passed away.

Most of the problems occurred when I could not face the truth about myself. I was much more than a casual cross-dresser and just having the occasional chance to dress in front of the mirror in my feminine clothes was just not enough to satisfy my dreams of becoming a full-fledged transgender woman someday.  That was when I entered the most shameful time of my life when I like to say, I started to cheat on my wife with another woman who happened to be me.

As with most cheating episodes, mine became very complex. First, I started innocently enough with me taking short trips out of the house by walking around our neighborhood. When I got away with that, I started driving around as a trans woman to nearby cities where no one would know me. It was when I began to gather the courage to get out of my car and start exploring clothing stores, malls and book store to name a few. Before I knew it, I was hooked and I was having lunch on my own, just to see how successful I would be as a novice trans woman. Amazingly, I found the world was mostly nice to me and I kept experimenting. Which put me directly in the crosshairs of what I pledged to my wife. That I would never go out in public as a woman. She even went as far as letting me have the money to rent a motel room where I could dress and go out.

I even abused that privilege and still left the house on a regular basis. The problem that I had was removing all the traces of makeup that I was wearing when my wife was gone and I had to pass her strict inspection when she got home. Before long, regardless of how hard I tried to remove all my makeup, I was guilty until proven innocent. My wife knew I had been out, no matter how much I lied and tried to talk my way out of it.

Once I started seriously down my gender path to trans womanhood, I can confess I was never quite innocent. I would look for any opportunity to get out and about and improve my worth in the world as a woman. To be sure, I was not proud of what I was doing, but the whole process felt so natural that I just had to keep going and challenge myself to see what was around the next corner of my life. Even though the whole lifestyle change I was going through was so scary, it was also exciting and natural. As if something deep down inside of me knew I was on the right path.

As I always say, all of the lying and sneaking around took a tremendous toll on my mental health. All of my insecurities came to light when my normally honest life was torn apart by lying so much to my wife. I guess you could say too, for a while I was lying to the world about who I was too when I first started to go out in the world. I was guilty with strangers who did not know they were interacting with who I really was, not some sort of drag act. In fact, it took me several meetings with the same people to overcome that major obstacle in my life. The last thing I wanted back in those days was to be connected with any of the negative talk show press the cross-dresser transgender community was getting. Or even worse when we were being compared to someone who was up to no good by disguising themselves as a woman to commit a crime.  As a group back then, we were guilty until proven innocent.

I was fortunate in that I managed to purge my feminine self about six months before my wife died, so at least, I could do the right thing and honor my promise to her for a short time. For a number of reasons, it was the longest six months of my life.  It turned out when she passed, I would never have to consider purging again. Except when I made the major decision to finally give away all my male clothes for the last time. The best and most complete purge I ever made.

As I reached that point in my life, I vowed that honesty would always be the best policy and I would always be innocent until proven guilty. It turned out my inner hidden female had always thought the same thing and when she had the chance to see the light of day, she made a honest attempt to do the best she could to take the ball and run with it. When that corner had been turned, it was like I had been freed from a giant weight on my shoulders. I could breathe again and be fully proud of who I had become, a whole transfeminine person.

I can’t say it enough, the days and years of lying and deception on my part was totally my doing because I did not have the courage to face who I really was. I have no excuse for my cowardice except for my male self just did not want to give up what he worked so hard to obtain.

Certainly, I would not wish any of the gender turmoil I went through on my worst enemy and if the politicians who keep passing the anti-transgender bills across the country had to walk a mile in our shoes, they may have a whole different understanding of what we transgender women and trans men face on a daily basis. Then we would be judged to be innocent until proven guilty, which we rarely are.

 

 

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.