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| Image from Andy Arjun on UnSplash. |
Binge cross-dressing happened a lot to me when I was quite young.
Once I was able to scrape together my meager finances to put
together a small wardrobe of feminine clothes that barely fit me, I could not
stay away from wearing them more and more. In fact, I was able to come up with
two main hiding places away from the prying eyes of my family and most
importantly, my slightly younger brother. It was about that time that I really
became involved with binging in my new clothes which I felt made me look like a
pretty girl.
Very soon, regardless of the risk involved with me cross-dressing
as a girl, I was doing it as much as I could get away with. I think now that my
mom had to know something about my cross-dressing but was either afraid to say
anything about such a complex subject or thought it was a phase that would go
away. Obviously, the joke was on her. My wanting to be a woman never did go away;
I just matured into it. Plus, back in the late 1950’s and early 1960's, there
was very little good information about gender issues to deal with, so we were
on our own as gender issues were called mental illnesses. Which even I knew at
such a young age was not true. For all I knew at the time, I really liked experimenting
with mom’s clothes and makeup and binge dressing was becoming routine.
As I said, once I began to mature into being a more accomplished
cross-dresser (even before I considered myself transgender) I managed to dress
more and more. I was even able to buy a beautiful long blond human hair wig
that she hated and I loved. Finally, after I changed girlfriends, she went away
and I kept the most important part of the relationship to me which of course
was the wig. It brought me to a whole other level of cross-dressing away from
Halloween wigs into the real deal. Back in the 1960’s when miniskirts were in,
I could not wait until I could find a chance to slide on pantyhose and miniskirt
and top it all off with my blond wig. Yes, I did binge any chance that I got!
Sadly, my binge dressing needed to come to a complete halt
during my military years in the Army. Instead of worrying about how short I
could wear my miniskirts, I had a more immediate and important problem of how
to deal with weapons and drill sergeants in Army basic training. How I survived
was that I put all my fond memories of cross-dressing in the back of my head
and daydreamed about the future I knew I could have shaving my legs again and
binge dressing as a woman.
After I served my time in the military, the only immediate release
I had from all the tension I felt to be feminine at all was with all the many
and varied Halloween parties I went to. During that time, I went from being a
French woman with my blond hair, black outfit, tights and beret, all the way to
professional woman one year when I was mistaken for a ciswoman just getting off
work. The good news was I was learning a lot, and the bad news was Halloween
only came about once a year. I needed desperately to find another way to binge
with a purpose and express myself as a transgender woman. A term I was
beginning to accept as my own.
Once I began to accept who I was, I needed to set out to
prove it to myself and the world that I could live my truth. It was then that
my binging took a whole different direction from where I was before. Thanks to
the basic acceptance I gained from successful Halloween parties, I had the
confidence to know I could look the part and blend in with society as another
ciswoman. Little did I know then, the hardest part of my male to female femininization
project was yet to come.
It took me finally getting out of the gay bars I regularly went
to for some sort of validation I never received and into being accepted as a regular
in many of the straight venues I went to and enjoyed as a man. My validation as
a regular gave me the confidence to keep trying to improve myself as a
transgender woman rounding out her life in the world. As I achieved goal after
goal I set up on my trans bucket list, I really binged out every chance that I
got which put me into a direct collision with my second wife who did not want to
live with another woman and my male self who was dead against giving up his
life all together.
By all out gender binging, I had set myself up for an
internal war I was fortunate to survive. It took me all I could do to keep all my
lives together as the years progressed. All I knew was I was able to carve out
a dream existence as a transfeminine person. No one knew of my male past, and I
loved experiencing every moment of my new life. Deep down, for once I felt I
was fighting my self when I was binging as a trans woman and expressing my true
self.
By turning back, the clock the best I could, I tried to take
the best that I learned from my male life and apply it to building a solid base
for my female life. I think it worked because I was able to decide which of my
male baggage was important enough to bring along and I benefitted from being
blessed with a long life, so I can see a number of important things come full
circle (which is another blog post.)
The bottom line is I have always been an impulsive person
which helped me all the times I just had to binge to satisfy my needs. Dealing
with my gender issues was just an integral part of that.
