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| Image from Jarle Johnasen on UnSplash. |
It is a lonely world for many transgender women and transgender men as we journey along our dark gender paths.
As I always point out, like so many of you, I got a late
start on filling out my gender workbook on how I was even going to begin a
transfeminine life. Before the word was even invented. I was not invited to any
overnight stays with the girls I admired so much to take advantage of early make-up
tips and even feminine peer pressure on the clothes I was wearing to do a better
job of looking the best I could in front of the mirror. Ironically, I was
probably ahead of most girls age-wise when I started wearing makeup and shaving
my legs, but I did not know that because I was not allowed behind the gender
curtain to play in the girls’ sandbox.
Looking back, I thought for a while there was always a chance
I was going through some sort of a phase and I just could not be the only boy
in the world with a strong desire to be a woman someday.
To make matters worse, I was always exceedingly shy back in
those days which made me an introvert, and I had a tendency to not trust
others. That would manifest itself much later in life when I had a very
difficult time making close friends. Especially with other men. Who I thought
would never understand my deepest darkest secret which by then I knew was no innocent
phase in life I was going through. Not surprisingly after a while, I lost most
of my shyness around ciswomen and enjoyed my time with them even more. Even
though my true motives were never revealed that I just wanted to be like them
in the worst way possible and I was just trying to see what it took to live
their lives.
Even though I was still married to a couple of very different
women through this portion of my life who knew of my cross-dressing desires and
did the best I could to surround myself with other women, deep down inside I
was still lonely. It never occurred to me why and what I could do about it for
years. I just never realized for the longest time that I was living much of my
life completely backwards. I was never meant to be a man and was forced into it
by a cruel twist of fate I could do nothing about. Being a woman trying to live
as a man put a terrific strain on me and caused me to constantly dwell on what
I was doing wrong to feel so lonely.
When I finally made it out of my gender closet and into the
world, my loneliness amazingly began to go away when I started to interact with
other women. While men shunned me, ciswomen were curious why I was in their world.
When they found out I was not some sort of fraud and a honest human being, it
was OK to talk on a shallow level. Which was fine with me because I was so
lonely after my second wife unexpectedly passed away. Her death taught me to
never take anything for granted again and I set out to live more deeply as the
transgender woman I was becoming. Just breaking down the gender barriers I was doing
was never enough to get behind the gender curtain. I needed to do more.
Primarily, I needed to learn all over again how to talk to people.
Mainly women but also men. Women I found came at me from all different directions
and practiced a lot of nonverbal communication. I needed to practice the art of
passive aggressiveness also when I found a smiling woman was not necessarily a
friendly one. Until I proved to be up to the gender communication challenge,
life became very interesting. Perhaps you have noticed that for the most part I
left men out because for the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by
me, because with most of the men I did encounter, all I did was soothe their
ego. Payback I guess from all the time I spent in the male world.
By this time in my life, I was looking at being sixty
directly in the eye and could see very few avenues available to me to combat
the extreme loneliness I felt at the time and had just figured I would have to
spend the rest of my life by myself. As someone once said, the darkest hour is
always right before the dawn and that is what happened to me. I already had my
casual lesbian friends who met with me several times a week to watch sports and
drink beer until my current wife came along online of all places and we cemented
a wonderful relationship. Firat of all, Liz made me a believer in myself again.
A confidence I had always had as a man but never as a trans woman.
Unbelievably, destiny had worked its magic, and I found
someone to love in the world again and we lived close enough to make a romance
work. As long as we are together (over twelve years now), we will not have to
experience any lonely days in a cold world ever again.
For those of you who want to know more about how I did it
was the only way I made it out was putting myself out there in that same cold
world. I had to battle my fears by going out in big straight sports bars and
becoming a regular. And, beat all the long odds to find a romantic partner on
an online dating site. My big break came in the sports bars when a bartender I
knew as a regular set me up with her single lesbian mother who I am friends
with to this day. My moral to the story was I needed to put myself out there
before I could reap the benefits, but I know the world has changed and you have
to be careful.
One way or another, we transgender women and trans men live
in a potentially very lonely world which is a shame because we have so much
more to offer than the average human because we have seen so much in our lives.
Thanks for reading along and contributing with claps and comments!
Hopefully I can come up with something meaningful to you.
