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| Image from Malvestida on UnSplash. |
I had many years in my life to make a crucial decision on which way I was going to lead my life. Continue in the male box I was put into by mistake at birth or continue the path I was taking into a fully feminine world.
I say many years because it took me approximately fifty
years of cross-dressing in the mirror and then the world to figure out if I
wanted to finally take the final steps, I needed to do to lead my dream life as
a transgender woman. The funny thing about life is that now the half a century
seemed to go by so fast, but when I was doing it, it was very slow.
Along the way, I had many of the usual suspects crop up I
used as excuses as why I did not transition earlier. Such as, having a severe
lack of information because I was born into the pre-internet era, or was I
cross-dressing just because of the thrill of the clothes or the danger of getting
caught. My whole life hung in the balance when I was doing my best to look like
a pretty girl because if I was caught, I knew I would have a trip to a psychiatrist
in my future who would say I was mentally ill. At such an early age I knew that
what I was doing as my cross-dresser self-did not make me mentally ill. All I
wanted to do was live a life among the girls I saw at school and put my male
life behind me.
Before I could even consider living a fully feminine life
such as a new term which I read about (transgender) on the internet, I would
have a ton of living and researching my future to do. I was only seeing one
side of a ciswoman’s existence which was the good side with all the pretty
clothes and hair which was the external side. Before I could see what ciswomen
had to do to get there, I would have a lot of living to do before I could ever
be admitted to the girls’ club for good.
Undoubtably, the biggest mistake I made was not moving forward
into my male to female femininization world faster than I did because femininization
came from the inner self for me. Much more I found than the purely external
femininization I thought that I was facing. So, I often miscalculated what I
was doing as a novice transgender woman. Among many other things, I had to outgrow what
I call my teen girl cross-dressing years when all I wanted to do was wear my
clothes too short or too tight for my testosterone poisoned body shape. Once I found
how wrong that was, I could move forward into being able to blend in with the
world of ciswomen my age.
As I left my teen cross-dressing years, I was able to expand
my search for my true self even further. I made mental lists for myself on what
I should try next in my feminine life. Or what could I do to see if I really
wanted to give up the successful male life I was living. A life that was very
good when it was good and terribly bad when I was suffering from my reoccurring
gender dysphoria. It all made coming up with my final big decision such a hard
one to make.
Still, I did not stop my constant research on whether I
could make it as a transfeminine person. All it really did was add years on to
my final decision, as I added layer upon layer of trans woman experiences to
fall back on. Some were bad, but most were good which encouraged me to move on.
Without the help often from anyone to guide me, I went the “Trial and Error”
route as I hoped my errors in a women’s world would not be too embarrassing. I
was successful more times than not because I let the other ciswomen in my world
take the lead, and I could sit back and learn from them. It was quite the
change from my old male self who was trained to always take the lead.
I can call it what I want, but destiny finally came along
and opened my gender changing doors for me. I was able to be approved by a
doctor and a therapist for HRT or gender affirming hormones. Which was the
final nail in the coffin for my old male self who was on his last legs anyhow. I
was all alone after my second wife passed away, so I did not have to explain my
gender differences to anyone else for a change. I even set out to prove I was
not wrong in my choices when I tried and failed to date women as a man again
and I even tried to date cismen as a trans woman to determine once and for all
my sexuality as a person. I was firmly in the female camp and was encouraged by
all the extra attention I was receiving from women and even lesbians as I
changed my life.
I ended up giving my male self-more chances than he deserved
which wasted more precious years of my life. But I was able to overcome my
timely errors by meeting my wife Liz online. Fourteen years later we are still together
and hopefully even though she did not get the rest of me, she got the best of
me. Because of Liz, it was easier for me to make my final decision to transition
out of my male life forever.
I was able to overcome the wasted male years of my life as I
pondered if I could live my dream. I just have always wanted the time back,
which of course is impossible. Having the chance to survive a life as a “Yo-Yo”
gender has provided me the chance to live out a positive life. Once I decided
to go all out and live it. I should have realized years ago when it was
decision time when it came to my gender.
