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| Image from Chase Li on UnSplash. |
Often, I write about running home to dress in my skirts and put makeup on to hide the failures I was feeling as a male.
My plan worked well until I discovered I was advancing so
far and so quickly as a novice cross dresser or young transgender girl, I was unknowingly
destroying my hiding place. Someone turned the light on in my closet and
suddenly I had nowhere to go. I needed to come up with a plan to come out swinging
or I was doomed. In addition, I still had to be very careful not to be caught
and end up in a psychiatrist’s office declaring me mentally ill. Then I would
really have nowhere to hide.
The better I became at the art of makeup and dressing
myself, the more I needed to consider what I was doing and wondering if I
should come out swinging at all. The problem continued to be, I was building more
male privileges in the life I was living. My life was like shadow boxing myself
as I sought out answers. Like most of you, I was risking a lot as I came closer
to pushing all my life’s chips to the center of table and betting it all on the
fact I was a transgender woman all along.
Then I went into my highly recommended experimentation years
of my life. In order to have any sort of an idea if I wanted to live as a
transgender woman, I needed to walk a mile in my new high heeled shoes. Those
were the scary yet exciting nights when I escaped the gay venues I was going to
and began to attempt to establish myself as a regular in lesbian and other
straight venues I was used to going to as a man. When I did, I discovered I
needed to make another transition from serious cross dresser to transgender woman
exploring the world. To my amazement I was successful when I went to venues
such as TGI Fridays and socialized with other professional women. Maybe I did
not have to swing so hard after all to escape the dark confines of my gender
closet.
To be sure, I still had setbacks when I came out into such a
different world, but I had enough gender euphoria to realize I could live out
my dream if I worked hard enough at it. At first, I suffered from the “what I
thought a feminine life would be” syndrome. I was trying to put all those years
of closely watching how women lived into actual practice without paying my dues
in the world. While I resented the fact, no one would let me see behind the
cisgender woman gender curtain, I was becoming a victim which did me no good in
the short or long term. So what if I did not understand what I was doing wrong,
I just had to figure it out and do better.
One of my major problems was solved when I finally came to
the conclusion I was never going to be accepted as a cisgender woman, but I
could find my own version of womanhood on my own path. That is when I started
to wear only one wig, settled on one name and began to build a new serious life
as a transfeminine person in the world. As I settled into a new life, I found
that many people (especially women) appreciated my honesty in a world of fake
people. I was surprised at all the female attention I received and was relieved
I did not have to attempt to change my sexuality.
The more I changed, it seemed the more I stayed the same as
my long hidden feminine soul took control finally. I was dealing with life on a
one-to-one basis for a change without having to swing away all the time just to
survive. As HRT hormones entered my life, it was just another example to me of
what took me so long. My body took to the gender affirming hormones flawlessly
and I was off to yet another transfeminine adventure. My age and hormonal
status led me down a new road of dealing with confrontations, no more could I
try to macho my way through trouble, I needed to take the feminine path and try
not to get into a situation I could not get out of before it happened. Or no
more swinging away for me. I needed to use my brain for a change.
As I have pointed out in previous posts, I was never a good athlete and
could never hit a curveball when I tried to play baseball. I finally took it
all to heart and quit trying to hit a curveball altogether and settled into watching
the boys play baseball (and girls too) when I did not have to play. I was tired
of banging my head against a hard gender wall and ended up where I always should
have been as a transgender woman. I just wish I had not been so stubborn when I
was doing it and had shed my male self-long before I did.
