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| Image from Vinicius Amano on UnSplash. |
I write often of the misadventures I had growing up as a gender I never wanted to be. Often my life seemed unbearable when I made a big error on the baseball field or missed a key tackle on the football field, causing my team to lose. When I did, the only thing I knew to do was to run home to my dresses and makeup and do my best to tune out all the noise of male failure in my head. If I could not be a good athlete, maybe I could try to be a pretty girl.
To make matters worse, the older I got, the more noise kept
popping up in my head. Especially from my male side, who was increasingly watching
any chance o a future he had slip away. Successes such as making it through the
military, and job promotions did not help either.
As the probability of a male to female gender transition
increased, the noise did too. Mainly because I noticed an increase in the male world,
I was never have been a part of. Perhaps, it was because I was thinking about
leaving it anyhow, so I was looking for sure if I wanted to.
One of the sounds I noticed the most were coming from the
alpha-males who were posturing for a better place in the world. Since in many
ways, my job forced me to be successful in my competition with the alpha’s (as
well as my upbringing) I could listen to the noise and tell exactly where it
was coming from and how I could compete. Which ultimately led me down a path I
had no desire to be on.
The further I traveled along the transgender path I was on,
the more I noticed the noise from both sides of the gender border increasing as
I stopped to look around at one of the many stop signs I had along the way. Sometimes
the screaming from both sides reached a pitch I could barely stand as each side
was yelling, they were better. To make matters worse, my male side had most all
the advantages which he used to his benefit when he stated his claim on my
life. Afterall, he had been there from the beginning and had taken the time and
effort to learn how the male world operated and how he could fit it. All my
feminine side could do then was continue to cross-dress in front of my favorite
mirror and dream of an uncertain future.
The one main thing she had going for her was she had the
advantage of feeling natural when she was allowed to express herself in the
world. It was a powerful emotion which at least kept the male screaming down to
a minimum, for a while. What always happened was, I had a several days of
gender euphoria after I cross-dressed which would sadly fade when I mentally
and physically had to go back to my male world. Which was far from being a
mellow existence. The gender headphones I was continually trying to wear in
life never seemed to work well. Even to the point of causing so much guilt, I
would purge (throw away) my feminine clothes and vowed to never wear them again.
You know how ell that worked as my female side screamed louder and louder to
once again be a bigger part of my world and I would be forced to give in.
The sad part about all the noise I was subjected to internally
and externally by my gender dysphoria was wrecking my fragile mental health. I
never bargained, ever having to deal with the stress of having to bargain with
two of the main binary genders ripping my life apart. I only survived by taking
advantage of finally listening to good therapists who told me that my gender issues
would never just go away and would always be a part of me. I guess you could say
that it was therapy which helped me cut through all the noise and essentially saved
my life from being extremely self-destructive.
Finally, when the noise reached a fever pitch, I needed to
take drastic measures to do something about it That is when I went on an aggressive
all-out push to see what a ciswoman’s world was all about and better yet, could
I ever be accepted into it. My so-called discovery tour took me out of the worlds
of dark gay venues into the lights of straight places such as TGIF Fridays
which back in those days was becoming a safe venue for single women to go to. To
do what I wanted to do, I needed to put my extreme fear of discovery behind me
and see if I could survive in Fridays. When I did, a portion of my noise
suddenly made sense to me, and I realized what I needed to do to tune out the
rest.
I was proving to myself that there was nothing wrong in what
I was doing, and I was starting to ignore all the panic warnings I was receiving
from my male side about what I would lose if I left him behind to follow a
feminine road. The best part was, the more I started to listen to the feminine
noise, it made me feel better about where my life was heading. Even though many
of the things I was trying scared me to death, as I succeeded in each step, I
was building a calm confidence I would never lose.
Of course, the more my feminine noise clamed me and made me
whole, my male noise started to subside to a low whimper. Gone were the days of
being lonely and searching for my gender identity when I discovered ciswomen
lesbian friends who gave me mine. As they taught me more about validating my
own womanhood than they ever knew they did.
Very soon I even healed from my destructive days of listening
to all that male noise and was able to throw those old gender headsets aside
and live my dream life.
Hey you!!!! Thanks for reading along with how I escaped my
male gender noise and maybe it can help you escape yours too. In any case thanks
for being here!
