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| JJ Hart |
As I crossed the six-decades portion of my life and spent at least five decades of it trying to stay under control by cross-dressing, I was trapped and had nowhere else to go.
It happened because I had embarked on such a complete path
of looking like and moving like a ciswoman and my gender bucket list was
shrinking due to too much use. All the trips to malls, antique stores, and thrift
stores just became boring when I was passing through them with no problems. Even
though I was bored, the idea of being successful as a transfeminine person
still consumed me. And, to make matters worse, I was finding less challenges to
undertake as I increasingly painted myself into a gender corner I had always
dreamed about but never thought I could reach.
I always made excuses such as I was never going to be good
looking enough to present well in the new world I was seeking when truthfully my
overall confidence as a trans woman had more to do with my approval than my
appearance ever did once I had went beyond the basic point I needed to be to
blend in with the ciswomen around me. Life changed when I realized there were
plenty of women in the world who dealt with being bigger in stature and even
had broad shoulders such as I had. My realizations helped to give me the boost
I needed to continue to let my so called “hobby” consume me.
The reason was that I was ignoring the fact that cross-dressing
was much more than a hobby, it was becoming a lifestyle. The biggest problem
was that nothing I did as a novice trans woman was ever good enough. Even my second
wife did not like the person I was becoming when I took the time and effort to
show off to her as I thought were my best feminine efforts. Even though I
desperately was seeking her approval, it was becoming obvious to me that my inner
feminine self and my wife were lining up to fight it out. I was left behind to
pick up the pieces as I was realizing how consumed I was when I had one of my rare,
sanctioned (by my wife) outings at Halloween in NYC when my wife decided she
did not want to go with me. The night turned out to be a dream evening as I ended
up going out with four other women dressed to thrill as I was and they all
happened to be as tall as I was in our heels. The night even ended on a high
note when I was asked to dance by a guy in the venue we went to. I turned him
down because he had no idea that I had one basic difference from the other woman
I came with.
Anytime I experienced such a wonderful evening such as that
Halloween party, I wondered if the gender euphoria I felt was worth it when I
came crashing down. I was consumed with the moment and wanted to re-live it
time and time again, but I was tucked away in my male work world and could not
get out. Looking back, I don’t see now how I survived the balancing act I was
putting myself through. I needed to physically show up as the man I never
wanted to be. While at the same time spend all my mental energy remembering the
transgender woman, I was. If I could have cried during that time in my life, I
am sure I would have cried myself to sleep many nights worrying about my gender
dysphoria and how it always threatened to wreck my life. Even to the point of
almost destroying my marriage to the woman I loved deeply when my frustrations
would boil over into yet another fight about me. Some of the fights were so
severe that my second wife told me I was not man enough to be a woman, or why didn’t
I just go away and fix the problem and make both of us happier.
Perhaps, by this time, you are wondering too why I did not
take her advice and do it. The main reason was, at that time, I was not ready
to give up totally on the life we had together when I was a man and even though
I was increasingly being consumed by the idea I could be the trans woman I
always dreamed of, I was not ready to pull the cord and jump out of the plane
just yet. Because I was still afraid of the new gender heights I was reaching
and selfish enough to think my wife may still come around to accept me. For
those of you who don’t know, she never did and died tragically of a massive
heart attack at the age of fifty.
The whole experience sent me into a major negative tailspin which
I had a difficult time emerging from. I think the only reason that I did was
because I had let my feminine self-consume me, and she could not wait for the
opportunity to take over and live. My life had come full circle, and all the
time and effort I put into my male to female femininization came back to help
me. I had already put the work into how I wanted to look with my make-up and
fashion basics and was already out into the world actually discovering how it
would be to carve out a new transfeminine life for my very own. I had gotten
what I needed as I moved ahead towards beginning HRT or gender affirming
hormones. Which were something I always wanted to try as part of my overall commitment
to being as close as possible to being who I always was destined to be.
When life consumed me, I was always somehow able to accept
it and even thrive with it. Even though it took me decades to do it with all
the ups and downs of what I had to go through. At the least, it made life
interesting.
