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| Image from Daiga Elaby on UnSplash. |
Before I get started on today’s post, I would like to mention Mother’s Day, and all it means to me. First of all, it gives me the chance to remember all the problems my mom went through to have me. Such as, going through three still born babies before my parents kept trying and had me. Without their determination, I would not be here today. Which is the main reason why I adopted my mom’s first name as my legal name when I changed it years ago.
Plus, even though my mom and I were much alike and fought quite
a bit through my youth, I managed to use her as a roll model as I slowly grew
into the daughter, she never accepted having. I view her now as a one of kind
woman who presented herself to me as an unknowing roll model. Happy Mother’s
Day to all of you reading today who may be ciswomen and birthed your own
children! We all know how important you are to the world. If your mom is still
around, do your best to try to bridge the gender gap. Although I was never able
to do it with mine before she passed away years ago.
Now, on to the post for today which has to do with my remaining
male gender and how he got in the way of my transfeminine progress in life. I
already mentioned the fights I had with my mom as she taught me to fight like
she did. Bring anything you could think of to make sure you have at least a
decent chance of winning the battle you were in. I think she indirectly taught
me valuable lessons about fighting as a girl because I had to resort to being
mental and not physical with my fighting.
As it turned out, just the aspect of having fights with
other males never materialized much with me as I was growing up. I tried to
hide behind liking sports and cars to hide my true love of fashion and makeup
to keep the bullies away and for the most part it worked. It also worked when I
failed at trying something such as sports, getting beat, and having the chance
to run home and soothe my feelings behind one of my favorite dresses and makeup.
This plan was all well and good when I was just dealing with
just minor athletic events and became much more serious when it came to
activities such as work and life in general. I quickly learned that if I was to
be successful, I could not just take my feelings home and cross-dress, I needed
to stay there and fight. I needed to push hard to keep my transgender issues at
bay and take care of myself. Even though in the background, my feminine self
was always waiting to get out and thrive in the world. Sort of like that app on
your computer which is always running in the background. Because every
situation I faced, I secretly wondered how I would face it as a trans woman. At
that point, I needed to face the real possibility that I would just have to experiment
with new situations in life from the view that ciswomen do.
That was when I got out of the gay venues I was going to and
back into the straight venues I had grown used to going to as a man. Of course,
I found the entire process to be extremely terrifying yet natural as I settled
down into my new world. A world where I did not have to worry about what my
feminine instincts were telling me as I was actively acting upon them. I was
free and gender for once was not getting in my way. All I had to worry about
was my fear of discovery disrupting my new life.
To my surprise, most of the world around me did not seem to
care there was a novice trans woman around them. No one screamed “Hey! That’s a
man” when I entered the room and at the worse all I received in response was a
few stares. Mostly from women. When I did, I always made sure to stand up
straight and try to make eye contact if a could as if to say what is wrong with
you? There is nothing wrong with me. As we all know, humans are like sharks in
the water who are attracted to blood. When I showed the hard-earned confidence,
I gained to project my authentic feminine self, the sharks left me alone. I can’t
emphasize enough though the bumps and bruises I took to my ego to find the much-needed
confidence to get by.
I did get by and stopped most all my gender battles which
helped me to end all the self-destructive behavior I had carried around with me
for decades. It certainly took a while for all the emotional scarring to go
away and for me to clean up my act. As I always say, it was like a huge weight
was lifted off my shoulders when I finally gave in to the transfeminine person
I always was meant to be. And I was allowed to continue to fill out my gender
workbook as I was socialized in the world of ciswomen by the small group of women
friends, I had built around me. I was able to learn a little or a lot from all
of them except for one. Which was my biggest issue…
In other words, the biggest boulder on my path to move was
getting my male gender out of the way. He was stubborn and hung on to his male
privileges as long as he could. All to no avail. I finally had to give up on
trying to use all my old male strength to help me and resorted to a more
feminine approach of slowly chipping away at portions of the rock. Success led
to more success and before I knew it, I had a new exciting path to my future open
for me ahead. It was bright, exciting and I never wanted to even think about
going back.
