Running from the Pain

 

Image from jc 
gellidon on UnSplash

Most certainly, I know I am not alone running from the pain of my gender dysphoria.

Most of you have been through it also. You know it takes a great amount of effort to out-run your issues. For me, it has been a survival of the fitness scenario. I was stuck between the proverbial gender rock and the hard place. Exactly between the two primary binary genders, or male and female. Of course I was raised male and often resented it. When I did resent where I was in life, I just became more and more frustrated and the pain set in. 

As the pain set in I had two alternatives as I saw it. Internalize the fact I was transgender or run from it. At the time, I hit a personal wall I didn't even know was there. When I became tired of totally internalizing my gender issues, I set out to outrun them. I ran from my native Ohio to the suburbs of New York City then back again to rural Southern Ohio along the Ohio River. At the same time, I was switching jobs almost as fast as I was changing my shoes. I was fortunate in that I was in an industry which was expanding rapidly and there were quite a few new job opportunities to be had. At least when I landed a new job, I had the opportunity to take my mind off of my true problems. 

None of the running worked and the pain increased. The only things I learned were there were pockets of acceptance wherever I went, including unlikely ones such as Parkersburg, West Virginia which had a small but active LGBTQ community. The problem became I could not become too involved with any transgender related activities without resistance from my second wife. So again my frustration and pain increased because I was so close yet so far away. 

Finally, I could stand it no longer and needed to face up to my gender problems. At the time, I was increasingly exploring the world as a transgender woman. At one point, I was even living half and half male and female. I was learning I had much more energy when I was in the feminine world than when I was living as a man. Even when I faced giving up all my hard earned male privileges. Increasingly, I shed a majority of my gender pressure and decided for sure I was transgender and then go for a life which reflected my new decision.  Since I had cross dressed so long I figured I was doing something  right especially when I felt so energized and natural in my life. I will forever remember the exciting yet scary night when I decided to do away with my male life and transition into a feminine world.

By doing so, I put my pain behind me and could stop all the running I was doing. It felt so good to relax and take a breath after all those years of running. Initially, I did not know how to act with all the gender freedom I was experiencing. Of course I learned to live a new life I had only ever dreamed of and was able to actually bring a portion of my old male baggage with me and discard the rest.

Baggage is actually a topic for another post but simply put, trying to carry all the extra baggage of two genders was exhausting. I don't see now how I did it but I survived, barely at times. Running from my pain nearly got to me and led me to suicide. Life then went full circle and I was paid back with the help of friends together we pushed back what was left of my male self and my female self prospered.

Sink or Swim

Image from Trans Wellness Event. 
Jessie Hart Archives. 

Many times when I first entered the world as a new cross dresser or femininized male, I wondered if I was going to sink or swim.  

Leaving the mirror (who never lied to me) was difficult because the public didn't lie either and let me know if I blended in with other women or looked like a clown. Of course when I was stared at or laughed at I sank to depths of depression as I thought I was in too deep and would never make it to my transgender dreams. 

I discovered sometimes the hard way when I was out in the world, I could not turn back and needed to stick it out, even when the going got tough. It included the times that got so bad when I was laughed at. Then, something deep inside of me kept saying move on because times would get better. Similar to when I learned to swim at an early age, I gained confidence in the water and I began to swim onwards and learned women's fashion, hair and makeup which came closer to flattering me. 

Often my biggest problem was myself. My old male ego was telling me I needed to try to look a certain way when the opposite was true. I needed to blend in with other women in the venues I was going to which was especially important when I made it out of the gay venues I was going to and into the world I was used to as a man. Perhaps I was mistaken for a drag queen in the gay bars because I was dressing as one. Slowly but surely I started to be accepted as a transgender woman in the preferred venues I went out to and I began to swim with the big girls. By doing so I accepted the extra challenge of communicating with them. Far beyond just appearing as one of them.

As I always say, women lead a much more layered lives than men and here I was right in the middle of them trying to swim with the current. Which at times was difficult to do. I had so much to learn in a very short period of time. In order to not sink in the situation I was in  It took me tons of lonely soul searching to figure out if I was moving my life in the right direction and was losing all my white male privileges worth it. Of course you know I knew it was and I kept swimming towards my dream of living as a transgender woman. 

I was lucky when women along the way threw me life jackets to keep me afloat in my time of need. Their efforts just helped me to decide somehow I wanted to be more like them. If I survived my male to female gender transition, maybe then I could pay it forward and help other novice transgender women. Which is the primary reason I write. Most certainly I am biased but I think crossing the gender frontier is one of the most difficult tasks a human can undertake, so any assistance is good assistance Especially when we are swimming against the tide of society. 

Hopefully, if you are becoming tired or confused during your gender swim, I can throw you my version of a life jacket or boat. You can beat society's system and succeed if you are careful and keep trying. I sank so low once I tried severe self harm (suicide) to myself and was lucky I made it to the surface and survived. I bring it up simply as an example for those who think being transgender is some sort of a choice. It's what happens when trans women or men are round pegs being forced into square holes and never given the chance to sink or swim.

There are many ways to find your way to womanhood as a transgender woman, you just need to be patient until you find your path.

It was All so Natural

Image from the Jessie Hart Archives. 

Even though I was facing tremendous hurdles as a cross dresser and/or novice transgender woman, everytime when gender times became tough, I kept on trying. Mainly because deep down  I felt so natural when I was cross dressed head to toe as a girl my age.

Although the time I was cross dressed felt so good, the length of time I was able to do it was never enough. Had I had more knowledge back then, I would have realized I was a transgender person. A big difference to me from only being a part-time male who enjoyed cross dressing in women's clothes. As I discovered more and more about myself, I discovered I was a woman cross dressing as a man during the majority of my life. I only knew I was not enjoying or was being fulfilled as a guy. The whole lifestyle never felt natural to me. 

As time went by, I increasingly followed the natural path no matter how difficult it proved to be. More often or not, I encountered very many severe twists and turns. Again, I was encouraged by the natural moments I experienced when I finally encountered the public as a trans woman. It was like the path had big sign boards along the way with directions on how to proceed. Or once I made it to a certain spot in my new gender life, I could set new goals. The example I always use was when I started to progress past just going shopping in clothing stores where they didn't care if I was a man dressed as a woman or not (because my money was green) and began to challenge myself in restaurants where I needed to interact one on one with the serving staff.  

From there, my goals became to refine and test my restroom skills if nature called during one of my longer outings. It was during some of my restroom visits when I  really needed to feel natural and spread my gender wings. I found out quickly I needed to be able to look other women in the eye and smile even though I was very scared. 

Through it all, I lived and was able to move forward towards new enticing goals of living life as a transgender woman. It was during this period of my life when I began to seriously consider moving forward with gender affirming hormones. Sadly, my second wife was very much against any idea of me being on hormones saying if she had wanted to marry a woman, she would have looked for one. In other words, she didn't sign up to live with another woman, trans or not. I loved her deeply and no matter how difficult it was, I tried to honor her wishes until her untimely death after we had been married twenty five years. 

Her rejection of any idea of me moving forward with HRT just put an extra strain on my mental health which in turn, led to a suicide attempt. Following the attempt, I tried yet another "purge" of my feminine wardrobe which of course didn't work. It wasn't too long after my final purge, she passed away very suddenly from a massive heart attack. As I write about often, her death was the ultimate shock to my system because I was always so self destructive there was no way I thought I would out-live her but I did.

When I did, I decided it was time to live my dream of being a full-time transgender woman. I took the natural path and never looked back.  

Living in Your Own Prison

 

Image from Engin Akyurt
on UnSplash

When someone says living a life as a transgender woman or trans man is a choice I get a huge chuckle. 

I wish the people who think my life was a choice, needed to live a small time in my shoes and  then they could truly decide my life was never a choice. I was living in my gender prison. In many ways, I could describe my confines to a bigger version of what was called my personal closet. Either way, I was stuck in a very dark and isolated space where I was all alone. Especially in the pre-internet days when I was living.

When the internet came along with social media, I was able to locate a few others who were cross dressers or transgender women , which made life a little easier in my prison. My biggest problem then became hiding my new on-line contacts from my wife who was more tech savvy than I was. Let's just say I needed to learn the hard way when my wife found a discussion I was having with a person in nearby Indiana and I had to become much too comfortable with.

Looking back, I could call the few, brief times when I tried to purge my feminine wardrobe and be a full time man as being out of my prison on parole. The problem was deep down I knew what I was doing was wrong and the pressure would build to build a new feminine wardrobe and try again in front of the mirror. I could almost predict when I would go back to my gender prison. 

Yet another casualty of me serving time in my closet was one I always mention, my mental health. Since it was already fragile and I was going to therapy for help, I didn't need any extra problems to push me closer to the edge.  I was becoming a hot mess as I took more and more chances when I left the house as my novice transgender self and explored the world. The problem became, I was feeling more and more natural when I escaped my prison. Even still, the process was not easy and involved too much scary trial experiences when I first went out. 

The entire process became all I thought about and when I was in my my male mode I caught myself thinking too much of the next time I was going to be able to experience life as a transgender woman. Plus, at the least I was busy studying the mannerisms of all the cis-women around me. I was locked in to one thing only and it was being a woman myself. It was a good thing I had my therapist to talk out my exploding feelings about my gender. 

I guess the only frustrating part of trying to explain to the outside world what it means to be transgender is there was no choice. If I would have continued in my self destructive male ways, I would have killed myself and become yet another statistic. Fortunately, destiny had other ideas for me when I escaped my gender prison and started to live an authentic life as a trans woman. Similar to so many others in the transgender community I was a survivor and thrived when I was free to do so. 

Un-Common Risks as a Trans Girl

Liz on left. Date Night. 

Most people undertake a risk or two as they make their way to the undertaker in the end. 

When you come right down to it, which person you chose to marry is a risk as well as which profession you choose. Transgender women and trans men seem to have an added layer of risk in their lives. Along the way as we pursue a gender transition, we have to make many difficult choices which aren't really choices at all. They are paths we have to follow or face devastating self harm to ourselves. Which results in extremely high suicide rates in the transgender community. 

When we are growing up in a world where our families often don't accept us, the entire process makes the risk factor even more important. I am so blessed to have a daughter who completely accepts and supports her transgender child and I am proud to have been a role model for my grandchild to follow but it wasn't easy. 

When it came to my marriages, seemingly destiny has led the way into several different areas of acceptance. Acceptance of course led to risks being taken. My first wife was very easy going and knew of my cross dressing desires before we were married and had our daughter who turned out to be my only child. My first wife accepted without question my desire to cross dress as a woman and venture out on Halloween adventures. I often thought if I came home from work one day and told her I was checking into a hospital for gender alignment surgery, she would have said that's fine, just be careful. As it turned out, I was not ready for that sort of surgical risk and would never be.

Then destiny threw me a curve ball with my second wife. The moment I saw her for the first time, I knew I wanted to be with her in the worst way. Even though she too knew I was a cross dresser, she still restored feelings I long ago had forgotten when I was ready to compete with another man for a woman. In order to win the competition I needed to divorce my first wife and move on to a totally different strong woman who knew somewhat of my gender issues. I say somewhat because back in those days I was just learning myself how deep my transgender feelings ran which were to cause strong problems in our twenty five year marriage later on after the newness wore off. From the start, I always thought she would be the one who would help me to break through in my cross dressing world and help me to be successful in my dreams. As it turned out, she wasn't that person and always drew the line if I suggested at all I wanted to go further into the transgender world. By the time she had passed away, our relationship had deteriorated into an ugly cat and mouse game of me taking risks and seeing what I could get away with.

Another main risk I took was with my job. Slowly but surely I had been promoted through the managerial ranks to a successful position as an executive general manager of a big popular casual restaurant chain. A position with a company I knew would not accept me transitioning into a transgender woman. In my haste to destroy myself anyhow, I began to go to my competition as a woman thinking no one would recognize me. Well, I was wrong and the roof began to fall in on me. It was tough but I denied all the rumors and kept on going.

By this time, my second wife's life was coming to an end and she suddenly without warning passed away from a massive heart attack. By this time I had purchased my own restaurant and was somewhat in control of my own financial destiny until a recession in the Rust Belt where I lived wiped out the population. I ended up losing my restaurant as well as my inheritance by taking a major risk and losing nearly everything I had. I finally was able to find me a fast food job to hold me over till I could take an early retirement from Social Security and sell vintage items my wife and I had collected over the years. Between the two I survived.

I then found myself in a period of wonderful gender discovery, when with the help of new women friends everyday seemed as if I was reborn. Specifically Kim and Liz helped me the most. Liz lived in nearby Cincinnati and we met on line. After corresponding by email  for months, I finally became brave enough to talk to her in person and our first date was at a drag show. That date was nearly twelve years ago and we are coming up on our second anniversary of marriage. Liz cemented her place with me when she told me she had never seen a man in me and why didn't I finish my transition into a feminine world with her.

Finally, after a half century of wondering and suffering over my gender dysphoria, someone else recognized my truth and wanted to accept it with me. My un-common risks were over. I accepted her advice, gave away my male clothes and never looked back.

A Toxic Male?

Image from Jurien Huggins
on UnSplash.

As I transitioned from a male to a feminine life, I often looked back at my life as a guy to determine if indeed I was a toxic male in any way. 

Of course I immediately mentally recoiled when I thought I could be toxic towards women in any way. After all I had spent a considerable amount of time worshipping the women around me, wondering how it would be to experience just for an instance being a girl. How come I couldn't wear the pretty clothes and be the gender who was so admired by the other. The problem with me was, I went way past just admiring a girl sexually, all the way to wanting to be a girl physically.  

Did any of it make me a toxic male? No, I don't think it did. In fact, I think the opposite happened as I put women up on some sort of an impossible pedestal. By doing so, and adding the fact I was extremely shy, I never had much of a chance to interact with girls or women growing up at all. From my perspective, the feminine grass always looked so much greener. 

Since I was forced into the male camp, I needed to learn to exist and had to put up with sexist comments directed towards women from many of the guys I grew up with all the way to adult hood. Mixed in too were the bullies I needed to somehow co-exist with. I learned to bluster my way around the bullies without jeopardizing my inner transgender self to ridicule or worse. In order to do so, I participated in as many of the male activities of the day as I could such as sports and cars. It worked and I was left alone for the most part and I even dated a few girls along the way. Since it is prom season around here, I am always reminded of the two proms I went to in high school. Even though I was the perfect gentleman at the proms, I wonder if my dates thought perhaps I was a little too timid and took it personally. I will never know because one of my dates and first serious girlfriend before college later in life committed suicide years later when her husband left her. What a shame. 

As I started college and started to date more regularly, I really began to see the results of toxic males around me. Especially in the fraternity setting I was briefly in. Certain fraternities were expected to co-mingle and party with certain women and sororities only where I went to college. I found out very quickly I did not fit in with the frats social system. Which was a forerunner to me not fitting in with the strict layers I encountered at the first cross dresser - transvestite mixers I went to. I felt so out of place and the only toxic people I saw were the "A" listers who were doing their best mean girls high school impressions. Maybe their male toxicity was bleeding through. 

I completely learned how not to be a toxic male when I settled into a career in the restaurant business. Along the way, as I progressed into higher management positions, I needed to coexist increasingly with women. Both crew members and managers. I learned quickly female crew members had the tendency to build cliques (not teams like the men) to be successful and the women managers I knew had to be tough but fair to survive. I on the other hand needed to be on their side when it came to battling any toxic males at all. Looking back, I think male toxicity was the prime reason for letting someone go. Which included sexual harassment which is a topic for another blog post.

My only regret was I wasn't a more vocal advocate for women my entire life as a man. I could have certainly spoken up when another guy joked about a woman. My only excuse is I was so intent on hiding my interior feminine self, I was afraid to do more. Transgender women and trans men speak of the importance of allies speaking up for us. I feel the same way about standing up for women before I transitioned. 

Saving my Own Life

Image from Alysha Rosly 
on UnSplash
 

 
I make no secret of my Bi-Polar mental condition which went undiagnosed for a good part of my younger life. 

Ironically, it was my first gender therapist who connected the dots and determined my condition when I told her I often spent days struggling to even get myself out of bed. I just thought I was riding the waves of gender dysphoria  which kept me so depressed or elevated when I was experiencing brief moments of gender euphoria. During this time of my life, I was far from being the easiest person in the world to live with. At the least, I was prescribed medications which evened out my moods. The meds also helped me sort out my gender issues and finally figure out one mental issue had nothing to do with the other. In fact my gender dysphoria was not a mental issue at all but instead an organic one. Had I listened to my therapist, she was trying to tell me all of that but I was unwilling to listen. Primarily because at the point of my life I was in, I was still a novice transgender woman and didn't know if I could live my dream life.  There were still too many gender bridges to cross such as telling family, friends and bosses I was transgender. 

The furthest I had come at that point was telling approximately five close friends and spouses I was a transvestite. A long way from living as a transsexual with all the resultant rules I would seemingly have to follow Such as major gender operations, moving away and then starting all over again. To make matters worse, I hadn't even thought much about my sexuality. Would I suddenly desire men sexually? I was overwhelmed with all the big questions and just continued my life as a very serious cross dresser. At the least, I was able to work on my presentation as a woman and go from there.

Even though, my solution was far from perfect, I was saving my life the only way I knew how. The problem kept reappearing when I started to go out more and more behind my second wife's back. When I did, I fairly quickly began to build up a robust life as a transgender woman. Every step I took, the more natural I felt when I could never see how I could go back to living a male life. The whole process created tremendous pressure on my already fragile mental  health. I became increasingly self destructive, all the way to an unsuccessful, ill advised suicide attempt. Essentially, from the point of suicide, I purged most of my feminine belongings and even grew a beard to prove to my second wife I could do it. By doing so, I was intensely unhappy for the short time she lived until passing away from a massive heart attack. I often wonder what would have happened with us had she lived.

Following the tragedy in my life, over a short period of time, I regathered myself and refocused  on a new feminine life. I quit dwelling on death and began living a preferred life as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was all of a sudden needing to quickly learn more than I ever imagined about my new life. Throwing out or giving away all my male clothes was at once liberating and  on the other hand, very scary. I had never purged my male self my entire life and he resisted. 

Regardless, scary or not, the process of a gender transition saved my life. Over a space in time, my mental health has stabilized and with the help of gender affirming hormones, for the first time in my life, my body and mind are beginning to mesh. The entire process took me a lifetime to figure out but as I always say, it all was so worth it. 

Transgender Pressure Cooker

Image from Jeshoots.com. 

When someone writes or says something about me being a transgender woman being a choice, I have to laugh. 

I'm sure those of you who have gone through life the way I have with gender issues would agree. Primarily because we have given up so much to cross the gender frontier. Primarily, I am referring to losing family, spouses, employment and gender privileges to transition. Just losing male privileges alone is a major issue. Very quickly I discovered I lost a portion of my intelligence when by accident I became involved in a conversation with several men. I found I was not respected in their world until I finally got tired of being ignored and left the group. Then I began to not speak much until I was spoken to until I began to gain more confidence. 

When I began to be successful, the pressure to be even better as a transgender woman started to increase. For several reasons, my fragile mental health became worse as I started to try to live a life situated between the two main primary genders. In other words, I was stuck in a gender fluid universe I did not want to be in. Living one day as a man and the next as a transgender woman, nearly killed me.  It became so bad I needed to make a conscious effort daily determining what gender I was going to be that day. How was I walking and talking were just a few of the many gender considerations I was going through as the pressure kept increasing. 

All of a sudden, I was able to establish a whole new identity as a trans woman. I was talking to other women and building a small circle of friends which taught me so much about the world I so much wanted to be a part of. I kept going because the process became so natural to me and very soon the main source of pressure came from having to return to what was left of my male life. Even thinking about going back caused me stress and added pressure. 

Finally, I knew I had no way around it and never really had a choice with my life. As a gender therapist told me so many years ago, there ultimately would be no choice for me if I was a transgender woman. Sadly I did not believe her and stubbornly went on to fight a losing gender battle for years before I gave up and faced my gender reality. By doing so, I tried very self destructive measures including suicide and excessive alcohol abuse before I started to live my truth. 

I had no choice and needed to give up all the pressure I felt to transition into a feminine world before it all literally killed me. Thank goodness for all the friends and family I had who helped me through my difficult pressure packed days. The more good days I had with them led to my belief I could live my gender truth full time. Ultimately transitioning was similar to sliding down a hill towards a steep cliff for me. I had others around me who took the pressure off and made the landing a soft one.  

Trans Crisis Management

 

Image from the Jessie
Hart archives. From the Ohio 
State Student Union. 

Over the years as I went through the process of living my life as a transgender woman, I encountered many instances of crisis management. 

Some of the encounters were funny, some were anything but funny. Several come to mind as I write this post. Probably the most humorous account came at the ill fated expense of a water balloon I used as a breast form one night when I was going out to my regular venues I loved the feel of the balloons. They provided a realistic bounce and even matched my body temperature if I filled them with water of a certain temperature. Of course, as I was doing all of this, I knew how fragile my fake breasts would be. And, a night I remember well, it happened, one of my beloved water balloons broke sending water down my clothes. I was lucky in that I was headed from my seat at the bar to the rest room and had just made it to the safety of the women's room, if it was empty at the time. It was empty and it saved me from any rushed explanations of the water which I caused. The only crisis management statement I could come up with was I was pregnant and my water broke. What really happened was, I gathered my one breast self together and left the venue like nothing happened, then headed home determined to find another form of realistic breasts. 

The next  profound crisis management encounter I remember was one of the worst I ever have had. It happened in another venue I went to regularly. After consuming my usual amount of beer, I naturally needed to innocently use the women's room. When I did, I didn't notice the woman who came in after me and I should have. I saw her and an older woman  I perceived to be her Mom come in the door and pass nearby me at the bar. The older woman wasn't shy about glaring at me but kept on going, minding her own business. I should have known my relaxation would come back to haunt me because when I came out of one of the stalls in the restroom, I was confronted by the daughter. Out of the clear blue sky, she started screaming at me and began her tirade by calling me a pervert. 

At first, my fight or flight mechanisms kicked in and my first inclination was to vacate the rest room. Instead, my inner female kicked in and faced the red faced screaming woman. Somehow during her rant, I was able to learn she ran her own hair dresser salon. When she slowed down, I asked her for a business card so I could pass it along to a very influential local LGBTQ organization and naturally tell them about my negative experience with her. It worked because she abruptly stopped and left the rest room while I not so calmly washed my hands, checked my makeup and returned to my seat. The whole experience taught me to always be aware of my surroundings and other potential problem people in it. 

Of course, these two examples are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to dealing with our own brand of trans crisis management. From makeup and fashion  struggles when we first come out of the closet, all the way to unwanted government discrimination, we face it all. I am sure all of you have faced your own crises over the years. Maybe going back all the way to being caught cross dressing in your Mom's or sister's clothes when you were growing up. Surviving it all was the challenge while preserving our mental health. Sadly, with the extremely high rates of suicide in the transgender community, too many don't make it. In fact, we just had a local trans musician commit self harm and die last week. 

Crisis management with all of us just needs to be a priority. 

Walking the Transgender Tightrope

 

Image from Johannes Plenio on 
UnSplash

I have never been accused of being coordinated at all which completely held me back when it came to me being able to participate in any sort of athletics except for football which often meant dealing with brute strength. 

Little did I know, I would have to develop my own sense of gender coordination to deal with my gender dysphoria. It turns out the better I became navigating the world as a novice transgender woman, the more balance I would need to survive in life. What happened was, the better I became with makeup and fashion, the more confidence I felt and in addition I was gaining the all important confidence to try more and more exciting yet terrifying experiences as my feminine self. 

Doing the more I could possibly hope for led me to trying to walk part of my life in my old male gender and part in my newer female one. My second wife even approved of a plan where I could have three days a week to leave the house dressed as a guy, go to a motel, cross dress as a woman and basically do whatever I wanted. Then dress back into my boring drab male clothes and come home. It didn't take long for me to become bored with this arrangement and I began slipping out of the house behind her back when she was working. Out of sheer willpower I needed to begin being more coordinated in how I was trying to run my gender conflicted life. There was really only one thing I knew for sure, I loved my feminine side and wanted to do more and more to let her out. 

Sadly, the whole process of trying to balance the two genders fighting for dominance within me was destroying my already bi-polar fragile mental health. I tried therapy and for years had only one therapist tell me the truth...there was essentially nothing I could do about wanting to transition into a transgender woman. I was what I was and I should accept it. Of course I wasn't smart enough to take her advice. I still wanted to save what was left of my long term marriage to my second wife while at the same time exploring what could be possible if I actually had the courage to transition into a fulltime world as a transgender woman. 

Finally, after falling off the tightrope more times than I can say, I could take the mounting gender pressure no longer and tried suicide as a solution. Just before my wife passed away from a massive heart attack, I thought I "purged" for the final time and got down from my tightrope. I grew a beard, gained a bunch of weight and overall was miserable but I gave it my best effort. 

I proved to myself I wasn't coordinated enough to navigate something complex enough as a gender tightrope and moved on to living a life as my authentic self. I am not one for regrets but if I allowed myself one, it would be I would have had the courage to transition earlier in life (before the age of sixty.) I would have saved myself so much time, effort and frustration as I attempted to balance my gender tightrope.      

What is Holding you Back?

My Hair. Beaded Trans Hair Clip
by Liz T Designs on Etsy

If you are still in your gender closet, tentatively looking out, what is holding you back is a big question. 

By now you are thinking there are very many big variables holding you back from leaving your closet behind and living as your authentic self. Examples include the possibility of losing spouses and or family, jobs and finances and even your home. Any way you cut it all the chances are major losses which can become lifetime setbacks. Been there, done it. 

The worry concerning all of the variables I mentioned kept me in the closet for over a half a century so I am no stranger to having one foot in my closet for years. It is the one big regret in life I have is I spent so much time and energy on my gender issues. In addition to losing portions of my life I could never get back, the whole time I was engaged in a terrible struggle with my mental health which I attempted to resolve with medication and therapy. Not to mention the time and money I spent trying to over medicate myself with alcohol. Many times when I was drinking, I felt over confident with how I was appearing to the public when I flipped my cross dressing script (in reality I was a woman cross dressing as a man) and went out in public thinking I was a man cross dressed as a woman. It took me years to figure it all out.

My excuse was I was still experiencing some sort of benefits from keeping one foot planted firmly in my male life. I had a good marriage, a loving daughter and a job with increased potential. In other words, I was living a very good example of the ideal male dream. The problem was becoming the more I gained, the less I liked the idea of what I was doing. But, even still, it was enough to hold me back as I dreamed of the possibility of someday living a life as a fulltime transgender woman. 

As with any thing else, success often comes with pressure and I was feeling it from several different sources. At the time my second wife was against any idea of me beginning a transgender path on gender affirming hormones, my job was adding pressure to do better continually and make the company more money. At the time, the pressure became so much I couldn't take it anymore and I tried the suicide I write so much about. I tried to take an overdose of my bi-polar medication and it luckily didn't work. 

From there I tried to retreat and live again totally as a man and bought my own restaurant. Both ideas turned out to be a total failure as my close friends and my spouse all died around me. All of a sudden, with nothing to lose, I found myself with nothing holding me back from my transgender dreams. I had reached the age of sixty and really was at a crossroads again in my life. I could go on living an unhappy male existence or begin a life I always wanted. 

For once I took the right path and started hormones so there would be no turning back in my decision. Plus, I wasn't getting any younger, so the time was right for me to make the jump off my gender cliff and see what happened. It turned out, the only thing holding me back was myself and the fear I head of rebuilding a new life as a transgender woman. Even though I thought I had completely thought out all the possibilities of such a move, it turned out there were many I didn't consider which is a topic for another post I will be writing soon.   

 

It Was Never Easy

Image from Alexander Grey
on UnSplash

 Two things amaze me when people bring up to me when they learn I am transgender. The first is when someone thinks I had a choice and the second is the entire process was at all easy. 

Since I was never a so-called natural feminine person to begin with, I needed to struggle completely to reach my goals of surviving in the public's eye at all as a woman...trans or not. The best description of my passing struggles came when my transgender friend Racquel told me I passed out of sheer will power. I knew what she was trying to say. I wasn't the best looking woman in the room but I was going to force the issue anyhow. 

Early on, I had only the mirror to do my gender battles with. I finally learned too late the mirror often lied to me. Night after night, I would think I looked great only to be immediately stared at or even laughed at in public. It was difficult learning how to try to dress myself so my feminine fashion helped me to live a life I had only dreamed of, not hurt it. At the same time, I tried to lose as much weight as I could and take care of my skin so I could wear less foundation. None of it was easy. But it was worth it.

In order to accomplish all I wanted to do on my difficult gender journey, I needed to learn something new and different. I had to learn to be my own best friend. I never liked my old male self and was just learning all the new possibilities of my feminine inner soul. She had many problems to face as she fought for acceptance from my male self who fought completely for all of his rights. At times, it was an ugly, bloody battle I never want to go through again. It was anything but easy and never a choice to go through as I was to find out later. 

I ended up suffering so much, I almost ended my life several times from various reckless self harm attempts all the way to an attempted death by pills which failed before I decided enough was enough. In order to survive I had to make a choice, so yes I guess I did have a choice and it was a very desperate one. Self survival meant I needed to pursue what measures I could and change my life forever. The final determination was deep down I felt more natural as a transgender woman and needed to find out where I would need to end up in the new pack of women in society. It was then I learned how deeply layered a woman's life could be and perhaps even more so as a trans woman. I had all the extra baggage of my previous life as a man which I carried with me to the other gender side. I knew the male gender expectations men had of women which made me extra shy of the entire gender dance between men and women. Primarily I learned why both genders often have a difficult time communicating in their relationships and wished often I could go back and do my life different. Maybe then, my second wife would have never said I made a terrible woman. Which I did and thought it only had to do with how I looked.

The final example for this post I will use was the amount of time it took me to finally face reality and come out fully as a transgender woman. Adding up the years, I struggled with my ultimate gender issues for nearly a half century. It was certainly difficult to break out of my old male chains and live the life of my dreams. I realized I never had a choice.

A Toxic Relationship

 

Image from Jurien Huggins
on UnSplash

One of the problems I faced when I went down the gender transition route I chose was facing a huge toxic relationship. 

 More than likely, many of you regulars assume I am writing about my second wife, who I was married to for twenty five years until she unexpectedly passed away at the age of fifty from a massive heart attack. In reality, the toxicity I am referring to was within myself. I wouldn't wish the ripping and tearing I went through from my battling binary genders on anyone. In other words, my old male self was fighting the best he could against me learning and living a feminine life. Deep down I feel he knew he was fighting a losing battle, which made everything so much worse. 

What happened was, following the brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced along my journey, I really resented having to go back to my male world. When I did, I took my frustration out on whomever was closest to me. In doing so, I was trying to lose relationships and jobs I had in the meantime. Somehow, through all my gender toxic tendencies, my wife and I managed to stay together. Jobs, were a different story as I lost several due to my foul temperament. I was lucky in that I was in a rapidly expanding industry at the time and had acquired a strong network of acquaintances who helped me obtain new employment. Finding all those jobs however just enabled me to be even more spoiled and toxic.

Speaking of being spoiled, along the way, I was perfecting my knowledge of women's fashion and makeup so I was able to cross dress myself better than ever before. Then, I started to go public more often in what would turn out to be the earliest stages of realizing I was a transgender woman and not a very serious cross dresser. A huge difference when it came to understanding why I was so toxic. The more time I spent trying to maintain my old unwanted male lifestyle, seemed to be a waste of time when all I did was daydream about being a woman. Mainly because all of a sudden, it seemed possible I could. If I went on my appearance only. Which of course I leaned later was just a small part of crossing the gender border to arrive at where I wanted to be.  

Through it all, my wife managed to stick it out with me, even though she was completely against me beginning gender affirming hormones and transitioning any further. In many ways I was completely torn. On one side, I loved her completely but on the other resented her for being the woman I always wanted to be. It would have been interesting if she would have lived if we could ever worked out the biggest puzzle I had. Which of course was my transgender inner woman who increasingly was struggling to live her own life. The end result was one night I could take the stress no longer and I tried suicide as an end to my torment. Happily now, I was a failure and can share my feelings with others who assume my path to get here was so smooth. Destiny and good genetics were on myside as I was able to work my way through the lonely days of my life and live long enough to come out of the other side. 

So, ironically, the biggest toxic relationship I had in my life was with myself. When I was able to understand the reason behind all of my torment, the fog went away and I was able to understand where I needed to go to live a better life.     

Mental Health and the Holidays

 

It doesn't take an expert to know we are entering the most difficult time of the year for transgender and/or LGBTQ individuals.

During this approaching time, many in the community face the truth of having no close family any more to celebrate the holidays with. It happened to me when my only sibling (a brother) and his wife decided not to invite me to the annual Thanksgiving Day family feast. We have not spoken since and that was ten years ago. What made it hurt even worse was my deceased second wife used to take it upon herself to cook and feed everyone for years.

Similar to so many aspects of me coming out, I was fortunate in I had a backup plan. What happened was my daughter and my partner (future wife) included me in their families. An improbable happening especially when I needed to mix in with Liz's heavily right wing conservative father. He has since passed on leaving me to forever wonder what he really thought of me. 

So destiny led me out of a potentially bad situation with my own often fragile mental health. As you may, or may not recall, years ago I was diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder along with having more than my share of anxiety. Again destiny stepped in and helped me cope with my mental health . I was nearly completely broke and could not afford my medications when a fellow veteran friend of mine suggested I take advantage of the Veteran's Administration health care. I did and again I was fortunate when I was assigned to a VA therapist who was able to separate my gender issues with my mental ones.

As I said, I was one of the fortunate LGBT or transgender community members who was able to cope with lots of help. To this day LGBTQ women and men are subject to much more substance abuse than the rest of the population because of reasons such as harassment, discrimination,  negative stigma and lack of family support. The basis for the information comes from a site called "LGBTQ+ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Resources"  Thanks to Enmanuel from FloridaRehab.com for the heads up for the site.

I make no secret of the fact I used to be very self destructive due to all the issues I dealt with in my life. From reckless driving in my cars all the way to trying to commit suicide with pills, I had a total disregard for my life. Plus, there weren't the outreach programs available in the pre internet/social media years which I lived through or groups of like minded individuals who provide social activities. Often, if you live close to populated areas, there are organizations you can take advantage of. 

Please, as the holidays approach, see what you can do to help your mental health.  There are sources available.

While My Blog Gently Weeps

Bubba and Brittini

Sadly, this story has been making it's way around the internet recently and friends such as Bobbi have reached out to me with the news.

Spoiler alert, the story is more than just sad, it is tragic. Perhaps by now you have heard of "Bubba Copeland" the former mayor of "Smith's Station, Alabama." I say former because Bubba committed suicide following being outed by a right wing publication called the 1819 News which outed Bubba's so called secret life as a curvy transgender woman. Bubba Copeland was also a Baptist minister who reportedly was a clergyman who cared deeply about their church and community.

Predictably, the only thing which mattered to the gender bigots who outed Bubba was the fact she was a transgender woman. If you are interested if the so called "news" source where all this came from felt at the least bad about Bubba's death. They didn't. "Craig Monger" who wrote the post supposedly supporting Alabama values on "X" (Twitter) said "Digging up someone's personal life is reporting on what someone posts on social media. The Alabama Baptist reported on the churches live stream. I actually spoke to the mayor." Not a word of sympathy was found on anything I read on the publication's site I could find.

Those of us who have dealt with gender issues our entire life know the inner torment Bubba must have gone through. No matter how many good deeds Bubba tried to do as a minister and a mayor in a small Alabama town devastated by a tornado, mattered as much to the 1819 News as much as how they dealt with a closeted transgender person. No mention was made of her life and what she faced. Gender dysphoria is hell to say the least. No attempt at any understanding of the tragedy. 

Brittini was survived by a wife and three children. May she be remembered for her good deeds. 

The Slippery Slope

Image from the Jessie
Hart Archives

I can't imagine the freedom some younger transgender youth have when their parents approve of and actually help with their gender transition.

I can use the example of my own grandchild who benefited completely from having the support of both of their parents. (It is the grandchild's choice to be referred to as they.) Of course how I grew up was totally on the opposite side of the acceptance spectrum. I was expected to be the best boy I could be and if I wasn't. I was always expected to do better. As much as I resented being put through all of that, the process probably set me up for success later in life. When I faced difficult situations, I just kept trying until on occasion I found success. 

Finding success as I sought out what to do concerning my increasingly serious gender issues proved to be my greatest win but it did not come easily. I compare it to being on a very slippery gender slope and finding yourself losing control the perceived damage. I was very scared on what could happen if I completed my male to female gender transgender transition I could lose everything I worked for in my semi-successful male life such as family, friends and finances to name a few of the major ones. 

Once the sliding began and I started to slide down the slope, I couldn't stop. The biggest problem was I didn't really care because for the first time in my life I felt natural in my own skin. I didn't have to put up feeling just a little all the way to being completely foreign when I was successful as a man. Nothing seems to have been enough until it came time to being a success as a transgender woman. The biggest move came when I made the decision to slide further down the slope and commit to being fully trans and away from being a highly active cross dresser. I was becoming more and more convinced I was doing the right thing by throwing my male life away and living a feminine one. 

What became increasingly obvious, it was time for me to lose my grip and tumble the remainder of the way down my gender slope. I finally could take the effort to jump the gender border before it killed me. I was trying my best to live equally between the two binary genders. Male for three days a week and female for the rest of the time. The resultant ripping and tearing led me to a major mental health breakdown with a suicide attempt. I saw the writing on the wall and finally decided to slide off my slippery gender slope. When I did not know was how my new circle of friends would be around for me to soften my landing.

Not only did my circle of cis-women friends accept me, they unknowingly helped me understand the basics of surviving in the feminine world. I call it being able to play in the girls sandbox.

Surprisingly, I survived the slippery slope much easier than I thought I would. Sure I had a few scratches and scrapes on the way down. Overall, as I said, I was the fortunate survivor of a very difficult gender struggle. Hopefully, in their own way my grandchild will not have to endure such a slippery slope.

Gender Walls

 

Image from Marcus Loke
on UnSplash

One of the reasons I waited so long to transition into a fulltime feminine world was when I tried to escape the walls which were forever threatening to close in around me.

Little did I know, each successful move I made came back to haunt me. Ironically, success just showed me perhaps I could live my dream as a transgender woman. Before I arrived at my final conclusion, I needed to seemingly transition more and more on my gender journey. My prime example has always been the time I decided I needed to change my mind set when I went out into the world cross dressed as a woman. Somehow it occurred to me I needed to reverse my thinking and decide I was going out as my authentic self  and all this time in my life I had been crossdressing not as a woman but as a man. When I realized my gender truth, I began to feel increasingly uncomfortable in the male world I worked my entire life to be successful in.

Very quickly when I went down this new path, deep down I knew I could never go back. I was suddenly sliding down a very slippery slope to a new life. A life I felt very natural and excited to be a part of. I had no idea if the outside world perceived me as being any different and I may have just been playing with semantics but as I said, the feelings were much different for me. I had crossed the line in my mind from being a cross dresser all the way to being a transgender woman. The first night I tried to change and was successful was when I went all out to dress to blend in with a group of professional women who always gathered after work at a nearby "Fridays" venue for an after work drink. Even though I was scared to death, I was able to relax and enjoy myself to the best of my ability. The best part was, no one gave me a second look. The bartenders were nice to me and I knew I was changing forever. 

Following all of the excitement and gender euphoria, ironically the walls began to close in on me again. What would I do with all my new found freedom to cross the gender border. I still had a wife I loved of twenty-five years, friends and family plus a very good job to consider losing. The pressure was intense. With the pressure I began to do all the wrong things. Primarily when I began to emotionally cheat on my wife by going out as my feminine self as much as I could. Of course, I was caught on numerous occasions which led us into massive relationship straining fights. While I never cheated on her physically, the emotional cheating was bad enough to put extra strain on me which I didn't need. All the pressure eventually led me to another self harm (suicide) attempt and my wife finally telling me why I wasn't man enough to be a woman. She passed away before she was able to see how prophetic her words finally became.

The end result of all her criticism became, I re-committed myself  to learning more and more what my life would mean to me if I took the final steps to living as a fulltime transgender woman. My steps included being cleared by doctors to begin HRT or hormone replacement therapy. At that point I knew there could never be any turning back as eventually I changed my legal name and settled into a new life with my wife Liz. 

Of course my final wall to overcome will be if and when I need to face what will happen to me when I have to go into assisted living or face being mis-gendered by part of my family when I die. It seems there are always walls to face when you are transgender. 

The Ship has Sailed

Image from Sebastian Bjune
on UnSplash

Very early in life, I learned being a male in any way was going to be a struggle.

In response I went through all the necessary contortions I could find to seek approval in a gender world I wanted no part of. Ironically I found I needed to be proficient as possible at being a male or be bullied. Even though, deep down, I knew I had missed my male ship all together, I kept on trying. I did my best to succeed in all the male-centric activities I tried. Even though I was a dismal failure at playing sports, I tried my best to play football and baseball through high school. It was my attempt at jumping aboard what was left of my male ship before it sailed totally out of sight over some sort of a distant horizon. Through it all, women still remained a mystery to me. As I wrote yesterday, I didn't have my first date with a girl until halfway through my junior year of high school. Deep down I felt girls had all the benefits of life because they could sit back in their pretty clothes and wait to be asked out.

I on the other hand, had to summon all of my courage to ask a girl out, which again, I was a dismal failure at. My first dates with girls were always set up by friends who I thought felt sorry for me. I never understood until much later in life the grass was not always greener on the feminine side of the gender border when my spouses explained to me the torment they felt as they waited to be asked out. 

As it turned out, my gender ship had already sailed no matter what I did. Even though I tried my best to lead a successful male life, I was always haunted and  pushed along by the fact I was always supposed to be feminine or any label you wanted to place on me. There were many such as cross dresser or  transvestite all the way to transsexual and finally transgender. None of them really mattered as I desperately searched for my gender truth. Finally, all the stress and tension my gender dysphoria caused me led me to a very serious suicide attempt. 

After taking all the pills and not dying, I returned to my old male life with a new purpose. I knew my masculine existence I worked so hard to maintain couldn't continue. The ship had sailed and if I was ever going to have a chance at living a meaningful life, it had to be as a transgender woman.

When I did come to my gender conclusion, I never looked back. I started my life all over again in a woman's world by beginning hormone replacement therapy or HRT. At that point I never did miss my old male ship at all. It was as if a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I was allowed to live again. As I was given a second chance at life, I most certainly did not want to destroy it and I set out to become the best person I knew how to be. 

It turned out I wasn't alone in starting over. My inner feminine self was waiting for my male ship to sail also and lend a hand. She did a great job because she waited so long.to have her way. It was good because I needed all the help I could get. 

I Couldn't Take It

 

Image from Adam Jicha 
on UnSplash

The process of completing my male to female gender transition admittedly took me many many years. Over fifty to be exact and the whole process took a toll on me. 

During the time, I experienced many peaks and valleys on my way to living my ultimate dream. My attempt was to try different scenarios to see if I could pass successfully as a woman in the public's eye. As I said, I experienced many failures and returned home to cry my eyes out. Through it all, I was still determined and kept going back to the cross dressing drawing board to try harder. Thankfully, the more I tried (and learned) the better I became at my presentation. The better I became, the more I wanted to try.

From that point, the better I became at being transgender, the better my chances of trying to live a fulltime life as a transgender woman became. The problem was my entrenched male self was fighting every gender move I made. He did his best to discourage me and did it well. After all, he had a lot to lose. Such as an entire life he had worked hard to create. Friends, family and employment were all at stake. So the pressure was intense to somehow stay the course and try to live a life stuck firmly between the two primary binary genders. 

The problem was when I was living the life of a transgender woman, I felt increasingly natural. I had a deep seated feeling all was right in my gender world for a change. The process should have brought about a welcome change, when in fact it was causing extra pressure. As much as I tried to avoid it, I could see ahead I would have to make serious decisions in my life. If I was ever able to salvage what was left of my mental health. Dealing with the pressure had led me down the road to self destructive behaviors including suicide. After my suicide attempt, I made a very unhappy decision. I decided to purge (or get rid of) most all of my feminine belongings, grow a beard and live fulltime as a guy. The whole process was designed to please my second wife who told me any number of times she didn't sign up to live with another woman. You regulars know within a year after I purged, she passed away unexpectedly from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. 

At that point my life entered a new stage of being totally alone. Between wife one and two, I had been steadily married since when I was in the military approximately thirty years before .Through my tears, I reached out to my feminine inner self for comfort. Off came the beard and on came the makeup as I set out to rebuild what was left of my life. It took awhile for my confidence and mental health to improve as I was suddenly able free to explore a world I had only ever just dreamed of. The pressure was relieved and I could finally enjoy where I was headed again and I could take it. I didn't want to self destruct. 

Re-Connections

 

Image from Priscilla Du Preez on
UnSplash 

Often in life we are capable of living out full circles during our time on earth, if we live that long. 

My lifelong journey to find and live with my authentic feminine gender gave me the opportunity to go full circle several times and then reconnect with myself. My biggest issue was to finally establish myself as a transgender woman. To do accomplish my reconnection,  it seemed I had to live my way through being a cross dresser (on two stages) or a transvestite if you prefer that term. I say cross dressing on two stages because for the longest time I considered myself cross dressing as a woman while I was primarily living as a man. When in truth, I was just doing the opposite, cross dressing as a man when I was primarily a woman inside. 

Along the way, I experienced several confidence building experiences to help me along. Sadly, most all of the character building changes occurred to my male self and it took many years for my inner female to catch up. Examples included my successes in career fields as well as being able to influence how my daughter was being raised. Both came back to aid me later in my gender reconnection but at the time didn't seem so positive. The salary I earned at my jobs helped me to earn enough and accept an early retirement which helped me clear a path to transition. And, as far as my daughter went, later on in life she has gone on to be one of my staunchest gender allies. I don't know how my life would have been without her. 

The problems with re-connections if you have ever done any plumbing work, you have to make sure the connection is secure before you move on. I experienced many problems with my gender transition as I tried to move on. I stubbornly refused to dress my age and to blend in with other women around me when I first tried to leave my closet. The entire process caused me deep grief until I began to learn the basics of getting by when it came to my presentation.  When I finally developed the confidence to try harder to secure my initial connection, it seemed something else would appear and get in the way. It turned out, moving and communicating as a woman presented a much more difficult problem for me than the appearance part.

After a while, when I was extremely self destructive to the point of suicide,  it turned out I was going to live long enough to go full circle with my gender in my life. I was fortunate to find and keep a small group of women friends who helped me secure and adjust to the societal demands I  was going to have to face in my new life as a transgender woman. 

By this time I had gone full circle and put my male past behind me. My re-connections were secure and I had a lot of life to look forward to.