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| Image from UnSplash. |
Gender awakenings came early and often for me. I say early because from my earliest days of conscious life, I knew something was not right about me. As I always point out, this was in the 1950’s in the dark days of the pre-internet era when any gender information was difficult to come by. To make up for it, I experimented wearing my mom’s clothes and trying to apply her makeup the best I could. Then I would wear out the carpet in front of the hallway mirror admiring myself. Somehow, I convinced myself I was a pretty girl ready to go out into the world.
When I finally broke out of my closet and tried out the real
world as a novice cross dresser, I received a rude awakening. Initially, it
came from groups of teenaged girls I encountered in the malls I went to. They
were brutal and not shy about laughing at me. Too many times, I was sent home
wondering what the problem was with my image or presentation as a woman. One
thing was for sure; the mirror was lying to me when it told me I could pass
with no problem. I just had to do better if I was to survive in chasing my
dream of living as a woman. In fact, at times it looked as if I had no chance
of ever making it at all.
Fortunately, as dreams went by, I found I had an achievable one
as the years went by. But achievable never meant easy. I had many
negative transgender awakenings mixed in with just enough gender euphoria to
keep me moving. It could be as little as encountering a group of teen girls
with no reactions, all the way to having lunch when I went out to shop. What I
was slowly doing was replacing my mirror in the hallway with the world. Maybe
this male to female transition trip was not going to be so difficult after all.
At this time, over confidence got to me on several occasions
when I had left the relative safety of the gay bar scene and tried to move to
more familiar venues such as sports bars and even lesbian taverns. The problem
was, I became too comfortable when I was accepted and had a tendency to slip
too far back to old unwanted male roles. Keeping track of where I was in my new
life and taking too many chances. I was guilty of being in the wrong place at
the wrong time and nearly suffered from it until I learned my male privilege of
safety no longer applied. I also was not prepared for how fast I lost part of
my intelligence when I was dealing with men. Very early on, I found myself
being completely ignored when I ended up with a group of men. Even though, I
knew more than they did.
As I learned I would have a much easier path to acceptance
from other women than men, I discovered the hard way that was not always the
case. The well documented times when I had the police called on me for using
the women’s room at one venue, all the way to being called a pervert in another
place come to mind. Those were deep wounds to overcome but somehow, I did and
found stable places to go to which accepted me for who I was. Even to the point
of protecting me as their token transgender woman. The basics of smiling often,
causing no trouble, and tipping well did wonders for me.
Even still, I had to be careful because I had a wife, family and
job to come home to after my dream evenings as a transfeminine person. Soon,
the delicate gender balance I was trying to maintain became too much to bear. I
was to the point where I was just waiting for the next high heeled shoe to fall,
or the next gender awakening to occur. I just knew I had come too far to turn
back now, and my dreams were within reach. Only my big three stood in my way
and destiny was coming along to take care of them.
My wife suddenly passed away, leaving me free of anyone except
myself to answer to when it came to my gender awakenings. Plus, the only person
I really cared about in my family (my daughter) became my staunchest ally when
I came out and I took an early retirement, so I did not have transition on a
job of any sort.
Once my gender awakenings started to come, they came fast
and furious like a runaway train. The best part was, the whole process felt so
natural, I never wanted to turn back. Somehow,
I kept the train on the track.
