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| Image from Ian Dooley on UnSplash |
Too many times, when I went out into the world for the first time as a new transgender woman, I wondered if I was making a memory or living a dream.
Sadly, most of the time I was working so hard to succeed
for the first time in a new exciting world, I did not have the time to know if I
was making memories or working my way towards a lifetime dream. There was
simply not enough time to do all I wanted to do, such as present well enough to
blend in with the ciswomen around me. It was like I was driving a new
car, and I did not know all the new features I was trying to master. How was I
ever going to stop being a man with all the male looks such as a scowl and how
I walked and turn myself into a pleasant looking feminine person as I camouflaged
all the testosterone damages male puberty had caused me.
There turned out to be a way after I worked my
way through not dressing like a teen girl which just drew
negative attention to me. Certainly, creating more negative memories than positive
ones and my dream of living as a full-time transfeminine person, remained just
that. A far-off dream. At first, I had many memories to make and learn from as
I followed my dark and lonely gender path. Perhaps my biggest problems came when
I realized I was trying too hard when it came to expressing my own brand of feminization
because I was working so hard to catch up with my own gender workbook and
decide where I wanted to be.
The only dreams I was having during this time of my
life were the rare occasions when I went to sleep and dreamed that I was the attractive
woman I always wanted to be and the pressure was off to look a certain way as a
woman which I had always lived with. I was obsessed with trying to try any beauty
secret I could to improve my appearance in the world. This obsession very much
was with me until I began to settle into my own beauty routine
The dream took
a giant step towards materializing when my daughter took me to her up-scale
beauty/salon and spa to color and style my hair for the first time when it had
grown long enough to do it. Even though I was scared beyond belief to do it, I
knew this was a golden opportunity to go behind the gender curtain into a
female dominated space I had never dreamed of going before. It was amazing as I
wrote about several posts ago, and I knew right then why ciswomen were so adamant
about having their hair done a certain way. I could not wait until I could scrape
up the extra money so I could afford to go back. Plus, with my new hair, there
was no way I could keep on presenting male in the world as I knew it.
I was so obsessed with putting myself out into the
world, I needed to think of different ways to do it and build more memories
such as when I started to meet the ciswomen and lesbians who would form my
circle of friends and help me slip across the gender border and behind the
gender curtain where I desperately dreamed of being.
At this point, I always mention the good and the bad
that happened to me along the way to validating myself as a transgender woman.
It took a lot of confidence I didn’t have to make it happen. Too many nights of
rejection when I attempted to push the gender envelope too far and was sent home
in tears with my new dreams shattered. When it did happen, I needed to rely on
my deepest inner feminine self to assure me everything would be OK and these
were just memories which happened to be unpleasant to add to my dream. She told
me that the roughest dreams you ever had are the ones you had to work extra
hard to achieve.
Sooner more than later, I began to have more pleasant memories
than bad ones and my ultimate dream again began to come into focus. If I tried hard
enough to accomplish all my feminine goals, I could join the others ahead of me
in the transgender community I was familiar with and leave my male past behind
me forever.
Surely, there is a big difference between memories and dreams. I consider memories a less than physical form of dreams. Meaning memories are easier to come by and dreams are something a human should always have to keep their lives headed in a more positive direction.
Depending upon where you are on your gender path,
maybe you are just in the dream phase of where you want to be and that is fine.
It is when you begin to build memories of your journey do you start to build
the blocks you will need to make it through. During Pride month, no matter what
you may read from haters, TERF’s and bigots, you should be proud of the gender
dreams you have.
You are worth it and often there are more silent
allies and developing transgender women and transgender men that you know who
are ready to join society. Just look at your memories and dreams as what you
had to go through to arrive where you are today. Someday you may be able to become
that confident trans woman you only were when you were asleep.
When it comes right down to it, it does not matter if
you are clinging to memories (past and present you are making) or the life you
are dreaming of living, The most important thing is the self-love you are able
to give yourself. Without it, you have a difficult time loving anyone else.
Thanks for reading along with me and thinking of your own
memories and dreams. Any of your comments are always appreciated!
