Stopping was Never an Option

 

Image from Josiah Niklas
on UnSplash.

Very early on, during my very confusing crossdressing years, I wondered if I could just stop the madness of wanting to change my gender as I grew older. I did not know at the time that stopping would not be an option.

As I grew older, my desire to be a pretty girl (then a woman) grew with me. The more I cross-dressed in front of the mirror, the better I became at the basics of makeup and whatever fashion I could get my hands on. Plus, the better I became, the more I wanted to do more to improve myself. Increasingly I knew stopping and purging all my feminine clothes was never going to be an option even though I tried and tried. At that point, I tried a clumsy attempt to come out to a couple friends I had but was rudely rejected. I needed to return to internalizing all my feelings of wanting to be a girl if I was to survive in my world. Which was cruel and unusual punishment for me and more importantly, my fragile mental health. I was already stuck in long periods of depression before I was diagnosed as being bi-polar by a therapist I went to as I grew up and away from my parents.

When I did move away to college, I actually lost my desire to cross dress and act like a girl for almost a year. I did not know how to act when stopping all of a sudden became an option.

Of course, before I knew it, my gender dysphoria came creeping back into my life. I then needed to build my wardrobe fashion, undergarments and makeup all from scratch. I vividly remember the trigger object which started it all. My future fiancé for some reason, found a short wig to cover her long straight hair, and tried to surprise me with it. I was not pleased and let her know it. I then set out to get her a wig I liked. Funds were tight as I worked at a small radio station where I went to college, but I managed to scrape together the money to buy a beautiful long blond wig I had seen in the window of a beauty shop in my hometown. Under the guise of buying, it for her, I had really wanted it for myself. As luck would have it, she did not like it, and I was able to “inherit” the wig when we separated years later.

I kept the wig until I joined the Army for my Vietnam War tour of duty and beyond, as I was able to hide it away on the rare occasions, I could use it to “top” off my outfit when I cross-dressed. Even with all the traveling I was doing with “Uncle Sam” I still was able to anchor myself with the belief that stopping my idea of being a woman was not a fairy tale and could still be possible someday.

It wasn’t until I seriously began to explore the public’s perspective of me as a newly minted transgender woman, did the world start to change and I knew nothing that I was trying in my new world was going to change…ever. Even still, ever became a big word for me as I hit a series of roadblocks to become a full-fledged transfeminine person. Just when it seemed I was moving in the right direction, something would come along and temporarily stop me. At that time, through all the roadblocks, I finally realized I could see my dream of living like a woman was certainly not an option and it would be a shame to waste all the time and effort I put into my path.

I also needed to make the final decisions I would need to successfully put my male life behind me. What I would do about supporting myself and coming out to my remaining family became very important decisions. My only child (daughter) made it easy on me because she accepted me totally. While on the other hand I was rejected by my only sibling (brother) and we became estranged. My parents, second wife and most of my friends that mattered had passed away which made my coming out process easier. One way or another, I had decided to go my own way no matter what anyone thought.

If I had realized earlier that stopping my male to female gender transition was never an option, life would have been so much easier for me. I would have been allowed to live the best I could, make all my mistakes earlier and achieve my ultimate dream sooner. Rather than stubbornly hanging on to a male life I was born into but never wanted.

 

 

 

Transgender Dreams

 

Image from Felipe Delgado
on UnSplash

Obviously, we transgender women and transgender men do a lot of dreaming when it comes to the ultimate results of our lives. For example, when I was very young, I could never speak truthfully when an adult asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Saying I wanted to be a woman would have never been acceptable and would have rewarded me with a visit to a psychiatrist. So, I said something more acceptable such as a lawyer or a veterinarian.

I had to save my ultimate desires to be feminine for my dream world and often went to sleep thinking of how it would be if I could wake up as a pretty girl. Of course, I was never able to take advantage of such a thing happening to me and I needed to make the best of what I had to work with. Which was about ready to radically change for the worse when I went through male puberty. As I started my growth spurt, I rapidly outgrew all my mom’s clothes I had tried to squeeze into and had to rely on my meager allowance added to my newspaper route delivery money to try to sneak out to stores and buy my own clothes and makeup.

Through this portion of my life, my mirror was my friend and helped me to bring dreams of being a pretty girl to life, no matter how I really looked. It wasn’t until I began to experience the public’s reaction to me did, I finally get a fair and accurate reaction to how I really looked. I desperately dreamed of being more than a clown in drag. After tons of work and trial and error experiences, I finally made it to where the public at least knew I was being serious about achieving my dream of being a woman. Little did I know, the real work I would need to do to achieve my dream was about to begin.

The more I explored the world as a novice transgender woman, the more I found I had to do to survive in the new exciting feminine world I had dreamed of being a part of. When I was in the public’s eye, I found I attracted the attention of ciswomen as never before and as I did, I needed to get radical and do things such as talk to them. Initially, I was very shy and completely unprepared to take such a big step, but I was way past the point of ever turning back. For the first time in my life, my dream appeared to be within reach, if I kept learning what my new world meant.

I found I was stuck in some sort of a gender never-never land. Ciswomen instinctively knew I was not Cis but on the other hand, wanted to be in their world. Fortunately, I found most of them let me into their worlds and showed me a path to being successful, if they knew it or not. I did not care how I received the help and guidance; I was just trying to achieve my dream of living as a successful transgender woman. As I tried to point out in yesterday’s post, I went past the point of trying to be trans all the way to just being me. Which I think the women around me accepted because of my honesty. By now, you may be thinking what about the men around me? For the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me. I wanted out of their club and wanted nothing to do with going back if I had anything to do with it. I was successful and never did. My dream increasingly appeared to be reachable, and destiny opened her doors for more success for me. Primarily when it came for time to consider going down the path of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

I knew first, I needed to find a doctor to approve taking the hormones and I found one in one of the Dayton, Ohio LGBTQ publications. He had openings and I was able to get in for a checkup and then receive my precious prescriptions for initial minimum dosages for estradiol and spiro to get started on a new path towards achieving my dream as never before. After I began the minimum dosages, I had no adverse reactions and in fact the opposite was true. I felt as if I should have been on the meds for my entire life. They made me feel so good.

By this time, I felt as if I was living proof that transgender dreams come true if you pay your dues such as I did. The dues I paid were certainly the best investment I ever made.   

 

The Yin and Yang of Gender

 

Yin and Yang from Gabriel Vasiliu 
on UnSplash. 

You might ask why I would write a post explaining why I was in such a hurry to transition into my womanhood when it took me nearly fifty years to come out of my gender shell. I finally discovered I was in a classic war between my yin and yang personalities.

Today, I am writing to explain the two forces I faced as I decided when and how to transition. My own personal yin and yang of gender. I guess it doesn’t matter which of the two forces I had to deal with, or if my yin side was feminine and my yang side was masculine because both were prominent parts of my life. Yang flourished because he had to early in my life and yin did the same when she finally had a chance to live and exist. I found this description from “Wikipedia” which backs up my theory:

“In Chinese creation theory, the universe develops out of a primary chaos of primordial qi or material energy, organized into the cycles of yin and yang, force and motion leading to form and matter. "Yin" is retractive, passive, contractive and receptive in nature in a contrasting relationship to "yang" that is repelling, active, expansive and repulsive.” It described me completely.

Yin and yang caught me chasing my tail as I would run back to the mirror as quickly as I could to put on a dress, make-up, and convince myself how pretty I was. It was yang’s primary form of escaping any potentially troublesome situations. As I always explain, coming to terms with all of this caused great torment, and now I wished I had someone to at least discuss it with except the one good therapist I was fortunate to be placed with at the Veterans’ Administration in Dayton, Ohio. She was understanding and even had a basic understanding of the LGBTQ community, so I did not have to educate her at all. However, we did not ever get into the clash of my yin and yang genders. On the plus side of our therapy, she never tried to equate any of my bi-polar depression issues with my need to express my yin side of myself.

Ironically, I think my yang side was very active and expansive in pushing my yin into the world. He provided the life lessons I needed to get out and push my gender envelope by learning new things. Without him, the initial exploratory trips to the regular venues I established myself in as a novice transgender woman would have never happened. So many nights I sat in my car for what seemed like forever before I summoned my courage to go inside.

On the other hand, it was yang who did his best to ensure his male world would never be taken away and he made a strong, experienced adversary. The problem became was how I was ever going to join my yin and yang together and form hopefully a good transfeminine person. The answer was I never had to really give up all the life which yang brought to the table. It turned out, I still was able to follow my love of sports, all the way to keeping my sexuality when lesbians took over my life. Altogether the entire process of joining my yin and yang proved to be easier than I thought. I just needed the courage to do it.

It would be too easy to say all transgender women and transgender men suffer from yin and yang gender problems, but the idea may go along way towards explaining what we feel to an outsider. It is far out of my pay grade to predict what anyone may do when confronted with such complex gender problems a trans person has. In fact, when I go back to “Wikipedia”, it even mentions gender in this form:

“When pertaining to human gender, yin is associated to more rounded feminine characteristics and Yang as sharp and masculine traits”.

I don’t know about you, but the whole definition works for me, and I wonder why it has taken me so long to stumble upon it in my research. In some ways, yin and yang reinforces my idea that transgender people deserve a special place in the world. Not one of scorn and discrimination. Maybe the average person just needs to know more about us on a regular basis and not what they hear from politicians. But they can’t even govern well enough to keep our government open, so I can’t see much chance of that anytime soon.

Growing Like a Weed

 

Image from Marya Volk 
on UnSplash.

I was devastated when I outgrew all my mom’s clothes and I had no sister’s closets to raid for clothes. Where would I ever be able to find the feminine accessories, I needed to cross dress in front of the mirror. So, I had to rely on a little luck and a whole lot of creativity to get by. For example, I found a discarded cute stretch mini skirt just outside of the girl’s locker room at school which fit me, and I had it for years. The rest of my “collection” came from being able to do work around the house, and a rural newspaper route I had delivering papers. My parents loved the fact that I was so industrious without ever knowing the real reason why.

As I continued my ascent towards unwanted puberty and testosterone poisoning, sadly I continued to grow like a weed, making it less probable I could find any clothes to fit me. Somehow, I did by being very creative with my meager funds and having the courage to sneak out of my grandma’s house to secretly go shopping for clothes and makeup. As I always point out, we lived out of town, and the only way I had to get around was by my bike, unless I spent the night at grandma’s. Who lived close to downtown where we lived. I survived the clerks in the stores I went to and slowly became better at what I bought.

Through it all, I thought I would outgrow this portion of my life when all I wanted was to be a girl. Like a weed, it kept on growing in me and refused to go away. I went through the usual phases of gender dysphoria many of us go through. The heights of euphoria when I crossed dressed, and the lows when I was not able to. The pressure on me continued to build up until I took chances and dressed in a locked room with my brother around. Certainly, if I was discovered, my parents would have treated me with enough weed killer at a psychiatrist appointment to do me in. My parents’ eldest son wanting to be a girl would not have been tolerated.

Either I was better in hiding my cross dressing from them, or they chose to ignore it, because nothing was ever said to me, and I dodged any trips to therapy where they knew nothing about gender dysphoria and would refer to me as being mentally ill.

The older I became, the more my weed sprouted and refused to go away. In fact, when the internet era began and we bought our first computer, it gave me the chance to research what sort of a weed I had. Very quickly I learned my early ideas were correct and I was much more than a weekend cross dresser who was more or less wanting to look like a ciswoman as some sort of a hobby. In fact, I was transgender which was a new term back in those days. For the first time in my life, I found a label which fit me. I was not a cross dresser at all, nor was I a fully-fledged transsexual who wanted to run off and have genital realignment surgery. Through the computer I was even able to meet others similar to me for the first time in my life.

At that point, I began to realize my weed was not a weed at all, it was turning out to be more of a late blooming flower which had to be explored and nurtured. As  I began to explore the new feminine world I was in, I discovered how complex ciswomen had it in their lives and what affected them. I can use my second wife as an example of how badly a woman could feel when her husband wants to run off and be a woman. Often without having the knowledge to do it. I felt sorry for my wife, and we fought often, but there was nothing I could do about my new flower in my life. It was not out of control as much as it was me and I refused to confront it. Long story short, she did not live long enough to experience the transfeminine person I had become and that was a shame because like it or not, she had a lot to do with the new feminine me.

Now I feel sorry for all those toxic men and ciswomen who can not seem to find their way out of their weed patch. Growing a beautiful new flower is the only way to go as you live your life as a transgender woman. Now I know why my old male self never liked flowers.

 

 

If I Had Known Then

Image from Hc Digital 
on UnSplash. 

The age-old question is, if I had known then what I know now, what would I have done differently.

Realistically, since I don’t have some sort of a magical time travel machine, I could not do anything differently. But if I had it all to do over again, I would have tried to come out of my male gender closet much earlier in life. I would have taken advantage of the youth I had and invested it in progressing to being a transgender woman. Even though I was well into my thirties before the term “transgender” was even invented or discussed. The truth of the matter is, I wasted too much time between Halloween parties when I could safely cross dress as a woman. Finally, once a year just wasn’t enough and I needed to open my closet door a little more and explore the world as a transgender woman.

If I had known then, I would have realized there would be no shortcut towards my ultimate goal of living as a trans woman. I would have to find my own unique path to being a woman that any other female has to do. For years, my second wife tried to tell me the truth, but my male ego stood in the way, and I refused to listen. I thought just looking the part of a woman was enough until getting out into the world proved me wrong. I needed to pay my dues just like any other cis woman before I was allowed to play in the girls only sandbox. It was a difficult struggle to get there, full of many setbacks, but somehow, I persevered and kept moving forward, often at the expense of my marriage and my male life. Primarily, my marriage since I was very close to my wife and she was my best friend. If I could go back, I would have tried even harder to be closer to her before she suddenly passed away at the age of fifty.

I would tell her she was my role model and all I really wanted to do was to have her like my feminine self, which she obviously did not. Instead, we fought like cats and dogs until she would tell me to go away and be a woman and spare her the pain. As much as I secretly knew she was right, I was still determined to hold the marriage together and pursue my transfeminine dreams the best I could. It all turned out to be the wrong plan and I suffered. There was not enough therapy in the world to help me through such a cut and dried situation. Sooner or later, I would have to make a decision in my life and choose between my two strong women…my wife and my inner feminine self who was becoming stronger and stronger by the day.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have set my male self aside and det out to build a new life as the transgender woman I was always meant to be. In the short term, it would have been difficult, but in the long term I would have been happier, and my mental health would have been better with the gender pressure off. Also, I need to bring up my excessive use of alcohol to mask my pain. Somehow when I drank, I felt more like a man and less like the woman I wanted to be. It was not until I was well into my male to female transition that I could decrease my addiction to alcohol and now I am lucky if I have two drinks a month.

Even If it is impossible to go back, I wonder how my life would have been if I had pulled the plug on my male life earlier. I certainly would not have missed all the time I was daydreaming my life away about how it would be to live a feminine life. How much better and productive could I have been. On the other side of the coin, I know I would have lost valuable time learning all I needed to learn to survive in such a new radical feminine world. Time seems to always erase the negatives and accentuates the positives.

Even still, knowing how successful I was able to be in my gender transition, it is impossible for me to not think what could have been possible if I had made the move earlier.  Even though my path was difficult enough, I may have had a smoother path if I had done then what I know now.

 

  

Damn its Hot in here

 

Image from Jon Tyson
on UnSplash. 

It is “patch day” for me. One of the days during the week when I change out my Estradiol hormonal patches. Every time I do it, I take the time to remember the changes I went through when I started gender affirming hormones or HRT.

Of course there were the much-publicized changes such as breast growth, changes in skin, and generous hair growth. Very quickly, I was able to put my wigs away and have my own hair styled professionally and begin to use much less makeup to present well. What I did not count on was the internal effects the HRT had on me. All of a sudden, I had emotions I had never had before, and I could cry.

One of the more humorous experiences I had was the night I experienced my first ever hot flash. I was out to be alone that night and was completely caught off guard when the heat hit me. In fact, I had just stopped thinking about how chilly it was in the venue and how I might have to put on my jacket to stay warm. Something I never had to do back in my male years. Suddenly my own thermostat seemed to be ruined, and I was paying the dues for all the times I thought the women around me were just making it up when they said they were cold. Then, I did not need my jacket at all when all hell broke loose, and I felt as if I was on fire. I quickly looked around to see if anyone else noticed my predicament, but no one did. I wondered at the time how they could not, but my heat must have been internal in nature. Later on, that evening, I tried to explain what had happened to me to my cisgender friends and they just laughed me off saying welcome to their world.

Now patch day once a year comes down to my annual mammogram. Since my maternal grandmother passed away years ago from breast cancer, my primary medical provider at the Veterans Administration makes sure every year I have a mammogram to be safe. If you have never experienced a mammogram, there is some brief discomfort but nothing like the alternative. So, I consider it a rite of passage when I have one.

It turned out for me there were many rites of passage to come as I went through a male to female transition. I had taken the appearance aspect of transitioning just about as far as I could and then faced a real decision in my life. Should I seek out a doctor to prescribe gender affirming hormones. I went to my local Dayton, Ohio LGBTQ resource guide and found a doctor and decided to make an appointment to see if I was healthy enough to begin HRT. This was way back in the days before the VA decided to include hormone therapy as a choice for gender dysphoric vets, so the doc I chose was the only logical choice. He asked me a few key questions about what I was prepared to lose of my male lifestyle and then approved me for a minimum dosage of medications to start my journey.

I started on pills and very soon they became a lifeline for a better world for me. Fairly quickly, after I showed no ill effects to the new hormones, I was prescribed larger dosages, and my body took to them naturally.  Then it got hot with my thought pattern of what I was going to do about all the changes which were happening to me. I was appearing very androgynous which was noticeable to others who knew me, so I needed to change my transition timetable because I was running out of time. In short, hormones slammed the door shut on my male life I had worked so hard to achieve. It was mine to give away, and I gladly did it.

Now, as I change my hormonal Estradiol patches out, I stop to remember the old male days and how I felt in my body and say a silent prayer that I have suffered no ill effects in my decade plus journey on HRT. I always take time to urge everyone considering femininizing their body through hormones, to seek guidance from a doctor before you do it. As I have seen the results of unregulated hormone therapy. The process is nothing to play with.

As I look back on the benefits of all the therapists and doctors I have seen over the years (and continue to see), being able to feel the heat of becoming a transgender woman was worth the effort.

 

 

 

The Blues

 

I have not been ashamed over the years to document my struggles with depression, which was finally diagnosed as being Bi-Polar by a gender therapist I was going to years ago. Fortunately, the therapist was the first of several who did not try to connect the dots between my mental health issues and my depression. Saying one caused the other.

What was happening was, when I got the blues, I was down for days, not wanting to even get out of bed. Having said that, I was able to break the depression on occasion by cross dressing and going out into the world as a novice transgender woman. Breaking the hold of the blues was often very brief when I needed to return to the very mundane male world I was stuck in.

In addition, I was doing very little to help myself. I drank heavily, not considering how much of a depressant alcohol was and my favorite music to listen to was the blues. Regardless of my gender issues. As you can tell, outside of the Bi-Polar medications I was taking, I was doing very little to help myself. With or without the help I received, I managed to make it and eventually thrive rather than just survive. Regardless of my second wife calling me the “pretty, pretty princess”, I still took a lot of pride in my feminine presentation. The better I looked, the fewer blues I needed to conquer in my life because for once, I was doing something positive for myself.

When I needed the Veteran’s Administration’s health care in the worst way, they really came through for me. I was going through hard times when my restaurant closed financially and could not afford my medications when one of my employees suggested turning to the VA for help. It was about this time too when the VA approved gender affirming hormones for veterans so I could help myself on two fronts by making an appointment. It turned out that what I needed was an appointment with a therapist for both of my issues. My depression and my gender issues. By the pure luck of the draw, I was assigned to a therapist who had knowledge of my depression and my gender dysphoria. I was going into my first visit thinking I would have a difficult time explaining how my Bi-Polar depression had nothing to do with my gender outlook.

I never had to connect those imaginary dots with my new therapist. She had a good understanding of the needs of the LGBTQ community and what it meant to me. Once again, all the paranoia I had built up was wasted and my depression meds as well as my HRT meds were approved. It was the help I needed when I needed it at the lowest part of my life.

Regardless of all the good news I discovered, I still had to translate all of it into my real life which was changing dramatically. I was going out more and more testing out my interactions with the public. Building a new life was as difficult as I had imagined and the struggles I went through sent me back into the blues when I thought I would never make it as a transgender woman. To be completely feminized by no one else but me turned out to be a daunting task because I was starting from near to point zero. Very quickly, I quit being a victim and turned the tables on my male self who was fighting for survival, but not before I tried various self-destructive things such as trying to kill myself. The blues were literally trying to kill me.

In my limited understanding of both issues, I fought for my entire life, both depression and gender dysphoria could be caused by chemical imbalances in my brain. So, I had no real chance to battle them. I was born to a high-risk birth rate mother in the days when the medication DES was routinely prescribed. DES supposedly flooded the uterus with estrogen hormones which could have affected my future gender issues. Of course, now I will never know if my lifetime of struggle to fit in with males was doomed to begin with and now depression is widely believed to be caused by a chemical imbalance in my brain which I think I inherited it from my mom. One way or another, I feel fortunate to live in an era when medications are available to treat my depression.

In many ways too, the blues are an outlet I miss in my interactions with today’s world. As the mid term elections rapidly approach, I am preparing myself for the barrage of anti-transgender propaganda from the Republican party here in Ohio. Knowing what to expect won’t make it easier for me to survive. As always, I will just have to. With or without the blues because every little thing is going to be alright.

 

 

You Make a Terrible Woman

 

JJ Hart on left. New wife Liz on right.

As I was initially coming out of my intensely lonely and dark gender shell, I dealt with quite a bit of guilt. Especially when my wife called me a terrible woman. I initially thought she was referring to my looks, which she told me she wasn’t.

My second wife was also fond of telling me coming out was all about me which as I look back on it, she was right. My transition was all about me, and I was completely immersed in it. Every time she even made the slightest move to interact with me, I shunned her as I was scared, she was just going to be negative. To be successful, I needed to do it alone it seemed.

I am sure the progress my wife saw in my overall presentation made her feel insecure about the future of our marriage. No matter how guilty I felt about the journey I was taking without her, deep down I knew I had to stay on my path if I was ever going to have a chance to achieve my dream of living as a transgender woman. Which my wife was dead set against.

As I progressed on and on the guilt grew, I was having. Here I was jeopardizing a good marriage, family and job just to wear women’s clothes and makeup. My problem was, I was still refusing to accept the truth about myself. In other words, my desire to be a woman in any sense of the word ran much deeper than just looking like one. When my wife told me I made a terrible woman because I hadn’t paid my dues past looking like one, I knew somehow, I needed to set out to learn what she was talking about, regardless of the guilt involved. To survive, my transition had to be just about me, and I stubbornly pushed forward.

The problem was, the more guilt I felt, the worse my mental health became. I did not know who to listen to, the world at large or the person I was closest to. The world at large was slowly coming to accept me as a transfeminine person while my wife was as standoffish as always about my progress. What she did not know was I was making the strides needed to prove I was not a terrible woman and in reality, a fairly likeable one. Or at least I was trying to.

Time marched on, and my guilt increased to the point where I committed suicide or tried to. When I failed, the entire self-harming episode left me with further problems with my guilt and mental health, so I sought out therapy. Fortunately, I found a good therapist who understood depression and the transgender community, and my life began to improve again. My therapist told me it was alright to feel guilt about the gender transition process and sometimes you must leave loved ones behind so you can live. Beyond all of that, she taught me extreme gender dysphoria was difficult to deal with and before long, our in-person meetings at the Veteran’s Administration were between her and my authentic self. What a relief!

My guilt subsided as my joy increased in my life. Sure, I still had rough spots to contend with, but with my overall knowledge of the world and what to expect, I knew I had finally overcome my fear of actually “making” a terrible woman. In reality what happened was I had the chance to live my way through what my wife told me and in addition. I was not making anything. I already was a transgender woman and had always been. I was just guilty of trying to hide it and internalize it too long. Surely, it was all my fault, and I never had the chance to apologize to her because of her untimely death from a massive heart attack at the age of fifty. I wanted to show her I had paid my dues in the world, and, at the least, I hoped we could be friends. Actions speak louder than words and I know she would never back off from saying I made a terrible woman and in turn at least like the new me.

In life, we rarely have a chance to make a second impression, and it has been nearly an impossible one for me since most of the people I knew as a man (that mattered) had passed away. I needed to concentrate on the new acquaintances I met as a trans woman who never knew my old male self who in his own way had passed on also. Since I did not have a difficult time making and keeping friends in my new life, I must not have been a terrible woman after all.

No Easy Way Out.

 

Image from Peter Fogden
on UnSplash.

When I had grown used to escaping my male problems by dressing in front of the mirror in my small stash of girl’s clothes and makeup the best I could, then I forgot my problems. It was an effective way to find a way out.

Before I knew it, I was digging myself a hole I would have a difficult time getting out of. As always, my main problems came from my refusal to accept my gender issues. I would cycle through the same old issues such as cross dressing until I relieved all the pressure I was under as my male self. Then knowing the relief would only last a couple of days.

Occasionally, I thought I would find the way out of my gender shell by trying the infamous “purge” which would finally do away with my feminine self altogether. Of course, we all know purging was no escape either as in a very short time, my urge to cross dress would flood back in again. All of this resulted in depression I struggled to control.  Years flew by before I was diagnosed as being bi-polar by a gender therapist I was going to. The diagnosis helped me to understand why I would sometimes want to do nothing but stay in bed. Fortunately, I was able to find a medication to help me that I was able to tolerate, and to this day, my depression is under control. Plus, having my bi-polar under control allowed me to separate it from my gender issues.

It became extremely important when I was matched up with a therapist from the Veteran’s Administration who controlled my gender affirming hormones. One thing I did not need was a therapist who connected my dots wrong and left me no escape. What I mean is, if I was matched with a therapist who thought my depression and gender issues were connected in any way. As with other things I excessively worried about, the therapist I ended up being matched up with never connected my dots wrong, and my HRT and depression medications were always kept separate.

Escape finally came slowly when I began to take control of my own life. I went down a huge rabbit hole I had been ignoring. As I left my old gender closet and explored the rabbit hole as a whole new person, I discovered the world I had only dreamed of as I began to live as a transgender woman. I also found many new layers of a feminine life I knew nothing about. I went from creating a fictional trans woman to a real person as I explored the world. The real person I became had to be able to communicate with the world at large. As with any other worlds I ever discovered (such as the military) being a transgender woman came with a whole new set of rules I could not escape.  

As my confidence increased, so did my success in building a new life. I so badly did not want to escape at any costs, I risked all my male life such as family, friends, and employment to live as a transfeminine person. I was putting on the line such as the benefits of hard-earned male privileges, a long-term marriage and a good job. All to follow my feminine dreams. It turned out, I learned many lessons when I was attempting to escape the rabbit hole I was making for myself.

Some would say it took a lot of courage to do what I did. While others would think I was nothing but a fool. I would say neither is the case because in order to live in this world at all, I knew I would have to make changes to escape. By the time I needed to make the final transition decision, I was nearly sixty and it had been weighing heavily on my shoulders for years. By then, I took all my so called “practice” time and became a transgender woman on a mission.

I escaped all excuses and rabbit holes I explored on my way to living my dream. Becoming my true self in a woman’s world was incredibly difficult to do. Just when I thought I was conquering the road I was on was being successful, I learned I was only just beginning and there were many obstacles to come. I was lucky enough to be able to negotiate everything by having wives to women friends to help me on the way.

If I had given up the fight and given in to the true desires I was having, I would have never had to think I had no way out.

 

Gender Trauma or Dysphoria?

 

Image from Dominic
Swain on UnSplash.

When you spend a life dealing with gender dysphoria, often, gender trauma comes along with it. Interestingly, I have encountered some in the transgender community who claimed they had no dysphoria at all.

One of those encounters I had, happened one night at a transgender-cross dresser support group I was attending. I mentioned my struggles with gender dysphoria and the moderator stuck her nose up in the air and said she never had experienced any dysphoria at all. I recovered from her statement by simply saying she was lucky. I would have not wished what I went through with my gender struggles on my worst enemy. As a sidelight, I wondered later if the moderator knew what gender dysphoria was anyway. Since that time, she has gone through gender realignment surgery and has married another transgender woman. What I consider a remarkable journey for someone who never had experienced any gender trauma supposedly at all.

My trauma started quite early in life when I knew something was wrong with me but just could not come up with what it was. In fairness to me or my parents (if they knew), the information on gender dysphoria was completely missing in those days when I was young. In fact, I don’t think I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria until I went to a Veteran’s Administration therapist. Which would have been sometime in my thirties and allowed my therapist to prescribe gender affirming hormones to me and start the paperwork towards all my legal gender change documents. So, it was very important.

Along the way, I had the public to blame for furthering my gender trauma, which made my ordeal of coming out of my gender shell even worse. I was insecure enough until I made it to the ordeal of having the police called on me because I simply had to use the restroom. To make matters worse, I was kicked out of one of my regular venues. That was the place where the crew came down to a nearby venue I was going to and invited me back. It turned out, the manager who told me to leave was fired for drug abuse and stealing. I had my revenge, but my gender dysphoria remained.  

It turned out, my newfound success in the world as a transgender woman was followed by extra pressure to do better. I wanted to be better at my art of makeup and fashion. I wanted to be able to blend but do it better than the average cisgender woman. I wanted to be respected but at the same time not threatening the world. I had my setbacks such as being called a pervert by another woman in a restroom. I got even with her too when I found out she owned a hair salon, and I reported her to the local powerful LGBTQ center.

When something like that happened, I desperately needed points of gender euphoria to balance out the bad spots. It seemed for every gender bigot I encountered; I ran into another nice person who was genuinely curious about me. Many times, even better, I was able to learn as much from the other women I met as they did about me. For weeks at a time, if I was lucky, I grew confident in my presentation and my gender dysphoria subsided. Not completely, as there was always a new obstacle on my path to being a full-time transfeminine person. On the plus side, I spent less time stuck in reverse on my transition journey.

By being out in the public’s eye, I spent less time dwelling on what I was going to do about my future. Was I going to keep pursuing a part-time male life until the wheels came off or was, I going to take the actions necessary to make progress towards my dreams. As I put off deciding on my life, my gender dysphoria simply would not go totally away. Every day and time I looked in the mirror, I struggled because sometimes I would get a glimpse of my real feminine self but on others, I could not shake the old male image looking back at me. No matter how much change was occurring from the gender affirming hormones I was on. Disappointment ran deep with me as the transition wheels fell off when I saw him in the mirror.

Sheer willpower, as well as elation when things were going right kept me going through the dark days of dysphoria. In fact, to this day, I still suffer from gender duress when I look in the mirror. I have made it to the point where I am not as bad off as the mirror is telling me I am or as good as the mirror is suggesting. I am tired of fighting and the world will just have to take what it gets from me.

 

 

Who "Ya" Going to Call?

 

Image from Beth Macdonald on UnSplash. 

For many cross dressers or transgender women, our gender pursuits are very lonely. If you are of a certain age, you remember lonely with a capital “L”.

You remember the pre-internet and social media days when any information on being a transvestite or transsexual was very difficult to come by. This is where I always mention Virginia Prince and her Transvestia publication and how it brought a sliver of light and hope into my dark closet. Virginia was all I had; there was no one else to call. My gender workbook was blank.

From the pages of Tranvestia, I learned of the nearby mixers I could attend and for the first time in my life meet likeminded individuals. I was naïve and thought I could meet others I could call and or meet on a regular basis. Instead, I met many people I did not understand and did not want to socialize with. Either I was too much of a woman for them, or not enough it seemed. I was caught in sort of a “Goldilocks” zone with a blond wig and still no friends to socialize with.  I selfishly wanted someone just like me on the gender spectrum.

Slowly, all of that began to change when I started to attend diverse gender mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. I started to come out of my shell a bit and began to meet others who I enjoyed their company which was a great start to finding my way out of the “who ya going to call syndrome”. From parties I was invited to, I actually had people I could call and be invited to come along to excursions such as the Andy Warhol main exhibit at The Ohio State University followed by a visit to a well-known Columbus gay venue I had never been to. I had a great time.

Of course, when I did begin to get out more in the world with or without my new transgender friends, I wanted more. Which left me in a really bad spot with my second wife and my male self who were increasingly putting up resistance to every move I was making. In my own mind, for the first time in my life, I was making progress towards learning if a transgender future was possible. Every step I took was resisted as the other two wanted nothing to do with my progress.

As I continued with building my own confidence as a transfeminine person, my circle of friends began to increase also. I was coming full circle into my own as I was the one setting up our social events and I even quit going to any other mixer in Columbus. Saving my time and money for the monthly lesbian mixers I so enjoyed in Dayton, Ohio. The only problems I still had were coming from my second wife who I loved very much and my male self who kept whispering in my ear was I doing the right thing by just giving all my male privilege away. I did my best to stay in the middle of the gender road while not getting hit by oncoming traffic.

Ironically, I had built such a good wall between my gender selves with my friends, I could not talk to them either. A prime example came when I tried to explain my first hot flash to a good lesbian friend of mine and all she said was welcome to her world. Lesson learned. From then on, I let her take the lead when the conversations became very personal because I knew she had a lot going on in her life, and at least I could be a good sounding board or listener.

I adjusted from moving from the very few male friends I had who had passed away to a very few new women friends who helped me to escape the severe loneliness I was feeling when my wife passed away. In ways they never knew, I was calling a friend and having the best of both worlds. I had reached my own “Goldilocks” zone as my friends were easing my solitude while at the same time, teaching me what it meant to be a woman. Primarily a woman who did not need the validation of a man to feel good about herself. Which was a direct conflict from the old ways of going through genital realignment surgery and then disappearing just to resurface in a new life with a man.

What was left of my sexuality after HRT remained with my lifelong admiration of women, so I did not have to change, which was a welcome discovery. Now, I am so fortunate to live with and have married the only person I need when I am feeling down or even gender dysphoric. I can talk it out with my wife Liz, and she is like I have my own in-house therapist. My problem is opening up after all these decades of closing myself off to the world. I was very good at the job.

 

 

 

 

Staring off The Cliff

 

Image from Anton Luk
on UnSplash 

When I reached a point where I saw the real possibility I could live a life of a transgender woman, I found myself staring off a deep gender cliff.

The biggest problem I had was wondering how I would land if I threw caution to the wind and become (as my second wife called it) man enough to be a woman. As I slid down the slippery slope towards my cliff, sometimes I was fearless and other times scared to death. I can’t tell you the number of times I sat in my car adjusting my hair and makeup before I went into a venue. At times, I considered bringing an oxygen tank along in case I hyper ventilated. I did not because I thought it would ruin my outfit.

Another problem I encountered was alcohol. When I drank, I became much more fearless but to get to my arrival, I needed to be brave and walk into a venue to order a drink. It took me awhile to put the alcohol in my rear-view mirror and get on with my life, but I did it.

Along the way, I cannot stress enough about all the bumps and bruises I had when I slid down a very slippery gender slope towards a very steep cliff. I was facing losing everything I knew, owned and loved to be a transgender woman, so I wanted to make sure I was doing my slide right. For the most part, I did good except for impromptu visits from the police after I used the rest room of my choice and another night when I was asked to leave a venue after I was doing absolutely nothing wrong. I mended faster than I thought I would and chalked the experiences up to what I needed to go through to transition in the straight world which I was trying out for the first time.

The main thing which kept me going was the deep feeling I had I was doing the right thing. I had spent too long in front of a lonely mirror to turn back then. I needed to face the cliff and decide how and when I was going to jump because it was becoming increasingly evident to me, I would need to.

After my second wife passed away, I went into another lonely dark period of my life when the only thing I did was go out in the world as a transfeminine person and watch the occasional sporting event with my brother as my old male self. What did happen was, I felt the time I was spending as a man was being increasingly wasted. Even my male self was seeing the beginning of the end to his life.  If my brother did not accept me (which he did not), he would have to go away.

What really helped me to overcome my fear of the gender cliff I was looking at, were the ciswomen friends I was developing. The give and take I felt when I was invited to girls’ nights out or even lesbian mixers was propelling me forward to making the ultimate choice in my life. Ultimately, I started gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s care and made my decision to jump off the cliff even easier to do.

It turned out, my women friends knew me better than I knew myself. They saw no traces of my old male self and helped me with the nuances of living in a feminine world. Many times, all I was doing was going along for the ride. Never had I ever experienced so much about a new world I desperately wanted to be a part of in my life. It all made my fear of jumping off my gender cliff so much easier.

Another example would be, I had taken the time to do my homework and build a solid base before the slippery slope claimed me. I waited for two extra years working at a job I hated to make sure I could retire on Social Security and not have to worry about transitioning on the job. During that time, my gender universe opened a little more when the Veterans Administration health care program I was in approved gender hormone therapy for veterans which gave me access to mental health care and cheaper medications.

It all turned out to be time well spent and came back to help me when I finally made the jump down my gender cliff. My experiences and friends made the landing so much easier. I ended up wondering why I had waited so long doing my preparation.

 

Just a Gender Detour

 

Image from Belinda Fewings
on UnSplash

After many years of looking back at my life, I began to think of my transgender experience as merely a detour in my life.

The problem was, there are many types of detours ranging from major closures to small delays. I found I needed to be careful with my navigation quite early when I was in the exploration stage of my mom’s clothes. One speed bump could lead me to an impromptu visit with a psychiatrist who knew nothing about gender issues and wanted to pronounce me mentally ill. Even back then, I knew I was not crazy for wanting to be a girl.

As the years progressed, I became increasingly skilled at sneaking around and dodging the detours in my life. Especially, the major ones such as becoming a parent. Even though the whole experience made me extremely proud, it still changed my life profoundly. I remember thinking at the time if it would affect my desire to be a woman but if anything, the birth process enhanced it. I was still in my detour mode, drinking heavily as I tried to find the nearest exit to help me.

To make up for the detours, I began to leave my closet and explore the world increasingly as a transfeminine person. The entire process meant taking chances such as leaving the house dressed as a woman and dodging many speed bumps along the way. It took me many more years before my path began to smooth out and I could see a clear road ahead. However, I still needed to be very careful with what I was doing. I had a long-term marriage and good job to protect among other male privileges. I was stuck between a giant rock and a hard place I needed to detour around. The rock was the better I did with my male life, and the hard place was my female side resented any incursion into her existence. To be sure, a very difficult place to be.

Then there were the times I crashed with my wife and was caught coming home late from one of my nightly gender adventures. A prime example was the night a lesbian was flirting with me and bought me a beer and said she should take me home with her. I was flattered and ended up staying too long and arriving home late. The ensuing fight lasted days after I hit that speed bump. Sadly, there were other times when I crashed on my own by driving an old sports car, which I bought that had the habit of suddenly not starting on occasion. Of course, one night when I was at a gay venue approximately twenty minutes from home, the car would not start. Fortunately, I had planned and left me enough time to call a tow truck and arrive home before my wife did. I had survived yet another close call.

My gender detours did not begin to go away until I started to really be allowed behind the gender curtain. It was after I had placed the gay venues firmly behind me in my rearview mirror and started to prove a fulltime life as a transgender woman was possible for me. The only problem was how fast I should dare to go. In those days, I still had my wife, family and job to worry about. As it turned out, destiny stepped in and showed me the way. Tragically my wife and several dear friends passed away leaving me alone to decide my future.  In addition, my road crew removed other detours such as employment when I discovered I could take my Social Security early and sell collectibles to make ends meet. My final indication I had a clear path ahead was when the Veterans’ Administration health care program approved gender affirming hormones for qualifying veterans. I was qualified and made a big jump towards my gender transition.

By this time, even I could see my detours towards living my dream were coming down, and I was in a now or never situation. I was sixty and had put up with my gender indecisions long enough. I went into a double retirement by quitting a job that I hated and gave away all my male clothes to charity.

Looking back, if I had known all the detours, I would have to take in my life just to survive, I wonder if I would have taken a different path. On the other hand, I was locked into a route I was taking and had no choice. Sure, I would have tried other ways around to get to where I was going. Such as attempting to come out quicker than I did and stop lying to myself. One way or another it is too late now to cry over spilled makeup.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is Just a Phase?

Image from Claudia Love on UnSplash.

Have you ever been accused of just going through a phase?

Drawing from several comments from other transgender women and trans men, including myself, I have heard us being accused of just going through a phase when it comes to being transgender.

There was a time in my life when I seriously hoped I was just going through a phase when it came to my love of dressing in feminine clothing and makeup. I wanted it to be just an innocent hobby I could put down and walk away from at any time. As years went by, I found I couldn’t replace my so-called hobby with anything else in my life. I did the worse possible thing, I tried to internalize my feelings hoping I could somehow ignore them, and the phase would go away. Of course, it never did.

I always thought my mom knew I was trying on her clothes and putting on her makeup but never said anything because she thought I was going through a phase. Obviously, she was wrong! She never had the courage to call me out on what I was doing until I brought it up to her in a very ill-fated attempt to come out when I was discharged from the Army many years later. She quickly rejected my attempt to clear the air by volunteering psychiatric care. Of course, I refused her offer because I knew I was not mentally ill. I just wanted to live a transfeminine life on my terms. We never mentioned it again for the rest of her life but at least I tried to explain my deepest secret to her.

The phase idea came to be one idea I always ran from. I did not feel deep down my feelings were a phase but still was afraid to face the truth. I ended up moving many times and trying many new jobs just to try to outrun my gender feelings. It all was exhausting to my already fragile mental health. In fact, my initial gender therapist diagnosed me as being bi-polar when all along I thought I was just terribly depressed when I never thought I could achieve my dream of living as a full-time transgender woman. I was depressed when I considered the extreme distance I still had to travel, just not as bad.

As I still managed to progress along my gender pathway, I still encountered phases I needed to go through. The major one was what I called my teen girl dressing years. As I survived my urge to stuff my oversize male body into skimpy fashions, I was quickly laughed back into my closet several times before I learned the proper way to attempt to blend in with what other women my age were wearing. Easily, it was the most difficult phase I needed to deal with. Mainly because I was so stubborn.

It turned out the stubbornness I possessed was just what I needed to keep going. Deep down I knew I was in the middle of one of the most complex journeys a human can take, and I could be successful if I tried hard enough. It all meant I needed to earn my way through the feminine gatekeepers I faced to be allowed to play in their sandbox.  I was petrified when I needed to actually begin to talk one on one with other women. Very early on, I was frightened of their reaction when they learned I was not a cis-gendered woman. This was before I learned my path to womanhood was as valid as theirs. I just came to mine along a different path. Amazingly to me, the doors were opened to me, and I was permitted to play behind the gender curtain.

It was around this time when I began one of the most powerful phases of my life, when I made the correct decision to begin gender affirming hormones, or HRT. I say powerful because the new hormones I was prescribed by a doctor turned out to be everything I dreamed of and more. If anything, else, the hormones proved my whole life was not a phase. Now I felt as if I was arriving home in the deepest sense. If you compared my hormonal life as a circle, I was completing mine. The effects of HRT made me feel whole as a transfeminine woman. I could feel deeper, be more emotional and enjoy the world as never before.

I proved, more than ever before, my life was not a phase, I was much more than just a man putting on a dress. I proved all along I was a woman putting on a male face and clothes all along. At the least, I could rest easily knowing what my gender issue was all along. Not a phase but my life.

 

 

The Biggest Lie

 

Image from Dave Goudreau 
on UnSplash.

Sadly, the biggest lie I’ve ever told in my life regarded my biggest truth.

The lie of course, regarded my gender identity. For simplistic reasons I could say the problem I faced early in life was having a complete lack of information to lean on. It was back before the internet information years, and I thought I was the only boy in the world who wanted to be a girl part of the time.

To compensate for my cross-dressing activities, I was prepared to lie my way through it. If I was ever caught red handed because of leaving lipstick on my fingers. Due to whatever circumstances which were beyond my control and very lucky, I was never caught by my family. Although I always have wondered if my mom somehow knew but hoped my fascination with her clothes was just a phase I would grow out of. The best part was, I never was caught or questioned so I did not have to lie my way out of an ill-advised trip to a psychiatrist. Back in those days, being a transvestite (the term which was used) was a mental illness problem. Not something I wanted to face. So, I hid in fear.

As I weighed the two alternatives, fear or lying, I chose to internalize the fear I was feeling every time I put on feminine clothes. Once again, I was able to put off lying to the one biggest person in my life…myself.

All was well until I was discharged from the Army and returned to civilian life. Once I did, I began to pick up where I had left off with my gender issues. I even went as far as almost telling my first wife who was also in the Army and was being discharged several months after I was, to expect a totally different me when we met again. I was totally thinking of meeting her as my transfeminine self. As much as I secretly wanted to, deep down I knew I was not ready for such a big move, so I hid my feelings again and lied my life away, for a while.

You know what they say about lies, the more you lie, the more you have to. Just to stay above water. Before long, I was drowning in my own personal lie, until I met my second wife. She was much stronger than my first wife who never said anything negative to me at all considering my gender issues. I often thought wife number one would not protest at all if I told her I was leaving for a period of time for sex realignment surgery. She was just too easy, and I divorced her to be with my second wife who also knew of my cross dressing. Which started out good but deteriorated

I say deteriorated because my second wife did all she could to support my growing gender issues until I had outgrown both of us. All of the times she encouraged me to go ahead and rent a motel room and spend the day out as a woman taught me valuable lessons. First and foremost, I could make it in the world as my feminine self after all. Then, the big lies started as I began to go out on my own when my wife was at work, from the house. Which was something I told her I would never do. By doing so, I began to live the biggest lie of all, as I was increasingly aggressive in my attempts to do more and more in the world away from my masculine self.

Naturally, the tailspin I put our marriage into put a strain on both of us. Especially when she caught me going out. When she did, a massive fight would break out for days until somehow an uneasy truce would be called. At times, things would be so bad, my wife told me just be man enough to be a woman. The problem was, I was still lying to myself thinking I could keep my married life balanced with my transfeminine one. I just was not that good a juggler to do it. Again, mainly because I could not face my truth.

Sadly, my second wife passed away before I faced my truth. Being the wise one in the relationship, she knew me better than I knew myself. Pushing me to pay attention to what it really meant to be a woman.

Now I just wish I did listen to her and went ahead and transitioned. Sure, it would have been difficult but living the life we lived was difficult too and I could have started living with a clear conscience. Being the stubborn person that I was, I kept on living a lie until I could take it no longer and finally made the move into a life I could enjoy as a fulltime transgender woman.

By the time I transitioned most of the important friends I had known (including my wife) had passed away. Leaving me alone in the world to carve out a new life in my sixties. It would have been very difficult, but I wish I had listened to my wife and been man enough to be a woman sooner.