Time Waits for No One if you are Trans

Image from David Cohen
on UnSplash.

Sometimes I look back at my nearly three quarters of a century of life and wonder how I made it.

Often I think I could have made it easier on myself if I had been able to muster the courage to come out much earlier and live the authentic feminine life I always wanted to live. It is difficult to imagine exactly how it would have worked out, because the world has changed so much for transgender women and men. It is always worth mentioning the pre-internet/social media days when trans people were so much more isolated in their dark gender closets.

Timing always has quite a bit of influence on how anyone is able to attempt joining the world as an out transgender person. As anyone becomes older, they have a tendency to accumulate life experiences, material or not. Families come along for many, making the gender shock of changing genders so much more of a problem. Baggage continues to increase when we undertake better employment and secure better housing. Both of which can be very difficult to give up.

Time keeps on moving, which often is the only definite and when it does, the pressure builds to do something about it. The older we become, the more the reality of our mortality sets it and we lose the recklessness of youth. I was certainly much more reckless when I was younger and tried more self destructive acts such as consuming too much alcohol and driving way too fast. Also, as the pressure mounted, my mental health which was already shaky was put to the test repeatedly. Anything I tried seemed to take me farther and farther away from any potential answers I could think of.  

The problem was I couldn't see the forest for the gender trees. Similar to any other woman, my biological clock was ticking away and the older I got, the louder it became. I tried everything to run from my clock but of course nothing worked. Finally, when I turned sixty, I could take it no longer. On one momentous night after years of struggle I gave up my male self and gave in to living fulltime as a transgender woman. I put all the years of experimentation as a cross dresser behind me, dis-carded the remainder of my male clothes and set out to live my dream. Sure, it was scary but all the preparation I put into the move made it more natural and successful from the beginning. Primarily my inner woman was overwhelmed by finally having the final say in my life. 

At the time, I was viewing the entire process as jumping off a gender cliff and hoping for a soft landing. As it turned out, all my prep time when I was actually trying to play in the girl's sandbox worked well for me because I had a chance to build up a close circle of women friends who helped with the landing and even welcomed me in. 

I knew too, I wasn't getting any younger and if I put off a gender transition much longer, I would likely never have the chance again. I was close to retirement age, had no spouse to worry about, and had a limited amount of family and friends to come out to, so even I didn't have a good reason to stay in my gender closet any longer. 

In my case, for whatever reason, I was able to wait out time to the bitter end and come out positive in the process. I wish now, I didn't wait so long to live as my authentic transgender self and put so much prep work into it but no one goes back and gets a second chance to rewind the clock.  

My Gender Clock never Stopped

Image from the Jessie Hart 
Archives. Ohio River in back
ground.

 Although it is difficult to remember my thoughts when I first viewed my girlish image in the hallway mirror growing up, I am certain I had a mixture of emotions. 

Probably, my biggest emotion was elation and from that point forward, something within clicked and a new gender clock was set and running. From then on I had a new goal and possibly a new life to consider. One of the things I needed to figure out was how deep my gender leanings were running. My young mind needed to consider was I just trying to look feminine or was there something much deeper going on. At that point, my clock dramatically entered the picture. Within a relatively short period of time, everytime I cross dressed, the "buzz" would wear off and I needed to try to sneak around and dress as a girl again and again. Something just wasn't right and my young mind was feeling it. Looking back, my clock issues with cross dressing could be easily explained away. I was in the earliest stages of considering I was transgender, which I ran from for most of my life.

As I grew older, I grew braver in my gender outlook and I began to search for ways to open my closet door and see the world. Sometimes I was successful and other times I wasn't. The successful times when I was able to negotiate the world as a novice transgender woman essentially set my gender clock forward a few minutes. When I wasn't, my clock was set back when I needed to head home and attempt to figure out what I was doing wrong. For some reason, I wasn't able to complete what was going on with my gender puzzle. On occasion, when my feedback was quick and brutal, my clock had more than it's shares of setbacks.

On the bright side, as hard as I tried to wreck my male life as I knew it, I was never successful as I searched desperately for my truth...could I really or ever live a life as a happy fulltime transgender woman. Since happiness was always difficult to define in my family growing up, I often wondered if gender was the missing ingredient for me to survive. 

Then there were the times I needed to put my gender clock on hold due to many major life changes such as going away to college and serving my time in the military. Essentially, again to survive, I needed a safe spot in the back of my head to store my clock until I could put it into use again. Thanks to several well attended Halloween parties I went to and tested out my prowess at being a novice transgender woman, I was able to set my clock forward to some sort of version of gender savings time. Because, at the same time I was watching the time, I was saving my life for the future. 

As I set the time forward, my life as a cross dresser became so intricate, I needed to seriously consider making a change. Finally, I came to the conclusion I was a woman cross dressing as a man and I needed to perceive myself in a different way. The different way involved me seriously considering if my gender clock wouldn't stop until I started to live more and more on the feminine side of life. At that point, my gender clock went into overdrive. I quickly started to develop a new life as a woman where very few people knew the old male me and I made the major decision to begin gender affirming hormones. 

Luckily, all this activity made my mental health better and my gender clock stronger. To this day, it has never stopped. Plus, if the world didn't like me, it was their problem, not mine.

In another side note, I received comments from "Sunshine Jen " and others on my health situation. So far I just found the main Cincinnati Veterans Hospital wants to take a further look at the spots on my head. So we are still in a wait and see place. Thanks for asking!

Just Passing Thru

 Over the past several days and weeks I have happened along several acquaintances I made over the years. Of course when you get to be my age (72) the opportunity grows to have more people who have just passed through your life. Then again too, I wonder about some of them making a larger influence on my life. 

In the middle of it all was my twenty five year relationship with my deceased wife, my five year relationship with my first wife and my current relationship which is going strong at nearly eleven years. I guess you can say if nothing else I have been loyal. As I think about all the others is when I get bogged down with all the "what if's". What if the woman I met in a Columbus Ohio lesbian bar and went to a party with wanted to see me again? Similar to the date I had with a guy in Dayton, Ohio? I could go on and on  The differences were my wife was still very much alive when I met the first woman and I really couldn't visualize myself with anyone else but the guy was much different. I was on my own and actively exploring my own sexuality. In essence I was all over the gender spectrum although I still knew I liked women. The allure of having validation from the male gender was powerful also.

As life has a way of doing, many times it is like water. If you let it go, it will find it's own level. For me that level was feminine. It seems the more I tried to find a male companion, the easier it was to find a female one. Much more than when I was completely in the world cross dressing as a man. Maybe the women I was around then could sense I was a mess. 

Photo from Unsplash

Since I was a mess, I had very few male "friends." I spent my life guarding myself from the world so most people just were passing thru. 

I think too, we transgender people have more of a chance to have more people just pass thru our lives. Primarily because early on we are so guarded and later because we start all over attempting to build new lives. Many times the process dictates a whole new set of people just passing thru.

Another problem is when transgender women or men become successful in entering society many of them leave the transgender or LGBTQ group they were part of.  So there goes another group of acquaintances. 

It's difficult for me to even compare if I had had the opportunity to live a mainstream life if I would have had more or less of the same people just passing thru. Maybe it isn't as important as it was to me when I thought of it when I couldn't sleep last night. I just can't help but wonder what happened to certain people who just passed me by so quickly as my life sped by.