A Decade

It turns out I have been writing Cyrsti's Condo for a decade now. On certain days, it seems like yesterday when Connie encouraged to start writing a blog on others it seems as if it was a century ago. At any rate, after I figured out what a blog really was I am nearing six thousand posts today. 

After extensive searching, I found a post from 2010:

"Saturday, May 29, 2010

You make a better looking woman!

You've probably heard the comment.
Unless you are like the recent "Tyra Show"guests. I'm referring to the 7 and 8 year old transgender kids who are living in their preferred gender. You've likely agonized over the duality within you. .When I played defensive end, I wanted to be the cheerleader...you know the story.
My experimentation with the opposite gender didn't really start until I was about 12. The magic elixir of seeing a girl in the mirror was powerful.  I've often wondered if some chemical endorphin in my brain is the catalyst for the creature I am today.
And what about the comments that I made a" better looking woman than man"?  (Halloween party gossip) Comments such as those used to destroy me! How could I even consider stopping this shameful "hobby"? Where was my "get out of jail free" card to end this madness?
Obviously, I didn't stop. In my mind there is nothing more powerful than a beautiful woman so I listened to the comments and obsessed to get better.  Better I did become.

The world knew me as one gender or the other and for the most part I went out of my way to create two existences.  Chance encounters with people who knew the male side of me never produced any recognition. Life was balanced.
Until New Years day this year.

Symbolically, I started the year and decade as Cyrsti for the first time ever. Checked into the hotel as a girl, went to the clubs with friends and left the next morning in girl clothes. On the way home, I changed into my favorite teams jersey (filled it out a little different!) and stopped and watched the first of the bowl  games.
On the way home, I was totally into girl mode when impulsively I stopped at my regular grocery store to pick up a couple things. On New Years Day I figured none of the regular cashiers would be working.  If they were, they wouldn't know me anyhow.  Wrong, wrong and WRONG! Both of the regular cashiers were working.
Of course one of them picked me out of the crowd immediately. I knew it and she knew it...she thought. I bought my groceries and took off.

I went back the next day to see if I was right.  It took her about ten seconds to start asking questions since I was alone in line.
She said "I know how you will answer" but "do you have an alter ego" or did I lose a bet.
I was naturally evasive as I considered "outing" myself and just said I was at my brothers watching football.
I did not out myself to her so she got bored and  wrapped it all up with "Who ever it was was very attractive and really looked like you".
Nearly three days later I ended up in the other cashier's line. Following a similar Q & A, she just said "if you ever had to go that way, you would have no problems, she was beautiful."
Not my ideal way to go fishing for compliments.

Fortunately, my gender balance wasn't too difficult to restore.  Many around me know of my duality and I don't care.
I did spend some time considering the old questions about how challenging it is to live life this way.
But you know I wouldn't miss another shot of that "magical elixir." Life would be soooo much more boring!"

There you go. Obviously I was better looking a decade ago! I even found pictures from 2010.

You May Be Trans If...

My word goal for my book is a rather mundane 60,000 words. Supposedly, the average book contains 64,000 words. So, along the way, I am trying my best to remember every little nuance of my life and how it related to me ultimately deciding I was transgender. I easily remembered the Christmases with no doll as a gift and the envy I felt when my girl cousins appeared up in their velvet dresses, black patent shoes and white tights. 

I remembered too, the fishing trips we took to Canada as a family. On occasion, on the interstate we would encounter another car with a girl I could admire. One in particular stands out to me. She had long dark hair and was riding by herself in the back seat. My heart ached to be just like her. 

What has been harder to remember ironically are the years later in my life when I was still so envious of the feminine gender. The biggest envy was not so surprising. As the Vietnam War increasingly encroached on my life through high school and college, I really resented the fact women didn't have to worry about being drafted and killed too. 

Recently as I considered all of this I remembered vividly one of the conversations my second wife and I had one summer day when I was in one of my severe emotional downers. In fact, it was during one of the vacations we took to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. During that period of my life, I had achieved quite a bit. I was a highly successful restaurant manager with a loving wife and daughter and a unique restored Civil War brick home. She finally sensed my mood and asked what the one thing I needed to allow myself to be happy. I never gave her the answer I quickly thought of. I wanted to be a woman. I would rather be making the trip as a girl. Instead I did the manly thing and hid my emotions. Sooner more than later, we would be back home and I could cover up my true emotions by cross dressing and relieving the strain for awhile. 

Looking back at just these three instances (there were more of course) I wonder now what took me so long to come out as trans and how I even made it at all. The only way I really did make it was maintaining a rather frenetic lifestyle, with a pressure packed job and self medication with too much alcohol. I was able to build a successful male life which was difficult to think about giving up totally. So again I did the guy thing and tried to "tough" my way through it. 

What  a relief it was when I finally decided I was transgender and had been all along.     

Love at Christmas!

Recently, MtF transgender activist Janet Mock began hosting an online show on MSNBC . Then, she celebrated another milestone- a romantic one!

This weekend the longtime boyfriend of transgender author and activist Janet Mock upstaged her Friday debut as a host of an online show for MSNBC. He popped the question, and Mock revealed the news — and showed off the ring — to her fans and friends on Instagram andTwitter, declaring, simply: “I said YES.”

Here's the juicy  love story from the Advocate: 
Tredwell met Mock early Easter morning of 2009 at a bar in Manhattan, and as she described their first encounter in an article on XOJane, she caught him looking at her as she twirled on the dance floor. “He's a fantasy come true, and I want him to want me,” she recalled.

They went for a walk on Houston Street. Over lattes and a cinnamon roll, they shared their stories: He’s from North Dakota, takes photos, and trains dogs for a living; she’s from Hawaii and works as an editor for a popular website. She told him she wants to tell stories that matter.

After a month of casual dates, Mock revealed her own story, saying, “I was born a boy.” She told him what she called her “whole story,” because she was falling for him. Her revelations includded “I knew I was a girl from my very first thoughts”; “I began presenting as female from age 12”;  “I took hormones in high school”; “I flew to Thailand to have surgery at 18.”

Afraid, worried about what he would say, Mock waited for him to react. And his reaction, as she described it, provoked tears: “Can I hug you?”
Mock credits her relationship with Tredwell and his desire “to know me, to ask me questions about my past, force me to retrace steps that have made me the woman I am today” for inspiring her to write her best-selling memoir, Redefining Realness. 

Follow the Advocate link above for more details on her first show So Popular with Janet Mock.