A Want...or a Need

JJ Hart Discovering her Needs
I am in the first row on the left.

When a want turns into a need, sometimes you can feel it. Other times, not so much as if it sneaks up on you from behind.

As I began to wear dresses and makeup as a young boy, for the most part, it was because I wanted to do it. Cross-dressing just relieved the pressure of my unwanted everyday male world. It did not take me long to figure out my want was much more than just a casual appreciation of women’s fashion and makeup.  I did not know it then (and the term had not yet been widely used) that I was transgender more than a cross-dresser. I could not feel the change because I did not have the gender knowledge to do it.

Life began to change for me when I started to cross-dress for the thrill of it and attend Halloween parties. The parties ended up teaching me the basics of being a woman in public around people I knew, and I wanted to take it a step further by not having to wait another year to try again to get out of my dark closet and into the world. That is when my story turned out to be dark as I was not met with many positives by the public as a novice trans woman, cross-dresser or whatever you would like to label me as. To too many people, I was simply a man in a dress and clown makeup. I learned the hard way to get back to my drawing board and work harder on my feminine craft to find out if I was ever going to be able to succeed at all at my dream.

I also learned that if I was ever going to find success on my gender path, I was never just going to make it by just thinking it was just a want. It had to become a deep-seated need. I went back and dieted, worked on my skin and did everything I could to improve my testosterone poisoned body. All it really taught me was how much deeper I needed to travel along my gender path to make it at all and I needed to do it very badly. As the pounds melted off, I was able to find more stylish feminine wardrobe items to fill out my fashion needs and dress for success to blend in with the rest of the ciswoman crowd. Who I learned the hard way, were the people who ran the world I was attempting to be a part of. Or I could go casual if I needed to and a more polished business look when I needed to upscale my appearance. Fashion-wise I was learning that looking the best I could and blending in with the public at the same time was a definite need not some sort of a frivolous want just to justify something I wanted.

The more I tested the world as a transfeminine person, the more I needed to do to help myself along in the learning process of just belonging in the world I always should have been a part of to begin with. It was a real chore just to put the mirror image I thought I had perfected into the public and into motion to see how it worked. For the most part, I was improving to the point where I needed to start trying to communicate with the world as a more complete trans woman. As I always point out, the communication challenge to me was immense because I had always been a lazy communicator in my life. By that I mean, I had never really had to listen closely to what another man was telling me. I knew instinctively how to respond to another man but was clueless when it came to woman to woman talk. Which I always had known was different but how different I did not know until I was made aware of it. For example, for the first time ever in my life I needed to really stop and listen to whomever was talking to me. Were they trying to point out danger to me or just being friendly as a ciswoman who was curious of me or a toxic man who just viewed me as some sort of a fetish object.

Quite possibly, the communication aspect of my male to female femininization need passed my desire to be as attractive as I could as a transgender woman in the world. Instead of just wishing and wanting to be accepted as an equal by the other ciswomen I met, I needed to make it a priority. I even swallowed my pride and took female vocal lessons to make the process easier. It was difficult, but I think I gained enough confidence to help with my overall presentation and life.

I was helped too when the pressure to succeed was relieved here and there by the new success I was having in the world carving out a new life which on one hand to be terrifying and on the other feeling so natural like I was coming home to the self I always should have been.

I found I did not discover all my true self until I could step away from me for a minute to look at how far my gender path had taken me. After years of experimenting and trying different things, I finally achieved my need to be allowed to play in the girls’ sandbox and I was not disappointed with what I found there. Even though I had to put up with the occasional hater or TERF who wanted me out, but the majority of women made me feel welcome in their world and that was all that mattered to me.

The sandbox provided me with firm lessons and reassurance in what I was trying to accomplish in life. The want I always felt was always a hidden need which took me years to realize was my true problem in life to solve.

I hope you can realize your true wants and needs on your gender path also and life becomes easier for you if you are searching like I always was.

 

 

 

  

It's a Lonely World

 

Image from Jarle Johnasen
on UnSplash.

It is a lonely world for many transgender women and transgender men as we journey along our dark gender paths.

As I always point out, like so many of you, I got a late start on filling out my gender workbook on how I was even going to begin a transfeminine life. Before the word was even invented. I was not invited to any overnight stays with the girls I admired so much to take advantage of early make-up tips and even feminine peer pressure on the clothes I was wearing to do a better job of looking the best I could in front of the mirror. Ironically, I was probably ahead of most girls age-wise when I started wearing makeup and shaving my legs, but I did not know that because I was not allowed behind the gender curtain to play in the girls’ sandbox.  

Looking back, I thought for a while there was always a chance I was going through some sort of a phase and I just could not be the only boy in the world with a strong desire to be a woman someday.

To make matters worse, I was always exceedingly shy back in those days which made me an introvert, and I had a tendency to not trust others. That would manifest itself much later in life when I had a very difficult time making close friends. Especially with other men. Who I thought would never understand my deepest darkest secret which by then I knew was no innocent phase in life I was going through. Not surprisingly after a while, I lost most of my shyness around ciswomen and enjoyed my time with them even more. Even though my true motives were never revealed that I just wanted to be like them in the worst way possible and I was just trying to see what it took to live their lives.

Even though I was still married to a couple of very different women through this portion of my life who knew of my cross-dressing desires and did the best I could to surround myself with other women, deep down inside I was still lonely. It never occurred to me why and what I could do about it for years. I just never realized for the longest time that I was living much of my life completely backwards. I was never meant to be a man and was forced into it by a cruel twist of fate I could do nothing about. Being a woman trying to live as a man put a terrific strain on me and caused me to constantly dwell on what I was doing wrong to feel so lonely.

When I finally made it out of my gender closet and into the world, my loneliness amazingly began to go away when I started to interact with other women. While men shunned me, ciswomen were curious why I was in their world. When they found out I was not some sort of fraud and a honest human being, it was OK to talk on a shallow level. Which was fine with me because I was so lonely after my second wife unexpectedly passed away. Her death taught me to never take anything for granted again and I set out to live more deeply as the transgender woman I was becoming. Just breaking down the gender barriers I was doing was never enough to get behind the gender curtain. I needed to do more.

Primarily, I needed to learn all over again how to talk to people. Mainly women but also men. Women I found came at me from all different directions and practiced a lot of nonverbal communication. I needed to practice the art of passive aggressiveness also when I found a smiling woman was not necessarily a friendly one. Until I proved to be up to the gender communication challenge, life became very interesting. Perhaps you have noticed that for the most part I left men out because for the most part, they left me alone. Which was fine by me, because with most of the men I did encounter, all I did was soothe their ego. Payback I guess from all the time I spent in the male world.

By this time in my life, I was looking at being sixty directly in the eye and could see very few avenues available to me to combat the extreme loneliness I felt at the time and had just figured I would have to spend the rest of my life by myself. As someone once said, the darkest hour is always right before the dawn and that is what happened to me. I already had my casual lesbian friends who met with me several times a week to watch sports and drink beer until my current wife came along online of all places and we cemented a wonderful relationship. Firat of all, Liz made me a believer in myself again. A confidence I had always had as a man but never as a trans woman.

Unbelievably, destiny had worked its magic, and I found someone to love in the world again and we lived close enough to make a romance work. As long as we are together (over twelve years now), we will not have to experience any lonely days in a cold world ever again.

For those of you who want to know more about how I did it was the only way I made it out was putting myself out there in that same cold world. I had to battle my fears by going out in big straight sports bars and becoming a regular. And, beat all the long odds to find a romantic partner on an online dating site. My big break came in the sports bars when a bartender I knew as a regular set me up with her single lesbian mother who I am friends with to this day. My moral to the story was I needed to put myself out there before I could reap the benefits, but I know the world has changed and you have to be careful.

One way or another, we transgender women and trans men live in a potentially very lonely world which is a shame because we have so much more to offer than the average human because we have seen so much in our lives.

Thanks for reading along and contributing with claps and comments! Hopefully I can come up with something meaningful to you.

 

It's Your World to Live In

 

Image from Gabriel Silverio
on UnSplash. 

When it comes down to it, it is your life to live and no one else’s. But life comes in the way.

The problem is often for transgender women and transgender men, it is easier said than done to live our own lives. Especially for those of us who had to wait until later in life to go after our dreams of transitioning into a feminine world. Perhaps, you were like I was and called selfish for my one-sided obsession about even seeing if my male to female dreams could ever become a reality. My second wife was fond of telling me my cross dressing should not be all about me.

The longer I pursued life on my new transfeminine gender path, I realized she was right. In order for me to move ahead in a world which felt so natural to me, I had to be selfish. It was the only way I could make the difficult decision to take a leap of faith and try to jump the gender border.

Back in those days, the only thing I could hang my pantyhose on were the annual Halloween parties I was going to dressed in my feminine finest. During these early parties, I learned a few of the basics I would need to survive as a trans woman later in life. Such as how visibly trained the human animal is to the genders, and if I was to go to the feminine side, everyone (male and female) would be noticing me. My new visible role in the world took some time and effort to get used to, but I did finally do it when I learned to dress to blend with the other ciswomen around me. It was my life to live, and I was coming closer and closer to deciding how I wanted to live it.

Before I did, I discovered I still had a whole lot of living to do before I made my decision. The problem was my male life on occasion was not that bad. Which gave me false hope that I could save it. All it did, as I juggled two genders at once, was to make my life a mental health hell as I struggled to maintain any sort of life I wanted. On one side, I had the increasingly financially successful male self-making it harder to give up all that he had earned and the male privileges which came with it. Struggling with my feminine side which felt she was in a more natural position to thrive. The end result was whatever decision I made just had to be the right one. With so much at stake in my life, I needed to go back to being very selfish with myself to make it.

In the meantime, I went into a heavy experimentation period of my life as a novice transgender woman. My goal was to try to live every moment that I could discover what a ciswoman has to go through in her life. So, I could tell if I wanted to do the same thing. I wanted to be more than the “pretty, pretty princess” that my second wife always called me when she was trying to make fun of my femininity to learn what she was really talking about. It was a struggle, but eventually I did by setting up my own version of a transgender bucket list of things to do. What did a ciswoman know that I did not became my main goal in life when I shed my male clothes and went out in the world as a trans woman. Overall, my plan worked well for me except the times I tried too hard and ended up in redneck bars where a single woman should have not been to begin with.

I did so much, I wore out my bucket list of obvious things to do and began to examine the difference between male and female privilege in society. Losing my male privilege brought about no real surprises such as having my intelligence challenged and learning to be more careful with my personal safety. While the main feminine privilege I felt was the freedom to be myself in the world and went way past just having doors opened for me by men. Needless to say, I was in love with the whole path I was on as a transfeminine person and could not wait to get back to it anytime I had to leave and go back to my increasingly unwanted male life.  I was stubborn but then again, I slowly realized I could never go back to the life I had lived before. No matter how successful it was.

As I reached the age of sixty, I could put it off no longer no matter how stubborn my male self-had become. When my second wife passed away from a massive heart attack, he was left with no allies in my life to fight with and was done. I had paid my cross-dressing dues by doing the best I could with what I had to work with appearance wise and had gone out of my way to experiment with how ciswomen live by putting myself in actual situations in life which I could expect to happen. After all of that, I just needed the final push off my gender cliff, and land in a world of my own choosing. Without a perpetual balancing act.

In other words, I guess you could say I went too far in paying my own dues during the approximately fifty years it took me to lead a life to discover who I always was. I decided long ago tt was too late to cry over what I did or did not do and to look forward to the time I have left in the world. At the least, I found living a life on both sides of the binary gender border was as scary as it was interesting. How many other humans get to experience what a transgender women or transgender man gets to see in one lifetime.

Sure, we experience our ups and downs but so does everyone else and we can have such an interesting path to claim a life which was always meant to be ours.

HEY YOU! Thanks for joining me in my journey and commenting or clapping for my posts. You make it all so worthwhile.

 

Dreaming in "3-G"

 

Image from Amin RK
on UnSplash.

Dreaming in “3-G” seems to be coming natural for me these days.

Somehow, I have skipped the old two gender dreams I was having and replaced them with a more complex series of dreams I can remember in the morning when I wake up. I call them three gender dreams.  It’s kind of like going from black and white movies back in the day to full color masterpieces.

Here is an example. Recently I was having a dream that I was a guy but later became a woman complete with a new bag of lipstick. I wondered at the time how the lipstick got there but I had no answer as the dream moved on. Also, I have noticed recently that my dreams have been shifting out of my old male world and into my relatively new feminine world. I suppose I was expecting miracles when I thought fifteen years of fulltime transgender life could replace sixty years in the male world. In my subconscious.  

All my gender dreams can be traced back to my earliest days of life when I had vivid dreams of being a pretty girl and being very disappointed when I woke up in the same body every morning. But as I remember, my dreams were all in “2-G” and involved me in one of the two main binary genders, male or female.

I find it interesting that some transgender women or transgender men who I happen to talk about concerning their dreams say they are always their authentic gender self when they dream. When I have always been a mixture. I suppose that it is another complexity of what trans folk go through. The only constant in all my “2-G” or “3-G” dreams I have had over the years is that from most of them I was having a positive experience that I wanted to continue. Such as in my early years when all I really wanted to do was present well enough to make it in public as a transfeminine person. Who could blend in with ciswomen everywhere and not cause any extra attention.

What confused me was when I was starting to successfully lead a trans woman’s life, why it didn’t it follow me more into my dream world. I took what I could get and kept moving on with my own male to female femininization program. Dreams were just an integral part of keeping my gender sanity along the way. They helped with dispersing all the pressure in life I was feeling from juggling two genders. Plus, I have considered too that the anti-depressant and anxiety medications I am on may contribute to the vivid dreams I have been having.

I also find it strange when I have a “3-G” rare negative dream. I would have thought that with all the success I finally had on my gender path, I would not have an ugly dream about someone pulling off my wig in public. Especially since I have not had to wear a wig in almost a decade and never had anyone try to pull mine off when I did. It is my own version of a nightmare-cross dresser style.

At the least, when the “3-G” dreams don’t turn ugly, they are cheap entertainment and I wonder how I got here. When I do, the answer always comes back loud and clear that I made it to the place in life where I always should have been. And my dreams just are a reflection of that.

Maybe too, my dreams are finally transitioning to my current feminine self. Which is currently making the transition to just being the me I needed to be. “2-G” or “3-G” dreams should not matter anymore as they are just a needed respite from the real world we transgender individuals must put up with.

No matter where your dreams lead to, I hope they find you in a good place in this sometimes-negative world we live in today. We need all we can get to lead a quality life away from all the gender haters and bigots and a little daydream of how your future could be can never hurt anyone.

This is just a little shorter post than you are used to seeing from me today as I have to get mentally prepared for my Veterans Administration assigned psychiatrist virtual visit. I thought it would be a fun time to write about the effect dreams of all kinds have on our lives as trans people.

Good night!

 

 

 

 

The Best Advice I Never Got

 

Image from Frame Harriak
on UnSplash. 

The best advice I never got came from no one.

There was no one there to tell me anything about what I was doing when I was doing my best just to be feminine. No one to tell me my skirts were way too short and tight and my makeup looked like I just left a circus clown drag show. And better yet, no one to tell me I was heading along a gender path which would ultimately ruin my life if I kept it up.

The only person who was screaming in my ear initially as I cross dressed in front of the mirror was my male self-telling me to hurry up and get done before I risked discovery and the end to the world as I knew it. This was the time too when my feminine side was lying to me by telling me I was a pretty girl. Maybe I could see some of my femininity in my pre-male puberty years but quickly faded with my bodily changes.

As life progressed as it always does, I witnessed the battle of my voices as once again my male side was telling me to stop cross-dressing and never do it again and my feminine side saying keep on trying and things will get better. Even though it was difficult to listen to the best advice I never got I kept deciding to pursue my feminine side and see what would happen,

At that time, I was stuck in a series of Halloween parties where I could dress as myself and not fear reprisal. Plus, I could judge how I was doing with what I wanted to wear and with how far I had come with my makeup skills or lack of them. I was aware that I was at risk for stirring up potential risks of being discovered when someone would ask who shaved my legs and applied my makeup. I just said I shaved my own legs and did not mention who did my makeup because my second wife did not wear any. I was normally Ok because it would take another ciswoman to question my makeup because if a man did, I would figure he may be part of my femininization club. I learned so much from the Halloween parties I went to that not going to them dressed as myself was the best advice I never got.

I think it is ironic that that almost everyone has advice for everyone else except when it comes to transgender women and transgender men. It seems, our situation is so unique that the only advice someone can come up with is just not do it. They have no understanding of what we are going through, and it is so much deeper than just wearing clothes of the opposite gender. Maybe that is why I never got any advice from anyone except one of my self-proclaimed gender therapists who told me there was nothing she could do about me wanting to be a woman. Like a dummy, I ignored the only good advice I could have received at the time.

It wasn’t until I started reading certain on-line computer sites did, I really encounter advice as transgender “Nazi’s” as we called them. Who continually did battle with many cross dressers, who received little or no respect from the transsexuals as they were called then. Being the cynic that I am, I enjoyed quite a few of the comments as the gender battles raged on. Seemingly, respect from some on the site was only gained by how many gender surgeries you had gone through. Why I needed to wait to receive advice I did not want from an internet site which should have been welcoming to all but wasn’t.

By the time I hit my experimental stage to judge where I should be in the world as a man or a trans woman. I was not in much of a mood for much advice, and it was the best advice I could ever get. I was very much on my own in the world as a new transfeminine person and loving it. If someone had told me to stop what I was doing, I would have said hell no as I was having the time of my life.

I think other ciswomen sensed my confidence in who I was and mostly just interacted with me out of curiosity and at the same time, without knowing it showed me the way behind the gender curtain. I needed their help to achieve my dream, and not much advice. As the curtain parted and I learned what I needed to exist in a world I had only dreamed of, the best advice I got was none because I did not seek it out.

I cannot say I did not need advice when it came to making my final gender decisions. Primarily the day when my future wife Liz saw me mentally struggling again with my gender issues and flat out told me she had never seen any male in me. Go ahead and transition into a feminine world. In all fairness, I heard the same thing from my second wife years before but could not figure out how to do it. This time I could do it and received a doctor’s approval for HRT gender affirming hormones and major changes to by external and internal body was underway.

It turned out to be the best advice I ever got. Especially when my stubborn self-listened and decided to change my life for good. To the place it should have always been. Making my way in a world of ciswomen. Now I want the time back that I lost, but it is too late. I will just have to take my own advice and make the best life I can with the time I have left.

Thanks to you all who read along with all my experiences. Hopefully they will help you with yours and of course I will offer my own advice from all that I learned when you comment. Without all of you, none of what I do would be meaningful to me.

 

 

 

Dealing with Stress as a Transgender Woman

 

Image from Ksenia Berjoz 
on UnSplash.

In the male world I did not want to be in, I had a difficult time responding to pressure except where I worked where oddly enough, I thrived.

I suppose the gender pressure I was under started very early in life when I needed to struggle mightily to even find the private time to even try to be the pretty girl I wanted to be in front of the mirror. From my early cross-dressing years, instead of growing away from feeling the pressure I was feeling, I grew into it. On one side, I had the fond thoughts of gender euphoria dominating every spare moment that I had and on the other side I had the reality of having to compete in a world I never wanted to be in. Football was a prime example of me trying to overachieve and ended up breaking two bones doing it before I just quit.

Moving forward to the time when I left my closet and started to discover the world as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman, the pressure was on more than ever before to succeed as neither of my egos were taking getting laughed at by the public well. My feelings hurt, and the pressure as I said was building to do something about it.

The first thing I knew I could do was go on a diet which quickly slimmed my body so I could find and wear more fashionable clothing and started to take care of my skin better everyday after I shaved. All of this helped me to feel better about myself, and I kept on trying to perfect my makeup techniques to improve my public presentation. With all of this, it still took me quite a while to build my fragile confidence to a point where I could go out in public again.

Then I found myself in a spot where pressure was coming at me from different angles. On the days I thought my makeup and clothes were at their peak of success, the pressure would set in about how I was moving as a transfeminine person in the world. I needed to concentrate on two things, not moving like a linebacker in drag and making sure I put a pleasant look on my face. Replacing the male scowl I had perfected for so long. If I was enjoying my new life, I would have to make sure I showed it to the world.

As I did all of that, my inner pressure began to change once again as I began to free myself from the drag atmosphere of the gay venues I was going to (where I was considered as just another queen) and into the straight world I was used to where I could at least have a fighting chance of being treated as another woman in the world where the ciswomen ruled the scene I wanted to be accepted into. For the most part, I discovered that most ciswomen did not notice me, or if they were, they were just curious why I was trying to play with the girls’ club and leaving the universe of men.

At that point, I nearly panicked from all the pressure I was under as I desperately tried to maintain what was left of my male life which included my wife and job and at the same time try to allow my feminine transgender side to flourish also. My main reason to panic came when I needed to learn immediately how to communicate one on one with other women. To relieve the pressure, I went all out and even took feminine vocal lessons and I had to focus for the first time in my life on really listening to what someone else was telling me because I found that ciswomen were the masters at non-verbal or passive aggressive communication and used both methods to by pass the men around them. Which was the main reason men said they could not understand women. The women had set it up that way.

I did maintain that life as long as I could before the pressure increased again until the forms of relieving it, I was using, just did not work any longer. On top of that, I was becoming more and more self-destructive, and I kept putting my life in danger. Fortunately, before anything severely happened to me because of the pressure I was feeling nothing severe happened to me and I began to build a new exciting life out of the ashes of the male life I used to live. I took what I could from him and added it to my new transfeminine life I was beginning to carve out for myself.

Magically then, much of the pressure I was feeling about my male to female femininization started to drain off me. I can’t take all of the credit because I fell into the open arms of so many ciswomen who had problems of their own and took the time and effort to help me with mine. All their efforts reinforced why I wanted to be allowed behind the gender curtain to start with.

After the pressure was released, it was like the sun came out to me on a cloudy day, I can’t say how much weight was lifted from my shoulders when I finally saw the sunlight and decided to put my male self in my past and begin HRT or gender affirming hormones under a doctor’s supervision.

I can’t say before then I had any knowledge at all how to live a life without experiencing gender pressure. As I matured into a confident transgender woman, I finally realized I did not have to live that way, and I had the built the confidence to change it.

Certainly, living under pressure is no fun, and I would not wish it on anyone. Also, I know everyday humans have stress in their life, but I am biased, but I think transgender women and transgender men have more than their fair share to deal with. How we are able to handle it can define our lives.

 

 

 

Swimming Upstream as a Trans Woman

 

JJ Hart. Pride image.
Ohio River in background.

I was very stubborn as I hung on to my male persona as long as I could. In the meantime, the struggle between my two genders was monumental.

Since I started life as a biological male, he sprinted off to an unfair advantage over my feminine self. Mainly because, like it or not, being male brought with it a series of benefits I would come to call male privilege. Even though it was hard to do, each time I was moderately successful as a boy I was rewarded. Even though, deep down, I did not want to be because I knew someday, I might have to give up all that hard earned male baggage to lead the life I always dreamed of, as a  transgender woman. Full time without any restrictions.

Along with being stubborn concerning my chances of ever living my transfeminine dreams, I was also very naïve when it came to having a grand plan on how it would ever happen. When I looked at the stream that crossed my gender path, at times it would become a river that was hard to cross to get to the feminine side I wanted to be on. There were times too, when I miscalculated the depth of the water upstream, I would have to face to get to the other side.

As the water subsided, and I could try to get out of my home mirror and into the world, I ran into new situations which would define parts of my life, and I would not know it yet. Such as the Halloween parties I went to as a woman and were immediately shunned by my male friends who were there also. Little did I know that later in life when I began to explore the world as a transgender woman, men shunning me would be a common theme. Ironically, at the same time, I was learning the opposite would happen with women. Particularly lesbian women. For the first time, the stream was busy pushing me in a way I never thought possible. It happened one of the nights I was a guest at the LGBTQIA+ diverse Columbus, Ohio parties I always went to.  That night a lesbian I had never seen before showed up with a friend and the attraction between us was real. We ended leaving and going to a big lesbian venue to see what was going on and we spent the rest of the evening getting to know each other, but I was still married at the time, and nothing ever came of seeing the first lesbian who was interested in me.

All I knew at the time was I was treading water as fast as I could just to stay afloat in the dual gender world, I was trying to live in. One big life jacket which was thrown at me was the attention I was receiving from gay and straight ciswomen. It meant I would never have to approach the potentially unpleasant situation of exploring my sexuality and I never had to go past the point of kissing men at all since most of them did not want to approach me. At any rate, I always thought I was never attractive enough for them, but when I reached an island as I was swimming upstream, I had the chance to pause and realize I did not need a man’s validation to make me a complete transgender person anyhow. There were plenty of fish in my sea and I needed destiny to lead me to one. Which it did with Liz who I later married and have been with well over a dozen years now.

Another thing my stream taught me was to never feel totally comfortable and rest much at all because something would come along and knock me back into the deep water. The problem was I was still catching up on the life that ciswomen grew up living, and it was very complex. I knew it would be, but sometimes I was just caught off guard and think did that really happen.

On the other hand, when I finally was able to relax with all that I had accomplished in my gender workbook, I was so much happier in life. I finally began to realize that I was never a man at all, just a woman trying to live her life from a totally different perspective than most anyone else. Then, it made sense to me why my life was always such a struggle because I had two powerful influences battling each other. The most powerful one had to finally win out, and my inner femininity won out.

If I had it all to do over again, I would have to tell myself to follow my instincts and stay out of the water before swimming upstream became exhausting and I almost went under for good.

I know I have many readers on different parts of their gender journeys looking for any guidance possible. All I can say is that at some point you need to be honest with yourself and decide to take the most natural path you can take. Maybe you can cross-dress enough to keep one foot in the stream and one foot out and that is OK too. I just could not do it that way, but that does not make it right or wrong for you.

For the most part, I still think society is still set up for men to succeed but that is changing. And, when you are a trans person continuing up your gender path, just consider the world is still in flux and the future is feminine no matter long the old white male dinosaurs hang on. Regardless, either way you must make your own way in your own gender stream, and you will have to expect at some point to swim against the current. It is just the nature of the beast we transgender women and transgender men must face in life.

Just be very careful and follow your true gender core and you can make it.

 

 

 

 

 

Exorcising my Demons

 

Peaches Grille, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Yesterday I went back to my hometown to pick up copies of court paperwork I needed on my name change so long ago.

By so long ago, I mean I finally had to sit in front of a judge who I knew to be very conservative to get my final name change signature. It was one super Christmas present as it all happened December 23, 2015. Even “Mr. Conservative Judge” himself said Merry Christmas when he signed my long overdue paperwork. As I remember now, I had many hoops to jump through such as posting a notice in the local newspaper and waiting for thirty days to see if anyone would object to the change. Then I needed to petition the court for the actual name change. My future wife Liz was with me when all of this happened, and we were on cloud nine when we received the final documents.

The only mistake I made was not getting enough court copies of my change due to poor planning and I ran out. So, the only thing I could do was make the hour and a half trip back to the court clerk for more certified copies that I needed to change one of my insurance policies names over from my old name to my new name. My only advice to those of you who are going through the legal name change process is to plan ahead and get plenty of copies and then get more.

By now you may be asking which of my demons did I exorcise. The first major demon was not having to see mail from my insurance company showing up with my previous male name on it and knowing it was not their fault but mine because I did not do anything about it. The second demon was even going back to my hometown (where I was born and raised) at all. It is an old industrial town which has had its heart ripped out a couple times by companies downsizing or even moving overseas. Setting all of that aside, I remember the rejection I received there from certain friends and family members when they discovered my deep, dark “gender secret”. It seems each rejection was burned into my soul.

So much so that I could not sleep the night before Liz and I went back to the city that I think never forgot about me. Even though that is a self-centered idea because it has in almost every way possible. My ex-brother still lives there who I am separated from and is another good reason to dread going back. To take the pressure off a little bit, I tried to meet up with my daughter and son-in-law in nearby Yellow Springs, Ohio which has always been a real treat to go to and has been referred to as the gayest town in Ohio.

My daughter could not be there because they were going to Maine to see my oldest grandchild who works up there as a nuclear engineer. Liz and I’s disappointment in not seeing daughter and son-in-law was short-lived because Yellow Springs was all decked out in its Pride finest as it was all going to happen the next day. We ended up stopping for lunch at a place called “Peaches Grill” for a great light lunch before we resumed our trip. “Peaches” was promoting their after-Pride party and was all decorated out in preparation. It was also the venue where I ended setting next to a “Debra Winger” look-a-like complete with the black “Urban Cowboy” movie cowgirl hat. It was a fun evening and no, she did not ask for my autograph (ha-ha). All in all, Yellow Springs is the direct opposite of my hometown which is only ten miles away.

Now, since I think I have all the papers I will need for any future demands put on me to vote by the Republicans, I am not envisioning any need to go back to my hometown since years ago now, I even sold the two properties I had left there. I don’t know why I have such a deep-seated fear of reliving all the bad moments that I had, I suppose it is just the vestiges of the life I had coming out into the world coming back to haunt me. And it speaks to the amount of suffering a transgender woman or transgender man can go through just to live their lives the way they need to.

I know too that I am one of the fortunate trans people who can get around freely in public since I present as just old now and can get by with my wife’s Liz help. I just have my age-old demons to harass me like I just went through. I dislike my old hometown so much, I even don’t want to mention it by name, but it is the one that the orange Russian in the White House keeps mentioning again when it comes to deporting the Haitians. I will let you fill in the blanks from there.

All in all, my demons are tough critters and the only survivors which still exist from my old male days. They play into my anxiety issues of always worrying ahead for seemingly any occasion. But as always, my feminine side has stood the test of time and has been successful in exorcising my demons. I guess you can say she has always had my back when the times were the darkest in the days when I was visiting Yellow Springs as a short-haired Army soldier when I desperately wanted to be one of the long-haired hippie girls I saw in their bell-bottom pants. It took me awhile, but I exorcised that demon who kept telling me I would never make it.

Most importantly we made the trip safely, even with a police detour set up on a rural highway for what looked like a potential swat situation as well as heavily pouring rain which hit us on and off. We made it past the demons and that is the important part.

 

 

 

What is a New Trans Girl to Do?

 

Image from UnSplash. 

I recently received a comment from “Mira” concerning writing more about what happens when you are a new transgender woman out in the world.

Thanks for the comment, “Mira”, on such a complex subject. The first thing I can think of being so different for me was that everyone was looking at me. As a man, I was used to admiring well dressed and attractive women but got used to the fact that I was nearly invisible to the world as a guy. In essence, other women and men all notice other ciswomen who go out of their way to at least look nice. Which was what I was doing when I went out in the public’s eye to see how well I could present myself as a transfeminine person.

Maybe the most important hurdle I faced at this time on my gender path was looking like I was trying too hard to look like a woman. The initial attempts I tried to make such as wearing too tight and short skirts, produced laughable results when I was laughed at in reality.  On the other hand, you need to take an accurate assessment of your basic strengths and weaknesses and go from there. I know you may think you may have very few strengths when you are trying to dress your testosterone poisoned body, but you may be surprised. Many men are blessed with passable looking feminine legs, which is a place to start building your presentation from. I learned my legs were good from the Halloween parties I went to in my mini dresses. So at least, I had a positive place to start from when I began to go out. Until I began to overdo it and feature my legs over my biggest fashion problem…my broad torso and shoulders. I still wore my denim miniskirts but with large flowing tops which were able to hide my shoulders as I got by.

The difficult part for me was getting any realistic feedback from anyone. The only feedback I received on a regular basis was from my mirror which I found had a habit of lying to me and from my wife who would dismiss me as only being the “pretty, pretty princess.” I did not want to be a princess; I just wanted to present as well as I could in the world as a transgender woman. I understand now what my wife was trying to tell me about being feminine would take more effort than just looking like a ciswoman and I would have a long way to go.

The next big step I took as a novice transgender woman was to not be afraid when someone wanted to know more about me and I don’t mean in a close, personal sense. As most of the many ciswomen I encountered just wanted to sell me something (clothing store clerks) or were just curious about what I was doing in their world. Once they were satisfied, I was not up to no good and I just wanted to be part of the girls’ club, they were happy and went on their way. Except for a few who stuck around and I was able to make friends with. Which came much later in my trans life when I grew more comfortable in my new skin. And speaking of skin, if you are overweight, consider going on a serious diet like I did to slim down and look better in more stylish clothes.

When you are new to all of this, it is easy to feel selfish when you are obsessed with how you look and act as you try to determine if you truly belong in the new world you are exploring. All of that is a natural reaction to letting go of the male world (or female world for you trans men) that you had to work so hard to survive in. Often against your will. Plus, learning all the nuances of a new gender is not and never will be easy. Especially if you transition later in life such as I did. The reality of the situation is that you have accumulated much more gender baggage to deal with over the years, and you must start deciding early on what you are going to do with it.

Backtracking a bit, what I remember the most about my early years as a transfeminine person was the panic I felt when I entered the world for the first time. Mainly because I had lost all the defense mechanisms I learned as a man. I could no longer rely on my size in a potential problem situation or my intelligence to win a discussion. My best offense in the new world I wanted to be in was to plan ahead and do what ciswomen do, not get into the situation to begin with. As far as intelligence goes, just plan on losing yours if and when you encounter a serious discussion with a man.

As you walk up your gender path as a new trans woman, validation as a person becomes a valued piece of your new personality. In my case, I was never attractive or interested in men enough for them to be in my world, so my validation had to come where it had always come from in my life, from other women. When I see many of the transgender women bemoaning the fact they don’t have a man, I always say, don’t overlook having a woman love and validate you. Always leave your future options open because anything can change in your life when you are trying to cross the gender border.

Finally, “Mira”, try to develop a thick skin and learn from your possible presentation mistakes when you begin to go out. Especially today with many areas of society being so volatile when it comes to trans women and trans men. When you are a quick gender learner, your life can come together faster than you ever thought. Be prepared, it could be an interesting one. Stay safe and thanks again for the comment and I hope that I have answered most of your question.

 

 

 

 

In the Wrong Room

 

JJ Hart

The first time I realized I was in the wrong room was when I was out as my transfeminine self in one of my regular venues when somehow, I found myself with a group of four men. Let me preface my thoughts by telling you the men were just having typical men type discussions on sports and work and no one was a rocket scientist.

Very quickly, after I was made to feel below their dignity to even acknowledge me, I went away with my first lesson learned. Stay out of male conversations unless invited, and even then, don’t expect your opinion to count for much. It seemed I had entered a place where my impostor syndrome was replaced by out and out rejection. I wasn’t worried about being in a group of ciswomen being worried about what to say and do, to entering a place where I was not wanted at all. I just can tell you this, I was never treated rudely by the women I faced in my first girl’s nights out as I was during my impromptu meetings with men. Which helped me to understand I was headed in the right direction on my gender path.

It could be too, that I did not give men a fair break. I was not attractive enough to be desirable, and I had not developed any sort of personality, yet which gave me any other positive characteristics. In other words, I was still an unsure new trans woman who had just left the men’s club, and it showed. At least to a transgender man who asked me out to a dinner date and later he said I was scared and nervous on our date. He was right, and I was just going through being in the wrong room as myself.

Fortunately, that feeling of being in the wrong room did not last long as I grew more adjusted to my new life as a transfeminine person. My inner self kept telling me I was in the right room at the right time as I felt natural doing it. As we all know, confidence plays a huge part in being successful as transgender women and transgender men and when I gained the confidence, I needed to say to the world who I was, there was no turning back. The more I accomplished in my new life, the more I realized that my male life was living a lie. The problem was that just deciding I was not going to live that lie any longer was not going to be as simple as just doing it. Because I had accumulated so much male baggage along the way as I fought to succeed in a world I never really wanted.

Even though I was fighting to switch rooms, the battle was never easy because of the major roadblocks which were in my way. Primarily, the roadblocks came from my second wife who was struggling to maintain her marriage to a man who did not want to be one and my male self who was fighting for his total existence. To make matters worse, my life as a man was not that bad all of the time, so the gender decisions I needed to make were so much more brutal in nature.

When I finally found myself in the right room as a trans woman, I found I needed to furnish it into what I needed to live. It was totally barren of anything I would need to live successfully, and I had to start by doing the best I could to present well as a woman and then learn the basics of survival in a world run by ciswomen. It was their room I was trying to be given admission to but not before I earned my way in.

That was when I needed to take a deep dive into myself and produce more of a one-sided effort to do something than I had ever tried before. Always before, when I was trying something new, I would get discouraged and quit, but this time I could just not and kept trying because I knew my dream of living as a transgender woman was certainly achievable. Before I did, I needed to somehow be allowed into other women’s lives and rooms to see how they lived. I was especially interested in the women who were not especially attractive because they showed me the importance looks do not have to play in a woman’s life. There were plenty of other things in a ciswoman’s multi-layered life to concentrate on other than beauty.

Since I lacked beauty, I needed to decorate my room with it, I needed to seek out other ways to do it. Such as was I treating other women the way I wanted to be treated became a main goal. A smile took me so much farther than my old male scowl designed to keep people away that I could not believe it.

Once I learned the difficult lessons of feminine decoration, I no longer had any vestiges of being in the wrong room. In fact, the deep belief that I was in the right room kept me going through out the trying times of legal name changes to the fun times of HRT therapy which sent me into the second puberty of my life. It turned out, it was the one my body was always waiting for.

Rooms are always difficult to plan for as you decorate a new one. Especially if your gender workbook is blank and you are struggling to catch up. The paintings on my walls were of my friends who showed me the way as well as my wife Liz and daughter who finally kicked me out of my old room and into a bright new one. As you can tell, they all mean so much to me.

As all of you do who follow along with my experiences and daily goals on a regular basis. Without you all, everything I do would be worthless, so thank you! And I hope the room that you are in is not a closet you are trying to find your way out of. Hopefully, you can do it soon.

 

 

 

 

A Lifetime or First Times as a Trans Woman

 

Image from Mahreal Boutrous
on UnSplash. 

As humans, I know we all experience quite a few first times in our lives. However, I think transgender women and transgender men tend to have more firsts than the average human.

During my life, every time I thought I had it together and there was nothing else to learn, along came something totally different to prove to me I still had a lot to prove to get to the next level of life I was trying to reach. This happened to me as a man and as a woman. My prime example was when I was in my twenties and totally out of control trying to drink my gender issues away and my daughter came along. Causing me to change my thinking about life radically because having a child was not something that I had planned on. Let’s just say the “protection” gave out and here she was. My very own daughter that I loved and love very much.

The initial problem I had as a first-time parent was what I was going to do about my gender issues which were increasingly looking like they were not going away, ever. What did I do? I tried to hide my femininity behind a wall of false male bravado which as we all know was a short-term solution to a long-term problem. So, I needed to set out to discover how long term my “problem” was.

Using a well-known phrase that I learned at one of the places I worked at, I did not have a problem. I had an opportunity to improve. To do it I would have to have the courage to take a different approach to life which would include a series of first times. The courage I am referring to was when I hitched up my new big girl panties and went out into the world for the first time as a novice cross-dresser or transgender woman searching for her identity. In those days, my first times were filled with rejection in the public’s eye and plenty of disappointment to deal with until I understood what it would take for me to present well enough to get by in the world of ciswomen that for the first time I learned really ran the world I wanted to be a part of. If I wasn’t attempting to be validated as a trans woman by men, first I needed to be validated by women.

Once I broke limits of what I was trying to accomplish in the world as a transfeminine person, the challenges and first times came quickly rolling in. The opportunity I had was trying to understand how deep my gender urges ran or how badly did I want to sacrifice my male life and live as a woman. What I decided to do was undertake a deep dive into what I “thought” a ciswoman’s life was all about, and what it really was. And more importantly, could I ever be allowed behind the gender curtain to see for myself if I wanted to play in the girls’ sandbox.

For the most part, I was successful as I accomplished my lists of firsts such as taking feminine vocal lessons, all the way to attempting to carve out my own new life away from any vestiges of my old male existence, Often, my life was a blur as I tried to balance what was left of my male existence with my new exciting life as a trans woman. Not only did I have to do my best to blend in with other women physically in the world, now I had the extra pressure of communicating for the first not as a man, but woman to woman. The last thing I wanted to do was come off during my final test with a stranger as some sort of an evil bitch just because I did not want to talk.

For some reason, during this portion of my life I was not having any problems attracting attention from ciswomen. After a lifetime of basic rejection from women, I tried to reach as a man, all of a sudden for the first time, I was having success as my transfeminine self. Even though I did not completely understand what the reason was for my success, I did not want to jinx myself and do too much and go back to rejection and loneliness again. So, I kept up what I was doing and for the first time built a new base to my life.

I had two reasons for my success as I looked back on those days. The first was, my inner feminine self-had so long to sit back and observe what I was doing with our lives that she knew exactly what she wanted to do when she had a chance to run the show for the first time. And the second was told to me by a person much wiser than me long ago that very few human beings have the chance to stop their lives and begin again, so don’t screw it up if you do. I was able to listen to both.  

Sure, I went through two lifetimes of first times with all the bumps and bruises which normally come with such adventures. When I think back to all those early days in the malls when I was getting laughed at for my weak initial femininizing attempts, I don’t see how I made it at all. I guess something deep down inside of me kept telling me that this was just an example of the first times I would be facing my whole life if I continued along the gender path I was considering.

I was far from deciding if I could ever slide behind the gender curtain to learn if I really wanted to be there. But somehow, I knew I would never forgive myself if I did not try. When I did, for the first time I found myself off the self-destructive male path I was on and on to a rewarding and healing path I loved as a transgender woman.

 

 

So Many Ways to Come Out

 

Image from Nicola Dowie
on UnSplash.

Recently, I had a response from a young transgender man on how he should attempt to come out to the world.

First of all, thanks for the comment and yes there are many ways to leave your closet and enter the world of the gender you are trying to live among. I know too that I have many trans men who stop by and read my comments which flatters me because as we flip the gender script, often the worlds we must conquer are not that different. Gaining the female or male privileges when you feminize or masculinize yourself often are the biggest issues. After you come out to spouses and family.

Over the years, I have read about coming outs that have ranged from just showing up cross-dressed as your authentic self, all the way to writing letters trying to explain the way you feel. As far as I am concerned, just all of a sudden showing up as a woman (or a man) has too much of a shock value and is counterproductive when you are trying to explain how you want to live to the person sitting across from you. Writing a letter may be more preferable if you feel more comfortable expressing yourself with written words rather than speaking one on one with someone. In my case, even though I did not feel comfortable talking to family about my upcoming changes, I hitched up my new big girl panties (under my male clothes) and asked to speak privately with those family members closest to me.  My first attempt at coming out was with my only child, a daughter and as I always write about, she took it extremely well. Just to show me life could never be that easy, my coming out to my only brother went off the rails quickly and we have not spoken since about 2014.

Having said that, I do caution trans women and trans men who are just coming out to family and loved ones that you are in a marathon not a race and sooner more than later, your family might come around. Plus, there is an increasing amount of information available now to explain your desire to live as yourself. If you have the chance, you maybe able to direct them towards the positive aspect of what you are doing and away from all the negative news they may see from politicians on the media ads. In my case, the split between my brother and I ran so deep when he refused to stand up for me and invite me to our family’s traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, I just can’t forgive him for that.

On the positive side, the relatively few people who knew the former me notice almost immediately that I am happier now. And if you give someone the chance to calm down and see the real you, they will respect that and the real you.

Of course, as we flip back to the negative side, there are always those family members that will try to throw religion in your face. Unless you are more of a biblical scholar than I am, I usually just give up on them.

Overall, I find the different sides of transitioning between transgender women and transgender men to be interesting. Since I was raised around the male dominated world of trying to force my way through difficult situations, I never gave much thought to trans men having to adjust to not being passive aggressive so much. Then there is always the idea of using the restroom which hangs over both of us. Even though trans men are in a new world in a men’s room where no one wants to make eye contact or speak, there is always the idea of having to still find a stall to use. Which conceivably could attract unwanted attention depending upon how well you present and how long you have been on testosterone. I know I have oversimplified the men’s room process and if you are a trans man, I am always up for ideas on restroom survival.

Flipping the script again, using the women’s room as a trans woman is something I know quite a bit about. The first thing I quickly learned was I needed to make contact and speak when someone else was in “the room.” From there, much of what I learned was either common sense such as never placing my purse on the floor and making sure my stall still had toilet paper all the way to trying to pee in the bowl a certain way to mimic the ciswoman in the stall next to me. Then, no matter how much I was in a hurry to leave, I had to always stop at a sink, check my face and always wash my hands.

Anyway, you cut it, when you have desire to cross the gender border either way from male to female or female to male, you must learn so many nuances of the moves you are making. Even though there are strict rules you need to follow, often times you will find yourself making up your own rules as you go along. It is just the nature of the ultra-serious game we play. What has worked for me in the past may not work for you and often I hear from readers who have supporters and non-supporters in the same family. The only advice I can offer is to embrace your new gender allies and hope your detractors come around.

The end result always must be it is your life to live and you need to live it to be happy. Sometimes your path will lead you the wrong way, just like your GPS does on occasion but it is not time to panic until you can get readjusted. Be patient, and it will happen.

As always, thank you for the comments I receive, often they are difficult to answer seeing as how we dealt with such a complex issue such as gender. I just hope, in my small way I can help.