Sealing the Final Deal in my Gender Struggle

 

JJ Hart. Key Largo last year.

Sealing the deal on my male to female gender transition was the most difficult decision I have ever had to make in my life.

It is the main reason I kept putting it off until I was nearly sixty years of age and could take the pressure no longer. The only way I kept what sanity I had was to cross-dress my way along until I could take bigger, more substantial steps.  One of the problems was, I had learned that cross dressing was not nearly enough to solve my gender issues and sooner or later, I would have to face the truth of who I really was. Also, I was very naïve and thought I could balance the influence of two genders in my world as I grew older.

As I set out to build a reasonably successful male life, at the same time, I was trying to fill out my feminine workbook with absolutely no help from other women. I was stuck being on my own for years, until I progressed to the point where I could leave my closet and explore the world as a novice. After brief successes (and a lot of failure), I was able to see portions of my future and judge if I could ever seal the deal and live my dream of being a fulltime transgender woman. Even though I was still progressing, I was still hitting roadblocks on my path to trans success and had to keep working my way forward through failure.

All I could see in my future was a life I would have to live alone with no way to support myself as a transfeminine person. My sexuality did not change, and I wanted basically nothing to do sexually with men, and I knew how incredibly difficult it would be to find a ciswoman who would accept me the way I was. I had pulled off some other seemingly impossible things in my life but accomplishing this and sealing the gender deal was too much to hope for.

Then, as I lived my new life as a trans woman, I learned that maybe my dream was not too much to hope for and one thing was for certain, if I did not try, I never would know if I could make it. I expanded my explorations with men and managed to have a couple real live dates when I enjoyed myself but nothing sexual happened, so I set my sights in lesbian bars for a ciswoman who wanted a woman with a little bit extra experience in the world. Amazingly to me, I was moderately successful in one lesbian bar where they accepted me. Which brought me so much closer to thinking I could seal the deal and live my dream.

Now I was to the point where I had to really see where I wanted to take my life. I was an executive general manager of a large casual dining restaurant which I had put in years of hard work to arrive at. If I transitioned, all the work I put into my career would be gone (along with the money) and I would have to start all over again. Behind the world as a transgender woman. Naturally, the whole situation was a major roadblock.

It finally came to the point where I faced sealing the deal like I was jumping off a cliff into nothingness. At that point destiny set in for me and made my final decision so much easier. Tragically, I lost my second wife and almost all of the close friends I had to death and could start with a clean slate in life. Plus, the restaurant I owned was failing and I was losing it also, leaving me a couple of years to work before I could retire early on Social Security which would give me enough income to get by. As You can tell, the doors to transition were opening wide and I would have been a fool not to walk through them.

Most importantly, my mental health was suffering and my self-worth as a man was at an all time low, so it was time to end the torture I was feeling and jump off the cliff and seal the deal. It was during this time too, that the Veterans Administration health care system, which I was already a part of, approved veteran’s care for gender dysphoria with mental health counseling and HRT if approved. I was quickly approved and ended up taking another giant step towards achieving my dream and sealing my lifetime goal.

What did I have to lose? I was leaving a male life I never really felt comfortable in to jump off a gender cliff and land in accepting women’s arms as I joined their world. When I did, I tried to take every little bit of advantage I could from all the learning experiences I put in over the years. Landing on my feet in high heeled shoes was a challenge but I managed to make it in fairly good shape. I came out fully at the age of sixty when I finally decided to seal the deal and never looked back. I could not take balancing two genders any longer and took the easy way out into the world of women where I should always had been.

As always, thanks for reading along, and any comments are welcome! I always do my best to respond.

 

If Your House of Cards is Broken, What Then

 

Image from Nik Korba on UnSplash.

If your house of cards is falling, what then?  Is something many transgender women and transgender men face as they transition to the gender of their choice.

The problem is, we hide our flaws so well over the years that many of the friends and family we associate with never had a chance to see the true selves we are internalizing. In my case, I knew very early on I had deep flaws that eventually I would have to adjust to. Somehow, I carried the misconception that age would solve all my gender problems which I hoped magically would just disappear. In the meantime, I set out to build a stable male existence on a house of cards.

The longer I built my house of cards, the harder it became to rationalize tearing it all down and starting over. As I started my path towards achieving my dream of living my life as a transgender woman. What I ended up doing was, trying to explore the world in stages as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, to see if I had any chance of making it at all. Very early on, I had my doubts as my futile attempts to blend in with the world were met with scorn. I knew without a shadow of a doubt what I was doing was breaking my male and female self and I needed to discover ways to fix it.

It was then I began to shove my male ego aside and begin dressing for the segment of the population I wanted to blend in with, cisgender women. I began to re-study all I had ever thought of women as a whole and started to fix the way I was trying to look. I was certainly not making it as a teen girl dressed to thrill and settled in on a more mature scaled back look I could handle with my testosterone poisoned body. I immediately began to see dividends as I started to successfully blend in with the world.

The problem I discovered was I was beginning to be too successful in my exploration. Suddenly I realized I was not a casual weekend cross dresser at all. I fit in with the new up and coming term transgender almost perfectly and I began to change my mindset from thinking I was a man trying to be a woman to I was actually a woman trying my best to be a strong, successful man. When I discovered this, my life in some ways changed for the best, but in other ways turned out to be problematic. It was easy to accept my changes, but it was hard to decide what to do about them because of the seismic problems they caused. My house of cards was shaking and becoming broken, and I did not know (or want to face what I needed to do about it.)

To attempt to hold my broken world together, I kept trying to apply the strongest male glue available. All I ended up doing was hurting my mental health more in the process of trying to save myself. All the ripping and tearing of my gender dysphoria was literally killing me. Finally forcing me into action to save myself. As I struggled, I continued on my not so merry way, exploring what it would really mean to me if my house of cards collapsed and I had to fix it. The only thing I had going for me was all the experiences I had built up as a transfeminine person in my life. So, I did not have to start from ground zero when I decided to go after my male to female transition for the final time. I was secure in my feminine appearance and communication skills, and I had major hurdles behind me. Then all I needed to learn was what would happen when I lost all of my male privileges which were a major part of my house of cards. In many ways, losing things such as my security and intelligence as a trans woman were breaking all the remaining chains I had to my old male life.

The bottom line was I took a male life that was not broken and broke it anyhow. Giving up nearly everything I knew as a man. Gender affirming hormones or HRT put the finishing touches on everything I had ever known and shifted my knowledge of gender privileges to the feminine side of the gender spectrum. As my testosterone decreased and my estrogen level increased, I was free to build a new life. Which for once was not broken or flawed. No more house of cards for me, nothing was broken.

 

 

A Trans Girl and her Football

 

Ohio State versus Michigan. 

When I seriously began to think of pursuing my male to female gender transition, I wondered what I would do about all my male baggage in my new feminine life.

Since I was nearly sixty years of age, I had plenty of baggage to consider what I was going to keep and what had to go. By far, my sports baggage was the largest piece of baggage I needed to wonder about was my love of sports. Especially football and baseball.

Ultimately, I found I did not have to worry about anything because ciswomen around me were catching up to me in their love of sports. To make it clearer, as I looked around during the big games I was watching in the sports bars I was hanging out in, I was beginning to notice more and more women in their football jerseys around me. All of a sudden, I did not feel so out of place. I knew some women were into sports, such as my second wife, but not to the level I was.

Also, what helped me was the customer/regular relationships I built with the bartenders I saw on a regular basis. It even got to the point when my beer was always waiting for me when I sat down in front of a big screen television to watch a game.  When all of this was happening, I was deciding I could take my love of sports with me as I transitioned into transgender womanhood. It was just part of my inheritance.

Little did I know, the best was yet to come, and I could bring my sports baggage with me. It turned out, my wife Liz and other ciswomen friends I had made along the way were all as passionate as I was about watching sports. I even was living life large when I was invited to go to a women’s roller derby match one day in Cincinnati by my lesbian friends. It was also a dollar beer night which also added to the fun.

The whole focus of this post is “The Game” is today. Or in other words, the Ohio State/Michigan football game. I make no secret of my love for the Ohio State Buckeyes as Liz is also so we will be tuned into the game. Ironically, the game was one of the main days out of Thanksgiving and Christmas we ever got together. The good news is, I have a better person to watch football with (my wife Liz) who helped me build my life as a transfeminine person, rather than tear it down like my brother did.

No matter how the game goes, I will forever be grateful to all the cis women in my life who encouraged me to be me which included bringing along my love of sports. It probably all came from playing sports (primarily football) which kept the bullies away at the same time. So, it worked well, even though I made it through a couple broken bones. One funny story I have about broken bones was when I broke my collar bone. The doctor who examined me said he would not reset the bone, and I would always have a lump where the break was. Then, the doctor said it would not matter since I would not be wearing a strapless gown in my life. I thought, if he had really known, he would not have said such a thing. Of course, I was worried from then on about that lump on my collar bone and always remember what the doctor said.

Any piece of advice I may have for anyone considering a gender transition of their own, is to look at your baggage closely and then what the ciswomen around you are doing. The world of women is always evolving with the world and is never staying in one place. It happened to me with sports and can happen to you too with some of your questionable baggage. It could be a chance for you to be a leader rather than a follower. If you follow your heart, others will find no problems with you. People are like sharks and have the tendency to circle the wounded ones quickly. Don’t give them the chance to see you bleed.

I know it is impossible to bring all your male baggage with you. Afterall, he had a hand in making you who you are today. Possibly, it all could make you a better person as a trans woman. You already are because of the understanding you have of the two main binary genders and you can build on that success.

Maybe you can be a trans girl with her football too, and GO BUCKEYES!

 

Gender Euphoria equals Black Friday Fun

 

Image from Markus Winkler
on UnSplash.

Yesterday’s Thanksgiving feast at my daughter’s -in-laws proved to be everything I thought it would be.

To begin with, all the usual suspects were there, including my trans grandchild who drove back from Maine with their partner for the dinner. Of course, my daughter and son-in-law were there also, with my first wife who I remain friends with today. Even though she slips up on occasion and calls me by my dead name. I forgive her because she is the mother of my only child and is getting a little forgetful in her old age. As I am.

To be surrounded by family who knew me before and to be accepted the way I was, always means a lot to me. Giving me a family to fall back on when my blood family rejected me, which I wrote about in my last post. I have never forgiven them for what they did and have kept my distance for over a decade now. If you missed my post, my bitterness stems from when my brother and sister-in-law asked me not to come to our Thanksgiving dinner when I came out to them as transgender.

As I have mentioned several times, my new chosen family has more than made up for my blood family loss. Especially in times such as yesterday when I am supplied with plenty of gender euphoria. Which brings me to the second part of this post, my first “Black Friday” shopping experience as a transgender woman.

The whole “Black Friday” woman’s shopping experience was always one I wanted to experience on my own as a transfeminine person and finally I had the chance because my second wife worked retail and would be busy. I knew if I played my cards right, I could set my work schedule up so I did not have to be at work until later in the afternoon, so I could pull my dream off. I knew what I was going to wear and knew where I was going to wear it, so I was set for an early morning departure as I pulled up my panty hose and picked out a big fluffy sweater, mini denim skirt and comfortable walking shoes. Just in case I could not find a close spot in the parking lot at the mall I chose.

As I found a parking spot and entered the crowded mall, I could not believe I was living out one of the big bucket list items on my gender dream. I was actually shopping for Christmas bargains with many other ciswomen who were oblivious to having a trans woman among them. The only problem I had was time. I did not have very much of it before I needed to head home and get ready for work in my old boring male clothes. Even still, I managed to walk away from the experience with the knowledge I could, indeed, make it in the public’s eye as a woman going about her everyday life.

Little did I know, my experience on “Black Friday” set me up for other bucket list activities and ones that required me having more skill in my new exciting yet scary gender. By going down the path I was on, I slowly realized I could never go back. Even if I had wanted to. As I always point out for me, my biggest problem was communicating with other women. I was always shy to begin with and the whole idea of talking to strangers as a transgender woman was staggering. Life became more than just interacting with clerks in clothing stores when I set out to learn how I may be treated in my male to female gender dream world. I even went as far as taking voice lessons to improve my vocal quality of life.

What proved to be the deciding factor was every time I was accepted in the world as my true self, I felt the flood of gender euphoria and wanted more. I felt so natural in my dream life, it did not feel like a dream anymore. It felt like I was living the life I always should have lived.

To get there, I needed to cross many bridges, some of which were very steep. Since I was afraid of heights, many times I was afraid to climb them and needed all the internal encouragement or gender euphoria to keep going. Thanksgiving dinner proved to be a big help as I was able to gain the confidence of a group of people I knew before I transitioned. It was the bridge I needed to do a lot of holiday shopping which I will write about more as Christmas approaches.

 

 

My Thanks to You

 

Image from Priscilla Dupreez 
on UnSplash. 

As another Thanksgiving approaches, it is time again to give thanks to all of you.

I know the holidays are a difficult and lonely time for many of us in the transgender community and many of us have reached out to non-blood acquaintances to fill the void we lost from an unapproving family. I make no secret of the problems I faced with my only brother on Thanksgiving over a decade ago.

I was just coming out of my gender dysphoric closet and needed to tell what was left of my family about my desire to live as a woman. It just so happened; my timing was perfect as the holidays were right around the corner. Rather than just show up as my transgender self, I decided to do the right thing and ask my brother and sister-in-law if they still wanted me to come to dinner. I was quite naïve at the time and was riding the high I felt when I received an all-out acceptance from my daughter.

I should have known better when the Thanksgiving door was rudely slammed in my face and I was told it was best not to come. I should have known better that my brother would not stand up for me in the face of strong disapproval from his rightwing Southern Baptist in laws. Pressure was thicker than blood with him and we both went on our separate ways. I have not talked to him since and have not missed the interaction.

As I said, my daughter, along with my future wife Liz stepped up in a major way. Not only was I invited to one family function, but I was also invited to two and I had plenty of turkey to eat.

I hope something like my experience has happened to you. Perhaps in the meantime, you have found non-blood friends to fill the family void you lost from rejection. Sadly, Liz’s dad has passed away and her only brother wants nothing to do with Thanksgiving, so the only dinner we are going to is at my daughter’s mother-in-law's up in Dayton, Ohio. For the first time in many years, her son is supposed to come along so it will make it a family get together.

In many ways, I feel as though I have all you regular visitors to the blog as family also. As you have read along with me, I feel you know more about me than most anyone else. In fact, my daughter set me up with a book writing subscription service so I could write about my life to my family after I am gone. I am at question number eighty-one so far.

I hope in many ways; this beginning of the holiday season brings a festive start for all of you. If you are traveling, be careful and make it safely to your destination.

Once again, thank you for joining me here for my journey no matter where you are.

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

Is There a way to Be Transgender

 

JJ Hart in Mystic, Connecticut.

To be fair, I saw this question posed on a couple different sites on the internet and thought I would comment on it. The question is, is there a way to be transgender.

As I thought about it, I initially thought for years that there was a way to be a transgender woman and that would be to copy all the other cisgender women around me. Even though I thought this was the best way to go, in the long run doing it hurt me. Why? Because doing it stopped me from becoming my true authentic feminine self.

Surely, cis women are guilty of forming cliques while men form teams and to be included in a feminine clique, you have to look and act the part…at first. I discovered that once I was accepted by an alpha female, my entrance requirements became easier to come by. But what I did not realize was how perceptive the other ciswomen in the group would be to me and how women can spot a fake a mile away. I would have to proceed with caution if I was going to succeed at the invisible goal of being transgender. To succeed, I did all the usual things such as obsess on my appearance so I could blend in with the other women when I received a cherished invitation to a girl’s night out.

Then, when I arrived at the function and my fear began to subside, I needed to look around and judge all my reactions to the conversations going on around me. Which marked my first real idea that there was not a real way to be transgender. Afterall, when the conversation turned to kids, I still could participate because I had one that of course I did not birth but still participated in the trials and tribulations of raising her. Similar to the other women in the group. It was just a small example of how I survived the evening as I added in my input when I could. It seemed to work because all the other women except for one accepted me and I ended up enjoying myself.

As the years went by, and I began to experience many nights as my transfeminine self, I found there was no way to be transgender but there was a way to be myself. When I did was when I became more and more successful in the world as a trans woman and my ultimate dream of living a full life as such could be realized. Also, during that time, I spent quite a few evenings socializing with a transgender woman friend of mine before she moved away to Dallas. The two of us were prime examples of differing ideas on how we wanted to pursue our lives as trans women. My friend Racquel wanted surgery to look the best she could and attract men, while I found myself comfortably in the company of lesbians who I found for the most part accepted me for who I was.  I did not and have not to this day desired any major gender surgeries. Mainly because I did not need them to help me to realize my way to be transgender.

Of course, as human beings, we are all different and one of the problems we have now is being forced into one small box by a society which does not understand us and for the most part has never met a transgender woman or man, that they know of. Some, like me, are forced into forms of living stealth just to survive. When just using the bathroom becomes a threat to your existence in some parts of the country, something needs to be done, yet we continue to be forced backwards in most parts of my native state of Ohio. It all makes just being transgender so difficult to do.

Enough of the negative, and now on to the positive. Even here in Ohio, the LGBTQ winds of change are blowing with several more communities proclaiming they are safe zones for us. And, with the strong showing so far for the Democrats in the country, real change could be on the horizon for change as we need it.

If and when change does happen, it will make it easier to live your gender dreams and realize one thing. In the end you are much more than just another transgender woman or trans man. You are you, and that is the most important fact to realize if you are to be successful in your world.

There is no way to be transgender but there is a way to be you. 

Gender Professionals

 

Image from Alysha Rosly
on UnSplash.

On occasion, I can just sit back and observe other women. Through my observations, it has occurred to me that some ciswomen are better at being women than others. For example, they walk straighter with their shoulders back and are proud of their femininity.

It has also been my theory that all females do not have the right to claim their femininity or the right to be called women just because they were born that way. Transgender women in particular know that becoming a woman can take many paths and we have can claim our own womanhood when our gender workbook is filled out.

Does it make us gender professionals? No, not in its own right but it does give us a leg to stand on when we are out in the public eye just trying to live our lives. It could be argued that transgender women and trans men must be better than our gender counterparts to get by and stand a chance of becoming gender professionals.

The question could be also, what does being gender professional really mean. I am only one gender conflicted person of course but for me to understand what a gender pro really meant, I needed to go into the world and live it. First, I tried to go to gay venues to see if possibly I was attracted to other men, or would they be attracted to me as a transgender woman. They were not attracted to me in any way and considered me no more than another drag queen on their turf. Which I wanted nothing to do with. Next, I tried the few lesbian venues I could find in the Dayton, Ohio area. There were three, and I found I was hated in one, had a neutral reception in another and was warmly accepted in a third. From the experience I mainly learned the different levels within the lesbian community and was it possible to work my way in at all.

The third and final venues I ended up at were the big sports bars I frequented as a man. In them, I was surprised to learn how quickly I could establish myself as a regular if I did not cause any trouble, learned to smile and then tip well. I learned too, to try to carry myself as a gender professional. Leaving no question of who I really was. I had to learn also carrying myself as a gender professional was completely different from being a gender professional. It meant I could carry myself well if I was wearing a fancy sweater and slacks, or my favorite team’s football jersey with a pair of jeans and boots. I discovered, more than anything else, I needed the confidence to do it and the rest of the world be damned if they did not like me. I was just having fun in the world as my self and taking advantage of all the fashion perks of being a woman.

Even with all the learning I was doing at the time, I still made learning from the ciswomen around me a priority. I figured they held the secrets that I needed to complete myself as a professional woman. The times to talk and communicate and the times to keep quiet and shut up and learn come to mind. You might say, I was exploring all the nuances of being a woman and trying to improve myself at the same time. I was fortunate in that almost all of my friends came from the lesbian community, so I came up with a unique view of the world. Especially around men which I learned did not validate my womanhood.

As you can tell, pursuing my quest to be a gender professional overtook much of my thinking. There was so much happening when I met my wife Liz, and I started to accompany her to her meetings she went to for various reasons. What happened was I had no choice but to expand my horizons again and meet a whole new set of people. When I did, I fell back to all the lessons I had learned about communicating with strangers. Not as a transgender woman but as just me.

Most Importantly, I had built back a portion of the self esteem I had lost as a gender professional growing up. I lost the inferiority complex I had put myself through during the rocky days of coming out earlier in life. Believing in myself for the first time as a transgender woman was all it took to get me by and enable me to become a true gender professional.

 

 

Five Million

 

Original image. 
JJ Hart writing.

Recently, I reached a milestone as far as my blogging “career” goes.

This week, I reached and went over my five millionth hit to the blog which was amazing to me when I considered the humble way this all got started. I actually started blogging a long time ago when I barely even knew what the term meant. And I did it mainly because of the discussions I had with “Connie” an online transgender woman friend I had met from Seattle. Along the way, on another site we were on, we discovered a mutual dislike for what we called “trans-nazi’s” or transsexuals who based their worth on the number of gender operations they had undergone. Somehow, they felt better than the rest of us and were not shy about letting us know it.

From there, I had started to relay the experiences I was having as I initially began the trip out of my closet and into the world. “Connie” thought my experiences would be worth sharing and here we are so many years later. In many ways, both of us share the same sarcastic sense of humor, so we matched up well.

On a much deeper level than just harassing the “trans-nazi’s”, I hoped sharing what I went through in my lifelong gender journey would be a great way to pay forward my experiences and help others. Every time I receive a comment or two from a person in need of guidance as a beginning cross dresser or transgender person, I feel honored that they reached out to me. While all our trips are different, at the same time we are similar and have all have the same opportunities to learn from each other.

Five million hits later, I now realize the strain of finding subjects to write about on a daily basis really takes it out on me until I run across a comment or two which keeps me going. It fulfils the original idea I had when I started writing something I did not know I could keep on doing for any length of time. When the comments kept rolling in, I knew I was on the right track because I thought the audience I was writing to represent is a very narrow part of a potential audience. Then I thought, if I was reaching just one person out of the vast majority of readers on the internet, I would be doing my job. I learned to be more satisfied with being more of a niche blog, designed for the transgender audience or those that were questioning being trans and would their life look similar to mine. Because switching your main binary gender is so difficult and intimidating to do.

The bottom line is, I would not have all those hits if it was not for you and I cannot comprehend how many of you come from around the world to visit the blog. My deepest thanks go out to all of you no matter where you are.

Even though now I write on two separate platforms, I still write for free because I feel it is the right thing to do. It just makes me feel better.

Once again, I cannot thank you enough for joining me in my gender journey and I should do it more. Just be assured, it means a lot to me when you read along and even take the time to comment!

May we continue on to many subjects together in the future. 

 

Stranger Things have Happened

 

Image from Alexander
Krivisly on
UnSplash.

My gender journey has proven to me that stranger things have happened, just not to me.

What I mean is, on a scale of one to ten at succeeding in ever living a life as a transgender woman, I would have ranked myself some where around an eight. Meaning I was giving myself very little chance of ever making it to my dream life. Along the way now, I wish I had kept more track of every time I succeeded at and then passed a goal I had set for my feminine self.

In many ways, the early days of shopping in mall women’s clothing stores was easy and gave me a false sense of hope. I was naïve and did not realize for the longest time, I just represented as a dollar sign in front of the store clerks, I was facing. Most certainly, I was not the first man in a dress and makeup they had ever seen in their store and would not be the last. Regardless, the false sense of confidence I was giving myself raised my faint hope of ever succeeding at my dream.

As I went not so blissfully on my high-heeled way, I did pick up bits and pieces of information I would need to survive. For once, I thought far enough ahead to set up time away from my wife so I could slip away and shop with the rest of the women in the malls on Black Friday after Thanksgiving. Which had been on my trans bucket list for years. By this time, I had experienced enough time in public as a woman, I knew things such as wearing comfortable footwear was a must for the long trips from the parking lot to the stores, all the way to being stylish but not overdone in my fashion choices for the day so I could blend in well with the other ciswomen I met. Stranger things happened and I had a great time which I will write about in a later blog post.

All of my continued success combined to make me think maybe, just maybe I could achieve my dream life, and I could increase my scale to a four out of ten. What helped me were the short trips I made to Columbus, Ohio to the small diverse parties I went to where I could meet and interact with anyone such as transsexuals on their way to surgery to cross dresser admirers who were there just to watch. I even met a stray lesbian there one night who I left with briefly to go to a big gay club together. Through it all, I was just trying to see where I fit in at all. I figured if I had any success at all at understanding where I was, I hoped I could see the light at the end of my gender tunnel was not the train and just maybe I could live my dream.

As much as I liked the interaction in Columbus, I knew I had to leave the relative safety of the group and try to carve out my own life as a transgender woman in the world. Sure, I was terrified to do it but I knew I had to overcome my fears if I was ever going to be able to move up my scale from a five to a seven. When I made it to a lucky seven, the pressure to live the way I wanted to really be increased. The reason for the increase came because of the new interactive experiences I was now having with other ciswomen around me. What I did was watch the women around me and try to learn how they were living their life and learn my own way.

From then on, when I could see the dream life I had hoped for was in sight, I could really concentrate on my future as a transfeminine person. At that point, I needed to begin my preparations for what do about telling the family close to me about my male to female gender transition, all the way to what I was going to do about surviving financially. I was to the point where I did not have to make it as a transgender woman, I just needed to let it happen. I had to stay in the new moment I was in and live it for all it was worth. It turned out my scale was worth it, all the way.

Stranger things happened to me. I may not have looked like a ten, but I felt like one.

A Marathon not a Sprint

 

Image from Peter Boccia
on UnSplash.

In my life, I have rarely ever had to run any distance at all. The only times when I did was when I played football and was in the Army. So, I was never a sprinter until I discovered my love of cross dressing as close as I could to a pretty girl. I could not wait until I came home from football practice, and no one was home so I could put on a short skirt like the cheerleaders I admired so much, were wearing.

I wonder now, if I knew how long it would take me and all the trials and tribulations I went through to arrive where I am today, would I have given up on my journey. I doubt it because along the way, my gender feelings ran so deep and I felt so natural as my feminine self, I could have ever turned back. I needed to settle in for the gender marathon I was facing because sprints (which I compare with brief moments of gender euphoria) were hard to come by. It is a good thing, because I was always better at marathons anyway.

I can blame my marital situation on the fact that I was still trying to run gender sprints. Rather than face up to the truth of who I was, for years I tried to maintain the delicate balance of a stable marriage and a rapidly growing love of public living as a transgender woman. All my sprints did were cause problems at home when I was caught and put a tremendous strain on my twenty-year -plus marriage. On occasion, life between us became so bad my wife on several occasions simply told me to be man enough to be a woman. I hadn’t been yet, but I was working on it. She did not know it, but her challenges kept me going during my gender marathon. I just needed time to get it through my old unwanted male head that being a woman (transgender or not) meant more than looking like one.

I receive many comments from those individuals who are just wondering where their gender path will take them. When I do, I try my best to point out I did not magically appear where I am now. It took me a lot of work and disappointment to realize I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to survive in their world. They had a head start on me in the race to womanhood and I needed to work hard to catch up. Along the way too, I found some ciswomen were eager to help me into their world, and some were not. Maybe they had their own marathons they were running in life.

Another thing I learned from running a gender marathon was I had the time to relax and enjoy the journey on occasion. I felt much different than the fast pace of fleeting gender euphoria when I was involved in a gender sprint. Then, it was back again to living in the present as a transfeminine person, rather than living in the future and missing most of the enjoyment. Slowing down also gave me time to research who I really was and who I was, was on the right path in my life. Because I had huge decisions to make. Family, marriage, jobs and friends could have been all on the line. At times I was crushed under the pressure of it all and had to put it down for a different day. Something I could have never done as a gender sprinter.

The moral to the story was that slowing down helped me to determine my own pace. The problem was that I wasted valuable time coming out of my male closet longer than I should of. I finally came to the conclusion that I could not have it both ways. I ended up doing what was right for me keeping in mind that your story you are writing in life could be totally different.

Either way, what you consider is a gender sprint or a marathon is a personal matter and has a lot to do with how old you are. Even though I have read about male to female transitions well after the age of sixty (when I did it) I think it is rarer because those who think they can put it off longer because they have put it off as long as they could. But then, on the other hand, there are people like me who realized their gender truth and could not put off making a move any longer. Before I had to sprint for the finish line of life itself.

 

 

 

 

 

Staying in the Present

 

ss

Image from Ekka Wessman
on UnSplash. 

As I progressed in my cross-dressing life to a novice transgender woman, it proved to be difficult for me in several different areas.

Just one of those areas was the amount of time I needed to stay in the present for the first time in my life. My problem was compounded by the fact I had trained myself to daydream my life away as I wanted nothing more than to be a girl. Then, when I took my feminine image out of the mirror and put it into motion, I needed to constantly stay in the present to remind myself where I was and what I was doing. If I did not, I would be in danger of slipping back to my old ingrained male self. The problem was particularly intense when I was trying my best to mimic the magical way ciswomen moved.

Sadly, I found if I relaxed at all, no matter how attractive I thought I looked as a trans woman, all would be lost if I looked like a linebacker in drag as I walked. And to make matters worse, I needed to quickly learn to change the old stay away masculine scowl I had perfected and replace it with a more welcoming feminine look. As I shopped and interacted with ciswomen in public, they wanted to smile at me, so I needed to be pleasant and smile back. Especially if they suspected all was not as it seemed gender wise with me. I did not want to appear as any sort of a threat.

Staying in the present brought about other pleasant rewards also, such as when I communicated with other women, I needed to look them in the eye and listen to what they were saying, not jumping ahead and anticipating what I thought they were going to say. My communication game with women had really changed.

After a lifetime of hiding in the future, the present started to be a very pleasant place for me to be. I could take the time to feel the different clothes and talk to different people from a whole new viewpoint. I could take and give compliments from others regardless of their hidden motives. I found just the most innocent mention of my earrings from another woman was not about my choice of jewelry at all, she was gently starting a conversation to find out more about me. It all carried into the learning curve I experienced when I began to take lessons in passive aggressive aggression, from other women. I never had needed much knowledge of passive anything with the alpha macho men I hung out with. They were upfront with me for the most part. Ciswomen, on the other hand, could smile at you while they clawed your back for whatever reason they had. For a while, I thought I was going to have to carry band aids in my purse for any surprise attacks such as one night when a woman was coming back from the restroom and caught me talking to her man and took a dim view of the situation.

The more time I spent in the present, the better my life had become, and I got to the point where I missed out on all the time, I spent daydreaming of my life away. As I wondered how it would be if I could shed all my male existence and redo it as a transfeminine person which made me unapproachable to family and friends as well as making me totally miserable. Also, all the jealousy I felt towards ciswomen would have been swept away if I had had the chance to live and compete with them in their own world. To be sure, it was a different world but a life I discovered I enjoyed immensely as I found my new life to be all I thought it would be and more.

To arrive at the point I wanted to be, I first had to be confident in how I arrived at my own womanhood and if someone did not like me, it was their problem not mine. Then and only then could I fully live in the present and most importantly, try to forget most of my past. The future is still a problem for me as I wonder what will become of me if I have to encounter an assisted living situation where my gender issues are not addressed. The difference now is that I don’t spend the time dwelling on it as I used to. The present is just more important for me, which was a hard lesson to learn.

 

 

Playing the Short Gender Game

 

Image from Jayson Hindrichsen
on UnSplash.

During my life, I always have taken the easy way out and thought about important things such as my gender as a short-term issue.

I write often of my love for the mirror when I was young. I hated seeing my male self-reflected back at me but completely enjoyed it when the mirror came to life and I was cross dressed as a pretty girl. Perhaps it was then that I started to think of my life as a short-term basis. Would I eventually outgrow my desire to be a girl when I became older, or if I did not, what would happen to me then. To make matters worse, the Vietnam War was ramping up and I had the constant threat of military duty to think of. Normally when I did, and the coast was clear, I ran back to the mirror and escaped behind a dress and makeup.

As I wrote about yesterday on Veterans’ Day, military duty finally caught up to me when my draft lottery number was fifty-two, so all the short-term thinking and worrying I did was a waste of time. I was going to have to put all my love of being feminine behind me and survive the best I could. It turned out that all the worrying I did about my gender issues and sexuality was wasted too. As I stayed very short-term in my cross-dress thinking, destiny took over in my life, and I started to do more and more in the world to express my new feminine self. Even though I found myself living on the edge more than once, I learned to live there until the next challenge came along. These were the years of changing jobs and moving my family way too much.

As I frenetically moved through life, I was moving too fast to slow down and see what the real issue was. It was gender, and sooner or later I would have to deal with it one on one. Until I did, I would be living a lie and a very messy one at that. Out of the one transgender woman I personally know who told me she was never gender dysphoric, I would guess she would tell me also that she never encountered any messy moments in her life when she transitioned. If she did not, she is one of the few that I know who didn’t.

Many of my messy moments stemmed from me being selfish and wanting to maintain my twenty-five years of marriage to a woman I really loved when she was against me going any further as a transgender woman and starting gender affirming hormones or HRT. By attempting to have it all in my life, my mental health suffered, and I made many mistakes as I tried indirectly to out myself to the world. The biggest one was when I insisted on going into my own restaurant dressed as a woman and being immediately recognized which I could have been fired for.

By this time, I was in a downward spiral which I could see no way out of. It all led me to a suicide attempt and more dissatisfaction with life. Through it all, I had a little voice within me saying everything would be OK someday if I just followed my transfeminine instincts. But before I did, I was stubborn and had a lot of life yet to live. Just when I thought I could not go any lower, I did. I lost my wife and three out of the only four male friends I had to death. Which sent me even lower into depression. I was at a point the experts say with drug addicts who must hit bottom before they can start the path upward. Just change the wording to my male self was at the bottom of his journey and it was time to give my inner female a chance to live. Because, at this time, there was no longer time for short term solutions, my male self just had to be done.

Fortunately, I was able to salvage all the years of practice and learning I put into my femininizing projects and did not have to start from scratch when it came to working on my presentation as a transgender woman. I could look at the long-term benefits of my male to female gender transition. It was such a relief to be able to finally change my thought processes around and not play the short-term gender game at all.

Tired of Looking Over my Shoulder

 

Christopher Morley
1974 movie
Freebie and the Bean.

In a continuation of yesterday’s post in many ways, today’s post is about how I grew weary of looking over my shoulder as a transgender woman.

Looking back, all I can remember from the earliest days I had cross-dressing in front of the mirror were the all too brief moments of gender euphoria I experienced and the all too numerous times I spent looking over my shoulder to see if anyone was going to catch me. Then life as I knew it would be ruined. To stop this from happening, I became very good at hiding my clothes and makeup away from the prying eyes of my slightly younger brother and the rest of my family. I even resorted to hiding a small amount of clothes, makeup and a mirror in a trash bag in a hollowed-out tree in the woods next to our house in the country. Even with all of this hiding, I still found myself spending a lot of time looking over my shoulder.

Somehow, I thought when I grew older, I would conquer all my gender issues, and they would magically disappear, but they just grew with me. The better I became applying makeup and selecting feminine clothes, the more I wanted to do. Like a dog chasing its tail, the more success I had led me to want to do more in the public’s eye. Sadly, as I grew into my high school and precollege years, I was still stuck in the same old routine of dressing at home, hiding from my family and looking over my shoulder. The only relief I remember was the night friends and I went to a high school carnival and one of the male students was parading around dressed as a pretty girl. I was fascinated but again was looking over my shoulder to make sure none of my friends noticed how interested I was.

Which was exactly how I felt when I saw the movie “Freebie and the Bean” in 1974. I did not know it or had never heard of actor “Christopher Morley” who was an accomplished female impersonator. He had a part in the movie which I found amazing because he was so believable as a woman. As with the student cross dressed as a pretty girl, when I saw Morley, I needed to look over my shoulder at my friends to see if they noticed my newfound interest in the film we were watching. I guess I was pretty good at hiding my interest because nobody ever said anything about it.

Moving forward, there were the early cross-dressing days when I was still trying to perfect my everyday presentation as a transgender woman. I constantly worried about someone sneaking up behind me and pulling off my ill-fitting wig. What would I do then? Put it back on or just pick the wig up and run out the door. Fortunately, I never had to find out when I figured it was my inner female paranoia talking to me that I was not looking good enough to pass her standards yet.

By this time, looking over my shoulder became a habit. There was a time when my second wife and I moved to a small town in southern Ohio to run a new restaurant there. In order to suppress all my cross-dressing desires, I started to do the grocery shopping as a woman then go ahead and do a little lite shopping for myself. One day when I was blissfully doing my thing as a transfeminine person, I unexpectedly ran straight into my wife’s boss doing his errands. As bad luck would have it, my wife and I were invited that weekend to a small party at her boss’s house and I needed to really look over my shoulder when I heard him mention to my wife about the “big woman” he had seen in a store. Rightfully so, I was always guilty until proven innocent with my wife and she turned directly to stare the look of death at me. It took me weeks of denial to finally live it down.

Denial, lying and other mistruths became a way of life for me with my wife before she passed away after twenty-five years of marriage. The only thing I am proud of is that I did manage a full out purge six months before she died. To prevent any backsliding, I even grew a beard. Needless to say, I was miserable during this time but nothing like I was going to live through later.

After all the tragedy I went through during this time, I finally had enough of looking over my shoulder for decades and decided to follow my instincts and come out to the world as a transgender woman. Not spending all that time and effort was completely refreshing and allowed me to totally concentrate on my new life as a trans woman.

 

It is Right When you Know it Is

 

Image from Caroline Herman
on UnSplash.

Some have asked me over the years, when did I know it was the right time for me to leave my closet and emerge into the world as a transgender woman. It is a complex question with a very easy answer. I always knew I was having problems with my gender but did not have a clue for years what to do about it.

The only relief I had was the brief time I had to rapidly cross dress in front of the mirror, away from my family and friends. Even when I was able to accomplish my goal of looking like a pretty girl, I still was aware deep down that something was not right with my life. In my own way, I set out to find any gender solutions I could, on my own, with no available sources to aid me. Plus, at the time, my male self was rapidly settling into a relatively successful life, and he wanted nothing to do giving up any of it to my inner feminine self. It turned out, this would be a battle I would have had to face for decades of my life to come. I would spend any available free time I had as a cross dresser, only to have what I learned rejected when I went back to my male life.

The only thing which kept me going was the deep idea I had that what I was doing was actually the natural part of my existence. And the parttime male life was an act. The act which became so good over the years that I shocked a number of people I knew when I finally came out as a transgender woman. I always had assumed they had thought something was up with me when they saw me at Halloween parties dressed as a woman but never did. It was like my male self-tried to dig a deep hole to bury my female self was never quite successful as she kept digging herself out.

The years at that point seem to fly by with the continuing fights with my second wife over considering if I was transgender at all and at the same time, me improving my transfeminine presentation during the times I was out in the public’s eye. I started to do more than just walk around in malls to see if I could present well and started to accomplish small tasks such as doing part of the family grocery shopping as a woman. I found I could do the tasks, and my life began to feel so natural again. The opposite of when I needed to go back to living as a man. It seemed unfair to me when my wife and my male self-ganged up on me to protect their interests in the relationship and I did not know what to do because I was just doing what was becoming more natural to me.

All the infighting only did one thing and that was prolonging the truth from coming out. I had always been destined to be feminine and when the time was right, I would be able to claim my birthright. The longer I lived as a transgender woman among ciswomen I knew I was in the right spot and had to face the facts about myself. My wife unexpectedly passed away from a massive heart attack leaving only my male self to protest any idea of me being trans and starting the HRT medical treatment. Under a doctor’s care of course.

Finally, when faced with the reality of my future life, my male self-gave in to my inner feminine self who had waited so long to live and prosper. More importantly, I was tired of all the internal fighting and knew I had readied myself to make a choice. All the frustrating years of playing with makeup and clothes came back to help me. I did not have to worry so much about my presentation when I made the decision to permanently be in the public’s eye as a transgender woman. I found a great majority of the world either didn’t pay any attention or were just curious of me which was a great surprise. I could relax and enjoy the wonderful new world I had always dreamed of.

When I finally stopped the gender in-fighting I suffered through all those years, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders at the age of sixty. Why I waited so long to face my true self in the mirror and decide to do the right thing will forever be a mystery to me. My only excuse is, I just knew the time was right.