At the Gender Crossroads

 

Image from Timelord on UnSplash

Many times, in my life, I have found myself at a gender crossroads.

Of course, like most of you, I learned from the situations I put myself into. As I always mention, the first one was when I needed to leave the comfort zone I had created with the mirror and attempt to live in the world as a transfeminine person. Initially, I was slapped down as people laughed and smirked at me. Until I learned to own who I was, which was a huge crossroad to negotiate.

Over the years, I began to think I had seen everything, but I had not. My main problem was I needed to make the final decision on which way I would go if I was faced with a making a final decision on which gender I would ever live as. Plus, I did not know if I even could live as a transgender woman. I kept searching and learning until I found I was not a man cross dressing as a woman; I was a woman cross dressing as a man.

I discovered also, I would need to transition more than once if I would ever try to make it to my dream life. Primarily when I learned it on the night I finally decided I would quit going out as a cross dresser and change my inner thought pattern. I was fed up with just trying to look like a woman and wanted to feel like one and see as if I could mingle with a group of ciswomen with no issues. I did make it with the other women and crossed another road I knew I could never go back. I mingled and socialized with other women and even used the women’s room with no pushback at all. It was amazing.

The next transition I need to make was when I needed to begin communicating with other women. It was never easy and a complete learning process. It does not take a genius to know women and men communicate on a different level. I knew well how to do it as a man, but I was a total novice as a woman. The first lesson I learned was I had to pause and listen to the other woman I was talking to. As a man, I could often make the first move and hope for the best. With women, I never did and often waited for a passive aggressive response. The real intent behind the smile often startled me until I caught on to the game.

All of it led me to the success I needed to this day to be successful with other women who indirectly try to bully me in their own way. An example was the ciswoman I wrote about in a recent post when she could not adjust to me being a parent not a dad to my daughter. In fact, I had a reader (Michelle) who responded to the woman and my return comment: “You handled it with so much more grace than I probably would’ve. And Liz’s quick response? Perfection. I’m so glad you still got to connect with your daughter and your grandchild, that’s what really matters. The rest is just noise.” Thanks for the comment! The woman was very noisy and was trying to bully me in her own way.

I was just fortunate that both Liz and I had been through similar situations, so we were ready. Somehow, the woman thought she had me over a gender barrel with the dad comment and that was when Liz took over. The woman asked Liz who I was to her and Liz said wife and the woman shut up.

My point it, both Liz and I had been through situations with other women such as her before, so we were able to handle the noise and go across yet another crossroad. By this time, I think there always will be another road to cross as I see my gender dream come together.

As Michelle said, the world is full of noise, and we must separate it into genders to make sense of it. Which would be another blog post altogether. In the meantime, for all of you approaching your own crossroads, try to feel secure on your journey and be careful. Especially these days when depending upon where you live transgender rights of any kind are in danger.

 

 

Just a Gender Detour

 

Image from Belinda Fewings
on UnSplash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When Being OK was not Good Enough

 

JJ Hart and wife Liz on right at Picnic.

I grew up in Ohio raised by greatest generation parents who lived through WWII and the great depression. Often, they were long on material support and short on emotional backing.

The main thing I remember from my childhood was, nothing was ever good enough. Take school for an example, while I excelled at subjects such as History and English, I really struggled with the Math and Sciences. Even still, I was expected to bring home straight A’s on my grade card every year. I had no excuses, especially when I went to high school where my mom was a teacher. She was pushing me hard for good grades to make it possible to get accepted by a good university.

I guess I became used to the pushing and figured nothing was ever good enough for myself and it carried over into my gender issues. Every time the mirror lied to me and said I was an attractive girl, I did not believe it and had to discover another way to prove it. Very quickly I learned I needed to replace the mirror with the public. Leaving my dark, lonely closet was the only way I could learn if I could ever achieve my dream of living a transfeminine life. It took every bit of courage I could muster to do it but if OK was not enough (by just standing in front of the mirror), I had to force myself into the world.

When I did force myself, it was like I was getting adjusted to a new pair of shoes. At first, I was tight and uncomfortable before I started to relax and began the basics of enjoying myself. I say I began the basics, because at every turn on my gender path, it seemed I was hitting a wall. Those were the times I needed to step back and decide if I was doing the right thing.

Those examples and failures proved to me I needed to keep going. Mainly because I felt so natural when I was pushing the envelope to leave my male self behind and live more and more as a transgender woman.

On occasion, proving OK was not enough and trashing the envelope almost got me into trouble. Mainly when I began to walk the fine line when I lost my male privileges. The most important being personal security. I was out and out lucky and escaped personal harm by men in the world. I wasn’t smart enough or experienced enough to sense the danger zones women are raised around. I learned quickly to park in well-lit areas or to ask for friends to walk me to my car. I did not want to be a statistic.

As I went through the process of living within the same parameter’s cisgender women have to face, I became a sponge of sorts. Nothing I did as I transitioned was ever good enough as my parents’ lessons oddly came back to help me. I was especially attentive when I went out to socialize with my women friends. They never realized what they did for me as I formed my own version of womanhood. In many ways I became a gender hybrid. It was impossible for me to leave decades of living an impacted male existence behind me, so I tried to take the good with me. For example, I was fortunate to have worked around women in the restaurant business for most of my life and I knew the trials and tribulations cisgender women faced in the world.

To this day, I have not shaken the idea of just being OK is just OK. I must be better just to be successful in the competitive world of women. I knew they could be competitive but not as much as I discovered when I finally had the chance to play in the girl’s sandbox. The whole process made me a better person in the long run, but it was surely difficult at times. Often brief moments of gender euphoria kept me going in my darkest gender hours. That was when I needed to provide electricity in my closet to give me the ability to see right from wrong.

Since my parents were my driving force behind my personality, I never had the chance to thank them for what they did. My Mom knew about my gender issues and chose to ignore them, and my dad never knew so I doubt if either would be pleased about their child raising outcome. They never knew how well OK was never enough worked out for me in my life.

 

 

Trans Girl on the "Down Low"

 

Image from Josh Withers
on UnSplash.

According to Wikipedia, down low is basically an African American term for gay cruising of other men. For this post, I am going to use it in another sense.

First of all, I need to take you all back to when I first considered my down low to be as I cheated on my wife. But I was doing it by cheating on her with another woman, which happened to be me. Of course, nothing made what I was doing right but I could not stop doing it as it had a powerful draw on me. Those were the exciting days of leaving the gay bar scene behind me and begin exploring the world of straight bars as well as lesbian venues.

Very soon, my success turned to failure as I began to feel guilty about lying to my wife about what I was doing. I tried my best to rationalize my thoughts because after all, I was having no physical contact with anyone. Male or female so I could not be accused of cheating, but I still was. The reason was, I had made an agreement with her that I could go out in public several days a week. Providing I never left the house cross-dressed. It was a sacred promise she never forgot and one I could not keep once I began to develop a transfeminine life.

Very soon, I felt as if I was still on the down low every time I snuck out of the house dressed as a woman. As I was basically doing as much as possible. The reason was, I was learning so much about the feminine world I had always dreamed about, I could never turn around and go back to my male life.

It was more exciting to stay on the down low until I could figure out what to do about the life I was leading. In fact, I because the more I experienced the new world, the more natural I began to feel as I was able to put the image I always saw in the mirror into motion. In many ways, I began to feel so natural as a transgender woman, it was difficult to ever return to being a man at all. I had to consciously tell myself I still was a part time man when I worked. So much so, I was beginning to be called ma’am when sir would have worked for the occasion. Still, I was secretly overjoyed when it happened.

Sadly, through it all, my marriage really suffered. Mostly because I was and am a very honest person and hated lying to my wife about what was really going on with me. Often, I learned when I lied one small time, I would have to lie more often to make up for it. An example was one year when we took a week for vacation and headed north to try to escape the heat. About two days into the vacation, I became increasingly mean and irritable because I really wanted to be spending my time traveling as a woman. Finally, my poor wife had had enough and asked me what was wrong. I lied again and internalized my feelings enough to get by, and we could eventually enjoy ourselves. Deep down, I hated myself for it.

Life began to finally slow down for me as I reached certain milestones in my transfeminine life. I was beginning to communicate with the world and started to feel much better about myself and at the same time my down low activities slowed down also. At least to a point where I could control them. It was around this time too, when my wife’s health began to really decline. It did not know it then, but she only had approximately six months to live. For some reason, I decided to go on a major purge and throw most of my feminine things away and went all the way to growing my version of a beard. It turned out, I did the best I could for the remainder of her life.

When she passed, of course I was tragically shocked and lonely, so I reached inward. The beard went away quickly, and I was able to restock my clothes and makeup. In no time at all, my inner feminine self was coming to my rescue. I began to retrace my steps I had taken as a novice transgender woman, and reestablished myself fairly quickly in the venues I was a regular in.

I was totally freed from the down low experiences from my past and could concentrate on going out to being alone. In other words, I wanted to be around other people. I just did not want them approaching me.

It worked in the short term until I began to socialize with and started to build a small circle of friends who knew nothing of my previous self. I never had had to go on the down low again.

 

 

You Said What?

 

Image from Thomas Park
on UnSplash.

When your life is made up of a series of no, you can’t do that, you tend to find the nearest rock and crawl under it.

In my case, that no sent me into a deep dark gender closet I hid in for years. I even sought refuge behind the dresses and makeup I was wearing. Afterall, girls did not have to face the same challenges I was facing. I was too naïve to think the girls had separate gender challenges of their own to conquer.  It wasn’t until much later in life when I learned the truth from the women I was around about their life.

The word “no” ended up serving two purposes with me in my life. I found out relatively early that the people telling me no had any real control over me. An example was when I earned a spot-on American Forces Radio and Television when I was going into the Army during the Vietnam War. Being slotted into AFRTS was extremely rare and difficult to do and I did it with help from my congressman (back when they did anything). I learned there were ways around no if you were able to find them. I served my military duty but, in a manner, I wanted to.

My gender life was another subject altogether. I was still struggling and had a huge NO above my head for years. With a largely unsupportive family and no means to support myself as a transfeminine woman, I did not know what to do except to keep treading water and hope I did not sink. Plus, I had no money or insurance to cover any expenses incurred with gender surgeries of any sort. I was on my own and had to internalize my feelings.

Again, I found I could find my way around totally internalizing my feelings by attending local transgender-crossdresser parties where I could learn from others. In the meantime, I was doing my best to survive in a male world where I was becoming successful in. In other words, the rock I was under had more inhabitants than ever before but just as dark for me. Then I found a way to put electric light under my rock or in my closet. It was when I forced myself out into the world which was very unforgiving for years until I gained my footing and on a very slippery gender surface. It seemed my new high heels were more difficult to walk in than I ever imagined.

More than ever before, it was during this time, my gender tables began to turn for me. I was climbing a major mountain and still did not know how steep it was going to be. On the nights I was rejected by the public, I needed to go home and resolve myself to never take no for an answer. Somehow, someway I was doing something wrong and if I corrected it I could survive as a transgender woman. That was when I improved my fashion and makeup, along with losing nearly fifty pounds. All the improvements to my feminine presentation along with having the chance to communicate one on one with cisgender women I met, helped me to ignore the no button and keep moving up my gender path. I even was internalizing less.

Through it all, I need to point out, most of my progress towards being a transfeminine woman was not easy and hard earned. There were still too many, one step forward and two steps back moments to mention. At times, it seemed I was destined to learn everything a cisgender woman knew about life before I would be allowed behind the gender curtain and be invited to girls’ night outs etc. The only regret I ever had was never being invited to a bridal shower or bachelorette party. But it never happened.

Since I often learned the hard way what no meant to me in my life, I sometimes feel as if I am the worst person in the world to be writing about it. Sometimes no does mean no when you find yourself in a dangerous situation and you don’t have your old male personal safety privilege to fall back on. You must take the good with the bad when you are a transgender woman. Especially today with the current anti-transgender political climate. The republicans are not letting up at all with their gender lies, at least here in Ohio where I live and it is disgusting.

The more I see of their lies, the more I am resolved to never say I give up and keep on fighting for the truth. A big NO to the gender bigots.

 

 

Emerging as Your True Self

 

Image from JC Gellidon 
on UnSplash. 

Emerging as your true self after a lifelong gender struggle is often very difficult.

It starts very early in life when you discover you are in the wrong place at the right time, or the right place at the wrong time. Whatever the case, your struggle to find yourself begins. In my case I began with explorations into my mom’s clothing which lasted until I could no longer fit into any of her clothes. If you had suggested to me my final emergence into the world would take as long as it did, I would not have believed you. It was a long journey until I finally took the transition step to live as a full-time transfeminine person at the age of sixty.

Some of you may ask why I waited so long or since I did, why couldn’t I just wait for it a little longer into my senior years. On the other hand, I felt if I did not do it then, I would never have the chance. So, I pulled the plug on my old male life and emerged new as a transgender woman. It was never easy, but I made it.

Others may ask why I never opted for any gender surgeries of any sort. I did not because I was on the borderline to being able to present well enough as a woman to get by and I did not have the insurance or the finances to do it. Plus, I was superstitious about having any operations on my body since to this day the only surgery I have ever done was getting my tonsils taken out. I decided to set my gender dysphoria aside and work with what I had or pass out of sheer willpower as a transgender woman friend once told me.

I can’t tell you how many times my willpower was challenged before I made it to the point of emergence in the world. The seemingly endless times I was sent home in tears when my cross-dressing plans went wrong. Fortunately, I was stubborn and kept on moving towards my dream of possibly living fulltime as a woman. I replaced my willpower with confidence since in most cases, I was following my path in the most difficult way possible, without the help of any facial feminization surgeries. For the most part, makeup art was my way around having no expensive, painful operations until I could begin gender affirming hormones.

For me, the hormones worked miracles inside and out. Outwardly, my skin softened along with my facial angles of manhood, and I could use less makeup. Also, on the plus side, my hair grew quickly and fully since I inherited no male pattern baldness which made wearing any sort of a wig a thing of the past for me. What really changed was my overall view of the world. Suddenly, my view softened as my senses heightened. I felt emotions such as I had never felt before, and I learned how women complained they were always cold (except during menopause) because I was in my second puberty and cold all the time.

During this time, emergence became a slippery slide for me. The HRT hormones were quickly making it impossible to go back to my male life because I did not want to. Why would I want to trade in all the work I put in to travel my long gender path for anything? I finally gave up on all the resistance I was putting into retaining any of a life as a male I never really wanted. The only remaining reason turned out to be me losing all the white male privileges I had worked so hard to gain. For that reason, I put off emerging and attempted to briefly live a portion of my life in both binary genders. Something I would strongly suggest not doing. For me, trying it wrecked my mental health and nearly my life. My male side was hanging on and very materialistic while my female side was discovering a magical life is the best way I can describe it. Afterall, I could see my best-case dream life within reach.

Through it all, I think being approved by a doctor for gender affirming hormones was the biggest moment of my emergence as a fulltime transgender woman. With the help, I was able to carve out a new life and put the old one aside. I was able to see a new world with the help of new friends who never knew the old me. The essence of emergence when someone else could enjoy the company of my new feminine self. HRT was just a kick start to make it to where I wanted to be. I needed to take it from there and make my emergence complete.

 

 

 

The Second Act

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Wellness Outreach. 

Will the second act of life be better and more successful than the first? How many people even get a second chance?

That is the question I needed to answer when I finally shed my male life and entered a transfeminine existence. Since I did it at the age of sixty, I have had plenty of ground to catch up with. Many times, it seemed I never would. My internal gender clock was moving one step forward and two steps back as I attempted to transition. I had times when the picture was clear in my mind, and I was able to put it into motion. Such as the night I took myself out to see a major Christmas light display in a nearby village and was warmly accepted in my soft bulky sweater, leggings and boots. Then, as I rode the wave of gender dysphoria, I would do something wrong such as how I was moving. I am fond of saying, I looked like a linebacker in drag.

The problem was, if I relaxed at all going into the second act of my life, I had the tendency to fall back into old habits. I was learning the hard way over and over, to take nothing for granted in my new life. Many times, I tried and failed not to be too hard on myself since I was making up for a first act in my life which lasted so long, and I had to concentrate so much on it just to survive. It was around this time when my male self really began to set up roadblocks on my gender path. Suddenly, he began to see that this road I was on was not a phase or joke and I was deadly serious.  He started to ask questions such as how I was going to live in my second act with no job and how I was prepared to do it without the wife I dearly loved and had been married to for nearly twenty-five years. To be sure, all very real and very scary questions.

I put off deciding my life as long as I could as I attempted to learn if I could really live a transfeminine life at all. Were the obstacles insurmountable or not. Through it all, the one overriding feeling which kept me searching was the deep down feeling I was doing the right thing. I was headed in the direction I should have been going in my life all along and I kept going through the ups and downs of transitioning into my second act.

Once it was clear I was successfully transitioning into my second act, I needed to make sure I was doing it correctly. It turned out I had all the help I needed. In addition to the cisgender women I always mention, there was one important person I don’t mention enough. That person turned out to be very real and important to me. She was my inner feminine person who had been waiting for all those years and decades for her chance to fully come out into the world. Once she finally did, she knew completely what to do and what was ahead for my second act of my life. Mainly, all the nuances of life as a woman if I really wanted to go there. She knew the best part of my life was yet to come.

More importantly, I had finally made it through the bleak years when often I thought there would be no tomorrow. Or at least my dream of living a feminine life would never be realized. Often it set off a series of insecurities in myself which set back my life. Act one was bleeding because I could not get to act two.

When I finally made it to my second act, it was as if I had lifted a heavy weight off my shoulders, and I came to a point where I needed to be more understanding and approachable in the world. I could not get away with the old male ways of internalizing my feelings and start living again. If I did try to hide as a transgender woman, I would never have a chance to provide myself with a positive outlook to other women and not come off as an unfriendly transfeminine woman which was the last thing I wanted or was.

Since I was one of the few humans who ever had the chance to stop their life and begin again so there was no way I could mess it up. I needed to enjoy life and live it the best I could.  

Being Your Mother's Daughter

 

Image from Bence Halmosi
on UnSplash. 

What if your dream came true and you could have started your life as your mother’s daughter?

How would life really have been if it could have shared that special mother/daughter bond we can only see from afar.

As I changed my Estradiol patches this morning, I stopped to think how my mom and I would have gotten along if my gender world had been different. I know for sure; everything would not have been so rosy if I was living my dream. I remember vividly being able to sit back and watch mom expertly apply her makeup before she went out in public. Which her generation always did. I wonder now when she would have let me start experimenting with makeup if I was her daughter. I think now, I was wearing makeup before she would allow me to if I was in the feminine world I so dearly wanted to be in. I was also fairly sure I was shaving my legs sooner than she would have allowed.

The reason was, she probably never understood having a son who was really her daughter was all about. If I was her daughter, the pressure would have been on to conform to her ideas and rules. We were so much alike to begin with I am sure we would have fought continually. The gender grass always looked greener from the other side as I grew up. Especially when it came to the world of fashion. I had always admired the clothes girls around me were able to wear when I was stuck in the same old clothes.

It was not until much later in life when I started to really learn of the fashion problems my second and third wives had with their moms, did I begin to understand what they were going through. For example, my second wife told me several times about how she snuck out of the house with her skirt at one length (for parent approval) then when she was out of sight, she rolled it up to make it a forbidden mini skirt and supposedly mom never found out. On a more cruel side, my third wife Liz’s mom constantly harassed her about her weight. I can’t imagine how bad that made her feel. The closest I could come was if my parents ever berated me over a bad athletic play I made. Which they never did.

Overall, I wonder if any bond mom and I would have ever come up with would have been one existing of competition. I am sure my female self would have been struggling as much as my male self to gain any respect at home. All the way to the college I was going to attend. Mom was a graduate of an upscale public university in Ohio as well as being an active alum of one of their sororities. I am sure she would have pushed me (as her daughter) to follow in her footsteps, which would have been another problem.

I wonder if at any point in time, my dream of growing up as my mom’s daughter would have turned into a nightmare. Although, nightmare might be too strong of a term. Better yet, a struggle would have been better to use because both genders have their problems if they are over able to arrive at adulthood and claim the title of women and men. As I said, being a transfeminine person always seemed to be the best way to exist (for me) in life. I would never need to worry about being shipped to fight in Vietnam or summoning my courage to ask a girl out, among other things. On the other hand, I never had the opportunity to be asked out if I was a girl. Certainly, there was a positive give and take to both genders, but I was only seeing the good.

Would mom have taught me the basics of makeup? Or would I have learned it from girlfriends at weekly sleepovers. I am slightly biased, but I think I would have learned from my female peer group more than mom. Having never had the chance to learn, I will never know and since mom rejected any sort of discussion on my transfeminine life, there never will be any way to find out. She passed years ago.

It wasn’t until years later did, I have the chance to learn what I missed or didn’t when I grew up male. It finally took a group of women took me through the process of being a woman. In essence making up for what my mom missed doing. I inherited her stubbornness to do what was right and her ability to keep going until she arrived where she wanted to be. It would have been interesting if she had ever accepted the fact she had a daughter, not a son.

 

 

It is Just a Phase?

Image from Claudia Love on UnSplash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Build the Plane before You Fly It.

 

Image from Miquel Angel
Hernadez on UnSplash. 

Early in my life I learned to build my gender plane before I tried to fly it.

When I was simply admiring myself in the mirror, life was easy, or so I thought. I could apply my makeup and put on my mini-skirt and journey to the mailbox, hoping the neighbors would not see me. Through it all, the mirror lied to me and said I looked wonderful even though I did not even have a wig. Even still, I kept going. Mainly because we lived in a very rural area and no one saw my mailbox adventures.

I suppose, during those days, I was merely experimenting with clothes and makeup, the same way any other young girl would do. The problem was, I had no one in my peer group to criticize me and help me to learn what was correct with make-up and fashion and it showed. I was attempting to fly my gender plane before it was fully built. The mirror never did any of it for me. It was simply there to tell me how good I looked.

It was not till much later in life, did I begin to replace the mirror with public feedback when it came to early adventures going out in the world as a transfeminine woman. I vividly remember all the nights I quickly returned home wiping the tears away after being followed by someone and laughed at. Mainly from teenaged girls. Somehow, I needed to keep taking my plane back to the drawing board to attempt to see what I was doing wrong. The good news is, I did begin to figure it out. I was dressing for the wrong gender. Trying to please men, when I should have been trying to please women. Out went the sleazy, ill-fitting clothes. Replaced by more sensible clothes as I did my best to cover my male poisoned body.

It worked as I began to blend into the world, as I gave myself the chance to experience my reality for a change. I was similar to the Wright Brothers during their first flights; I was not going far but I was doing it. During this time, my flights grew dramatically longer. I was finding my way out of the clothing stores where all they cared about was my money, all the way into restaurants where I had to interact with staff on a one-on-one basis. I was discovering how well my plane was built or not. Surely, I was still experiencing my ups and downs, but I was having more of the positive side of life.

The problem was, on my male side, he was still having success in his world with a very successful job. So, he wanted no part of helping to build a new gender plane. I was forced to build around him. Which made for a very shaky foundation. Especially for my already frail mental health. It hurt me deeply when I was flying high and he brought me back to earth with a crash. He even took me as far as an ill-fated suicide attempt.

In the short, and long term, I survived him and continued to build my plane, every time I thought I was done, there was more to do as I studied the nuances of living a transfeminine life. Adjusting to being passive aggressive alone to other women was a big adjustment, not to mention the communication issues I faced in the new world I was in. Other women were very curious about me and wanted to know what I was doing in their world. Very soon, my air space became very crowded with new people, mostly all women.

Many times, starting all over in life became a major challenge for me. I needed my plane to provide me with a better view of what was really happening in my life. I had too many fake, mean people to beware of. Even after all these years, my plane was still very fragile. Before I moved ahead any further, I just had to build in the inner strength I needed to pursue my dream of living fulltime as a transgender woman.

To accomplish my dream, I needed the friends I had found in my new life to do it. I always mention the Liz’s, Kim’s and Nicki’s of the world who helped more than they ever knew. It was all of them who finished building my plane more than I did and I will be forever grateful for them coming together to save me.

Growing up, I built plenty of model cars to look at and even race, but nothing helped me to prepare for the greatest building experience of my life. A gender transformation project which took me decades to complete. In fact, I am still working on it to this day even though I have been fully out for over a decade now. There was more building than I ever thought possible to start all over again with my life.

 

Painting a Picture

 

Image from Vinicus Amix
Amano on UnSplash.

During my life, I have never been accused of being an artist. In fact, I would mess up drawing stick figures.

The best thing I could do was connect dots. Which I needed to do quite often in my gender conflicted life. Basically, the main dots I needed to connect were, was I a boy or a girl. It ended up taking me far too long to finally connect those dots and attempt to draw my gender picture.

When I began to experiment with makeup, I learned the basics of facial artwork and even I could make myself look better in the mirror. Mainly, though, I struggled along until I summoned the courage to request a makeover from a professional makeup person at one of the transgender-cross dresser mixers I went to. He did a miracle job and transformed me into a woman who I only had dreamed of. Most importantly, he was able to explain to me what he was doing in a step-by-step format that even I could understand. I looked so good, I was invited along by the “A” listers, as I called them when they went out to explore other venues after the mixer was over. I even got the last laugh over all of them when a man tried to pick me up in a venue we were in, and they were not.

Sadly, the success I felt from the mixer did not last long when I had to go back to the real world, I was a part of. When I did, I became mean and nasty to my wife and others around me. All the way to almost losing jobs because of my attitude. No way to paint a picture. Somehow, I needed to get better before I self-destructed my life.

I hung on until I did get better when I had the chance to leave my closet more than once a year for Halloween parties. I was aided by the fact that my artwork with makeup and clothes continued to improve until I looked better than some sort of a circus clown in drag. I simply had to if I was ever going to have the chance to live my dream. Through it all, it did occur to me how difficult the process was going to be. I was painting two pictures at the same time, one as a transfeminine woman. One as a successful man. The stress of doing so nearly killed me. Being a man was easier because of all the white male privileges I had gained but being a transfeminine woman felt so exciting and natural when I painted her.

By the time I had gotten this far, I found I had painted myself in a corner. I could see the finish line for a change, while at the same time, I had a wife I loved, a family I loved and a good job to protect as a man. Decisions, decisions were wearing me down. Primarily because it was so frustrating to me to have worked so hard throughout my life to paint two pictures, only to have to finally choose between the two. What I did was let the public choose which picture they preferred. Since my transgender woman had an unfair advantage, she won the contest easily. She got to start all over again and learn from all the mistakes her male counterpart made and go from there. Time and time again, the public picked her.

Putting the finishing touches on my feminine portrait proved to be easier said than done. First, I needed to come out of my closet to what was left of my blood family. I received a 50/50 reception when I was accepted by my daughter and rejected by my brother. By this time both of my parents were deceased. Predictably, both coming out events were scary and quickly resolved. My daughter wondered why she was the last to know while my brother did not have the courage to stand up for me to the rest of his extended family. We have not spoken now in over a decade. Sad but true, he never wanted to see my finished portrait. Conversely, my daughter and I are closer than ever.

But then again, are our portraits ever finished until we die. Shouldn’t we always be making small upgrades the best we can? Plus, age should put us in a better position to do it. Sure, painting two completely different gender portraits at the same time was difficult and at times required tons of skill to keep one hidden. But somehow, I was able to gain the artistic skill to make it happen.

The powerful draw of an overwhelming dream was all the motivation I needed to become a better artist and provide the background I needed to live a life as a transgender woman.

The Biggest Lie

 

Image from Dave Goudreau 
on UnSplash.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Building Bricks as a Trans Girl

 

Image from Marcus Spiske
on UnSplash. 

If nothing else, my long life has been a series of gender building blocks.

Ironically in my youth I spent hours building small houses with a set of plastic building blocks I was gifted. That was until I discovered the joys of mom’s clothes and began to admire myself in the family’s hallway mirror. Little did I know, from those humble beginnings, I was heading towards building a lifetime of building blocks. Transphobes as well as other assorted bigots were ruining my early days as a transfeminine woman. Which meant I needed to sort through my gender bricks until I could survive.

Very early on, I knew I needed to build a strong closet. To quote a famous “Doors” song, I was a “Rider on the Storm.”  Somedays my storm would be less as my gender dysphoria subsided on others it was unbearable and all I did was think about the next time I could cross dress in front of the mirror. It was on those occasions; the mirror would play tricks on me and tell me I was an attractive woman. I say tricks because on a good day, I had not mastered the art of makeup or fashion. I needed to be persistent in my building blocks because I would never have been successful if I did not. My dream of living a life in a transfeminine world was proving to be much more difficult than I ever imagined.

It turned out my wife was right, I did make a terrible woman until I paid my dues, but I couldn't pay my dues until I built enough gender bricks to be allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the nuances of doing it. One thing I did know was that I was my gender journey of a thousand miles did begin with that single step in front of the mirror. To keep up with my journey, more and more bricks would be needed for me to succeed. Once I was behind that imaginary but so real curtain, I became a complete sponge to be the best transfeminine person I could be. Some days I was thrilled to be where I was and on others, I was scared to death. Building a new life from scratch with very little help proved to be intimidating.

I learned and became better at dodging the barbs and smirks of the haters in the world. I had built enough bricks to replace my old gender closet with a new one which was built to last me. The new closet was good enough to take me to the point where I could authentically begin a new life as a transgender woman. Which meant I needed to be better than the average cisgender woman just to get by.

The women around me who helped me build my new gender fortress were the gate keepers who never knew how much they helped me live my dream. I was able to layer my feminine experience all the way to success.

Little did I know when I was a kid trying on my mom’s clothes for the first time, how far I would need to go to survive. My last adventure turned out to be my best.

 

A Trans Girl in the Arena

 

JJ Hart at a Witches Ball. 

Or, should I say, a scared trans girl in a new arena.

As I started my gender transition from male to female, I truthfully did not have an idea of the complexity of what I was getting myself into. I had closely studied the ciswomen around me for years to try to see what made them tick and how they survived the challenges in their lives. I also learned the hard way; I could only go so far until I was allowed behind the gender curtain.

My first initial shock when I entered the arena of life as a transfeminine person was everyone would be looking at me. Sure, I was used to the fact that all men looked at women and judged them, but I was not prepared for women doing the same thing and even more so. Since I was never the most attractive woman in the room, I did not have to worry about most men giving me a second look. Except those men who desired me for what I was, a transgender woman.

Women were a completely different deal. I found quickly how another woman could look you up and down, and head to toe. Judging me without saying a word. It took me awhile to get over the experience and plan for it. If I was going casual or professional, it did not matter, I needed to be perfect in my presentation. From accessories to shoes, I needed to shine, or blend. In other words, I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to survive in the new arena of life I chose. An arena where everyone noticed who I was or wasn’t.

After the initial shock wore off, I learned that this part of my new transfeminine life was just something I needed to get used to. For the most part, I was used to men shunning me and women showing interest in me because they were curious what I was doing in their world. I ignored the men and concentrated on the attention I was getting from the women because I was learning so much from them about how to survive in the new gender world I was in. Sure, I suffered several bumps and bruises along the way, but I survived and moved forward. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly until I found my way.

Being a trans girl in a big arena surely brought on a new set of challenges when I lost all of my male privileges. Such as my right to personal security and my right to express myself to the best of my ability. I was used to being able to scare off most all of potential physical danger as a man, which of course was all lost as a woman and I was nearly attacked several times before I learned. Also, being excluded in conversations simply because of who I was became a common place. Both aspects of my life were something I did not quite bargain for when I entered the new arena I was in.

The nuances of living in a new arena became a common place for me. As I transitioned from cross dresser to full time transgender woman, I knew I was in the right place, and I could see the so-called finish line ahead. Or so I thought.

Now at the age of seventy-five, I can see the finish line but for the most part it has nothing to do with my gender arena. The finish line I am seeing has to do with my own mortality and how my family will remember me. In many ways, I am the unintended role model for my transgender grandchild who is facing an uncertain world. I say unintended because I had nothing to do with my grandchild’s life choices. They (choice of pronouns) are just fortunate in that their parents are so supportive of the life choices they make coming from such a diverse family environment.

I believe we will never stop transitioning in our lives. We keep transitioning all the way to the grave as transgender women and trans men whose families refuse to bury the trans people as their authentic selves. The final battle and insult. The arena never seems to be quiet at all.

At the least I could say, the journey to the gender arena and the successes and failures on how I survived were never boring and not something the average human will ever know. Perhaps, it is part of the reason we have been demonized by a certain political party when most of the population has never met a transgender person. If they ever stepped into our arena and saw our life firsthand. They would know, we are not such monsters after all, just average people trying to make it in the arenas we chose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here we Go Again

 

Image from Pau Casals on UnSplash.

A very short and sour post coming up:

Here we go. The convicted orange felon and his minions in Washington, DC, are in my life once again. For those you who don’t know, I am a Vietnam Era veteran who is under VA medical care.

Now, in addition to staff cuts, he has given permission to Veteran’s Administration doctors and presumably other personnel to not treat transgender patients. According to the “Guardian” here is how the unhinged executive order reads:

“While medical staff are still required to treat patients regardless of race, color, religion, or sex, new rules at the VA have explicitly removed protections based on political party affiliation, marital status, and national origin, The Guardian reported Monday. Huh? The staff is required to treat me, but they are not going to if I am trans or a democrat?

To be clear, in my long time VA medical care history, I have yet to be discriminated against in any way because I am transgender. I would hate to see that change just because the incompetent head bigot wants it to.

What I will never understand is what a total crazy man is doing in my life trying to ruin it. He has no business doing it. I guess what frustrates me the most are the transgender women I know who voted for him. Saying he would not be that bad. Well, he is, and I hope you are satisfied.

Maybe he needs his diaper changed more often since his birthday military parade was such a failure. And he decided to take it out on veterans everywhere who had faithfully served their country. Which is more than he ever did.

I better end this post now before I get into more trouble than I ever thought possible.

 

The Clash of Gender Ego's

 

Image from Sherest Gupta
on UnSplash. 

Through most of my long life, I needed to deal with the clash of egos, doing battle for my existence.

On one side, I had my well-worn and battle tested male ego who was doing his best to make it in a world where he did not want to be. On the other, I had my deeply hidden feminine side who only made her appearance in front of the mirror and then went back into hiding. In other words, my male ego attempted to dominate while at the same time, my female ego was hiding, just exactly where she did not want to be.

For the longest time, to make matters worse, I did not think women had much of an ego at all. Except maybe with their appearance. As I made my way through life, I discovered how wrong I was. On several levels, As I always warn about, my male ego dictated how I dressed early in my life when I was going out in public. I fell in love with several compliments I received about my legs when I went to Halloween parties and made sure I showed them off to the extreme when I was going out for the first time. The idea was all well and good except I was doing nothing to overcome my broad shoulders and torso. I had no fashion balance, and it showed with the number of times I was made fun of in public. My male ego had failed me. I was dressing to his tastes and was failing.

It took years to do, but my female ego finally took control and slowly but surely, I began to blend in with the other women around me. For a moment, I even thought my clash of egos was over, but I was completely wrong. My male ego was very stubborn and still thought he had some sort of control over my life. He refused to believe he had lost all his male privileges and nearly got us in trouble several times before he learned the hard way what problems could exist.

One of the biggest issues was the idea of my sexuality and how it would or would not change with my new transgender life. Of course, Mr. Macho recoiled at any thought of intimacy with a man, but Ms. Self wasn’t so sure. Like many women, she had a spectrum of ideas about sex which were not so rigid and paranoid. In fact, I made a concerted effort to date a few men to see what (if any) excitement would happen. It just so happened women turned out to be much more interested in me as a trans woman, my choice was easy to make. For once, my male ego won. For the wrong reason.

One of the earliest instances I can remember of a lesbian woman approaching me happened one night at a mixer/party I went to at a friend’s house in Columbus, Ohio. At the mixer, I ended up approaching another woman and having a brief conversation before we decided to leave for a while and go to a big lesbian club to mingle even farther. We ended up having a good time that night, but since I still had a wife to go home to, I could not stay long enough but visiting with another ciswoman who happened to be a lesbian was a wonderful experience and would set the path for my future. Although, I did not know it at the time, primarily because my male and female egos were still clashing.

By now, you may be asking the question, who was winning the struggle? My woman was, even though my male self would win every now and then, it was as if he would take one step forward and two steps back. On the occasions when my second wife would catch me coming back from a night on the town, he would jump forward into purge mode. Vowing to never wear any female clothes ever again. All the time knowing there was no way possible he could ever keep his promise. I had crossed too many lines in my gender sand to go back, and the fact was becoming increasingly evident to him and my wife, there was nothing they could do. They were waiting for me to face my own reality.

Solving my final gender issue was easier said than done. My male self was hanging on for dear life until the very end, and he nearly pulled all of us down in the process until therapy and suicide came into play. Finally, I needed to pick a winner in my gender ego clash, and I was wise and picked the only way I could go. I put my old male self completely aside and begin to live a transfeminine life I had only dreamed of. I wondered why I did not pick the winning side years ago and live my truth.

 

 

The Inner Girl I Never Knew

 

JJ Hart, Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio. 

As I was growing up, the girl I saw in the mirror did not seem to be quite real. Mainly because I was still caught in the male world I was born into. It seemed the more I struggled with my reflection, the more depressed I became. It did not seem fair I could not enjoy all the perceived benefits I observed from the girls around me. I say perceived, because it was not until I was able to go behind the gender curtain to see life was not always easier for the women around me.

Life moved on and I discovered always being the pursued by the opposite gender (males) was not often good. The problem was being pursued by the correct male. Not a scary, creepy or toxic one. Another problem I had learning from the females around me was I was so very shy and afraid to talk to any girls at all. So, I watched the dating scene from afar and wondered why I couldn’t be a part of it.

The main problem I had other than being shy was the gender dysphoria I was always suffering from. I was riding a dual edged sword. On one edge, I was struggling to meet the demands of my parents as their oldest son, and on the other hand, was the fact that some days when I woke up, I did not know what gender I wanted to be that day.  Problems I would not have wished upon my worst enemy. Finally, I did the only thing I knew how to do to survive, I went exploring. Or I should say, as I was growing up, I saw the girl looking back and then my transgender side went exploring.

My male self-stayed home as my feminine side attended transvestite – cross dresser mixers searching for answers to my true self. Ironically, the mixers just added more questions than answers. I discovered more layers in the cross-dresser community than I imagined existed. There was everything from male admirers at the party, all the way to impossibly feminine transsexuals I never knew existed. The biggest surprise was that my inner girl was again having a hard time fitting in.

One of the problems was, the transgender term or the knowledge around it had not been widely known at the time. When I finally heard of it, I thought it really described me, and I began to research it more. The tipping point came as I began to explore the public more and more. As I began to experience a new life I only dreamed of, the more natural I felt, and my missing girl was finally freeing herself from the confining world of my closet’s mirror. At that point, my pressure of transgender womanhood began to increase. It was less and less a fun game and became a very serious journey. The real reason why was the trip to my dream was becoming possible and was I going to risk everything my male self-had worked so hard to achieve.  

Nothing turned out to be easy as it seemed as I entered the world as a transgender woman. My focus needed to be dealing with other women on a one-on-one everyday basis. Over a relatively short space of time, I grew into the woman I needed to become to survive. Or my inner girl was growing up into a woman and I needed the gatekeepers to allow me to play in the alpha girls’ sandbox. Very soon, I reached the point of no return, and I had lost most of my past anyhow, so I had nothing to lose. My second wife had passed away along with many of my close male friends, so there was no better time to put my old male self completely in my past.

For the longest time, I never understood what my inner girl was observing and learning from. I found out when she finally had the chance to emerge into the world, she knew what to do. I thought in a small amount of time, she made a major gender adjustment and began to enjoy the dream I had attained. By I, I mean my male self was needed to propel the changes I went through. He provided many of the materialistic necessities I needed such as fashion, hair and makeup to get by. At the least, the entire process was very complex when I put my life into a gender mixer and hoped for the best.

There were plenty of times when I had the opportunity to purge my feminine belongings and return to a male life I never really wanted. When I kept coming back, I finally learned my inner girl was screaming at me to do the right thing. The right thing was to live out the remainder of my life as a transgender woman. Destiny led me to success.

Memorial Day

 

Carla Lewis, Trans Vet. 

Most of you know I am a transgender veteran and proud of it.

I served many wars ago during the Vietnam War (I refuse to call it a conflict) for three years. Plus, it is sad I needed to say many wars ago instead of years since my country has always been at war during my life. 

During Memorial Day every year, I feel the need to remind everyone of the real meaning of the weekend. It is so much more than the unofficial beginning of summer, along with a chance to bring out the grille and treat the family to hot dogs and hamburgers. What the long weekend means is a chance to pause and remember those servicemen and servicewomen who paid the ultimate prize for freedom in our country.

Sadly, now, many of those hard-earned freedoms are being taken away. Especially for transgender Americans in states such as Ohio. Where I live. Specifically, the Republican party has made it nearly impossible for me as a transgender woman to even legally use a public restroom of my choice.

Regardless, we have cemeteries’ full of service men and women who paid the ultimate price with their life when they left their families and homes to serve in the military. I was fortunate in that I did not have to face any combat in Vietnam when I served but I felt the impact when I learned a battle-damaged F-4 fighter jet had veered off the runway and struck the predecessor of the radio/television station I worked at. The damage killed all thirteen workers at the station. Just before I got there.

Meanwhile on the home front, I had one friend who did not survive his time in Vietnam and two others who lived but were deeply scarred for the rest of their lives.

I often wonder now how many of the military members who lost their lives were trying to run away from their gender issues? Since supposedly, the military has had a larger amount of enlistee’s thinking the military would help “make them a man”. Instead of making them dead.

All I ask is, on this Memorial Day, take a second to pause and remember all of those who gave their all for our freedoms. May they not have died in vain.

 

Survive or Thrive as a Transgender Person

 

Image from The Blow Up on UnSplash.

It is easy to say, there is a major difference between just surviving and thriving as a transgender woman or transgender man. 

During my very long gender journey, I spent most of the time just surviving. Mainly when I existed by admiring my femininized version in the mirror. I did not understand at the time the difference in wanting to look like a girl, I wanted to be a girl. The entire process caused me huge amounts of duress and ruined my fragile mental health. Primarily because I had no one to explain to me how there were many others who were suffering in their own closets. In those days, there was no internet to provide any information whatsoever. No one to connect with at all. On some days, the loneliness was unbearable.

Still, I survived and continued to follow my own path. I was able to do what worked for me and gradually was able to join the public flow as my own extreme novice version of being a woman. As with any other newcomer, I paid my dues as ugly as they were. Along the way I kept thinking about what I was doing. Why would I ever consider trying anything as crazy as actually following through on my feminine desires to live a transgender dream.

Following a certain tipping point I went through, my desire to do more than just survive as a transgender woman became too much to handle. I was becoming increasingly more mentally unstable and self-destructive to the point of attempting suicide when I could take my life any longer. Fortunately, I was not successful and then set out to do more than survive.

I knew enough to know what I needed to do. Make a deeper dive into myself and explore my own femininity. I also knew I had to leave the mirror behind and substitute it for the world. To do it, I had to set my fears aside and look the other women I inevitably faced as the primary gate keepers in their world. A primarily had to learn the basics of passive aggressive behavior. Was another woman really letting me into her world or just acting as if she was. I learned the hard way to have eyes on the world from behind my back.

By succeeding in the world in my transgender womanhood, I was essentially carving out my own niche. Primarily because most of the world had never seen a transgender woman at all. When I immediately established, I was not a scary person at all up to no good, normally I received a good reception from other women, not men. With women at least, the gate was open for me to walk through. With men, my interactions were few and far between as their frail sexuality was threatened. I adjusted to my new world very easily and thrived more than I ever thought I would.

Suddenly, nearly all my spare time was living as my feminine self and when I was not, I was thinking about her. Or why was I wasting my precious time as a man when I was thriving in my new world as a woman. Each evening, I was out I had the opportunity to discover more and more the nuances I would need to thrive in the world as a transgender woman. Still, some nights I was still struggling to take everything in as my senses were barraged from many different angles. Specifically, when I started gender affirming hormones. From that point forward, I was able to attempt to sync up my internal with my external self. As I thrived, my mental health improved as I was finally able to live as my true gender self.

With age, I learned life is, but a big circle and I was able to find my way into thriving more than surviving. Many days, it was a struggle but finally finding my way was certainly worth it in the long term. Since I spent such a long time just surviving, I felt so much better in my new life.

 As the image says, success only comes from failure.