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| Image from Bruce Mars on UnSplash. |
Nothing last forever in a transgender woman’s world, or does it?
Many of my life’s earliest recollections begin with the vivid
dreams I had of being the pretty girl of my thoughts, only to be shattered back
to reality when I woke up into my same old male world. Sadly, I remember
thinking at the time how bad it was that dreams could not last forever. Why was
I stuck with the impossible dream.
At the time, I thought too, it was a possibility that I was
going through some sort of a phase that I would grow out of. As many of us
know, we did not grow out of any sort of cross-dressing phase, I grew into a
more transfeminine one. It turns out that thinking me wanting to be a girl was
just a phase was as wrong as thinking I was truly crazy because of my gender
issues. I did not really think I was crazy for just wanting to be who I was,
but it remained a thought in the back of my head which back in those days was
reinforced by the mental health community.
As life moved quickly forward as it always does, in my thirties
and early forties, I began to really entrench myself in the physical world of
newly found cross-dressers and transgender women around me. For the first time
in my life, I discovered I did have role models in the community I could learn
from. In their lives, they were approaching the world as if they were never
going back to their male selves, so why couldn’t I. My impossible dream may not
be so impossible after all as I improved my feminine presentation to the point
to where I could blend in with the majority of ciswomen I encountered when I
started leaving the mirror at home and heading into the world.
From there, I began to set up small bucket lists for myself.
Once I completed one task as a novice transgender woman, I immediately set up
another. Basically, I set my tasks up on what my observations of women were
anyhow and how much I wanted to try them in my new world I was experimenting in.
An example was when I began to go to the big bookstores as me to see if I
caused any negative attention. When I didn’t, I began to visit their in-house
coffee shop and even began to use the restroom of my choice. The women’s of
course. I would have looked very silly using the men’s room the way I was dressed.
Another problem I had was focusing on my dream. Just
exploring the world without a plan was not getting me anywhere. In order to progress
towards my goal, I purposely chose a few of the most trying experiences a
ciswoman could have. Like going to an auto parts store to see how I was treated.
The scariest experience I ever had was going to a pick it yourself junk yard
with my wife Liz to pick up a side mirror for an old car we had. It was a very
hot and humid Ohio day, and I was worried about melting in front of the guys at
the junk yard, but no one gave me a second look, and we were off with our mirror
before I knew it. But to this day, I am still shy of going into male dominated
spaces because I know of how women can be taken advantage of from my old days
as a male.
By the time all of this was happening, I was having a
sneaking suspicion that my desire to live full-time as a transfeminine person was
never just going to go away. In fact, it was just going to become more intense.
As my third wife Liz became more serious, she wanted to travel
to a few places she had never been to and some that she had. The easiest way to
do it was to sign up for tours with a local Cincinnati based tour bus company. Over
the years, we traveled from Boston and Maine and New Orleans to Mardi Gras
and Florida in the south. The challenge for me was always using the restroom
with a bus who majority of passengers were women. I had some adventures along
the way such as one elderly woman commenting that I was using “their” restroom,
all the way to being afraid of confronting two agitated women in an Alabama
restroom and being afraid of being arrested by a “good ol boy” southern sheriff
for just wanting to pee. To add insult to potential restroom drama, matters
just got worse when I became non-mobile to where I needed to use a handicapped
stall where there was one available. But through it all, I learned to be resilient,
and the world was not such a bad place after all.
It was about this time that my gender life flipped, and I
knew my male life was not going to last forever but my female one would last as
long as I did. It was during this period I survived two trips to the hospital.
One for Covid and one for pneumonia which were the most gender numbing
experiences of my life. When the nurses asked questions about my gender status
since I was still biologically a male and I had to put up with all the nudity which
went along with my visits. From it all I learned that being nice to the staff
was the best way to go and they would be nice to me.
I am sure that kid in the mirror would have never thought
his life would have taken so many twists and turns if he chose the gender path
that he did. Would he have done it? Sure, but would he ultimately have a
choice, no. Being transgender was simply something that was built into him from
the beginning and he never would have a choice in the matter. As soon as he
could come to that conclusion, the better off he would be when he discovered
nothing lasts forever.
