Change was Coming

 

JJ Hart

As I grew into myself, I learned the truth. Change was coming if I liked it or not.

Change was one of the reasons I loved the fall season so much. As the weather cooled off and football came on, I could go through my feminine wardrobe and see what I could keep and what had to be discarded. Plus, I can’t forget Halloween which of course is the cross dressers’ national holiday in October.

Sadly, as the leaves began to change and fall from the trees, the whole time was bittersweet for me. The worst fall I could remember was when I was on a six-month delay to join the Army and I was working at a small radio station in Bowling Green, Ohio. If you are not familiar with that part of northwest Ohio, it is very flat to the point that any hills are manmade. One night, I was just driving around feeling sorry for myself as I looked ahead to Army basic training and I was so sad as the leaves blew in front of me. If I could have cried, I would have, but tears were nearly impossible for me in my male pre-HRT days. Similar to everything else in those days, I internalized my feelings and tried to move on as deep down I knew change had to happen.

During that time, I almost outed myself to my roommates in the apartment I was staying in until I left for basic. On one trip home, I brought back one of my favorite outfits along with a wig and makeup to Bowling Green. One day when I left, I assumed I had hidden my belongings well enough to not be discovered but I was wrong, and one night when I was preparing to surprise a male visitor to the apartment, after I went to work of shaving my legs and face, I checked for my clothes, and they were gone. I certainly thought, for a while change was coming then it was not. No one said a word to me and very soon, I was off to play soldier anyway so nothing else mattered.

Back in those Vietnam War days, basic training was an intense team building experience when a few drill sergeants needed to try to get a bunch of raw recruits ready for possible combat. During this time, the only way I could keep my girl self-alive was to bury her deeply in my subconscious mind, So, when we were on long forced marches around Ft. Knox, I made sure I thought about the well-being of my girl and the changes we would go through after my military service was finished.

Looking back at the three years I served; the time now seems like a blur and when I was discharged, I came really close to making a big change then by picking my future wife up at the airport cross dressed as my transfeminine self. I even went as far as hinting as such when I wrote her a letter. (Remember those?) Again, my male self-won out and I decided not to, and my big change had to go back to coming again. I did not have the courage yet to face my gender truth and took the easy way out and went back to accepting all the male privileges I had earned.

It was not until I became a parent and had reached my thirties did change to me become a real priority. I will always remember my thirtieth birthday being my hardest because I still hadn’t decided what I was going to do with my life. Sure, I had employment and financial issues to be aware of but again the underlying big elephant in the room was what changes would have to happen with my gender. I knew it was never going to be easy to present well as a woman, and I needed to work extra hard to earn whatever passing grades I could achieve in the public’s eye. Once I made the mental changes to proceed, much of my work became cosmetic in nature.

I was able to move the elephant aside and set about learning what it would take me to really live life as a transgender woman and not just be the “Pretty, pretty princess” my second wife called me. As change set in, I learned very few trans women or women at all live the life of a princess and I had a lot of work to do to put my male life behind me.

The last major change I put myself through was the hormonal one when I started gender affirming hormones. The HRT allowed me to sync up my external and internal selves and live a more productive life as a transfeminine person.

Planting the Gender Seeds

 

Image from Sebastian
Demitro on UnSplash.  

After my initial experiments with my mom’s clothes, I blamed the cross dressing and started to plant my gender seeds, as I wanted to be feminine all the time. Sadly, for me, it took me decades to realize the seeds were already planted and were growing. All along, I had an idea that was the case, but I was afraid to do anything about it. Mainly, because I had no one to turn to for understanding. The times were very dark in the 1950’s when I was growing up for any understanding of gender issues at all. As I always mention too, I grew up as the oldest son in a male dominated family, so my goals were set for me as a boy.

It wasn’t until much later in life that I had served my time in the military that I was able to water my gender seeds and watch them grow. My first realization I could come out of my gender closet came in the final months of my time in Germany in the Army when I went to a Halloween party thrown by the nearby hospital staff dressed completely as a woman with shaved legs and all. The biggest moment came weeks later when I admitted to my closest friends, my costume was not a costume at all. I loved to dress as a woman and was a transvestite as we were called back then. In the 1970’s.

The best part was, my friends could care less and more importantly, the higher up’s in the Army never found out and I was honorably discharged after my three years were up on time with no problems. Coming out to my friends really set me up for success in growing more and diverse gender seeds…until my mom came along and tried to kill them. I was emboldened by my recent success in coming out and one night I decided to tell her. She responded the expected way with shock and the added offer of paying for a trip to a psychiatrist. From there, the discussion rapidly ended, never to be brought up again for the rest of her life. I knew deep down I was not crazy and did not need a mental health professional to tell me I was.

With that knowledge, my gender seeds continued to develop, even though they were in the darkness of my closet for the most part. Until I could stand it no longer, the only times I ventured out in public as a novice transgender woman was the occasional Halloween party and business trip I went on. Somehow, I was able to smuggle my feminine wardrobe, wig, and makeup past my wife and enjoy a night out on the town when I arrived there. For the most part, the experiences I went through helped me to nourish my transgender seeds and come away with a better understanding of where I fit into the world as a transfeminine person.

Even though I was becoming more successful in chasing my dream to ever live as a trans woman, I kept finding I had a long way to go. In order to see my seeds finally bloom, I needed to have the cisgender alpha females I encountered to accept me. They closely examined me and let me in to play in the girl’s sandbox. To get there, I needed to tend to my seeds which were still blooming. The mistakes I made all centered around when I was overconfident about where I was headed and I got burnt. Fortunately, I was able to reach down and pick one of my flowers and offer it as a peace offering. The flower was enough to move my life along.

My garden proved to me to be worth all the effort I put into it. All the tears I suffered early on when I went out into the world as a transfeminine person were used to water my seeds and watch them grow. Plus, all the time and effort I put into learning the makeup arts after looking like a clown in drag came back to help me. I took the time also to plant diverse seeds which helped me when I encountered difficult situations. Which I never knew where and when they were coming from.

It turned out that I never had much of a green thumb in my male life, but a flourishing trans thumb when it counted the most. It was quite the discovery for me when I discovered how layered and complex the women’s world I was in. I also benefited from the careful job I did of planting and protecting my young seeds. On occasion, I regret the time it took them to grow, but in many ways, I was the prisoner of when I grew up in the dark days in the pre-internet era. But taking the extra time to become strong and thrive in my new life was worth it. As I said, the seeds were there all along, all I needed to do was nourish them. 

 

 

Come Out Swinging

 

Image from Chase Li
on UnSplash.

Often, I write about running home to dress in my skirts and put makeup on to hide the failures I was feeling as a male.

My plan worked well until I discovered I was advancing so far and so quickly as a novice cross dresser or young transgender girl, I was unknowingly destroying my hiding place. Someone turned the light on in my closet and suddenly I had nowhere to go. I needed to come up with a plan to come out swinging or I was doomed. In addition, I still had to be very careful not to be caught and end up in a psychiatrist’s office declaring me mentally ill. Then I would really have nowhere to hide.

The better I became at the art of makeup and dressing myself, the more I needed to consider what I was doing and wondering if I should come out swinging at all. The problem continued to be, I was building more male privileges in the life I was living. My life was like shadow boxing myself as I sought out answers. Like most of you, I was risking a lot as I came closer to pushing all my life’s chips to the center of table and betting it all on the fact I was a transgender woman all along.

Then I went into my highly recommended experimentation years of my life. In order to have any sort of an idea if I wanted to live as a transgender woman, I needed to walk a mile in my new high heeled shoes. Those were the scary yet exciting nights when I escaped the gay venues I was going to and began to attempt to establish myself as a regular in lesbian and other straight venues I was used to going to as a man. When I did, I discovered I needed to make another transition from serious cross dresser to transgender woman exploring the world. To my amazement I was successful when I went to venues such as TGI Fridays and socialized with other professional women. Maybe I did not have to swing so hard after all to escape the dark confines of my gender closet.

To be sure, I still had setbacks when I came out into such a different world, but I had enough gender euphoria to realize I could live out my dream if I worked hard enough at it. At first, I suffered from the “what I thought a feminine life would be” syndrome. I was trying to put all those years of closely watching how women lived into actual practice without paying my dues in the world. While I resented the fact, no one would let me see behind the cisgender woman gender curtain, I was becoming a victim which did me no good in the short or long term. So what if I did not understand what I was doing wrong, I just had to figure it out and do better.

One of my major problems was solved when I finally came to the conclusion I was never going to be accepted as a cisgender woman, but I could find my own version of womanhood on my own path. That is when I started to wear only one wig, settled on one name and began to build a new serious life as a transfeminine person in the world. As I settled into a new life, I found that many people (especially women) appreciated my honesty in a world of fake people. I was surprised at all the female attention I received and was relieved I did not have to attempt to change my sexuality.

The more I changed, it seemed the more I stayed the same as my long hidden feminine soul took control finally. I was dealing with life on a one-to-one basis for a change without having to swing away all the time just to survive. As HRT hormones entered my life, it was just another example to me of what took me so long. My body took to the gender affirming hormones flawlessly and I was off to yet another transfeminine adventure. My age and hormonal status led me down a new road of dealing with confrontations, no more could I try to macho my way through trouble, I needed to take the feminine path and try not to get into a situation I could not get out of before it happened. Or no more swinging away for me. I needed to use my brain for a change.

As I have pointed out in previous posts, I was never a good athlete and could never hit a curveball when I tried to play baseball. I finally took it all to heart and quit trying to hit a curveball altogether and settled into watching the boys play baseball (and girls too) when I did not have to play. I was tired of banging my head against a hard gender wall and ended up where I always should have been as a transgender woman. I just wish I had not been so stubborn when I was doing it and had shed my male self-long before I did.

 

Closing the Circle

 

JJ Hart at Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio.

Very quickly when I opened my gender closet door and looked out, I noticed a whole different world I would have to conquer if I was to survive.

To begin with, I was slightly overconfident with my ideas because I had spent so much time studying the girls around me. I was jealous of their pretty clothes and how the boys chased them. I so badly wanted to run in their circle but as we all know, that was not going to be possible for years to come. To begin with, there were so many smaller circles to negotiate before I could advance. So many, I could barely keep track of them all. I had a LONG way to go.

To put it all into perspective, if you remember the Hula Hoop craze, with the round hoop you put on your hips, arms or even neck and spun it around. I was so uncoordinated, I had a difficult time playing with one as I grew up. If I could not even spin a simple hoop around my hips, how was I ever going to accomplish anything vastly different such as changing my gender identity. For the most part, I was naïve and did not understand all the complexities I was facing. While I was obsessed for years looking like a woman, I should have been obsessed with knowing what a woman was really all about. I remained too new to the gender game to be allowed to enter woman only spaces, or what I refer to as the girl’s sandbox.

Then in the middle years of my life when I began to explore the world more and more as a transgender woman, it seemed I had too many hoops or circles in the air. So many, in fact I kept making wrong choices such as the wigs I wore and how I misconstrued how I needed to look to blend in with the public. Instead of dealing from transfeminine strength, I was dealing with my old male ego hanging on and causing problems. I was stuck in my so-called teen cross-dressing years until I rapidly outgrew them in my thirties. Better choices of fashion and makeup helped me to overcome my testosterone body flaws and blend in with the other women who may have had traces of my problems with their body too. Even with all my newfound success, I was still having a difficult time closing my circles. My major problem was I did not completely realize how difficult it would be to stop a life and start over from a completely different point.

As I chased my Mini skirted tail, I had plenty of time to consider what I was doing with my life. In fact, too much as every spare moment I had, I was daydreaming of the next time I would spend as a transgender woman and what I would wear. I am surprised now I had kept my mind on my job enough to be promoted to an upper management position. I would love to have a portion of the time back I wasted. Perhaps, the sky would have been the limit for my male life, but it was not to be because I could not stop until my gender circle was closed.

It finally took a close circle of cisgender women around me to help me through my crisis. My current wife Liz in particular who told me she had never seen any masculine in me at all when I was still living part time as a man. It was the final shove I needed to reach out and close my transgender circle for good.

I don’t think I gained any physical coordination from transitioning, but I am sure I gained mental help when I long neglected woman side took over. I found part of feminine privilege came when I was allowed to participate in a softer side of life which did not revolve pushing and blustering my way through. My new circle involved more mental gymnastics with other women to see where they were coming from, as well as dealing with a passive aggressive side of life.

Not going in circles anymore was a wonderful experience. All my trial-and-error times in the world as a novice transgender woman came back to help me when I made the final transition to where I always wanted to be. No more spinning hoops to deal with which were destroying my mental health. To be sure, all of my bi-polar depression issues did not go away but the overlaying gender issues did. It sounds easy for me now, but all I needed to do all along was listen to my true self and close my gender circle.

 

 

Is Purging Just a part of a Trans Journey we Need to Go Through?

 

Image from Shayan Rostami
on UnSplash. 

I received several wonderful comments to my “Purging” post yesterday including people such as Jeanie who has had gender issues for years such as me.

Here is the comment and we will go from there: “I just purged last Thursday. I wanted to see if there was a strong enough "desire to reacquire". I'd go months with the stash behind insulation in the basement under a bay window without dressing. It might be I was too chickenshit”.

Thanks for the comment! And it got me to thinking about all the ways we cross dressers or novice transgender women went to hide our small collection of feminine wardrobe and makeup from our family. As a kid, I even went as far as hiding my stash in plastic garbage bags in a hollowed-out tree in a neighboring woods. Where I hoped no one would ever discover it. In addition, I had two other small hiding places in the house I could go to if I was suddenly free to cross-dress in front of the mirror. The entire process added to hiding my gender issues in plain sight. Almost, as all along, I was desperately trying to escape being caught and being sent on an unpleasant trip to a psychiatrist who would have most assuredly pronounced me mentally ill. Which was the norm for mental health professionals back in those days.

Since I never completely purged my feminine stash ever, maybe I was too chickenshit to do it (as Jeanie said). Or, as I struggled throughout my life with gender issues, my own “desire to reacquire” would return to rule my life. As it turned out, I was never strong enough to purge totally. Which looking back should have given me a clue to who I really was, a woman cross dressing as a man. Deep down, I knew, every feminine item I had worked so hard to acquire could not so easily be thrown in the trash. It would ultimately come down to me wondering how much different I would look in the mirror if I had not thrown out my previous stash.

At first, it all got worse before it got better when I entered my strong going out in the world as a novice transgender woman with my second wife. Fortunately, when I was restoring the old house, we lived in, I was able to build in a closet we rarely used. So, I found a place to hide the many thrifts store finds I had made and purchased. Also, by this time I was in a place where I did not care what my gender foes thought. I was building my future public persona, so I needed to look my best. Essentially, I entered the “don’t ask, don’t tell” phase of our relationship when my wife never said a word about my increasingly large wardrobe. She knew, I knew I was never going to purge again. Which turned out to be not true.

Just before she passed away, I decided to throw away “most” of my wardrobe and makeup and even went to the extent of growing a beard. Which I considered the ultimate purge. Even as I did it, something told me to keep my favorite outfit, wig and shoes because I never could be sure when I would need my old friends again. Tragically, six months later I did when my wife passed away and I turned inwardly to my feminine soul for comfort. When I did, I was able to shave my beard and hit the ground running towards a new life. Or, should I say, heels on the ground.

One way or another, I was happy I was not strong enough to totally attempt to purge away my feminine life. It was time to open a new chapter, even if I was sixty, as a transfeminine person. It seems many of us, with gender issues are doomed to a life of denial. We try to sooth our transgender or cross dresser sides by trips to our mirrors until we are caught, or in a relationship which even makes it worse. We begin to feel guilty about many things such as forsaking our ingrained male habits, all the way to feeling selfish for wanting to do something as radical as changing our genders for ourselves.

A lifetime of purging falls right in line with all the other pitfalls we encounter on our gender journeys. We must be strong enough men to make it to transgender womanhood and purging is just another experience we have to go through.

As always, thanks for reading along with my writings and experiences! Your comments mean a lot to me also. They help me to know if I am headed in the right direction. Please keep them coming!

 

 

Purging

 

JJ Hart from back in Ed's and Michelle's
time.

For many transgender or cross dresser women, rarely have we lived a life when we never wanted to go back to our male selves. A common term for the practice is called “purging.”

Like many of you, I have experienced my share of trying to purge away my gender issues. About the time I thought I was entering a high-profile stage of my feminine life, I began to feel guilty and wanted to throw it all away. Then, I learned there were different stages of purging. For example, when I was purging, I never could seem to throw out or give away all my hard earned, cherished feminine wardrobe and makeup away. Deep down I always left the door open to my closet for a return to cross dressing as I called it back in those days.

Then there was Ed, an acquaintance I had who really defined purging to me. Ed was a frustrated cross dresser who at the least was having problems with his family and at the same time dealing with several very serious health problems. Before he reached a crisis point with his health problems, he decided to give away all his cross-dressing items. With Ed, that meant a lot. He needed to empty out an entire storage unit he rented to hide his wigs, wardrobe and makeup from his family. I turned out to be on the receiving end of his gifts. He gave me a nice set of silicone breast forms he purchased as well as a plastic tackle box full of expensive makeup.

What ever happened to him I will never know, the last I heard from him was decades ago when he was increasingly becoming more and more negative concerning a transgender friend of ours. Michelle was very beautiful and was headed towards gender realignment surgery, and I think Ed had developed deeper feelings for her than just friendship. He never confided in me if that was the case which leaves me to yet another unclosed mystery in my life. Along with what my deceased wife would have thought of me if she ever knew me as a more complete transgender woman.

Even as I continued to progress along my transgender path, I found myself to be a contradiction of terms. I did not know for the longest time how I fit in on the gender spectrum. I had an idea I was more than a casual cross dresser such as Ed was but was I as serious about becoming a fulltime woman as Michelle was. Being in the middle as always tortured my frail mental health as I did not know which way I wanted my life to go.

Initially, I decided I could take the pressure no longer and purged my feminine fashion and makeup…almost. I compromised and did not throw out my favorite wig, sweater and Ed’s silicone breast forms. So, I had left the door wide open to return to a life I had always thought deep down, I could never leave behind. Slowly but surely, I rebuilt my wardrobe, added another wig and purchased new makeup to fill Ed’s tackle box I still owned.

That was the last time I tried to purge my physical belongings, helping to calm my transfeminine longings down. Following the many times in life I attempted to purge my life away from my deep-seated gender desires, I finally learned that I could not easily throw my real life in the trash. I also lost track of Ed and Michelle long ago and the last I heard from Michelle was she had gone ahead with her gender surgeries and was living with a lesbian in nearby Columbus, Ohio.

I just wish I had the foresight to understand how close purging was to my overall wellbeing than the obvious. All along, I thought I was trying to rid my feminine self of her external possessions when in reality, I was proving the futility of trying to deny the person I was always destined to be.

In a full circle moment, I was able to grow my own breasts thanks to gender affirming hormones or HRT and donate my silicone breast forms Ed gave me to a swap out at a transgender-cross dresser support group meeting I attended. As I mentioned, he had very serious health issues, and I doubt if he is still alive today. In a moment of clarity, I remembered his full name and searched for it on Facebook to no avail.

One way or another, I view purging yet another unique sideline of following a gender path. As far as I was concerned, I not so slyly resisted completely throwing away all of my wardrobe, shoes, wigs and makeup I acquired. I never knew when I would go back, I just knew I could.

Can You Ever Enjoy the Ride?

 

Image from A. C. on UnSplash.

Lately, it has occurred to me how often I did not pause to enjoy my gender journey.

Perhaps it was because for the longest time I experienced very little gender euphoria for two reasons. The main reason was, I was never raised to feel any joy in my life. Nothing was ever good enough. So, when I entered the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, life was very tough. The other main reason was, I was approaching my life from the exact wrong way. Deep down I knew when my “buzz” went away so soon from merely dressing up in feminine clothes in front of the mirror, I was doing something wrong. I did not know then my gender issues ran much deeper than just a love of fashion and makeup.

Before I knew it, I was in a vicious gender circle in my life when I needed to dress up rather than wanted to. There was a huge difference. When I needed to cross-dress, I had the tendency to take more chances and jeopardize my life as I knew it because I knew there was no way my parents would ever understand how their son was really their daughter. Plus, there were many other distractions too, such as not being able to afford my own wig until I was well into my college years. I hated running around with a towel on my head fantasizing that I had a full head of luxurious girls’ hair.

There was always something I was reaching for which ruined my present enjoyment. Such as a better dress, shoes or makeup which could help me look better as I had neared an impossible ideal of attractiveness. Facing my reality of appearance when the only feedback I had was in the mirror. As we all know, the mirror has a tendency to lie to you if you are not careful, and I needed a way to test my presentation as a transfeminine person in the public’s eye. Easier said than done, when I was busy living my own down low in a male life I was frustrated to be in anyhow.

Very quickly, I learned the mirror had been lying to me as I was rejected by the public. To succeed with my dream, I needed to pause my life and attempt to find out why I was having all the problems I was having. Almost immediately, I determined I needed to get my male self out of the way. He was dictating how my fashion presented itself and it was all wrong. For any number of reasons trying to dress sexy in the wrong places was getting me into trouble. My guy was dressing me for other guys when I should have been dressing for other women. Once I figured out, I was not a teen aged girl, my public life became decidedly better.

So much better, I was even able to enjoy several of the solo nights out I went on to be by myself. Even though I knew I was a transgender woman, I was just being me, and the public (amazingly enough) was accepting it also. My mirror even came back into play, and I used it more often in places such as women’s rooms to adjust my hair and makeup.

Life then began to roll on very fast. All the way to the point I was having a difficult time keeping up. I was learning so much about the feminine side of life, it was too late to turn back then and more and more, I was discovering how much I loved this new side of life I had always dreamed of.

Also, my life was reaching a new level of complexity as I was shutting down the male side and giving full access to my female side who had waited so long to be free. My problem was I was still trying to live part time in both genders as I transitioned, and I was afraid of what would happen when I lost all my male privileges. Finally, my mental health could take it no longer and I had to jump off the gender cliff I have written about.

As I jumped, the ride down was scary but fun in its own way, not unlike a big rollercoaster at an amusement park, the ride up in many ways was worth the ride down. All the fear and terror I had experienced when I had come out to a close family disappeared when I was accepted by my daughter and my wife Liz and a warm set of relief sat in. I could not wait until I could get back in public and live my true existence out of the closet. I was creating my own universe for a change and not relying on someone else to do it.

I began to build my own female privilege and thrive in it. It continues till this day and is the topic for another day. In the meantime, I often try to pause my life and enjoy where I am in my life.

 

 

A Trans Girl and her Hair

 

JJ Hart and Mega Hair. Most of
it is tied up behind my head.

Certainly, one aspect of life transgender women share with cisgender women is the love of their hair.

Very early in my life and for years following, like so many novice cross dressers, I had no access (financial or otherwise) to buying a wig, nor did my mom wear one. I was stuck wearing a towel around my head and imagining I had beautiful flowing hair.

I needed to wait until my college years before I could afford to buy a wig, which supposedly was for my fiancé who I desperately wanted to not like it. To me, it was long blond, thick and beautiful, and I couldn't wait to try it on. I was still firmly in the closet to her in those days, so I needed to figure out an excuse to wear it.

Finally, I could not take the pressure any longer and came out of my closet to her and asked her to dress me head to toe as a woman with (you guessed it), that beautiful hair to finish off my outfit. As it turned out, that one day of satisfaction of cross dressing would come back to haunt me later. To make a long story short, she held my gender issues against me and threatened to leave me if I did not tell the military draft board, I was gay when they came after me during the Vietnam War. We broke up when I refused her demands and fortunately, I got to keep the wig. Years later, I found I received the better end of the deal.

After I was discharged from the military, I did have the financial resources to purchase more wigs and was able to be successful on occasion when I did not simply try to buy the longest hair in the wig shop, I went to. I normally traveled at least fifty miles to get to a quality venue to purchase a new wig. I was obsessed with my hair; it was the crowning glory of all the work I put into my fashion and makeup. As with many other aspects of learning to blend in with the other women around me, I took the wig obsession too far. I was beginning to be involved with the public far too often to change wigs every day. They were beginning to know me looking a certain way and I needed to stay on course to carve out a niche as the new transfeminine person I wanted to be. My clown wigs, as I called them, went into a storage bin, only to be seen again on Halloween…maybe.

The biggest jump from there came when I started to grow an amazing amount of my own hair when I started gender reaffirming therapy or HRT. The prescribing doctor told me that I would grow a lot of hair, and he was right. He noticed at the age of sixty, I had no signs of male pattern baldness which I carry over to this day.

Another person who noticed my hair was my daughter and for my first birthday following coming out to her, she offered me a trip to her upscale beauty salon for a color and style of my new hair which was all mine! Naturally, I was scared to death to go but the experience opened so many doors for me. The main door was the understanding of why so many women make a priority of going to a hairdresser to look good. As I soaked up the atmosphere at the salon, I thought I could skip my daily dosage of estradiol tablets I was on at the time were not needed because of all the estrogen in the air. Even though I was still frightened, I still loved it as I was the center of attention for my hairdresser and my daughter who was hovering nearby.

From that point onward, wigs were in my past and I needed to concentrate on my own hair. An immediate problem was I couldn't see the back of my head and did not have a wig head to rely on to turn the hair around and see the back. It did not take me long to master the art of holding another mirror up, catching the reflection in the main mirror so I could see the back of my head. Initially, I compared it with seeing the dark side of the moon.

I know my experience with hair turned out to be very lucky in my world of genetics. While I did not have to put up with expensive wigs, going to a hairdresser is certainly not cheap. Plus, for me at least, I think the ability to go without wigs was one of the most important aspects of me presenting well as a woman.

Maybe it was karma making up for all those years I had to have short hair, when I was finally allowed to grow it out. Whatever the case, I share with women everywhere, trans or not, the importance of having good hair. Plus, you can still have great hair with your wigs, if anyone asks if it is your own hair, you can truthfully answer, yes! I bought it.

 

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.

Reality

JJ Hart, middle, with Min and Kathy

 It took me years of denying my true gender identity to finally face the reality of who I was really was.

To do so, I needed to transition more than once to my surprise. I was naive and thought when I just put on a dress and makeup I was done transitioning. When in truth, I was only beginning my gender path. Deep down I knew there was something deeply wrong with how I viewed the world in all ways. Did I view it as male or a female. The only fact I did know was I was completely alone with my gender issues. There was no one else to talk to. 

Reality was a dark closet with no doors I could escape from. My only outlet was admiring my image in the family mirror growing up. I even went to the extent of taking on a rural newspaper route to add to my meager allowance to buy my own makeup and panty hose. By doing so, I could stay out of my mom's makeup and stop risking the possibility of snagging or running her hose. If you remember the panty hose which came in an plastic egg, I was a huge fan. The difference between just dressing in the clothes I found or bought was growing huge. No matter how much I cross dressed and admired myself in the mirror, the reality was, it was just never enough. Whatever I was doing, I could do it better. 

One of my biggest problems or dreams was to have my own glamorous wig. I grew up in the era of crew cuts or shorter hair for boys so there was nothing I could do to style what hair I had into anything resembling a feminine style. I was caught for many years, college in fact, before I could manage to sneak around and buy myself a wig I loved. It was long and blond, and I cherished it. I viewed the wig as one of the final pieces of my cross dressing puzzle. Maybe then, I could actually try to enter the world as who I was actually beginning to perceive as my authentic or true self. Little did I know, I was just spreading the seeds of my gender future.

The reality was, suddenly I was realizing I was following a life's path I wanted to be on. Each time I attempted to jump off of it, by purging all my feminine possessions. When I did, I could barely live with myself and could not wait to return to the protective confines of my transgender womanhood. Even though the path was bumpy and often threatening, the alternative of going back was even worse. The path allowed me to enter an oasis from life for me to judge where I was and where I wanted to go. As I always say, I was careful and took my time because I had so much to lose in my male life. I needed to make sure I was doing the right thing before I entered the world of women fulltime. 

Reality showed me the way; I finally put aside everything I had which screamed male and never looked back. As I said, the path I took was long and dark and I made my share of mistakes when I ran into the walls. The powder keg which was me needed to be de-fused so I could live a free life in a very pleasurable environment. I can't say the wait was worth it since I had no choice. I was stuck in a male world of my own making and did not have the courage to realize I had the power to break out and live my truth...or reality. 

Wishes were not Enough

 

Image from Delphina Iacub on UnSplash.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about the amount of time I spent wishing I was a girl as I went about attempting to live a male life.

As I pointed out yesterday, I finally arrived at a point where every spare second, I was becoming dedicated to my pursuit of becoming a girl. Which included watching the girls around me closely at school. I was desperately jealous of their fashion and lifestyle. 

As I became older, in order to survive in the world, I put less time wishing I was feminine and adding more time into actually doing it. Which meant of course I needed to unlock the door to my gender closet and try to enter the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman. Back in those days, I took a lot of rejection, as I thought I looked like a clown in drag. Stubbornly, I persisted until I could find the right mixture of makeup skill, fashion and wigs. Once I did, my life across a new and exciting gender border became much more satisfying and fun. So much so, I was fooled into thinking my feminized wishes were coming true. 

It was about that time when I hit a gender wall as I found out what my wife was telling me all along, I had a long way to go on my path to transgender womanhood past just looking like a woman. I needed to quit wishing and find out what she was talking about. 

The more I explored the world as a trans woman, the more the world opened to me as gender curtains were pulled back. Of course, I knew cisgender women had their own world to exist in but I did not know how strong and in-depth that world was. For the longest time, my head was spinning as I tried my best to absorb the daily lessons I was learning. Primarily about communication and co-existence with other women on their playing field. Certainly, wishes were not enough when it came to surviving in a woman's world. I found I drew the curiosity of other women who wondered what I was doing in their world, and I had to be better than the average ciswoman just to get by. 

It was about this time; I decided to take a shortcut in my external femininized appearance and research doctors to see if I was healthy enough to begin gender affirming hormones (or HRT). I was, and the hormones almost immediately went about making changes such as softening my skin and producing breasts. All of which helped me to help my presentation skills. Especially, since I did not have any male pattern baldness and quickly was able to grow my own hair out and go wigless. 

I found by this time, wishes did not have to be enough, and I could move up my final transition timeline. Finally, my long-awaited dream could become a reality, and I could put my hated male clothes away forever. Perhaps the best part was, I never wished for him to return.

Forever Dancing

 

Image from Alexa Posteraro
on UnSplash.

During my long gender journey, I often thought there were times when I had finished my trip and made it to my goal of transgender womanhood.

It was during those occasions when life laughed at me and said I better begin dancing once again. As always, I was a terrible dancer and needed to try harder than the average woman to succeed. If I did not, I knew I would never make it.

Earlier in my journey, I thought I was doing enough dancing to get myself by and then hit a solid gender wall when I failed. Any gender euphoria was very brief and fleeting as I went out in public as a novice transgender woman for the first time. On too many occasions, I needed to hurry home in tears after being laughed at (or worse) by the public. Fortunately, I was somehow able to pick myself up and get back to dancing the best I could in my gender game. At whatever cost I needed to do, my first priority was to improve my overall femininized presentation. 

I started by losing weight. In fact, I shed nearly fifty pounds which enabled me to better fit into a wider and more fashionable style of women's clothing than I ever had before. From there, I began to work more diligently on my skin. So, I could wear less makeup. Then I added better wigs to my dance list and finally began to notice a difference in how I was perceived in the world as a transgender woman. By that time, I thought I was ready to dance but I was far from it. All I had really done was carefully craft a feminine image which I needed to put into motion. 

As I continued to enter the world as a transgender woman, many times, the world pushed back at me. I had problems with how I moved and how I communicated with the public before I could ultimately relax and really learn to dance. As I tried and tried to improve myself, most of the push back came from my second wife and my old male self. Both of whom had stakes in my success or failure in my new world. I have written often of the times when my wife rightfully said I made a terrible woman. Mainly because I was still putting my woman together and was making mistakes. At that point, I did not have the lived experiences as a trans woman to do better and anytime she caught me out of our agreement to explore the world, all hell would break lose. Afterall, she understood more than I did how she was losing my male self to another woman. Who happened to be me.

Once I broke through and decided transgender womanhood was the only dance for me, I began to do better. Physically, I never made it to being a better dancer, but mentally I did. Primarily because I needed to survive in the feminine world or sandbox, I chose. By nature, I found cisgender women operate on a whole different level than men. Which I already knew of course but not to the point of survival I found myself in the midst of. To oversimplify, men came at me from at the most two angles, and women from many more. I was ambushed by several passive aggressive women on many occasions before I learned to protect myself from perceived lesser threats. 

To this day, I am still dancing. Primarily because it is what it takes to be a transgender woman in todays' world. Plus, I would be remiss if I did not mention the small group of women friends, I had who were instrumental in helping me with my dancing lessons.   

Can't Go Back

 

Image from UnSplash.

At the ripe old age of seventy-five, there is no way I will back track my long difficult gender journey to transgender womanhood. 

One thing I never thought would happen is I would ever have to consider backtracking at all but here I am. Of course, the main reason I am doing it is because of the orange felon attempting to destroy our country as we know it. In the short span of time, he has been in "power", already he has affected me severely. Or almost has. 

The first time was when the Veterans' Administration came down with a new directive saying there would be no more gender affirming hormones provided by the VA. Since I receive my HRT from VA Health, I was rapidly attempting to discover a Plan "B" to get my hormones. Then the VA amended their hormone directive to not issuing HRT to new veterans only which of course left me out. I felt good for me and bad for any other new veterans suffering with gender issues along with other problems. 

Then, there was a glimmer of hope from the powers to be who were looking for a loophole in the gender directive. The loophole was veterans needing HRT for mental health reasons could still be administered hormones, just not wigs or various items such as breast forms. So, for the time being, the status quo has been maintained. No thanks to the buffoon in Washington.

The second major issue manufactured by the gender bigots in Washington is the "Save Act" which is designed to take voting rights away from women everywhere. Transgender or cisgender. Here is a segment of explanation of what the "Save Act" means: 

"In addition to married women,” Cherry said, “any eligible voter who has changed their names for myriad other reasons (related to marriage or divorce, a gender identity transition, a change based on personal preference, etc.) could face heightened barriers to vote if the SAVE Act were enacted due to their lack of birth certificate that reflects their current legal name.” Cherry is a legal director for "Voteriders" which provides voter ID information.

My problem with the bill is my birth certificate has never been changed here in Ohio to reflect my new legal name, and counties here in Ohio are refusing to do it. Including the one I was born in. So, I could not use my birth certificate to vote. The act still has to pass the US Senate, so we will see what happens. Whatever does happen is I never want to lose my precious right to vote as my authentic self. 

One thing is for sure; I will never backtrack from my life as a transgender woman. As I write about often, I can never relive all the exciting years I spent as a novice in a fulfilling new world. Also, I need to add how much I resent the recent attacks into my world. Like the rest of you, I am just living a quiet life and don't need you to tell me which restroom to use or how to vote. 

Mainly now because I do not ever want, nor will I go back, and I will never disappear. If by chance, the blog goes away because of my comments, you will know why. I hit the big time and was noticed by the wrong people.

Authenticity

Transgender flag flying at 
Cincinnati's City Hall.

 In order to just get by in the world, transgender women, or trans men need to be authentic. Which is always easier said than done. 

First of all, you need the confidence to try out your new self in an exciting yet scary different world. Maybe, a person smarter than me has an idea on how to provide yourself with confidence other just by just doing it. For transgender women, among other things, it means putting aside all the hard-earned male privileges we came to be used to. In order to be truly authentic in our transgender womanhood, everything male had to go. 

It took me years, or even decades to get around to living authentically as a trans woman. Before I was able to, I needed to adjust my thinking to what a woman really was, and what she had to go through during her life. As my second wife kept trying to tell me, there was so much more to womanhood than just looking like one. Finally, I started to realize what she meant, but it was not until I made it out into the world as a novice transgender woman, did I realize what she really meant. For me, it meant the girls nights out I was invited to, along with everyday communication helped me to discover my true feminine self. 

Even still, all those nights I went out to be by myself were not helping me with my authenticity. I learned the difficult way all females were not women because they were never socialized into womanhood. Through it all, I wondered where the whole process would land me. For years, I feared a hard fall in my life if I had fully transitioned into transgender womanhood, but it never happened for me. I think, the more I learned in my new life helped strangers to interact with me easier, one on one. 

Perhaps the biggest discovery in my life came when I learned firsthand how powerful my internal feminine self was. Once she sensed she had control in my life, she effortlessly took over and guided me to a soft landing when I slid off my gender cliff. One of the main things she did was making me how total the femininization process was once it got started. I guess the first thing she changed was how I looked at my life. For example, she made me realize I was never a man cross dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross dressing as a man. All of a sudden, my early life made sense as to why I could never satisfy the deep craving I had to dress as a woman, only to discover a couple days later, I would be depressed if I could not dress again and find the nearest mirror. I needed constant reassurance I was on the proper path to my own form of transgender womanhood.

I guess, authenticity can only be earned the hard way through lots of work and even experimentation.  When you do experiment, and are successful, gender euphoria and confidence set in and you are ready to move forward in your life.   

Transgender Day of Visibility

 

Transgender Day of Visibility
poster from my
hometown. 

Today is the annual transgender day of visibility on March 31st. 

It is a time such as never before to attempt to stand up and be counted as a transgender woman or transgender man. Sadly, it is also the time we trans people take the most risks to do so. Stakes are becoming higher and higher against us coming out in many areas of the country, especially, here in my native Ohio. Where an overwhelmingly republican legislature in the state capital of Columbus has passed bill after negative bill against us. 

To me, my visibility is an ongoing deal. Since I live fulltime in my transgender womanhood, long ago I decided to never run and hide my feminine nature. Back when I did not have so many mobility issues, I was more of an active participant than I am today. In place of being active at all, I have tried to pick up my pace with my writing and protest with my keyboard and votes. 

Plus, I know I am so fortunate to have found and married an accepting/encouraging spouse who helped usher me into my transgender womanhood. I know so many others in the community who are so lonely. 

Wherever you happen to be in your gender transition, these troubled days present a troubled challenge to being visible. Challenges such as your presentation provide sometimes insurmountable hurdles to being more visible. Similar to a "Catch 22" of passing. In other words, you need to be seen in public to learn if you present well enough to stay out of personal danger, but it is scary to even start to get the experience to begin with.  Again, I was lucky when my time to come out meant at the worst you were laughed at and not beat up. Plus, I was able to put years of practice into makeup, fashion, and wigs when I cross dressed in my closet. If the times were reversed, I often wonder what I would have done differently, if anything. All in all, it is just another one of those life's questions I will never know.

On this transgender day of visibility, I hope all of you find your own way to be visible. Anything from marching in a parade, all the way to looking at yourself in the mirror, find a way to celebrate the rare, beautiful self which is you! 

Seasons Change

 

Image from Jamiethlene Reskspe on
UnSplash.

It appears that Spring has quit teasing us here in Southern Ohio and is finally here to stay. Spring teases us every year, so it is no real surprise when it happens. We can go from summer like weather to winter in one week. 

What it means is wardrobe adjustments which account for cooler mornings and warmer afternoons have to be made.  Plus, I always use the unique seasonal changes here to completely go through my clothes to see what will stay and what will go.  From nearly the very beginning of my love of everything feminine, I had admired how girls and women had the opportunity to completely change their fashion with the seasons. Putting aside all the challenges I had with having any resources at all to buy new fashion, I still did my best to meet the seasonal change challenges. 

My biggest challenge this year is coming up in the middle of April when my wife Liz and I have been invited to my daughters in laws house for a lunch get together. I am planning for it already and am planning to wear a two-piece lightweight top I just purchased for our trip to the Florida Keys. I will pair the top with leggings I have and hopefully will be dressed well enough to blend in with the rest of the women who will be there. Sadly, I don't think my transgender grandchild will be there because they (pronoun of choice) will be hiking the Appalachian trail with their partner. I will have to find out from their mom if they still are going to have a job as a civilian nuclear engineer with the US Navy or did the orange felon's threat against transgender women and trans men destroy any hopes of having a job. 

In the meantime, it is opening day in Cincinnati for the pro-baseball Reds, which has a huge parade and is close to a complete local holiday. Since the parade is televised during the afternoon, and I really don't care much for parades, it will give me a chance to get started with my spring wardrobe assessment. I know right now, I am setting fairly well with my collection of light weight tops and T's. Especially when I added a few select T Shirts from my trip to Key West, Florida. I purchased a very colorful T(shirt) from "Harpoon Harry's" where we ate lunch and later made a special stop in Jimmy Buffet's "Margaritaville" shop where I picked up another shirt to add to my collection. My second wife and I were huge fans of Jimmy and when he passed way, another of my bucket list items went with him.

Watching Buffet's famous Cincinnati summer riverside concerts were always a hit with us, but little did my wife know how badly I wanted to be one of the women watching the show. My transition took so long, I sadly never made it. 

Now, I hear the birds chirping and a pile of clothes awaits to be sorted to be worn or donated. It has always been a labor of fashion love for me to go through the seasonal changes which made being a woman much more fun for me than being a boring man. Even though, sometimes I think the fashion experience is shallow in nature, it has always been fun to me. 

Especially, when I can shed the boring dark colors of winter and become a part of the new bright spring flowers and budding of the trees. Everything I wanted to do when I started my path to transgender womanhood. It also time to put all my sweaters away and turn another page towards my future and bright as a new season.

 

The Light in the Mirror

 

Image from Alessandro 
Bianchi 
on UnSplash.

I spend quite a bit of time here attacking my mirror when I was growing up.

Recently, I have come to the conclusion some of my negativity could have been wrong. First of all, I was fortunate to have a beautiful full length mirror dad installed at one of the ends of the hallway in our house when I was growing up. When no one else was home, I would spend as much time as I had admiring myself in the hallway mirror. As I did, I could always see a brief dim light in the mirror when I viewed my feminine self for the first time. Even when I knew, the light would have to be extinguished soon, and I would have to go back to my unwanted male world. 

As I grew up and began to explore the world for the first time as a beginning cross dresser, I made plenty of mistakes the mirror did not tell me about. In fact, the mirror light shone brightly and told me I looked great when in fact, I looked just the opposite. I was presenting as a clown in drag with no one to warn me. For a long time, the light in the mirror nearly went completely out as I was rejected in public time and time again resulting in a deep depression for me.

I kept trying though, and the light began to come back on. I lost weight and began to find styles of women's fashion which flattered my body shape and finally began to present better. Especially when I was making the mental transition to novice transgender womanhood from cross dresser. To do it, I needed every break I could muster. Plus, I needed to turn up my light in the mirror, and let my femininized light shine through, so I could see her better. 

The extra light turned out to be all I needed to become more skilled at my makeup art and do the best I could with my testosterone damaged male face. With a little help from a professional makeup person, my light in the mirror grew even brighter, and more importantly, I could trust it. With trust came confidence which equated to more acceptance as a transgender woman in the public's eye. All of a sudden, my lifelong dream to lead a feminine life was within reach. If my light in the mirror stayed on. 

It did and I was even able to turn up my light to a brighter level with the addition of HRT or gender affirming hormones. Among the many other positive changes I went through was when the overall texture of my skin softened. Which meant the male lines in my face softened and I could use less makeup. Specifically, foundation. I quickly learned with more femininized skin and being able to wear my own hair, I was suddenly more presentable to the world. 

Looking back, I may have been too quick to judge my light in the mirror. It just took a little longer (along with the rest of me) to become more situated with living a new life away from my old male self, and perhaps it was my fault for not switching to a brighter bulb sooner. Plus, I was fortunate in that my light in the mirror did not burn out altogether. 

 

Knowing the Rules before You Break Them

 

Image from Milan de Clercq 
on UnSplash

I had a very good idea of what it would take me to survive in a male world before I decided to see if the grass on the other side of the gender border would be any better or greener.

Growing up in a very male dominated family with the only girl being my mom, provided me with a so-called brightly lit path to my future. I was fortunate in some ways to have a larger male body to keep the bullies away as I played sports such as football and baseball regularly.  Of course, I came to dislike my body completely when I went through male puberty and had a difficult time finding any new fashionable girls' clothes to wear. 

When I went through the hated male puberty, the rules of the road so to speak, became clearer and clearer to me. Coming from a white middle-class family with two working parents in the 1950's to mid 1960's gave me a work ethic I used to scrape together the meager funds I needed to buy my own makeup and a few fashion accessories. I knew I could not ask my parents for the money because they would want to know what I needed it for. Any hint of femininity on my part would immediately break all the rules and would result in trips to a psychiatrist. Even then, I knew going to a therapist who knew nothing about gender issues would be a disaster. 

I knew the rules and played the game of male gender the best I could. I found good hiding places for my femininizing fashion and makeup while at the same time, dreamed of the day I could buy a nice wig. In those days, I was able to get by with a mirror who never lied to me by telling me I was a pretty girl. The feelings of joy or gender euphoria would continue several days before the pressure built up on me to cross dress again and again. When I began to realize I was just scratching the surface of my gender issues, I became quite good at knowing one of the primary male rules taught to me as a kid. If you did not like something, internalize it until it went away.

The problem I had was, my desire to be a woman never went away and it was so much more than just being a phase. From the darkness of my closet, I had what turned out to be a distorted idea of what womanhood meant to females everywhere. I only saw what I considered the good part was. Such as no military service and being able to enjoy the wonderful world of woman's fashion. I left out the challengingly part of women's lives such as child raising and toxic men, to name a few. As I was able to cross the gender border, I did realize the grass was not always greener and had I truly been a birth daughter to my mom, extra pressure to conform to her standards would have increased. I am certain she would have pushed me to go to the same university she did, all the way to pledging the same sorority.  I would have again been breaking rules. Just of a different sort.

When I arrived at a time when I was drafted into the military, I was forced into being a follower of rules more than I ever had in the past. Conforming to new Army standards to survive at least kept most of my mind off of my gender issues. I needed to put my desires aside and just dream of the day I could be free to be a transgender woman in my future. It was difficult, but I did it.

By the time I was honorably discharged three years later from the Army, I was able to settle back into the life I had before without one big exception. Without military service looming over my head, I could concentrate on my future. When I did, it became increasingly evident to me, there was a possibility I could break all the gender rules and achieve transgender womanhood. It was still going to be a decades long journey from there, but I was encouraged for once.

Of course, once I began to explore the world as a novice transgender woman, I found a whole new set of rules to deal with. To make matters worse, I had no knowledge of many of the rules I was about to break before I did them. The workbook I was using was blank and I needed to write the rules as I needed them. 

Again, I was fortunate, and I survived when I broke the rules, but I learned quickly since I was free.  Then as I safely continued along my gender path, I found I could make it safely to my dream. Mainly because I knew the rules from both sides of the binary gender and I was a better person for it. 

Why Not Me?

 

JJ Hart at Club Diversity
Columbus, Ohio

When I was very young, I had the tendency to hide behind my skirts when I needed to deny any masculine pursuits at all. 

Any time I failed, I ran home to see if I could lock myself in the bathroom and apply makeup and try on any of mom's clothes which still fit. I had a dream of finally making it to my own transgender womanhood when I grew older, but I had no idea of how. Back then, little did I know, the journey would take me over fifty years to complete and the path would be so curvy and full of hurdles. If I did, I wonder if I would have ever attempted to try it.

Of course, I started out innocently enough as a cross dresser in a mirror. My reaction was a double-edged sword. One side of the sword told me I was not doing anything really wrong, while the other side wondered if I was the only one in the world doing it. If that was the case, being a transvestite just could not be good. Right? All I had to rely on was my instincts which told me I was on the right path. So, I persisted and stayed on it. Since the only real feedback I had was from the mirror, I needed to rely on it when it was telling me I had advanced on from the clownish drag makeup stage I was into a more acceptable feminine form. At the time, I equated it with painting model cars which I was never good at and I was so proud when I thought I had conquered the basics of makeup. Even to the point of purchasing my own from the newspaper route I had when I was a kid. When my friends were buying model cars, I was buying makeup and loving it. It was not until many years later, would I receive the instruction I needed to really understand the art of makeup, but I was getting by at the time.

Clothes and hair were a whole other problem I needed to try to conquer at the time. With the very limited budget I was on, there was no way I could afford a nice wig all the way to my college years, when I was working a better paying job. In order to buy a wig, I needed the help of my fiancé who bought it under the idea she would possibly wear it. The wig was long and blond and was my cross-dresser's dream and luckily, she hated it, so I inherited it. Even with the abuse I put it through, the wig lasted for years before I needed to finally retire it. Clothes were another problem because again I did not have much money, and these were the days before larger sized women's fashions became available in a younger style. It was not until years later, when thrift stores became abundant, did I finally become fashion independent. 

As my feminine life was coming together, slowly I began to realize transgender womanhood may not be such a reach for me after all. I was beginning to explore all facets of the world as a trans woman and it all felt so natural. The more I attempted and succeeded at in my new life, the less I wanted to go back to my old, boring male world. So, I did not.

I was on a slippery gender slope my path had led me to, and all of a sudden, I did not fear it anymore. Somehow, I knew there was a soft landing out there for me. The stop signs were gone, and I knew at the age of sixty, if I did not try to live my transgender dreams, I would never have the chance and would forever regret my decision. From there, I decided to follow my heart and seek medical help to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones forever sealed my trans life, and I never looked back. I always felt my body was looking for the hormones the whole time. Again, a scary gender transitional moment felt so natural. 

Why not me, turned out to be why should not it be me?