You being You or Playing up Being Different as a Transgender Woman

JJ Hart

At first glance, the statement of what makes you, you, seems like an easy one to answer. Especially if you are not transgender. Because you are in the majority and not perceived as being different.

For cisgender women or men, lives are set up to be lived in a certain pattern from birth till death. Using a baseball reference, life throws you a real curve ball when you are trans. Because you are different and often pay the price. The sad part is, for the longest time, we have such a hard time explaining to others our gender issues when we don’t understand them ourselves. In my case, it took me years to come to the conclusion I was not a man cross dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross dressing as a man, and I was not stuck with some sort of a weak excuse such as I was a woman stuck in a man’s body.

I grew up in a semi-dysfunctional family which valued being different. Until it infringed on what mom and dad thought was right. So having their oldest son want to be their daughter would never have been accepted. Or that was way too different for them to understand. I basically went on with my life knowing I was different and not knowing the information I needed to know if anyone else felt the same way.

Before I knew it, I was on the path to male privilege if I just did my best to earn it. The only problem was, I did not want to be on it. It was as if some invisible force was keeping me there against my will. Sometimes, it was easier not to expend my energy fighting my gender issues than to actually begin to leave my mirror and seek out attention in the world. It was only then did I begin to learn if my transgender dreams could ever become a reality or would forever remain a dream until I die. I just knew, both of my parents had lived relatively long lives so I should have time enough to do what I wanted.

In the meantime, I did what was expected of me. Such as reproducing an offspring daughter, earning two college degrees and serving my country in the military. I was not different than many of the other men around me, and life was a blur during this time. The worst part was, I was still not coming any closer to learning if I had any possibility of living my transgender dreams other than the occasional Halloween party. I was still paranoid that others around me would learn of my gender difference and often I would wake up in the morning wondering if I was a man or a woman. Which certainly set my day off on the wrong foot and I am not even adding in the vivid dreams I was having when I was a pretty woman. It would often take me hours to fully return to the disappointing relationship I had with my life as a man.

All the relationship did was continue to cement my unwanted claim of being a semi-successful man. I often wonder what I could have accomplished if I could have given my male self the full attention he sometimes deserved. Not the partial attention he received when I was inwardly thinking of what my life would be like if I could live it as a transfeminine person. It was as if something was telling me to put the brakes on acquiring any extra baggage as a man that I would have to get rid of when and if I was able to transition from male to female. It turned out, the learning curve I went through as a male helped me anyhow as a transwoman, because I was a stronger person. Which really came in handy on those lonely nights when I was out trying to be myself and not the self that made me different.

It was not until I made my gender differences an accepted part of me did I begin to experience success with finding new friends in the world. Since I could not deny what I was, why not utilize me to make me more attractive and I don’t mean in the physical sense. I was like other cisgender women who may not be the most attractive woman in the room but there was something about them which set them apart with their inner glow. I knew if I could harness my inner glow, I could go much farther in life and dispel for good that there was any dreaming left for me to do.

Literally without thinking about it I had crossed the line and transitioned again. I had went from being a serious cross dresser all the way to being a transgender woman and then to being just me. I had spent all the time around the cisgender women that I knew for them to accept me as an equal behind the gender curtain and I did not have to feel any different any longer. I did not have to seek out a mirror to reinforce in my mind who I was. I had sorted my male baggage and kept what I wanted and discarded the rest, so I was ready for my next big challenge which was being approved for gender affirming hormones or HRT. When my body took to them so naturally, I was able to take another big step towards doing away with what made me different from other ciswomen around me. In fact, I wondered what hormones some of the mean women I knew were on. They must have had an overdose of testosterone somehow in their diet.

While it is often difficult to emphasize the differences which make you different as a transgender woman or trans man in today's world, your differences can still be a positive influence when someone gets to know the real you.

 

  

Gender Lost and Found

Image from Jon Tyson on UnSplash.

I spent most of my life in the gender lost and found department.

It all started when I discovered my fascination with my mom’s clothes and was lost when I outgrew all of her wardrobe. I was fortunate when I found a elastic, stretch mini skirt in a box outside the girls’ locker room one day and managed to hide it away in my gym bag and take it home for myself. What was lost was now found.

Along the way, I ended up wishing my overall gender dysphoria could be solved as easily as finding a skirt I could squeeze into and wear. It was only the beginning of a lifelong search to finally face up to who I really was. Until I faced up to the fact that I was never male at all, I was lost in a life I did not want.

Slowly but surely, I began to find my way out of my dilemma. But before I did, I needed to gather all the courage I could to leave my mirror and experience the world, as terrifying as it was as a transfeminine person. It was only then could I see the possibilities of what my future might hold if I actually followed my dreams and was able to live a life on my terms as a transgender woman. Along the way, I found out more about myself than I lost as explored the world. Surely, initially (as I always point out) I was treated rudely in a world which was different back in those days. The world was more likely to find humor in my efforts to be feminine than today when more and more people are just mean. To a point where they will share their unwanted bigoted feelings with you. Every time I was laughed at as a novice cross dresser, I resolved to head home to the safety of my mirror and attempt to fix the problems which were holding me back.

What I found was, I was not trying hard enough to blend in with the ciswomen around me. I needed to lose my male ego which was telling me to run from the criticism I was receiving and for the first time, pay attention to what the world was trying to tell me. Get out of the teen girl fashions I was trying to be seen in and start trying to determine my strengths and go from there.

The more I learned about presentation as a trans woman, the easier my life became as I began to test the boundaries of what I could do. For the most part, I was successful in building the basics of a new feminine life other than the times when I tried to go too far into venues I should have never considered trying. Ironically, one of the biggest set of venues I needed to lose were the gay bars I was going to. Even though, for the most part I found I could express myself there, my growth as a person was slowed dramatically. I tired of being rejected as just another drag queen and wanted to find something more. Losing the gay bars except on certain occasions was the best move I made except when I found acceptance in a small lesbian tavern I went to regularly along with the bigger sports bars, I found that I could be a regular in also.

As I expanded my feminine horizons, I lost more and more of my male self who had always wondered what it would be like to go to his favorite venues as a woman. I found I was right and enjoyed myself even more as a transgender woman. Especially when I went there enough to be recognized as a person, not some sort of a man in a dress. My golden rules of being accepted almost always worked for me as there were three. Number one, be friendly and not be a bitch. Number two never cause any trouble, and number three always tip well.

The only problems I found were when I needed to separate who I was in the real world when I needed to go back to being a man and existing in my working world, I increasingly wanted nothing of. It was a fast-moving pressure packed macho world which I could never see myself doing a male to female transition in, so I was lost in limbo much of the time. It was the only major problem I found I could do nothing about and had to give up a well-paying job when I retired to a fulltime transgender woman’s world. At least, I found my knowledge of competition carried me over quite well into the women’s world I was in. Of course, I needed to lose all my male privileges’ I had gained over the years and start all over again and often I learned the hard way that women compete just as hard as men. Just in different arenas.

Once I learned the new rules, I was learning quickly and even enjoying my feminine world even more than I thought I would. Probably because I was dealing from a position of gender strength because of all the time I had spent in a male world. Many times, I found I knew what potential problem would be coming at me before it even appeared. One of the gifts of being a transgender person.

Of course, now I feel that I have found much more than I had ever lost. I look back at my all too lengthy male life as the chance I had to learn the basic building blocks of life which I would need later to succeed at being a woman. From there I needed to take all the benefits I found as a new feminine person and use them wisely. To squander all that I had learned would have been a tragedy as I wasted all my time in the gender lost and found.

 

 

 

  

My Gender Timing was Everything

 

Image from Danny G
on UnSplash. 

For me, timing was everything when it came to completing my male to female gender transition. Plus, there was no way possible to think I would take nearly a half of century to do it.

The problem was, I never considered the extra layers of a ciswoman’s life rather than what a man had to go through to live. Just having to put up with a man in a relationship would have been enough for me to drive me into a lesbian relationship. Although I never really understood why more men don’t want to accept trans women because we understand so much about the way they think because after all, we had to live as a man for a while. But that is a long, drawn-out story to be saved for another time.

In many ways, timing comes down to everything when you decide to jump out of your closet and enter the world. Just a few things to consider are what would happen to you if you were out as your authentic feminine self and ran into someone you know. It happened to me one time long ago when I was married to my second wife. I was happily following my shopping routines in the small Ohio town we lived in when I parked in a parking lot, slid out of my car and right into the on-coming face of my wife’s boss. As I panicked and headed the other way as fast as I could, all I could hope for was he did not recognize me in my wig, makeup, mini skirt and matching leotard top. Fortunately, as I got a quick glimpse of his face, he showed no reaction to me at all.

I thought the experience was behind me until a week or so later, we were invited to a party at their house. At the party, her boss casually brought up how he had seen this big woman at a big box store he was shopping at the other day.  As I ignored the comment the best I could, I saw my wife suddenly glaring at me from across the room, and I knew what she was thinking. It was me; her boss saw that day. It took me a long time to live that one down because I was never supposed to leave the house as a trans woman unless I was somehow supervised.

Timing kept me living on the edge with my job too. What if my “hobby” of being a cross dresser was discovered? I knew I would not be able to function the way my male self-had all his life. I was stuck between the rock and the hard place on several personal fronts. I was becoming increasingly dependent on my lessons I was teaching myself as a woman and keeping my personal life together. All I could do was keep on working towards my dream of living as a transfeminine person. As I progressed along my often-rocky gender path, all I could do was look for a quick exit. But I found out, exits were as rare as on a long-deserted interstate highway.

It was not until I reached my mid-fifties, did I begin to see the faint out-lines of a possible gender exit ahead for me. All I needed to do was time my male exit correctly so I could cover the main living basics such as spousal support (or nonsupport), a job to support name changes, all the way to all the identification forms I would need such as a new driver’s license. For me, the name change was the most challenging because I needed to go before a very conservative judge I even knew before as a man. Surprisingly, he just smiled and approved my paperwork and name change and the rest was basically easy. So timing on that exit went smoothly with no roadblocks.

Other exits were not so forgiving for me. Such as what was I going to do about a job at that time. I had just closed my restaurant and was essentially broke, and I needed to find a job fairly quickly to support myself. I guess timing was everything and I took an easy exit into a job that I hated. I took the job anyway and managed to keep it for the couple of years I needed to work to claim my early retirement and keep myself afloat by selling vintage collections that my deceased wife and I had put together over the years. During this time of my life, there were other main detours which were difficult to navigate.

That was when my current wife Liz stepped in along with a huge push from destiny to erase any doubts in my mind that I was making the right decisions. I can not forget to mention this was also the time when I was able to begin HRT or gender affirming hormones and take another smooth exit away from my old male life. Putting him in my rearview mirror was the best move I had ever made in my life. I had a new me to go with my new name, and I was ready to go by the time I hit the age of sixty-two. I did not even have to revisit another job exit and just totally retired and moved in with Liz. Where I still am nearly a decade later.

Timing was everything for me, and even though it took me longer than I ever expected to reach my dream, the trip was worth it and I managed to even stay on a very rocky gender road full of roadblocks without wrecking.

 

 

 

Following your North Star

 

Image from Heidi Fin 
on UnSplash. 

I define my own personal “North Star” as the basic direction I had to go to be truthful to myself. Many times, I found how valuable my star was when I was lost in my own transgender woods and couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Along my path, there were many times I lost sight of my North Star and needed to regain it before I could continue. As I did, I spent many a very dark night searching for my life’s truth of wanting to shed my male existence for a feminine one. I would not recommend what I went through to anyone because it was a long, lonely journey. Even still, I was fortunate in that I seemed to always have just the right amount of gender euphoria to propel me forward. It did not matter if I was just gazing at my image in the mirror and thinking I was a pretty girl, or shopping for groceries in our local market, something possibly positive came along for me to see my star and wondered if it was still within reach.

Sometimes, life was cruel and dealt me roadblocks which kept me from following my dreams such as the unplanned birth of my daughter. Which turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me in my life. At the time of her birth in 1976 I was very much out of control and needed something to ground me. Much more than the excessive amount of alcohol I was drinking at the time. All the beer did was help me to lose sight of my North Star until I could regroup and find it. I did not learn until much later how alcohol was a depressant and did not mix well with my already depressed personality. Even though I was dazzled by the miracle of birth and the rapid growth into a little person by my daughter, life was still not good as I was sliding by in a haze most of the time and losing track once again of my North Star.

Somehow, I was able to emerge from this part of my life on my feet and ready to search for my truth again. But not enough to accept what I was finding. Even though that bright light of a transfeminine existence seemed close enough for me to reach out and grab it, I just kept denying its existence and taking the route of least resistance and was existing the best I could as a part-time cross-dresser.

When I changed professions and entered the professional restaurant business, I developed a love/hate relationship with what I was doing. I loved the extra money and advancement it brought me but hated the hours and extra pressure the job brought with it. I guess the good part also was that the new profession cleared the way for me to reset my existence and locate my North Star again.

Once I located my star, I had to finally face the reality of where it was leading me. Gone were the evenings or days of going out into the world thinking I was nothing more than an innocent man trying to look like a cisgender woman. In, was a new reality that I wanted much more than to look like a woman. I was a woman and needed to see if I could live my truth, I knew all along but refused to face. Even though I was terrified of doing it, I was advancing down my gender path, and the skies were clear so I could see my star and have an idea of where I wanted to go. Better yet, once I was passing my gender mileposts of very much socializing with cisgender women as an equal in my mind, there was no going back.

As I did it, I made certain I was trying to cover all my basics such as what I would do to live in a new transgender world I dreamed of and in reality, had never seen. Such as how I would support myself because I knew my current male job would never support a mid-gender stream male to female transition. At that time, I was still several years away from an early Social Security retirement, so I needed to be careful of what I decided to do. What I decided on was a low impact non pressure job I could work just to get by for the time I needed until I retired. I found that was impossible and I had to backtrack into fast food again and work a job I hated until I could quit and pursue my star.

By this time, I had paid a lot of dues playing in the girls’ sandbox and I had a very good idea of what I was facing if I went full time into a transgender world. I don’t think it is possible to ever capture your North Star, but I do think you can come close to living it. There are many paths to get there, and no one is right. Some transition on their own while others have help like I did. I was always a social critter, and my process happened to work for me but yours could be different. Plus, destiny can often alter your path to following your personal star. Do not panic until you find it again and revive your journey.

Remember, you are in uncharted gender territory, often without a compass. When it happens to you, you need to just hitch up your big girl panties and do it.

 

 

 

Who Won the War

 

I call this a fake image of me.
Pre Hormonal padding and hair.

Relax, this post is not another of my political rants!

As my life enters its senior stages, I have the luxury of looking back and wondering what the hell happened. Or, who won the gender battles and who ultimately won the war.

Even though the cards were stacked against her to start (and continued for years), my feminine side managed to hold her own enough to survive. Which was amazing when I looked at the beginnings of our life and what she had to put up with. To start with, I was born into a very male dominated family with a highly competitive nature to contend with, so I always had to be ready for a battle of some sort. For the longest time, I would have to accept defeat at the hands of my brother who was always the better athlete and I would quickly run and hide behind my dresses and makeup. When I did, my feelings were soothed and I was ready to try to compete and win.

One way or another, I found the only winning I was doing was when I was a girl in front of the mirror. The mirror kept telling me I was pretty, and that kept me going. I was far from winning any gender war within myself, but I was managing to tread water and stay afloat…barely because I had no where else to turn. My desire to be a girl was shutting me off from the world. What happened then was, I grew tired of just presenting in front of the mirror and wanted to test how well I did in front of the world. The whole scenario forced me into major battles once again.

This time, I found amazingly I could compete in the world as a transgender woman and I did not have to accept defeat every time I went out in public. Maybe I was finding my home gender after all. I think at this time too, I was battle hardened from all the defeats I had sustained in my male life, and it was easier for me to continue to move forward.

As life started to change, I wanted to explore the consequences of what I was doing more and more. Then my battles became more serious and far reaching which led my male self and my second wife to panic. They suddenly realized I was becoming a more accomplished trans woman and could possibly make it after all to my dream of living a full-time life as a transfeminine person. For her part, my wife kept telling me I made a terrible woman, which I learned later was true. Simply because I had not spent enough time behind the gender curtain to claim my womanhood, yet, but I was coming alarmingly close enough to find out what she was talking about to set her alarms off. And my male self, not to be outdone was doing his part too by relaying all the new jobs and moves he was making into a personal success story.

Between the two of them, they made formidable gender foes, and I needed to become better at exploring who I really was. Whenever I could get off work, I attended cross dresser-transgender mixers, both large and small to determine if I could do what I saw other successful people living on the gender frontier. By doing so I could see my major battle lines being drawn up ahead, and I was like a runaway train headed for them. Major decisions were coming up in my life if I like them or not because I had spent too much time and effort in my explorations to turn tail and run again. I had nowhere to go this time because I had blocked all my exits. All my skirts, dresses, heels and makeup were ready for action.

By this time, my male self was in pure panic mode knowing that his ace card of military service had backfired on him. He thought somehow an ultra-macho experience that Army infantry basic training would make me more of a man when in fact, the whole experience made me a stronger person and believer in myself. When push came to shove and the times were darkest, I could make a decision and live with it. Even if was the decision that would effectively be his final battle and win the war for his feminine counterpart.

Also, I was coming up with a clearer idea of why I had struggled with who I truly was for all those years. I had blindly followed the idea that I was a man cross dressing as a parttime woman when, in fact, I was a woman cross dressing as a parttime man who happened to be married to a strong ciswoman. Plus, he was the primary wage earner in the family. Covering all those gender tracks was exceedingly difficult and put a tremendous strain on his mental health but he kept on fighting the gender battles against all odds. Out of some misguided idea that he had to. It was such a relief when he surrendered and gave up the remainder of his clothes to a local thrift store. The only thing he saved was his Army uniform which had taught me so much about life and winning,

When he realized he had lost, there was no time for wild celebrations. Only time for serious contemplation of what was next and how my victorious trans woman would react. It turned out, she took her win quietly and set out to build a life she always knew was possible. A life which was enhanced even further when she was approved for therapy and HRT through the Veterans Administration. Finally, she had the help she needed to match her internal needs with her external appearance. Which is the subject for another blog post altogether.

Regardless, victory was sweet as my old male self-faded into the past. She lost many battles, but ultimately won the war.

 

A Musical Interlude

 

AFTN Image. I am on the left and Dave
Mallett is on the right taking a break, Circa 1972. 

I have mentioned many times that I started my working career as a radio DJ on local AM “Top40” stations all the way to entertaining the military on American Radio and Television stations in Thailand and Germany.

During that time, I developed a great attachment to various forms of music including the blues which I suffered from at the time from untreated Bi-Polar depression. Then I began to feel the music deeper than ever before and it helped me to overcome the deep issues I had from my gender dysphoria.

Ironically, out of the clear blue sky yesterday, I heard one of those songs which had affected me so deeply. Actually, I saw “Rascal Flatts” perform their remake of “Life is a Highway” by “Tom Cochrane” on a New Years Eve show I was watching this year.  When I did, the memories from the late 1970’s/early 80’s came flooding back to me when I heard these lyrics for the first time:

“Life is a highway
I want to ride it all night long
If you're going my way
I want to drive it all night long”

I was in Columbus, Ohio finishing up yet another exciting evening of partying with friends at a small diverse cross-dresser-transgender mixer I was at. When I heard the song, it was one of those magic moments when I had the lights of the Columbus skyline in my rearview mirror and nothing but open road ahead to collect my thoughts about the evening. It seemed all my senses were at their highest possible point as I savored the summer evening and for once did not think of everything which would come up in the future when I crashed back into my unwanted male life. All I knew was I wanted to drive the transgender highway I was on all night long and never lose the feelings I was experiencing. With lyrics such as this:

“Life's like a road that you travel on
Where there's one day here and the next day gone
Sometimes you bend, sometimes you stand
Sometimes you turn your back to the wind
There's a world outside every darkened door
Where blues won't haunt you anymore
Where the brave are free and lovers soar
Come ride with me to the distant shore”

I really wanted to ride to the distant shore but was not certain how I was going to get there. So, I relied on music to dull the gender pain I felt daily except when I was stepping out to feel what a feminine lifestyle would mean for me.

Yet another song which reflects so deeply what I was feeling is the classic “Nights in White Satin” by the “Moody Blues”. Again, here are a couple of brief excerpts from the song if you have never heard it:

“Nights in white satin, never reaching the end
Letters I've written, never meaning to send
Beauty I've always missed, with these eyes before
Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore”

Most certainly, I was at the point where I could not say what the truth was about my gender at that time. I was at my peak of being non-committal about where I wanted to go in my life. Should I sell it all off for what I could get as a man and start all over again as a transgender woman was my dilemma. Was I missing the beauty with my eyes before. And here was the hardest part, spelled out for me so well by the “Moody Blues”:

“Gazing at people some hand in hand
Just what I'm going through they can't understand
Some try to tell me thoughts they cannot defend
Just what you want to be you will be in the end”

That was the hard part. Did I want to be a transfeminine person, pay the dues and achieve my goals in the end. It turned out I did achieve my dream later in life when I could not take living as a man any longer, so what I wanted to be, I was in the end. And what about those people who tried to me their thoughts they cannot defend? They were so difficult sometimes to overcome.

I am sure, with the amount of music which has been produced over the years, you have music which profoundly speaks to you and your gender issues too. Sometimes I feel. Since we transgender women and trans men go through such profound changes in our lives, we may feel the music deeper than our non-trans counterparts.

In the meantime, we are stuck on Cochranes highway. Riding it all day as well as all night long.

 

When What You See is Not What You Get

 

By request, Liz on right at a summer picnic.

Most all of this post comes from the early days of me being out in the world as a novice transgender woman.

Early on, when I was hanging out in the gay men’s venues, I had a difficult time separating myself from the drag queens in the room. While I appreciated their artform, I certainly was not a part of it. The only time I had tried to ever perform on stage was at a crossdresser-transgender mixer I had went to years ago in the Cleveland, Ohio area. I was a dismal failure, and my performing career was over, for good. But I walked away from the experience in my high heeled shoes with a newfound respect for what good drag performers go through.

Life really began to change for me when I left the gay venues and began to see if I could make it in a more normal universe in the big sports bars, I was used to going to as a man and wondering how it would be to experience them as a transgender woman. Surprisingly, I found less resistance to me being there than I did in the gay bars where I sometimes had to fight to get a drink. Not unlike the clerks I met in mall clothing stores, I found I was no more than a dollar sign to most all the servers and bartenders I met. As long as I followed the basic rules of smiling, never causing any trouble and tipping well, I was cool to most all of the employees I faced and for the most part, just another face in the crowd. Which is exactly what I wanted.

In the venues I went to, it did not take me long to become a regular and I took advantage of perks such as restroom privileges. Plus, when the bartenders knew me so well, it helped me with other new patrons who may question my existence. I wanted anything but them thinking they were encountering a man in a dress.  To preclude that happening, I worked hard at blending in with the other ciswomen around me. I knew exactly what most of them were going to wear so I could wear the same thing. When I did and my makeup and hair were on point, it gave me the confidence to try new things as a trans woman.

I discovered at that time, my own little rating system I used with the public. I felt a high percentage of the world was just going on about their business and did not care about me one way or another. Then another percentage who did notice me were curious (not evil) women who wondered what I was doing in their world, and finally there was the group of haters who had sensed I was different and wanted to confront me. Fortunately, they turned out to be the smallest group I needed to face when I was out in the world because I was certainly not what they thought they were getting when they saw me in public. I was more than a fearful spineless person trying to act like someone they were not. I was rapidly becoming more comfortable as my authentic self.

Perhaps the biggest learning experience I had was when I did know I had the confidence to be myself and what the world saw of me was all true. No drag queen, no parttime cross dresser, just me a transgender woman. Since the great majority of the world had no idea of what a transfeminine person was, I knew I would have to educate anyone who needed to know more about me. On occasion, I needed to answer insensitive questions from people who had known better. Like the nurse at one of my mammograms years ago, who blurted out something to the effect did I still have all of my equipment down below. Like it was any of her business. But, for the most part, people treated me with respect. It was all in how I treated strangers. If I acted as if nothing was wrong with me, most people went right along with the program and did not ask me any invasive, personal questions.

Then came the portion of my life when I began to be able to surround myself with people who never knew anything about my old male past. Amazingly to me, they accepted me as I was and never asked any probing questions. The only outliers were my transwoman friend Racquel who told me I passed out of sheer willpower and my wife Liz who sent me down a permanent path to transition when she told me she had never seen any male in me at all. She was particularly profound at the time because I was still trying to live part-time in both of the main binary genders. Liz knew what she saw was what she was going to get when I went through my male to female transition and even started HRT or gender affirming hormones. In fact, I took my first doses (I was on pills then) when we celebrated New Years Eve together one year when we first met over a decade ago.

I desperately wanted the world to see in me what they saw in all women, just a feminine person trying to live her life as easily as possible. It took me years to build the confidence and courage to shed my old male self and do it but certainly it was finally worth it to live my truth. My motto became, what you see is exactly what you get and if you for some reason don’t like it, it is your problem. Not mine.

 

 

 

 

 

 

If You Dream it, Can you Do It

 

Image from Alaric Duan
on UnSplash.

Dreams can be a motivational tool or a cruel mistake to follow.

Often dreaming it and doing it are two vastly different things. As I always mention, some of the most serious and reoccurring dreams I experienced were those which I was a pretty girl and those dreams carried over into real life with me wanting to be a woman when I became older. For years and years, it seemed to be an impossible dream. As it was impossible to see the future.

Initially, the future just looked bleak to me when my cards told me I would be a male for life. I was born into it, now I had to get over it. I can honestly say I worked hard at being the best man I could. Even to point where I did not appreciate the toxic male behavior, I was witnessing around other males I was with.  I am sure now, I was feeling how my feminine side was reacting to the spectacle I was witnessing. It certainly affected me when I first encountered toxic males when I entered the world as a transgender woman. I was paranoid and considered myself an easy target for them. Still, my dream would not go away, and I continued along my path to gender freedom. Sometimes, my life was like I had climbed a big hill and from the summit I could see my dream life in the distance. If only I could get there and was it just another impossible dream.

In the meantime, I became as good as I could on leading a life which included a heavy dose of male status quo. In other words, I was doing all the right things possible to maintain a proper male life, while at the same time attempting to still see if my dream was a possibility. There were just too many gender variables to ignore. Such as spouse, family, friends and employment. I just had to see if my dream could ever become a reality, and if it could, how would I do it. As I was heavily embedded in the male culture and it seemed as if I was getting deeper in over my head every day. I became so sick and tired of having two people compete for my life and every time I did something as a man, having my woman want to do it too. There was no escape, even on vacation when I was trying to run from myself. All that happened was I would grow frustrated with my situation and ruin the whole vacation with my wife when she kept asking what was wrong. There was no way I could tell her the truth and that I rather be spending my time as a woman.

Until I made it out into the world as a novice transfeminine person, did I begin to see I could indeed have a chance to make it to my ultimate goal of joining the society of cisgender women as much of an equal as I could manage. Or would I be roundly rejected and my dream shattered. Of course, during this time of my life, I needed to really consider what I wanted (or needed) to do. Happily, I discovered there was a place in the world for trans women like me if I approached my dream the right way. I decided to try to slow my life down so I could see the big picture. What the big picture showed me was there indeed was a path to my dream.

One of the biggest lessons I learned was to quit obsessing about worrying so much about my appearance and start concentrating on me the best I could. I had spent years doing appearance and achieved all my goals for presenting as a woman. Then it was time for the me who was waiting for her chance to shine for all those years could come out and not  to be outdone. She did not disappoint and she quickly surpassed what my male self-had attempted to do for all those years and proved she was much more than a dream. She emerged as a real person who had paid her dues. I was not the prettiest girl in the room, but I could be the nicest and let my personality rule.

Because of several fortunate events, I was able to see my dream up close and seize it. I am sure if you asked that kid gazing at a girl in the mirror who was him if he would ever make it to living his dream of living as a woman, he would have said you were crazy. He had no way of knowing all the ups and downs and twists and turns gender dysphoria would take him during his life. If nothing else, it made life interesting and taught me a lot about human nature.

For me, dreaming it was doing it. Mainly because I had no other dreams to sidetrack me. I was very much a live and let live person and let life come to me. Except of course, when it came to my gender issues which took years to overcome.

Being humans, we all have different dreams, and I hope whatever your dream is, that you realize it and make sure it is not a nightmare, Surely, if you do your research, it won’t be and you can live your version of yourself as a transgender woman.

 

 

A Labor of Love

 

Image from Mor Shani

Lately, it has occurred to me that possibly my posts have been a little negative when describing my journey along my gender path. Sure, my trip had its ups and downs but overall, it was a labor of love. Gender euphoria always seemed to come along at just the right time to keep me centered on my dream of living a transfeminine life. Finally meaning to me that transitioning male to female was the only way to live for me.

From that point forward, I just had to figure out a way to do it. I knew I loved the lure of women’s fashion and makeup, and how it all changed around me on a seasonal basis. So far from the male fashion I was used to. Instead of just putting on a coat when the weather became cooler outside. Now I needed to choose between leggings, boots and fuzzy sweaters to keep me warm and stylish.  Furthermore, I loved the concept of seasonal change and the desirability of going through my wardrobe to see what could stay and what had to go to the thrift store.

Even though, fashion and makeup remained a priority for me, a new love interest set in when I began to explore the world more as a transgender woman. Whole new gender vistas opened up for me relatively quickly as I needed to put my static mirror version of my trans woman self into motion. It became a labor of love to go out and start meeting new people. As I did, I came to the realization that most strangers I met did not mistake me for a cisgender woman, but on the other hand, I could be quite satisfied to be recognized as myself…a woman from a different background. I think in a couple of the venues I became a regular in; I became their token transgender woman to prove their overall diversity. Whatever the case, I loved the extra attention I was getting. Especially from the ciswomen I met who were basically curious what I was doing in their world.

All the on hands experience in the world I was getting helped me to want more and leave my male life behind. As I always say, the gender change concept seemed to be so natural for me as I went forward. The only problems came from wondering what I was going to do about all the male baggage I carried with me. I discovered I was much more than a man trying to put on a pretty face, I was a full-fledged person trying to build a life from scratch. All the nuances of doing so extended way psst making sure my shoes matched my purse, all the way to wondering how I was going to handle the woman sitting next to me when and if she tried to make conversation. In a very short period of time, I became used to the challenge, and it became part of my life and yes, I loved it.

As I increasingly loved this new life I was living, I was able to balance between the two main binary genders. Before it became too much to handle mentally for me. It became increasingly evident that if I was going to survive as a person, I was going to have to choose one of the genders pulling on me. At that point my lifetime of loving everything feminine kicked in for me. Long ago, I had realized I was much more than a casual crossdresser and made it a love affair to learn more about my dream of being a woman on my own terms. Which meant I did not necessarily need all the extensive facial or gender realignment surgeries. I just needed to present well enough in the world as a trans woman to be left alone. Mainly because of the circle of ciswomen friends who accepted me as an equal, I was able to achieve my goal. Even with the added surprise of finding a woman who loved me the way I was.

The tragedy probably was I did not realize the depth of the love affair I was having until much later in life. I would have preferred to have spent more time living as a transgender woman in a world I created. Rather than sharing it with a man I started a life with and had very little control over.

I will never know (of course) what life I missed and maybe the course of destiny I was on would have stayed the same anyhow. Just being able to acknowledge the lifelong love affair I was on is just enough to rationalize where I ended up. So if you are just starting or contemplating starting your journey, try to look down deep inside of yourself to see where your love affair has taken you. It may save you problems later on your journey.

 

 

 

 

Reflections on a Theme

 

Image from Alexsandra King
on UnSplash. 

Reflections on a theme could really go several ways.

The first one goes all the way back to my earliest days of gazing in the mirror at my new girl-like figure. Since I did not have much to work with as far as clothes and makeup went, I needed to use a lot of my imagination when I looked at myself. All I remember is, every article of clothing I could wear was cherished and I hoped I did not destroy it and clue my mom into someone had been into her clothes.

On the other hand, makeup was a little easier to hide, since mom had a whole drawer full of used makeup and samples for me to experiment with until I arrived at the point where I did not think I looked like a circus clown doing drag. As I said, imagination played heavily into my girlish pursuits back in those days until one fact came in loud and clear. Just dressing like a girl fell far short of meeting my expectations of how I wanted to feel. More than just looking like a girl, I wanted to know how it would be to feel like one. It turned out to be an idea I would carry with me throughout my life. Little did I know I would be writing about the same theme some fifty years later as I still struggle to understand all the aspects of the gender dysphoria I went through before I just gave up and went to my dominant side which was OK because in her own way my mom was a dominant woman and had to be to survive in the world of men she was in.

I guess you could say mom was the first feminine role model I had. As I reflected on her, I saw a person who worked hard to get a college degree during the depression years then ran off with a man her parents probably did not totally approve of. In other words, she was strong-willed and often got her way. Except for the daughter, she never knew she had who was watching more than just the way she applied her makeup. I was watching how she navigated the world. In my own way, I went through my own great depression as I learned how difficult it was going to be to be a transfeminine person. Long before the term was ever used.

During this time, I spent a lot of time reflecting on who I was and why I was this way. Surely, I was one of a very few boys around me who wanted to be a girl. One of the many ideas I reflected on was the fact that I was simply afraid to go out and compete with the other boys. Which even though was probably true to an extent, I knew I had to do it anyway, so I had no choice but to make a half-hearted attempt at doing boy things to throw gender doubters off my path when they realized what an effeminate boy I really was. Since I was not athletic enough to hang with the jocks or smart enough to hang with the brains, I ended up taking some sort of a middle path with a group of troublemakers which at least kept me away from the bullies. Sadly, there was no group for boys who wanted to be girls.

As I stayed in the mirror for years and years, I built up quite the love for my reflection as I went along. So much so that I caught my reflection lying to me. No matter how ridiculous I looked, the reflection I was seeing told me I looked great which hurt my overall feminine approach to life, out of the mirror. It was not until I gathered all my courage and began to explore the world as a novice crossdresser ot transgender woman, did my reflection begin to change. What happened was, for better or for worse, I traded out my home mirror for one in public. As strangers began to notice me, I very quickly received feedback on my reflection from them. Was I convincing the world that I was a serious transgender woman and not some sort of a joke or someone up to no good that was all the craze back in those days on television and in the movies.

All of this reflection on a theme quickly became very important to me since I had finally made the move to get out of my closet and see the world through the eyes of a very serious trans woman. Soon I reached the point of no return and just had to rely on my home mirror to apply my makeup and fix my hair. The rest was up to me to do in the public’s eye, where my true reflection always was. My theme always should have been I was a feminine based individual all of my life with strong ties to woman role models. My goal never was to be the, “Pretty, pretty princess” as my wife called me. I was just going through a phase so get to a point where I could become a strong independent trans woman. I did not know at the time how much the world would change and I would need every bit of my new self to survive under a corrupt president who wants to erase the LGBTQ community.

Now, when I see myself in the mirror, the only reflection on a theme that I see is me. I am a survivor of my internal gender dysphoria wars and external problems along the way too. Some were interesting, some I learned from and most were quickly forgotten as life intervened. All I know is, I would never have found out if I had been stuck in my reflection on a theme. Which was being a woman. Being stubborn enough to keep pushing ahead was what kept me going. Deep down, I knew I was right.

 

 

 

 

Running...Always Running

 

Image from Filip Mroz 
on UnSplash. 

During my life, I have never thought of myself as a runner of any sort. I have never completed any marathons, or long distance runs anywhere except the Army in basic training when I had to.

In basic, all I really learned about running was to never try to look behind you and see how fast if anyone was gaining on you. Mainly because I was never the fastest person running and I was trying to compete against the clock. Not another person. Lessons which came back and helped me later in life when I set out to battle my gender dysphoria. I would have been so much better off if I had never looked back to see who was chasing me.

For the longest time, I took up too much of my mental universe either worrying about what someone else thought about me or worse yet, feeling extreme jealousy over the way another woman looked. I discovered that I was just wasting my time when I spent too much time or effort on both. Which I was doing. There was no way possible that everyone was going to accept me because no matter what I was doing, there seemed to be to be someone else on my wavelength to tell me something was wrong with what I was doing. And as far as being jealous of the way another ciswoman looked, I discovered later in life that there had not been a woman born yet who did not find some sort of flaw in the way she looked. My job was to do the best I could and work with what I had to present my best transfeminine to the world.

Instead of turning around and wasting time and energy watching who was gaining on me, to succeed I needed to throw all my limited resources towards filling out my gender workbook as fast as possible. If someone did like me because I was a transgender woman, that was their problem not mine.

The main problem I needed to solve about me running from my problems was all the moving and job changes I was putting myself and my family through. Even though all the job interviews and moving around was exhausting, I used the process to run from my inner most feelings…that I wanted to quit being a male and live a feminine life. Behind every job move that I made, there was the ulterior motive of wanting to make my life back then as a cross dresser potentially easier. Ultimately, that is the reason I made moves from places like my conservative hometown in Ohio all the way to New York City where I thought I could find a much more liberal existence.

Finally, I went nearly full circle and landed back in my old hometown, but the difference was this time I would be much closer to Columbus, Ohio where I had contacts in the cross dressing-transgender community. By doing so, I even managed to land a much better job which I had worked for years to get. For once, it seemed I was putting my running life behind me, but I really wasn’t. Not until I finally was able to face myself about my true lifelong issues such as (you guessed it) why I wanted to be a transgender woman. To do so, I still had the usual obstacles in the way such as what was I ever going to do about the twenty year plus marriage I was in and the great job I had worked so hard to get, Stopping all the running I was doing was never going to be easy but I kept painting myself into corners I could not easily escape from when on the occasions I was successful in my feminine presentation led me on to wanting more.

More meant taking an increased number of chances with a male life I should have been satisfied with. All my plans were coming together except for the most important one. Except for the most important one I had been running from my entire life. What was I going to do about my increasingly relevant feminine life. The stress I was under became tremendous. Afterall, I was trying my best to juggle two binary genders at the same time. Lucky or not, I was still able to keep most of my feminine life a secret from most of my acquaintances and I continued on as long as I could before the running had to come to a complete halt.

During my life, I was able to only make and keep a very few male friends and as destiny would have it, they all passed away (along with my wife) in a short span of time. At that point, there was no reason to keep running, so I was able to stop and take the easy way out for a change. I chose going all out into a transfeminine lifestyle and never look back with the help of gender affirming hormones or HRT.

When I stopped all my running and faced the truth, I had been avoiding all along, the feeling I had was euphoric and one I had never experienced before. My next step was not to hold it against myself that I did not stop running much earlier in my life and take the lessons I learned about not looking back in the Army. I never knew what happiness was until I did it.