A Wealth of Riches

It seems recently I have been overwhelmed by the possible amount of material I have received for my Cyrsti's Condo blog. Believe me though, I am not complaining. Often I go weeks on end trying to come up with something to write about. Over the years I have somehow come up with over six thousand posts. Thanks to all of you such as Connie, Paula and Mandy who help out with content too. Then there is everyday life.

For example, Thursday night Liz and I went to the Christmas party for transgender-cross dressers and their families. I had a very good time as most of the people around our table I had known for quite a while, Several were cross dressers from small towns in Indiana who were complaining how hard it was to remain in the closet where they live. On the other hand, we were able to sit close to the very accomplished 80 year old role model I have mentioned in the blog before. She has done an amazing job of being accepted in society as her true self.

Liz did manage to take one selfie to share. I know it's not the best quality but it is all I have.

Also on the plus side, Liz managed to win the "split the pot" lottery which everyone could pay to take a chance at. So we were able to recoup the forty dollar per ticket amount.

This is just a small amount of items I want to share with you all and we will get to a couple new transgender women who are making a difference.

Plus, we have another couple of events coming up this weekend, one never knows what will happen to write about!

Alexandra Billings

From Wikipedia:

Alexandra Scott Billings is an American actress, teacher, singer, and activist. Billings is among the first openly transgender women to have played a transgender character on television, which she did in the 2005 made-for-TV movie Romy and Michele: In The Beginning.

The Past

As impossible as it is to dwell on any changes one could have made to change a life, we transgender folk seem to always do it.

Take away the fact we are trying to do one of the most impossible things to do in a life (changing a gender) and it turns out we trans people are always trying to figure out a way to have done it better.

One example is timing. Those who transitioned later in life, like me, always have the nagging ideas such as what would have happened if we would have attempted the big move earlier in life.

The easy answer for me is I probably could have accomplished so much more. I spent so much energy and torment trying to live with my gender dysphoria.

When you factor in all the outside factors such as family, society, etc, it just hurts my noggin to even think about it.

My example is if I would have followed my first finance's lead and told the Army I was gay when they came a knocking during the Vietnam War draft. She gave me the option of serving or her. As painful as it was at the time, if I had chosen her, I would have missed out on such tremendous life experiences as having my daughter and traveling over three continents in three years on Uncle Sam's dime. Now I'm happy I didn't choose her!

Still it wasn't good enough. At times I resent the years I spent just trying to live up to the macho code. I can rationalize it all now though by thinking I was just ahead of my time. I was just waiting for the world to catch up. As far as transgender community goes, the good "ol" days weren't so good. After all, I remember men being arrested for just dressing like women.

I could go on and on about the torment of growing up as a boy wanting to be a girl but none of that does any good anyhow.

Maybe I should just keep thinking about how things are, not how they should have been. I am happy where I am now. If you ever would have asked me how it all would end up to this point, I would have not believed you anyway.

Dwelling on the past is useless anyway.