Was the Transition Risk Worth It?

Image from Sammie Chaffin
on UnSplash

 The answer to this question most likely depends on where you may be in your gender transition. If you are just beginning, the risks coming fast and furious these days may seem to be to much to handle. Until recently with the barrage of anti transgender political bills, I considered the era I transitioned in to have been more risky. Now I am not so sure.

As I remember, the biggest problems I faced were of my own doing such as my well documented fashion errors which led to me being rejected by the public. Once I conquered being able to present properly as a woman, I could then move on to other problems. The main one was the sudden possibility I could carve out a new relatively successful life in a feminine world. The main things which were holding me back were the extreme risks involved with following my gender dream. In my life up to that point I had achieved success in going against the odds and taking risks. The main example I can recall was when I was drafted during the ill-fated Vietnam War. Instead of serving the two year draft time, I chose the three year enlistment time and set out to see if any branch of the military offered anything close to my career in radio broadcasting. It turns out the Army did  and with the help of a US Congressman I was able to be accepted into the American Forces Radio and Television Service and then served in Thailand and Germany. You might say I was successful. 

As the years went by, I left the broadcasting business and entered the food service industry which was expanding rapidly. I was able to increase my income substantially and begin a love/hate relationship for the next thirty plus years.  The problem was, I became so adept running restaurants I was paid more handsomely for my efforts. Taking chances with my feminine life became more and more of a problem. The more successful I became in the male dominated world I was in, the more I lost if I suddenly left it. I tried desperately to exist in both gender worlds to no avail. The process became so apparent, the more I did in my new and exciting feminine the more natural I felt. The more natural I felt, the easier it became to take on the new risks I was experiencing even though I was overall terrified about the path my life was taking. 

I never attempt to speak (or write) for anyone else but for me the risk I took to stop my male life and rebuild a new one as a transgender woman was worth it. Especially when I began hormone replacement therapy which I understand has a new name these days. Regardless I look at the point when I started HRT as the point of no return for my old unwanted male self. I was ready to take the final risk to begin a new natural gender life. If, on the other hand if you are still in your gender closet, don't despair because you never know when doors may open for you to explore the world. One never can tell the future and often destiny can lead in unexpected directions. 

Sadly, though, the longer we wait, the more risks we transgender women or trans men have to take when we transition. We develop family, friends and employment to navigate. When the risk became no choice as it did in my case, it was time to take another key step in my transgender transition, throw away all my male clothes, become femininized by the hormones  and start a new life.        

Trust the Process?

Summer Maxi Dress from
the Jessie Hart 
Collection 

So many times when I had reached the point of utter desperation with my gender dysphoria, I wondered what was ever going to become of me. I just had too much of the powerful and seductive draw of the strong inner feminine being who lived within me. She constantly battled the male world which I was born into and for the most part wanted nothing to do with.

All of my battles led to well publicized bouts of self destructive behavior such as using my car as a possible suicide object by driving way too fast and drinking way too much along the way. Unfortunately, my drinking was subsidized in a good way to a masculine pursuit in my family.  My Dad was known to finish his day everyday with a shot (or two) of whiskey. Attempting to out drink him became an unreachable goal for both my younger brother and I. While it never worked with Dad, the entire drinking process provided me with yet another gender façade when I was dealing with others. Plus, the faux level of bravado I found with the alcohol enabled me to initially coming out as a transvestite to friends of mine, all the way to relaxing me when I was attempting to face the world out of my gender closet as a novice transgender woman. The whole process added to my problems with the mirror I was experiencing. When I was intoxicated and staring at myself in the mirror, I was guaranteed to see what I wanted to see. An attractive woman ready to be seen by the public.

My love of the alcoholic came to very much of an abrupt halt when I was pronounced with possible liver problems by my Veterans Administration doctors. I was surprised outside of a few slip ups, I was able to leave my love of alcohol behind. I was able to trust the process and know I would be better off without the one super destructive aspect of my life which was my drinking. These days, I rarely have more than one beer a month. 

As far as my driving goes, I have become decidedly a defensive driver at my age and I have a strong vested interest in being a safe driver while I am behind the wheel. I feel as if I suffered too many close calls when I was younger to tempt fate anymore. The prime example was when I easily could have seriously injured myself and my brother when I rolled a car at a high rate of speed when we were going to college classes one day. I certainly had a guardian angel riding with me that afternoon when I was trying some self destructive behavior

The reason I was able to move away from such poor choices when it came to my lifestyle was when I was able to complete my gender transition I was happier in life.  Or, when my woman took over, she was running the show and did away with all the self destructive nonsense I was participating in. Even though for many years it was very difficult for me to trust the gender process I was slowly becoming so satisfied with my life I wanted to prolong it as far as possible. A honorable pastime.   

Living the Trans Dream

Summer in Ohio
from the Jessie Hart
Collection

Every so often I have the chance to sit back and wonder how I ever made it to the place in life I have arrived at now. I spent so many years living a mostly frustrated male life, wondering how it would be to permanently cross over the gender frontier and live life full time as a transgender woman. For the longest time, I thought I would never make it to the point where I could ever live my dream. 

In the beginning and during several years following, I went down the same rabbit holes as other cross dressers or transvestites I knew. The same old male egos showed through our fancy feminine clothes to reveal we didn't know much about being women at all. Just doing our best to look like one.  Finally I came to the point of knowing I wanted to discover more in depth just what I would be facing if indeed I decided to try to complete a MtF gender transition. Before I knew it, years and life had slipped away and destiny opened a few doors for me which enabled me to transition fully. Recently I received a comment from fellow blogger Paula Godwin who described her journey a little different:

" For those of us who transition later in life it is "interesting" when we get the revelation that after spending the first 50 (or so) years of our life trying to work out if we are a woman at all, that then we suddenly have to work out what sort of a woman. Although having said that I'm not at all sure how much choice we actually get in the matter, much like being Trans at all, I suspect that much of what sort of a woman I would turn out to be was not a choice but an inevitable!" 

You can read more from Paula by following her "Paula's Place" blog here or by checking out my "Do You Wanna Hook Up" section of the blog which contains her latest post.

Thanks for the comment and I too spent fifty years or so exploring being a woman at all. Then when I decided I couldn't deny my feminine nature any longer, jumping into the world and out of my closet was quite the experience. The first lesson I learned was all the years I thought my appearance as a woman was the most important facet of my life just wasn't true. I had no knowledge of all the other facets of a woman's life she had to live through on her path from being just a female to being a woman. My second wife so profoundly put it during a huge fight we were having about me being a crossdresser, that I made a terrible woman and she was not talking about just how I looked. At that point I was forced to put my male ego aside and seriously consider what my wife was talking about. The entire process of learning more concerning women's lives was difficult because I was shielded from what really went on with women because I was still presenting nearly fulltime as a man. In other words, I could not be trusted with secrets until I made the huge step of coming out as my authentic feminine self, which was sensed and embraced on many levels by several of the cis-women who befriended  me. 

During this period of gender discovery, much of my life was a blur as I increasingly set my male self aside and allowed my woman self to flourish. As Paula put it so well, it wasn't a choice, it was an inevitable.