Planned or Evolved

 

Image from UnSplash

Completing a gender change is a difficult experience, to say the least. 

Sometimes I think my path to a transgender life was planned, sometimes I think I just evolved. I think that because the more I planned, the less I accomplished. There were literally years which went by without much change at all, or so I thought. Those were the days when I thought I had perfected my wardrobe and makeup but then failed miserably when I went out in the public's eye and found out I still had a long way to go. In other words, putting the feminine image in motion was the plan but I found I needed to evolve into it. I needed to walk the feminine walk more than I had ever had. The mirror had to take a back seat to reality.

Along the way, I was able to plan on carving out precious time in my male life to explore the possibility if I could further explore a transgender life as a woman. I went to many mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio which were attended by everyone from transsexuals to transvestites to male "admirers:. Somewhere in the middle of all those people was me. I guess I could have been described as a questioner who was just observing all the others to see where I fit. Through it all, there was no way I could plan my next gender move, I needed to evolve into it. 

It wasn't until much later in life until I tried to plan my future. Fairly quickly after taking my time in my MtF gender transition, the time was quickly approaching to pick up the pace. For one, I wasn't getting any younger and if I was ever going to try, I better do it. Plus another major issue was I was becoming better and better existing in public as a transgender woman. If in any way I was receiving negative feedback perhaps I would have felt differently about transitioning but it was different because I felt so natural the more I did it. The more I communicated and existed in the world as a trans woman, the less I needed to plan my next move. I could just sit back, relax and evolve who I was. 

Evolution eventually led me to beginning hormone replacement therapy and never formulating any plans to ever go back to my old unwanted male life. The hormones I was fortunate enough to be approved for helped me to evolve much further into a feminine life I wasn't prepared for. I learned quickly there was no way anything I had accomplished in life HRT opened pathways in my life I could have never planned for, I needed to evolve into as a new human being. 

Once I evolved I was able to be a better person as the stress of attempting to live between two of the main binary genders drained off of me. Even my long bout with having a prescribed Bi-Polar depression disorder became better. Probably because my consumption of alcohol went way down also,  All because I quit planning to change my gender and evolved into a transgender woman I could be happy with.    

Muscle Memory

Image from the Jessie Hart
archive. Ohio River background. 

If you are into sports at all, perhaps you have heard the term "muscle memory". Athletes use it to describe how they approach certain aspects of their sport. A prime example is how a batter in baseball prepares the same way everytime when he comes to the plate. 

As transgender women and trans men often we face the same dilemma of how to cross the gender frontier and establish ourselves successfully as new women or men. Naturally along the way we have a tendency to carry characteristics of our previous gender we need to erase. One of the first aspects of my old gender I attempted to change was how I walked. What I encountered was, I finally achieved a certain level of presentation in my mirror and then I had to put the entire feminine image into motion. I needed to break so many bad habits when I was trying to cross dress as a man, I felt I needed to practice as much as I could. I even went to extreme measures such as going to big box stores later at night and practice walking as a woman. Even though I was still dressed as a man. I always wondered what the store detectives watching on camera thought of me. 

Over time my ability to move more as a transgender woman improved to a point I felt more secure in public. At that point I discovered another serious problem I was facing was how I held my facial expression. It took a small child loudly telling her Mother "Look at the big mean woman!" The obvious compliment was the kid called me a woman but the bad side was she thought I was mean. From that point forward I tried to take the old male scowl off my face and replace it with a more welcoming look. With my new look, along the way, I attracted more positive communication as a woman in the public's eye. 

Muscle memory for me was difficult to maintain. I really needed to concentrate to make my gender image complete. My old male ways were so ingrained. It seemed on occasion the harder I tried, the more mistakes I would make. An example was the time my high heel became wedged in a small crack in a mall sidewalk I was in or the time I was leaving a venue where I was a regular in. One night I was wearing my high heeled boots, got up to leave and promptly fell in a wet spot. Fortunately I was not injured in either case except for my pride. I went back to the drawing board and I challenged myself to walking better in high heels. All part of the new muscle memory I was attempting to assimilate in order to be a more accomplished transgender woman.

These days I am trying once again to improve my movement muscle memory. Since I went through a period of time when I was having mobility issues. I finally found myself at a point where moving as a woman wasn't as important as just moving at all. Happily I am beginning to do better with my mobility now so I can again concentrate on moving as a woman. 

All in all, muscle memory is a very important phase for all transgender women and trans men to go through. Why should we spend so much time and effort in looking good for the world and destroy the image completely when we put it into motion. 

Gender Secrets

 

Photo from the Jessie Hart
Archives

Transgender women and trans men most certainly carry their share of secrets during their life. 

My secrets started quite early. The first I can remember were when I was asked what I wanted to be later in life. Instead of the usual answers (which adults wanted to hear) such as a doctor or a lawyer, all I could secretly think of was I wanted to grow up to be was a woman.  Little did I know, the secrets in my life were just beginning. First there were times I needed to sneak around my families' back to try to just look like a feminine person in my mirror. 

As I said, those were the "easy" secrets to keep as I kept my small feminine wardrobe hidden from my family. Plus, every cent of my hard earned money went to adding new items of clothing or makeup. I worked a newspaper route at a young age as well as earning a meager allowance by doing household chores. All helped to invigorate my passion to be female. Somehow I still managed to hide my secret from my family.

Other secrets I could never share with anyone else were many and varied. For example, when I was a defensive end on the high school football team all I really wanted to be was a cheerleader in one of their short flouncy skirts. Then there were the two proms I went to when I was a junior and senior in high school. There was no way I wanted to be the male in the relationships. I wanted so bad to be the person in the beautiful prom dress with the corsage I needed to buy. I wonder now if there was anyone else to talk to about my feelings would it have led to much change. As it was, it would not have been possible because I was still living in the pre-internet dark ages before  Even if therapy was available to me, no one knew anything about my gender issues. I actually did try to bring my cross dressing up to one therapist after I served my time in the Army and was roundly rejected. It wasn't until I discovered a therapist who specialized in gender issues did I get any relief. She told me there was nothing she could do about my being a transvestite or cross dresser but I was also bi-polar and could help me by prescribing medications. The medication did relieve much of my depression.

By the time I began to consider getting serious with women to the point of marriage, I quickly experienced the positive and the negative of keeping gender secrets. My first time of sharing my secret with a woman who was my first fiancé was a total disaster. She held it against me later when I was facing being drafted into the military. Even with this experience, I was determined to not change how I disclosed my deepest secrets to the women I was very interested in. By doing so, my first and second wives knew before they married me that I was a transvestite. As it turned out, telling them did not have any real effects until I began leaning towards being transgender with my second wife. Even though we fought continually concerning what my gender desires were, at least for the most part I was out front about who I was.

It took me many years to learn but all my years of thinking women had it easier in life, I was wrong. When I found I needed to put my secrets away and begin to peel back the multi layered life's women I was wrong. I needed to experience the same path females follow before they can claim the title of being women. Sadly, some never make it and just can only claim to be female. Which is a subject for a whole other blog post.

In the meantime, it is so enlightening to be able to not having to keep so many heavy gender secrets....secret.