Acceptance

 

Image from Damir Kopezhanov
on UnSplash

Recently I attended my first Alzheimer's of Cincinnati diversity group session.  

There were five people including me and truthfully, they were not very diverse. The group included one African American, one Jewish woman with her daughter and a couple of other women. I didn't enter the group looking for much more, in fact, I didn't know what to expect. The only thing I didn't want to happen was for anyone to disrespect me by using the wrong pronouns. It was new for me because I was the one seemingly adding most of the diversity. 

 The meeting went smoothly with me being responded to as "she". Where it will go from here will be interesting also. The moderator was pressing me to "recruit" other members of the "Crossport" transgender-transvestite organization of which I am a part of. I told her it would be easier said than done because even though the group is fairly large, the over- whelming largest portion of the members are still firmly in the closet. 

I wonder too, when the monthly diversity meeting in two months will be held in person, will anyone have a different reaction to me. I wouldn't think so but sometimes my gender dysphoria just gets a chance to work overtime. The next  meeting in August  will be virtual too. So it won't be until September until I meet everyone in person,  so I will have plenty of time to worry about it. 

Anyway you cut it, acceptance is nice. Especially when I have another chance to be out on the world as a proud (sometimes confident) transgender woman. My goal is to become an outreach person who has information about where to go for elderly care assistance in the area. So even though, a person's parent my not be LGBTQ+, I still will be able to relay any information I may have when it comes to Alzheimer's Elderly care of any type. 

Now, coming up next will be my third (out of ten) virtual meetups with the Dayton, Ohio Veterans Administration. They are trying their own outreach to LGBTQA+ veterans within their system. I am particularly wanting to provide feedback because of the initial failings I encountered when I first came out years ago. I will say now, in their (the VA's) dealings with me I have seen a noticeable improvement in many areas and I don't feel so much as a "trail blazer" like I did when I first entered the VA system. 

With both personal attempts to do more with the public to help others struggling with their gender issues, I will be paying forward the good karma I will need in the future. 

Refining the Gender Lines

 

Photo from the
Jessie Hart
Archive

As I began to face the world as a novice transvestite, cross dresser or transgender woman, I discovered I had many blurred lines I needed to address. 

In other words, I needed much more work before I ever could understand completely the odds I was facing. The biggest problem I had was I was never naturally feminine, or so I thought. So I needed to begin from scratch to build my feminine self. I write long and often concerning all the public humiliation I suffered when I initially began to leave my gender closet and go out in public. At the beginning, I was ultra careful to go to dark places which were not well populated by the public. Something I learned the hard way later on not to do in my transition. 

One of the few good things I can say about that time in my life was, I had the time I needed to experiment with my presentation. I could secretly go to thrift stores and purchase clothes (at a bargain price) which I thought would look good on me and even fit properly. During my quest to improve my look, I was able to spend very little money and at the same time hide what I was doing from my wife. I remember saving every little bit of extra change I could manage and spend it during the thrift stores bargain or dollar days. Because of the experience, destiny was on my side and I was slowly able to improve my presentation. Especially when I really saved up and was able to purchase a fairly nice wig. 

Ironically, the more lines of my looks I was able to refine, the more I discovered I needed to work on. Back in those days I obsessed on having no hair on my legs, putting together a perfectly matched outfit and finishing it off with just the right accessories. I would spend hours shopping for just the right addition to my presentation. It was around that time when I finally was able to recognize and try my best to blend in with the women around me. I had acquired a business professional wardrobe to wear when I went to upscale malls as well as the new club venues I was trying out. On the other hand, I had other clothes which scaled my look back a bit for when I was first trying out going to large sports bar venues. My goal was to refine my myself so I would do my best to fit in.

The more I worked at it, the better I became and I learned if I didn't listen to my male self and try to dress too sexy and/or trashy, I actually could make a small place in the world for myself as a transgender woman. 

Even at that point, I discovered I still had a ton of refinement to go through as I progressed towards my goal. Primarily, I needed to learn to communicate with the new world I discovered as a feminine person. Quickly I was presented with public levels which went from those people who didn't bother to notice me at all, all the way to those curious types who wanted to know more about transgender women. I can only say making the transition was not easy. It seemed to me for awhile every stranger had their own potential questions to pursue. Finally, I learned they didn't and again life became easier when I discovered the whole world wasn't looking at me. Or, as my second wife told me, it wasn't all about me. 

Refinement in the gender world comes difficultly to everyone. Born female does not make you a woman, you need to grow into it. It just seems, refining our gender lines as a transgender woman or trans man comes as a much more difficult process. Because for the most part we didn't have any help. 

Magnificent Obsession

Image from UnSplash

Early in life when I was going through the difficult steps of attempting to sort out my gender dysphoria, one of my ideas was my desire to be feminine was merely an obsession.

On good days, I even thought what I was going through was an evil joke which I would out grow. Naturally I never did out grow wanting to be a woman and on the other hand just grew into it. To arrive at understanding my gender journey, I needed to make many twists and turns along the way. The first involved just not getting caught when I tried to cross dress as a girl for my favorite mirror. I have no idea now how I got away with everything I did. Including even shaving the hated hair from my legs. My biggest problem was having an ever inquisitive slightly younger brother who was always getting in my way. 

As I grew into (then out of) my ideas of cross dressing being a harmless hobby, I again began to wonder if the whole process I was living was still an obsession. As I did though, my mind was flooded with reassurances I was on the right path with my gender issues. I spent too many hours obsessing on the next time I would be able to cross dress in my feminine clothes. I often wish I had the time back I wasted on my magnificent obsession. When I couldn't dress when I wanted to, it made me a nasty person and one which was not easy to live with. All because I was having a hard time living with myself. It was a period of my life I am not proud of.

Finally, when I could take the gender pressure no longer, I began to venture out of my deep, dark and lonely gender closet. I learned the obsession was only going one way and it was because my old male self was obsessed with holding on to his life, no matter what. It was then I entered my transgender stage of my life. When I decided to go out in the public's eye as a woman. Not as a person just trying to look like one. Even though the process was tremendously frightening, it was equally as enlightening. I found once I did it, I could exist in the public's eye as the feminine person I always dreamed of being. From that point forward the magnificent obsession flipped and I knew I could pursue a life as a transgender woman. A life I had only dreamed of.

Even though I found a feminine transgender life may be possible, my male self was still busy whispering in my ear. He was saying what about telling friends, family and what about my job. As much as I hated to admit it, he was right. It was extremely difficult to uproot a male life I was so entrenched in to begin a new one. I write often on how much the gender pressure effected me. I was so close to my dream yet so far away. Plus even though I was close, there was still so much to learn to fulfill my phantom obsession of being invited to play in the girl's sandbox. 

Call it what you will but my magnificent obsession led me to finally living my dream as a fulltime transgender woman.