Moving too Fast

 

Image from UnSplash

There were times during my transition when time moved so slow but then again other times went all too fast.

Most of the slow times involved the periods when I had to wait to cross dress again and again seeking precious small amounts of gender euphoria. I needed them to hold me over until the next time I could stare into the mirror and visualize my feminine self looking back. Improvements at the time were painfully slow. It seemed they only happened to just barely keeping me afloat in life. It turned out to be a decades long project to resurrect my true self which went into forced hiding many years before when I was a misunderstood youth. I was forced by society into being a boy when all I really wanted was to be a girl.

Sometimes I think I was fortunate to have survived the slow times in my life when I was so frustrated with my very limited chance to express myself. The very few chances I had were often dismal failures such as when I talked my fiancé into dressing me head to toe as a cross dressed woman. First of all, I didn't think she did that good of a job and the whole experience came back to haunt me when I entered the military. To satisfy her paranoia about me serving, she told me to tell the draft board I was gay. Nothing wrong with being gay but I wasn't and I was not ready to out myself to the world. So out she went. I was prepared to face a long slow three years in the military (Army) by myself. 

It turned out, the three years I served did go by very fast. I was able to experience different cultures when I was stationed in Thailand and Germany. I was even able to come out of my gender closet very briefly to let a few close friends into who I really was. Ultimately I owe the three years to allowing me to meet my first wife who is the mother of my daughter who accepts me totally and giving me the chance to utilize much needed Veterans Administration health care when my business failed and I needed it most. 

The period of time when I signed up with the VA which entitled me to low cost bi-polar medications  and ultimately my hormone replacement therapy was a blur. Not only was I going through a very dark period of my life when I was losing nearly everything, I was exploring an exciting but terrifying time of life when I seriously began to live finally as my transgender self. Initially I set out to live a isolated self as a novice trans person, it proved impossible. I had always been a social person when I left high school and I found I still craved human interaction. My interactions started innocently enough when I began to be recognized as a regular at several of the venues. From there destiny did the rest. One of the bartenders who always saw me by myself set me up with her Mom who I still know today. Another social contact happened one night when another woman sent me a note down the bar. 

At this time, my life began to speed up, I was learning more and more about what my new life could be like. The women I was with showed me so much and I always say , I owe them so much. Without their input, I would have taken literally years longer to achieve my goals of living as a transgender woman. There were times I thought I was moving too fast but eventually determined the feeling was just because my old male self was being threatened with losing everything he had worked so long to accomplish. 

Very quickly I did catch up and look back at that time of my life as one big blur but the outcome was wonderful. 

On another sidelight...it's nine eleven. Never forget!!!!!

Insistence

 

Image from the Jessie
Hart Archives

I found out long ago, living my desired lifestyle as my authentic feminine self would involve tons of insistence. 

First of all, I needed to insist I needed all the practice I could come by in front of the mirror as I attempted to perfect any sort of a new gender appearance. It meant sneaking around the prying eyes of an inquisitive younger brother as well as hiding from my parents who I knew would never understand. Slowly but surely my insistence paid off and I improved my appearance. Little did I know, it was only the beginning of an extremely long life time journey.

Through it all, I needed to insist on continuing my journey no matter how difficult the process was. If I was ever discovered, the push back would have the potential to be tremendous. I could lose my friends, family and job, almost immediately. As the pressure mounted, I still needed to move forward down my path to move from a part time transvestite or cross dresser all the way to living fulltime as a fulltime transgender woman. 

Insistence was also the key during my early days of exploring the world as my true self. I needed to face all the stares (and even laughs) I was getting from the public. I ended up learning the hard way how the mirror could and was lying to me. I needed to repeatedly go back to my wardrobe and makeup drawing board until I achieved more of a success. 

Then, I learned the hard way, how my successes would lead to needing more insistence for success on my part. I was petrified the first several times I was forced into one on one conversations with other women. How was my voice going to sound and what would I say were my primary worries. At the beginning, I resorted to trying to attempting to mimic the pitch of the woman I was talking to and as far as what I would say, I would simply just respond to whatever questions were asked of me. I don't know how well it worked but it was all I had. Finally I was forced to improve and began to develop who I would be as a transgender woman as I began to interact with the world.

Even still, whatever was going on, I needed to insist with some people I was feminine, not masculine. To this day, I have to correct the pronoun usage used with me by strangers. I am fortunate because I have two powerful gender allies with my wife Liz and my daughter Andrea (who also has a transgender child). Often either of them will lead the conversation for me calling me "she".  That way strangers who may question my gender have an idea of who I am. 

What makes everything so difficult these days are the continuing attacks on the LGBTQ and primarily transgender community by a certain political party not called Democratic. In fact, the party has outlined a platform for 2025 which would be the beginning of the end for trans women and men everywhere in this country. A prime reason all of us have to unite against the gender bigots now and in the future.

One of the positives is our tribe has been trained to be insistent and will survive in the future.

Being Better

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart
Collection

Always attempting to be better than the next person was always part of my life. 

Nothing I did was ever good enough for my parents. If I received "B's" in a school course, my grade should have been an "A". If I made sports team, why wasn't I a starting player? These were just a few examples of how life went. I can't ever remember hearing an encouraging comment like way to go from my parents. Similar to so many other aspects in life, I figured it was normal and went on. Little did I know how being better would come back to haunt me later in life.

As I doubled down on my cross dressing efforts again I found nothing I did was good enough. The main problem I had was I was always playing catch up to the other women. They all benefitted from growing up around a peer group which judged them with basics such as makeup and wardrobe. Of course I needed to learn all of it on my own. 

Perhaps one of the most frustrating aspects of the entire transgender process was not only did I need to learn the appearance process on the fly (with no help), when I ended up going out in public, in order to survive I had to be better than the women around me. Perhaps one of the bigger compliments I ever received from my second wife came when she actually asked me to help her with her makeup one night when we were going out. Although she never said it, I knew I had somehow arrived in her eyes as a person who knew her way around makeup. 

It turned out, I was only scratching the surface. Before I utilized the benefits of hormone replacement therapy to grow my own hips and breasts, I resorted to silicone breasts and foam hips to give me a more feminine form. I simply wanted to be the attractive blond woman in the bars I frequented. It worked as I was noticed in a few of the lesbian bars I went to, as I was approached my other women much more masculine than I was. My confidence soared and I felt as if I was finally making in roads into looking better than the next woman. Even though I was transgender. Then it occurred to me I had to be better to just survive as trans. 

Through it all, my natural upbringing kicked in and I thought being better was just part of the game. After all, any cis woman could throw on any old shirt and jeans and go out and no one would question her gender. If I did the same, I would be busted or clocked instantly for being a man in a dress. As unfair as it was, I understood because I had been living with the rules my entire life. In other words, I was up to working harder to achieve my goal of living fulltime as a transgender woman. Which was becoming harder and harder with each step forward I took. I always understood women led a vastly different gender life as men but I didn't understand how much until I set out to prove I could do it every day.

I was primarily blindsided by the communication aspect of feminine interactive conversation. I needed to learn the basics of reading  someone's emotions through their eyes and not their words. Plus, let's not forget the power of a woman's passive aggressive nature. Too many times I remembered trusting another woman only to be stabbed (or clawed) in the back. The whole process taught me  quickly I needed to get better. A feminine public presentation was one thing but being allowed to play in the girls sandbox was another. 

In remembering my post from yesterday, I still need to remind myself of who and where I am as a trans woman. Just a small thing as a smile turned out to be a huge deal. But I was used to knowing I needed to be better. Picked myself up and went from there.