Are You Really Someone Else as a Trans Person?

 

Image from Kevin Laminto 
on UnSplash

For the longest time, I considered the idea I was two separate people.

On one hand, I was living the male life I was entrenched in and on the other, I was attempting to carve out the precious time I needed to explore my cross dressing self in front of the mirror. Trying to live a life on the gender border between male and female as very difficult to say the least. When I was in male mode, I spent every spare moment wanting to cross dress again at the least and trying to imagine what living as a girl would be like the rest of the time. To make matters worse, I even dreamed of being a pretty girl when I was asleep. Then I had to wake up confused and bitter when I found out life really hadn't changed and I was still a male after all. I needed to go again and challenge an unwanted world. 

Through it all, I often wondered why me? It took years for me to embrace who I really was and know the answer. I was just me and it would have to be good enough. However, the family upbringing I went through made it so difficult. During my youth, I was taught nothing was good enough. When I brought home any "B's: in my studies, they were not good enough. Where were the expected "A's." The never good enough attitude carried with me into my cross dressing life, all the way to when I became a novice transgender woman. In other words, when I acquired a new dress, when its newness wore off, I always felt I could look better in another dress, It led me to being a thrift store shop-a -holic. I couldn't wait until I could take what I had set aside money wise from my wife and use what time I could set aside to locate the next great outfit. 

My problem became especially bad when I was able to afford shopping for new wigs. I went through what I called my clown era of wigs before I settled into one or two wigs I wore all the time. By doing so, I was able to finally begin to build myself as a stable transgender woman in the world. I was beginning to learn I was someone else and that person was not a guy. 

As I was doing all of this  and as I lived a new and exciting world as a trans woman, I found I was taking all the stress off my mental health. The new authentic me enabled me to feel more confident on the gender path I was taking. I was fortunate also to have had a good therapist at the time to help me talk my way through it with her. Since I had previously been diagnosed as being Bi-Polar, both of us were careful to keep my gender issues separate. Plus, no mention was ever made of me being two people. I set the idea aside as being yet another mistaken idea from my youth. It could have been my male self attempting yet another move to survive the onslaught of life changing ideas which threatened his very existence. 

My life today proves I was always only one person and that was my feminine side. It is so sad I needed to fight so long to feminize my entire life as a transgender woman. The only true person I needed to be.  

Teamwork makes the Dreamwork as a Trans Woman

Girls Night Out, I am on the bottom far left.

Similar to so many other cross dressers or novice transgender women I have heard from, they dream of enlisting a cis-woman to aid in their appearance.

I was included in having a similar fantasy. All the way to the point of begging my fiancé to completely dress me as a woman if I rented an out of the way motel room for privacy. Sadly, for me, she agreed and she did do her best to dress me as the woman of my dreams.  I say sadly for two reasons. The first being I did not see that much of an improvement over what I was able to do for myself since by that time I had practiced in the mirror myself for years. The second reason I say sadly came years later when I was facing being drafted into the military and being sent off to Vietnam. At the time she pressed me to tell the draft board I was gay to be deferred from going. Even though I didn't and don't have anything against the gay community, I knew I wasn't gay and wasn't going to lie to escape military service. The end result was she ended up breaking the engagement when I went off to the Army which I learned later was the best thing which could have happened in my life to that point.

As you can tell, I didn't have anyone to enable my teamwork work from any sort of a dream work. One of the problems I was having was working my way through exactly what my gender dream. I was still years away from facing my reality of being a transgender woman. So I suffered alone with my gender dysphoria before I was able to break out of my gender closet. It wasn't until much later when I discovered the beneficial beauty of having cis-woman friends who accepted the new transgender me for who I was. When I let it happen, my dreamwork began to flourish. 

Quickly I began to learn the world from the aspect of being an invited participant in girls' nights out. I was invited along to several different groups of women. All the way from married women to younger girls still in the dating pool. Neither mattered to me because I was learning so much about living a women's life with no men around. Even though when I went out with the younger group, I found how it was to be the decidedly older and less attractive woman in the group. Again, it didn't matter as I flattered and happy to be invited to begin with. 

This was an exciting time of my life when all of a sudden my dream of living a life of a fulltime transgender woman seemed to be so reachable. Being included and  embraced by the women I met was the difference. We went to birthday dinners together, went to parties with each other and of course used the rest room together, All of which turned into the ultimate bonding experience as a new trans woman.

Was I scared? Sure I was but the embraces I received within the group quickly put me at ease so I could enjoy myself and gain confidence in the new feminine person I was creating. It turned out I did not have much creating to do because once my feminine soul hit the world, she flourished. 

Even still, being in a women's world and experiencing their teamwork, did make the dream work happen for me. I was a better person for it once I left my gender dysphoria behind. My mental health improved as well as everything else in my life once I left my male self behind.

Opportunity Knocks

 

Civil War Cemetery image
from the Jessie Hart Archives
 

In my life I have found several really rare times where true opportunity actually knocked on my door. 

As I indicated, the situations were exceedingly rare and required split second decisions on how I was going to proceed. Possibly the first main one happened when I went with the "A" list trans women from the cross dresser - transgender mixer I was at in Cleveland. It was the night I gathered my courage, put on my big girl panties and was able to enjoy a professional makeover at the mixer. The result was I looked better than I ever had in my life and really wanted to claim my spot with the other impossibly feminine women in the room who were planning to continue the meeting with going to gay venues afterwards. At the second venue we went to, for the first time in my life as a woman I was approached by a good looking man who wanted to socialize. Since I was in a city I knew nothing about and with acquaintances who were about to call a taxi and leave, I decided to turn his advances down and leave. I often wonder what would have happened if I had stayed. What sort of opportunity if any, did I miss?

 Most likely, the second opportunity I did take advantage of was when suddenly I decided I had had enough of cross dressing and wanted to follow my gender instincts even further. It was the night I was determined to go out and blend in with a group of young professional women at an upscale bar/restaurant I had frequented several times as my male self. More than anything else, I wanted to see if I could blend in with the group as a transgender woman and enjoy myself. Perhaps what I remember most about the evening was how scared I was as I waited in the parking lot constantly checking my hair and makeup before I gathered the courage to go into the venue. As it turned out, opportunity did knock that night. I enjoyed myself after I could take a normal breath again and I knew my life as a casual cross dresser was gone forever. I needed new horizons to conquer as a novice transgender woman.

As I settled into attempting to find my way as a trans woman in the world, I tried to try different venues and situations to deal with. Some were successful, some were not. The ones which I can remember the most were the times I tested going to more or less red-neck country venues. I quickly discovered I wasn't welcome and moved on quickly but not before the cops were called on me a couple of times. No opportunity to succeed in those places for sure and I never went back.

Perhaps the biggest opportunity which came knocking at my door was when I had the chance to begin gender affirming hormones or HRT. At my age of sixty, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to harm myself, so I took the proper precautions and sought out a doctor to prescribe the medications I had waited for so long. Fortunately for me my health proved not to be an issue and I was given minimum dosages to get me started. Seemingly, my body took to the hormones like I always should have been on them and new changes started almost immediately. In no time at all, I was moved up to a higher dosage and my new changes took over my body. So much so, I needed to move up my transition timetable when my hair started to take off and grow along with my softening skin and protruding breasts. 

Then, the most unexpected opportunity happened when I met my current wife Liz on line nearly fourteen years ago. At my age and transgender history, I was prepared to spend the rest of my life alone and especially never expected to ever be married again. Opportunity was telling me to never say never and here I am.

I have a very hard head however and many times opportunity had to knock loudly to get my attention. Often because I was stuck with life changing conditions where I could lose everything. I tried to fall back on my inner self and hope for the best and finally I let her lead me the right direction.