Doing What is Right

 

My wife Liz on left. Mother's Day this year.

During several high profile jobs I worked at, doing what was right was drilled into me by my superiors.

Even though it took me many years to finally realize I needed to do it, I came out of my gender closet and started a new life as a transgender woman. As I write about often, I am haunted on how much better my life would have been if I had come out earlier and did the right thing.

I should have known and if I had listened to my instincts, I would have done it. As it was, everytime I cross dressed as a woman I felt so natural and something was trying to tell me something big was wrong. It is no wonder, I struggled with my mental health and had anger issues when now I take all I was going through into consideration. Sadly, the person who bore the brunt of my frustrations was my second wife. Mainly because we had made a deal I could cross dress as much as I wanted as long as I kept it away from our home. I was even allowed to spend the money to go to a motel to get ready for a trip on the town if I wanted to. As it worked out, even that was not enough to satisfy my gender desires. Essentially what happened was I became better and better at my presentation skills and when I did, I enjoyed myself more and more.

As it turned out, we were similar to runaway trains on the same track. I was headed towards gender affirming hormones (HRT) and she was completely against them. Saying hormones broke the agreement we set up when we married. She was right and I ended up between the rock and a hard place before she passed away. Once again it seemed I was back to point zero again in my life but this time, I could not go back to cross dressing in front of the mirror. I was too far along towards my lifelong dream of living in a women's world to ever go back. Still, I had the problem of doing what was right and sticking with my promise to never leave the house as my transgender self. I became desperate and began to break that promise regularly which inwardly I was ashamed of.

Overall, my guy self still had enough influence to try to stop my slide into womanhood by putting up the same old barriers. Barriers such as internalizing all my feelings and trying to ignore my mounting mental health problems by drinking way too much until I could take it no longer and I went out to pursue my other new life as a trans woman. Then tried to be home before my wife and hide the whole evening from her. In the short and long term, my plan never worked because in part it was so difficult for me to remove the makeup I so painstakingly applied. I think now, most of the time she knew when I was out sneaking around and just made the decision not to press the issue.

Deep down, on my end, I knew I needed to press the issue. When I was out living my best life as a transgender woman, I couldn't go back to a life as a guy I never asked for. Doing what was right just seemed to be the fair and natural thing  to do. 

Now, if my story ended there, it would have had a happy ending but it didn't. Approximately six months before she passed away, my wife and I had a massive fight about my part time life as a woman and I decided to make one last ill-fated attempt at quitting my feminine life and purging most of my belongings. After nearly six months into growing a beard and gaining an immense amount of weight, as I tried to quit doing what was right, my wife passed away after twenty five years of marriage. Leaving me on my own to finally do what was right.

I did and decided I was not getting any younger and had followed the proper "prep" work to allow my feminine soul to take control. She did and without indicating any "I told you so." She took over my life life with goodness and control. I will forever wonder what would have happened if I had let her take over sooner because she was clearly doing the right things with my life. 

Time Waits for No One if you are Trans

Image from David Cohen
on UnSplash.

Sometimes I look back at my nearly three quarters of a century of life and wonder how I made it.

Often I think I could have made it easier on myself if I had been able to muster the courage to come out much earlier and live the authentic feminine life I always wanted to live. It is difficult to imagine exactly how it would have worked out, because the world has changed so much for transgender women and men. It is always worth mentioning the pre-internet/social media days when trans people were so much more isolated in their dark gender closets.

Timing always has quite a bit of influence on how anyone is able to attempt joining the world as an out transgender person. As anyone becomes older, they have a tendency to accumulate life experiences, material or not. Families come along for many, making the gender shock of changing genders so much more of a problem. Baggage continues to increase when we undertake better employment and secure better housing. Both of which can be very difficult to give up.

Time keeps on moving, which often is the only definite and when it does, the pressure builds to do something about it. The older we become, the more the reality of our mortality sets it and we lose the recklessness of youth. I was certainly much more reckless when I was younger and tried more self destructive acts such as consuming too much alcohol and driving way too fast. Also, as the pressure mounted, my mental health which was already shaky was put to the test repeatedly. Anything I tried seemed to take me farther and farther away from any potential answers I could think of.  

The problem was I couldn't see the forest for the gender trees. Similar to any other woman, my biological clock was ticking away and the older I got, the louder it became. I tried everything to run from my clock but of course nothing worked. Finally, when I turned sixty, I could take it no longer. On one momentous night after years of struggle I gave up my male self and gave in to living fulltime as a transgender woman. I put all the years of experimentation as a cross dresser behind me, dis-carded the remainder of my male clothes and set out to live my dream. Sure, it was scary but all the preparation I put into the move made it more natural and successful from the beginning. Primarily my inner woman was overwhelmed by finally having the final say in my life. 

At the time, I was viewing the entire process as jumping off a gender cliff and hoping for a soft landing. As it turned out, all my prep time when I was actually trying to play in the girl's sandbox worked well for me because I had a chance to build up a close circle of women friends who helped with the landing and even welcomed me in. 

I knew too, I wasn't getting any younger and if I put off a gender transition much longer, I would likely never have the chance again. I was close to retirement age, had no spouse to worry about, and had a limited amount of family and friends to come out to, so even I didn't have a good reason to stay in my gender closet any longer. 

In my case, for whatever reason, I was able to wait out time to the bitter end and come out positive in the process. I wish now, I didn't wait so long to live as my authentic transgender self and put so much prep work into it but no one goes back and gets a second chance to rewind the clock.  

Memorial Day

 

Author in Civil War Cemetery
Cincinnati, Ohio.

It is the time once again for my annual Memorial Day post.

It always seems to me, the true meaning of the weekend gets lost on things such as cookouts, parades and fireworks. Every once in a while, I will receive a "Thanks for your service" on Memorial Day and because I am a Vietnam Era vet. I am always sure to thank the person but the weekend is not about the veterans who survived all the various wars this country has fought over the years. The real reason for Memorial Day is to stop and remember all those who served and paid the ultimate sacrifice with their lives.

Speaking of lives, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the transgender veterans who perhaps joined the military to "prove" their manhood and died while they were still in their closets.  So sad they never had the chance to express themselves. 

To all of you who lost a close family member in a war or have a veteran who is still suffering from combat trauma, you have all my respect and Memorial Day is for you.

At the least, as I said, take the time to remember that freedom is never free and it is a constant struggle to maintain it from enemies from outside and inside our country. I know also of the many transgender veterans I hear from here on the blog. (Georgette and others.) I know you all have the proper perspective on the day but still, thanks for being a survivor! One of the true meanings of Memorial Day.