Transgender Truth

Image from Ava Sol
on UnSplash

Often as a transgender woman or trans man, we have a hard time find finding out our personal truths. 

Our truths can be hidden behind a maze of society issues which we have to work our way through. In other words, is what we are thinking a real truth or something acting like one. Did I really want to be a girl or just temporally look like one? I struggled to figure it all out. 

Worse yet, was the fact I needed to hide my emerging truth from the world. How was I ever going to discover if my gender life as a guy was indeed a lie unless I was able to take on the world as my own sense of femininity. Was it all an act or was it real, who knew? Little did I know, I was embarking on a lifetime trip to determine how true my gender issues were. As I went along, hiding became less and less of an alternative because I was finding out how natural I felt when I was playing in the girl's sandbox. All the bastions of sacred femininity were suddenly opening to me in the forms of being invited to girl's night's out and earning my way into having women's rest room privileges. 

When I did, the pressure started to mount to live my life more and more as a transgender woman. Every time I had to interact with the world as a man, I felt as if I was somehow an impostor and I was just going through the motions. Plus, my obligations to spouse, family, friends and work started to weigh heavily on my mental health. I did my best to enlist the aid of a qualified gender therapist to help me. There were very few of the therapists in those days who knew anything at all about gender issues, so mine was hard to find. Looking back, I think I saw her advertisement in an issue of "Transvestia" Magazine. When she saw me after a couple of appointments, she told me her truth which I did not listen to. She said, there was nothing she could do with me wanting to be a woman and somehow I would have to learn to live with it or accept it. Like I said, I ignored her advice and continued to ignore my basic truth.

Speaking of truth, currently, I am writing a book gift which was given to me on Mother's Day this year by my daughter. It is a year long project designed to answer questions from my family. The book will be given  to me after I am done and then passed on so others can understand my life and truths after I am gone. One of the questions from my trans grandchild is what has been the most ill-advised thing you (me) has ever done and I think ignoring my therapist's advice may have to be up around the top. Had I listened to her and told my second wife the truth, I would have saved myself so much turmoil over the years and I would have faced my truth. How bad could have it have been. I would have had to find other employment and new friends but rebuilding my life then could have been easier. 

I was stubborn and held on to my idea I ever was male for way too long and it cost me years of alcohol abuse and mental health problems. I was so fortunate I found and was accepted by women who I admired so much who embraced my idea of what an ideal woman would act like. Ironically, the evil TERF's were few and far between. I was allowed to flourish as I learned so much from the women around me who accepted me for what I was for the first time in my life. 

My truth was finally evident to me. I had never been meant to live a male existence and I just wish I had faced my transgender truth earlier than the age of sixty. Sixty is when I gave in and gave up any hope of ever living as a male again. In addition, I am so proud of my college aged transgender grand child for coming out so early in her life. Hopefully, my existence helped hers.

A Transgender Marathon

Archive Image

 I'm sure you have heard the saying it's a marathon, not a sprint. This is especially true for transgender women and trans men.

Yesterday, I read a social media post from a first time transgender woman going out in public for the first time. In the post, she was bemoaning the fact after applying her makeup and seeing pictures, she did not look as good as she thought she did. My heart went out to her and I mentioned I went down the same path. Learning the art of makeup is just the first part of a transgender marathon into understanding yourself. 

Others who read the post chimed in with similar thoughts and even expanded it into impostor syndrome as a future possible reaction the person might have to face. 

Looking back, I could remember vividly how badly I felt when I first started my visits out of the house and into the public's eye. Back then, pictures were difficult to come by and were mainly only accessible by the old "photo kiosks" and drug stores. Only one time get I get brave enough to take a roll of film to one of the kiosks to see how I looked on film. I was shocked, and not in a good way, I obviously looked like a cross dresser and a bad one at that. The worst part was, the person who developed and gave me my pictures knew me and even worse yet, his Dad worked with my Dad. My marathon was almost over before it started. If I liked it or not. 

As it turned out, I moved back into the mirror and did my best to remove the negative self image I still had from the ill advised pictures. It actually took me years to try to attempt more pictures as my marathon moved on. As with anything else, the more you work on something, the better you become. Also technology was on my side with better cameras, which offered more than the very expensive Polaroids giving instant pictorial feedback. I was fascinated with my first cell phone which took pictures and better yet I had my first computer that I used to upload cross dressed pictures of myself. By doing so, I attracted attention, flattering to begin with in chatrooms until my wife caught on. She learned the computer skills faster than I did, so I needed to try to catch up as fast as possible. 

My marathon marched on, I gained more and more confidence until I reached increasing problems with my gender dysphoria. It seemed, no matter how much effort I put into my feminine appearance and deportment, the more I felt like a guy in a dress. To survive, I finally had to come to a basic conclusion. I was not as good looking as a woman I thought I was, or as bad. There was always the middle point I needed to shoot for. Finally, I knew who I was and I had the confidence to move on from new problems such as impostor syndrome. 

Again, I needed to come to a middle point where I could survive as a person. While I could never reclaim a girl's childhood experiences, or the problems associated with having periods or pregnancies, I had to go through my own set of experiences which presented their own problems. For example, I needed to try to escape my own gender demons which everyone in life seems to have, male or female, trans or not. I finally had to end the part of my marathon I agonized over for so long and claim my own brand of womanhood. Somehow I always found a way to survive and found a path. I was able to chase it and find success...in my own way. Which turned out was all I could do.

Going all the way back to the person who was just starting their public journey as a transgender person, try to make your marathon as easy as you can, Roll with the punches and move along as quickly as you can but always remembering the entire process is a marathon, not a sprint and sometimes, you are your own worst enemy. 

Good Together

 

Image from Columbus, Ohio
from the Archives.

As I grew into expressing my authentic self, I felt the pressure of attempting to placate what was left of my male self while I was increasingly living as a transgender woman. 

Increasingly, I felt as if I was living with a stranger when I tried to express my male self. He was fading quickly into my past, much quicker than I thought possible. Who was this man who controlled my life for so long? It took me so long to have the courage to figure it out. As I always point out, the answer was an easy one. I never was a man cross dressing as a woman, I was a woman cross dressing as a man. Once I figured it out, my life became so much easier. 

Sadly, my male and female sides never were good together. My second wife was fond of teaming up with my male self against my femininized insecure self. When she needed help the most, it was extremely difficult to find. Fortunately, I was stubborn enough to mentally tell them to go to hell. Mainly, because I felt so natural when I was following my transgender instincts. 

Instincts led me to improving my natural presentation as a woman including fashion and make-up arts. Maybe as I improved, my wife and male self became more and more scared. Somehow they saw me glimpse my reality and they did not like the future they saw. Specifically, the very few nights, my wife actually went out to eat with my femininized self, she made it painfully obvious she did not like me. More than anything else, her attitude hurt my feelings since I had attempted to dress down to meet her standards of wearing jeans, boots and sweaters. My next step down for me was to wear no makeup at all which would have defeated the purpose of going at all. Essentially, I gave up on any idea of us co-existing as women of any type. We were never good together. 

All I really wanted was an even break, or so I thought. The more I ended up exploring the world as a novice transgender woman, the more I wanted to do. Eventually, I could take it no longer and took the only way out I had. I went the gender affirming hormone route and decided to pursue a life as a trans woman and the rest of the story is relatively easy. The more life I lived, the more I felt more relaxed and good together with myself. 

Life was good again as I had come full circle from the dark days of death and gender dysphoria.