Who was the Problem?

 

Image from Ben White on UnSplash

Looking back at my long journey to transgender womanhood, I finally discovered I was the true problem all along.

I was in shock. All this time I was desperately seeking someone else to blame for my gender identity issues. I kept thinking I was alone in the world and why did it have to be me. Remember too I grew up in the pre-internet generation before there was much if any real information available to gender challenged people. The struggle was real.

It took me years to figure out I was not a man cross dressing as a woman but rather I was a woman cross dressing as a man. To arrive at such a major point in my life required years of trial and error in the public's eye as a novice femininized person. To advance to the life I had always dreamed of, required a lot of work on one hand and confidence I could do it on the other. 

Somehow, I needed to work through all my paranoia I was experiencing and begin to enjoy my new life. I equate it now with learning to dance with a new partner and beginning to feel at ease with it. Primarily when I tried to perfect moving as fluidly and gracefully as a natural woman. Moving like a linebacker at a dance was out. It all was a major obstacle towards moving to my dream. Or could I ever hope to be able to live fulltime as a woman like I had seen others around me do. Then if moving as a woman was not difficult, communicating came along and presented the greatest challenges of all. 

The act of communication came up on me quickly. As I started to go out in the public's eye just to get out of the house as a woman, the better I became doing it. I learned quickly, how many other women wanted to communicate with me. For the most part, they were just being nice and wanted to know what I was doing in their world. Once they found out why I was there and I did not pose a threat, they wanted to know more. If I did not learn the basics of feminine communication quickly, then I would be the problem if I came off as unfriendly or even worse, bitchy. To work on my fears, I went back to the mirror to practice talking as a woman. It was bad when at first, all I could come up with was a scratchy falsetto which just would not work. Initially, before I began vocal lessons, I started with a quiet background voice as I tried my best to mimic the woman I was talking to. 

Perhaps the biggest problem I encountered was adjusting to the basic passive aggressive spirit of women everywhere. Primarily, I needed to learn a smiling face did not always mean acceptance from another woman. I was the problem when I treated smiles as acceptance and learned the hard way when they were not. I think I still have the scars down my back to prove it.

It turned out, my basic stubbornness to leave my male self behind was the real problem. All the stress and tension he caused over the years cannot be reclaimed.  In the end, I needed to put all the blame on myself. If I could have understood all my gender issues over the years, life would have been so much more pleasant for me. I am sure it all goes back to me knowing I felt better as a girl and more natural. I have no idea now why I waited so long. Except I did not want to give up all the materialistic items I had accumulated as a guy. It took a transgender woman to whisper in my ear that all would OK if I just had followed my heart and transitioned. Then I would not have been the problem at all. 

Joy to the World

Image from JJ Hart Liz on right.

Gender euphoria is so wonderful to a transgender woman or trans man striving to present themselves in the world as their authentic selves. On the other hand, it is often very rare to obtain. 

The brief moments I experienced euphoria in the world when I first went out as a novice trans woman or cross dresser, kept me going but barely. The reason was, I suffered from huge bouts of  gender dysphoria which wrecked my life. It seemed every morning when I woke up and looked in the mirror, would I see the same old male I never wanted to be or somehow see behind him and view the girl I always dreamed of being. My dreams even reflected my gender issues when I would awake following a very vivid dream where I was the pretty girl. When reality set in, I was very sad.

It took me years to realize I could fight back against my gender dysphoria and do more to live out my dream of living as a woman. Years of sorrow when I failed became years of joy when I succeeded. Progress was very slow at first as I went out shopping in the world and sought out every mirror I could find to restore my faith I was indeed a presentable woman just minding her business in the world. When I discovered most people did not really care about me, my life became much easier and took quite a bit of the pressure off I was feeling. 

Still, I needed more. On every occasion I could, I was out the door seeking new places to visit as my new exciting self. I was walking the gender border and feeling the joy on some of the days I was successful and torment on the days I was not. My main problem was trying to find feedback with what I was attempting to do. The only time I did receive any response was when I went to the small, diverse parties I went to at an acquaintance's house in nearby Columbus, Ohio. From transgender admirers to inquisitive lesbians, I had a chance to meet new people in my world and see how I measured up to them. I knew I could never be a beautiful as a few of the impossibly feminine transgender women who attended but just maybe I could elevate my appearance to a feminine level where I could get by. The parties also proved to be the initial starting point of developing my own new personality as a trans woman, so they were very beneficial.

As I experienced the joy of being my true self, something had to give. Sadly, the something turned out to be my male self and my marriage of twenty five years to my second wife. Both of them suffered terribly. Naturally, neither of them wanted to lose any power. My male self was quite comfortable in the life he had built and my wife did not want to lose the man she married, so I was in for very difficult times. What happened next was my mental health went into a very steep decline. I did not know where to turn and at that time did not have a good therapist to fall back on. Then I resorted to the worst possible choice when I tried to internalize everything. By doing so, I made everything worse. 

I continued to go out as much as i could but ended up just forcing the gender issue and losing any of the joy I had previously felt. It wasn't until I decided to begin gender affirming hormones and transition fully, did I begin to reclaim the happiness I felt. 

Was it worth it? Sure as I finally achieved my dreams of living fulltime as a transgender woman. I just wish I had the courage to do it sooner. Or as my second wife told me a number of times when we bitterly fought...be man enough to be a woman. 

The Double Edged Gender Sword

Image from JJ Hart. Wife Liz on left.

The longer we live as transgender women and trans men, often we find many aspects which represent a double edged sword. 

One of the edges of the sword has to be the duress we feel when at first we arrive in public for the first time. To make matters worse, we have no peer group to help us out of the mirror to be judged by the harsh eyes of the world. No one to tell us we looked clownish as we tried the makeup arts for the first time. I can't tell you how many times I hurried home in tears following being stared at at the least, or laughed out of a venue at the worst.

From it all, I learned to develop a thick skin and always go back to the drawing board as quickly as I could to help solve any presentation problems I might have had. Even when I was doing it, the cross dresser drawing board was certainly difficult to figure out. What happened was, I used the very brief moments of gender euphoria I earned and moved forward attempting to tightrope my way along the sharp edge of my sword. I was risking ridicule at the least and the loss of family, friends and employment at the worst. Failure as a transgender woman was a very real pressure.

Once I began to learn how to present in public more effectively as a transgender woman, I began to use my sword more effectively.  Then the world became much more comfortable for me in my quest to live my femininized dreams. In addition, my makeup arts became better as well as my use of hair to enhance my appearance. 

It bares mentioning also, going through the overall transgender experience, made me a more resilient person and set up to battle the more challenging times we face. I learned in my research transgender folk have always been around and always will be, no matter who tries to erase us. Battling the sword all these years helped me be more secure in my transgender identity. 

In all fairness to my sword, it started out very dull. I worked long and hard to sharpen it by going out in public which was the best indicator of my progress.  So I took all the good and bad and did the best I could with it. All my interaction with the public included the dark evenings when red-necks repeatedly kept playing "Dude Looks Like a Lady" on the juke box in a venue where I was a regular. Since management at the time would not support me, I left to find another venue and took my money elsewhere. I was rewarded months later when an employee from the venue I was discouraged from coming to, found me in another venue and invited me back. To make matters even better, the manager who would not back me up was fired for drug use. Excluding a stray bigoted woman in the woman's room, I never had any further problems there again.

Once my gender sword swung back into doses of gender euphoria, I began to appreciate all it had done for me. Transgender womanhood was finally mine to enjoy when I learned I was not a quitter and was in my transition for the long haul.