Merry Christmas

Leg Lamp from the "Christmas Story"

 Doesn't seem possible another year has flown by and here I am writing another Christmas Day blog post as the "Yule Log" plays on the television behind my wife Liz and me.

Earlier this morning, I cried tears of sorrow and joy. The sorrow came from remembering the times of my life when my family was strong, and we had festive Christmases. Plus, I am old enough to remember how much fun it was when the downtown was vibrant and glowing with its holiday decorations. Now around here at least, the downtowns have been replaced by sterile decaying malls or outside shopping centers. I even cried when I recalled the life my ex-brother and I shared. 

Now, the tears of joy. Slowly but surely as I began to think about the present, I shed tears when I thought of the love I feel for Liz and how fortunate I am to have someone to love me in a season where so many others, especially in the transgender community just don't. When my brother and his family rejected me during the holiday season over a decade ago, I found a new family with my daughter and Liz. I know I am blessed.

On this Christmas, I also make sure I watch a couple of my favorite classics such as "It's a Wonderful Life" and Ralphie's "The Christmas Story." Ralphie is especially special to me because the time period it represents is roughly the same as mine growing up. The only difference is, instead of the BB Gun Ralphie so desperately wanted, in my case I received the gun but did not get what I wanted, a doll baby. It is poetic justice, I guess.

Regardless, I hope you have a Merry Christmas with blood or chosen family and thanks for joining me!

 

Getting What you Want

 

Image from Aiden Craver
on UnSplash.

This is not really a Christmas post, even though in many ways, it fits in well with the season. 

As I was growing up, I vividly remember being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up into an adult. I also remember lying and saying something like a lawyer or doctor. Anything to make my parents happy without telling whoever asked, I really just wanted to be a girl when I grew up. An answer such as that would have landed me in all sorts of trouble.  

I progressed through life doing my best to navigate a very dark and bumpy gender road without much help from anyone except the occasional therapist. Through it all, for the longest time, getting what I wanted was a faraway dream. During my gender journey, I faced all sorts of problems such as my reoccurring issues dealing with my feminine appearance. Like so many of you, I needed to learn the fashion and makeup arts all by myself with no one to help. Back in those days, there were not the plethora of on-line makeup videos and special makeup stores to help a novice cross dresser along.

Then there were the up close and personal meetings I had with the impossibly feminine transsexual women I met. Interacting with them made me feel again how impossible my dream of becoming a full-time woman of any sort would be. However, it was about this time I began to take better care of myself, so I had a chance of becoming a better feminine version of myself. 

I dieted and lost nearly fifty pounds and began a regular skin routine which really helped with using less makeup and achieving better results. Suddenly, there was a light at the end of my presentation tunnel which was not the train. Maybe I could get what I wanted after all. At that point, I really became serious about exploring the world as a transgender woman. The rest as they say is history. When I did gather the courage to enter the world, I found I could survive. I discovered a great majority of the world did not care and a smaller percentage was just curious and amazingly enough, a smaller percentage yet respected me for living my truth. The bottom line was I survived and became better at life as a transgender woman.

When I did survive and relaxed, I saw my reality shining through. Maybe, just maybe, I could shed the shackles of my old male existence and live my gender dream. I could answer finally my own question of what I wanted to be when I grew up. A woman. To further the process along, I was able to begin gender affirming hormones which femininized me even further. My facial lines softened, my hair and breasts began to grow, and my emotions softened to the point where I could cry freely for the first time in my life. Through it all, my body was asking me what took so long to start HRT.

Looking back, getting what I wanted was the most difficult trip I had ever taken in my entire life. Pure perseverance and destiny helped me along to a full-time life away from my old unwanted male self, into a life I always wanted.   

Creative Gender Tensions?

 

Image from Levi Stute
on UnSplash

As I moved along my long and bumpy gender path, seemingly I created many gender tensions which were overblown or not needed at all.

It all started innocently enough when I first caught a glimpse of myself for the first time wearing makeup and a dress in the family's full length hallway mirror. Immediately, I knew I was hooked and could not wait to cross dress again for my own personal pleasure and delight. Sadly, the gender tension began when I could not dress again for a while. All of it sometimes became unbearable when I woke up in the morning not knowing if I wanted to be the boy I had always been, or the girl I was increasingly wanting to be. To say the least, life was very confusing, and I felt I had to be the only person in the world dealing with the same gender issues.

In the pre-internet years (along with social media), I was in the so-called dark ages of information. I had very little in the way of outside information to guide me along or challenge the many new ideas I was considering when it came to my gender life. Everything was out of focus including my sexuality. Did I like girls at all or did I just want to be one. The tension was real but still I kept struggling along trying to be the best male bodied person I could be. 

Then the internet came along and with it, my life was changed forever. Once we could afford a computer, suddenly I found how un-alone I was and how many others there were in the world with similar gender issues to mine. Of course, I was just not content to read about others, I needed to try to interact. I became involved with several early chat rooms which eventually were discovered by my second wife when she learned how to search my browsing history. Even though the great majority of the people I chatted with were not geographically close to me, I found one who was. In fact, he was within fifty miles, so a meeting was certainly possible. That was until my wife found out and an all-new battle broke out over the control of the computer. Until I learned more about erasing my history on the computer, I needed to stay off of it. Which created a new set of gender tensions. 

Living with my tensions became second nature over the years. I followed the same old up and down patterns of being up when I cross dressed, to being down when I was forced back into my male life. I rode the edge of a double-edged sword for years until I finally decided to face the truth about myself and be me. Still, it took me years of careful exploration of my transgender womanhood before I cautiously decided I was on the right path. Once I did, much of my gender tension disappeared and I knew I was making the right move for a change. All that was left was to make the crucial decisions about who I was coming out to and when.  When I did come out, I was met with approval from my daughter and rejection from my brother, so I suppose it could have been better or worse. I still had immediate family when I did it which decreased my tension along with providing me extra confidence in myself, I never had known before. 

By now, perhaps you are wondering where the creative portion of all of this comes in. All the time when I was traveling my gender path to transgender womanhood, there were many chances to zig when I should have zagged, and I ran into problems I needed to get out of. Mostly trying to navigate the problem of expressing my new transgender self while still being involved in a committed relationship. All I can say is somehow I survived and made it to my new life as a trans woman. 

When I did, my tension went away, and I was able to live a life free of gender problems which had plagued me my entire life. The relief was real.