Once Your Eyes are Opened

 

JJ Hart, Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio

In my case, once my eyes were opened as a transgender woman, I could never close them again.

Perhaps it is because I went through so many trials and tribulations to arrive where I wanted, or even desperately needed to be in my life. Since I had so few natural feminine traits to work with, I really needed to work hard to achieve a feminine presentation. I tried all sorts of ill-fated ideas before I ever got it right. Yes, it was me making the routine cross-dressing mistakes such as attempting to dress as a teen aged girl when I was thirty and had a testosterone poisoned body. All I accomplished was directing unwanted attention to myself. 

 It took me awhile to realize what I was doing, and my eyes were finally opened to what I was doing. The perception I had was I was dressing for men, when in fact, I should be doing the opposite and dressing for the women around me I needed to co-exist with. I learned the hard way, women ran the world I wanted to be part of, and I needed to do my best to get there. All of this meant I needed to keep my eyes open and do the best I could to study the women around me. Or how did the women react to the world around them, good or bad. 

Sadly, blocking my way were women such as my second wife who wanted no part of living with another woman, transgender or not. She was content with letting me learn on my own what women needed to survive in the world. Looking back on it, her process for me was the best way to go because once I learned something in my new transgender womanhood, I never forgot it. Also, magically, once I opened one door to my new life, my eyes were opened to another door. 

As I opened a new door, I knew I could never go back to my old male life which was bringing me down. I felt so good and natural in my new life, there was really no choice to be made. The only problem was what was I going to do with all the male baggage I had acquired over the years. Similar to most of you, I had the usual assortment of spouses, family, friends and employment to deal with. Fortunately, I started my transition process with the person who turned out to be the most accepting of all my family and friends. I am speaking of my daughter and her immediate encouragement helped pave my way to more attempts at telling the world about my authentic self. I ended up going one for two in the family process when I was roundly rejected by my brother and his family. He opened my eyes to what transgender rejection could really be like.

Still, I persisted, knowing I was on the right path and my eyes were not deceiving me. It took me awhile, but I finally gained the confidence to look another woman in the eye and communicate one on one with her. To do so, I needed to not concentrate on how I sounded and instead put an emphasis on what I said. In order to survive, I needed to keep my eyes open at all times because certainly every other woman was not going to be my friend. 

I did keep my eyes open and learned the hard way to keep my head on a swivel. There were many claws I needed to be aware of. Quickly, I was hardened to what the new world was like around me. More and more, I could never go back to the male privileges I had before. Even though, I lost much of my intelligence according to most men and especially lost my personal security, I still wanted more and more of my transgender womanhood. 

You might say, I acquired new 20-20 vision and it was perfect in many ways. It was a long and difficult learning process, but it was the best life I could have ever imagined, and I just felt I had done it sooner. 

Nice to be Wanted

 

Image from UnSplash.

This morning, I had several errands to run. 

Neither of the errands required much prep time on my part since I knew ahead of time what I was going to face. Speaking of face, almost all that I did this morning was shaved mine. After a very close shave and an application of moisturizer, I was almost ready to go. 

When I arrived at my first destination, it was mostly empty, so I headed directly for the greeting/birthday card section. The pressure was on to buy the right cards to the best of my ability. The first card I needed was for a longtime friend of mine whose mother who is turning one hundred this year. I was thinking what in the world type of card could I ever get which would be appropriate for a person reaching such a wonderful milestone in her life. I think I picked a card which would be fine for the occasion.

The second card I had to pick out was for my wife Liz's brother who was reaching a milestone of his own. His 60th birthday. In addition, he has a very dry sense of humor, so it was difficult to judge which, if any, card would work for him or Liz. One way or another, in a vacuum, I made a decision for better or worse and moved on to the other items I needed to pick up. 

My first interaction face to face with a person in the store was with a clerk who was checking me out. In more ways than one, I think. To be clear, I don't think he found me attractive, but I do think he knew I was transgender. The reason was, he was very, very nice to me and made me feel very welcome as I left the store with my cards and other items I needed.

After a couple of other stops, equally as positive, I finally stopped at a coffee shop drive thru to pick up coffee and breakfast items for Liz and me. After the give and take with the guy at the speaker and window, I received my order and was pleasantly surprised when the name on my cup said, "You Rock!"  

The whole morning was obviously very supportive for me, and I am fortunate to live in a liberal suburb of Cincinnati and it showed this morning. Plus, I was waited on by younger men who seem to be more accepting to an obvious transgender woman. 

Changing the subject now, my resignation from the Greater Cincinnati Alzheimer's diversity council when they decided to drop the "diversity" part of their name was accepted so it now is a part of my past. I am saddened but was something I needed to do and not be a hypocrite.  

Finally, today, I am awaiting news on my request to renew my Estradiol prescription with my VA endocrinologist. The whole process used to be fairly routine but now, I am not so sure. When I hear back, I will let you all know. 

For me, it has been a busy day.

In a further update, my request to renew my Estradiol patches has been approved, so I am very relieved! 

The Comfort Zone

 

My trans friend Racquel

As a transgender woman or a trans man, you often encounter major barriers when it comes to reaching our gender comfort zones.

We have all sorts of setbacks such as family and spouses, employment and potential loss of friends. Giving up the life we had been leading is never an easy decision to make. It's definitely more than just an easy choice which a percentage of people (or transphobes) think it is. For some reason, they think it is just a matter of transgender people putting away their clothes and returning to their birth genders. They don't understand how deep our experiences run. Along the way, we become very resilient in our journeys and for the most part, our tribe is strong.

We are strong, in part, because of the time and experiences we went through to reach our comfort zones. I know I had to endure stares all the way to out and out laughter in the early days when I went out and challenged the world. Catching up with all the years I lost not growing up as a girl really came back to haunt me when I had to struggle to catch up. No one taught me the basics of fashion and makeup. More importantly, I did not have the confidence I needed to move forward to even learn if my gender dreams could ever become a reality. Which was the most important thing to me.

Slowly but surely, with success, my time in the comfort zone came around and I survived. It was never easy. To this day, when we traveled to the Florida Keys recently, after all I had been through in my life chasing my gender, I still was very nervous about several things I would face along the way on the bus tour.  I did not know how I would fare as a transgender woman on a bus full of strangers. Especially when it came to having restroom privileges as we traveled through the deep south. However, I can't spotlight the deep south for its anti-transgender laws when my native Ohio recently has passed some of the most restrictive trans laws in the country. I guess you could say, I could run but I could not hide.

Quickly, my fears dissolved as the other women on the bus began to not so slyly question my wife Liz and I's relationship. The reason was one woman said to Liz, she thought we were sisters. Which really increased my confidence and put me in a comfort zone which would last for the rest of the trip.

My comfort zone expanded, and I was able to enjoy my new reality of acceptance in my transgender womanhood. Of course, it was all challenged when I caught Covid on the way back to Ohio and ended up in a suburban Atlanta hospital. I was fortunate in that I had my Covid vaccine three months before and my case was lessened in its severity. My three days stay in the hospital really challenged my comfort zone because I have never had any gender altering surgeries. So, even though the staff initially thought I was a woman, it quickly became evident I was still a biological male. Hopefully, I won't have to go through an experience such as that for a while again.

As we all know, comfort zones are fleeting and have to be earned. You need to be patient and do the best you can until your confidence as a transgender woman or trans man comes along, and you are finally comfortable in your own skin.