Transition III

This week in Cyrsti's Condo, we have been running a series of posts on my perceptions of a MtF gender transition. Level One I called "Cross Dressing" and Level Two, I called "Tweener". Number Three I am going to call "S&S"...Successful and scared.

We finished up the last post writing about the "parallel lives" I was increasingly living. All of the sudden I was learning what my deceased wife said I would never know anything about-what a woman really went through in life. Certainly the existence was not the "kicks and giggles in heels" many think it to be, but a life I was coming to love. The more I understood it. At the least, people were beginning to relate to the new me and you know? I was scared on so many levels.

After all, here I was dumping all 60 plus years of male privilege in the trash at a time when merely having salt and pepper colored hair and goatee earned me a "Sir" if I deserved it or not.

I was scared too because I knew the next level was HRT and my male train was running out of track.

I was successful though because my transition felt so natural to me. For some reason I had been waiting for a moment of undeniable truth I was transgender.

There would be no turning back from that point forward. 

Transition Part II

Monday we started a series of posts here in Cyrsti's Condo on what I called my stages of a Mtf gender transition. I called Level One my "Cross Dressing" phase. Please remember, none of these stages are meant to disrespect anyone.

Today, I am going to name my second phase "Tweener." Why? As I look back on the years of trying my best to not face up to my true gender soul, I was in truth running from the fact my gender issues ran so much deeper than just putting on a dress and walking in the mall. These times were as tough on me as any adolescent kid going through puberty, except I didn't know which way I was headed.

The only certainty was, if I figured out beyond a shadow of a doubt I was transgender, I knew I could trash my life as I knew it. Family, job etc, all in a great big dumpster. So what did I do? Took it like a man. Tried to bluff my way through it and be as macho as I could and for the most part, it worked until little by little I started to slide to the inevitable.I knew that someday I would have to transition, or check out of this existence altogether. 

Physically, being a tweener to me meant living a whole different existence. I had to no longer approach the world hoping I could "pass" as a woman. I needed to see if I could live as one.

Slowly but surely I ended up having separate but parallel lives going on, which was tough too. As it turned out though, a little toughness was going to help the tweener grow up and take on a whole new world as a woman.

Stirring the "Hot Mess."

Most certainly if you have been around Cyrsti's Condo for any length of time, you know of Connie's name and regardless of what I write, my respect for her. If you wonder why read on:

"Transgender women of our age (and I'm going to stick with the three years that separate us for a few more weeks until I hit the big 6-5), grew up so clueless as to what and who we may have been. As you say, there was no internet to access, but the proper information wasn't available anywhere. What you call a "hot mess" was what I found to be an insidious "vicious circle", where acting out by cross dressing brought a temporary relief that carried with it a guilt that was equal to - or greater than - the amount of thrill of seeing the feminine self I felt to be inside. Soon, the required lying and deception became as much the thrill as dressing up was. All of the scheming, planning, and deception began taking up as much of my time as the actual act of cross dressing did. More importantly, it exhausted me on an emotional level and caused me to be a lesser spouse and parent than I wanted to be. Thus, more guilt and depression. I wasn't just an unhappy transgender(?) woman, I was a miserable excuse for a human being. 

I remember when we became "friends" on that unnamed "TransNazi" site. If I remember correctly, you put in a friend request to me, siting my cynicism and love of blues music as your reasons. I don't think either of us had a lot of "friends" on that site, but we did have our fun being smart asses - for me, mostly in my comments on others' blog posts, including yours. We've both changed so much, yet here I am, still being a smart ass on your blog. At any rate, I believe that we both benefited from each other's misery, which eventually allowed us to step away from the "hot mess" or "vicious circle" we'd been in individually for so long. My cynical take on that would be that I learned I wasn't, at least, as screwed up as that Cyrsti chick. Truthfully, though, it was the knowledge that someone else had been going through much of the same shit for so many years that made it easier for me to move on. I've found that to be more of a moving off the stage than the moving on to a new one. I had thought myself to be such a good actor until I'd discovered that I was really a bad one."

See what you have done, I'm tearing up. Damn hormones!!!!

On another level though, my lack of a father figure guilt trip didn't seem to work on my kid, so all turned out better than I could have ever expected. 

Maybe we could do a "bicoastal" weekly Podcast between Seattle and Cincinnati? :)

Bonnie Who?

Sorry Bonnie Raitt but a friend pointed this out to me!
Love your singing!!!       

First in a Series?

The more I work on Book #2 and see some of the ideas which I didn't use when I wrote  "Stiletto's on Thin Ice" I have come to the realization they couldn't because they hadn't happened yet.

While I love a crystal ball as well as the next girl, life just doesn't work for me that way. This time though I began to think of a series of ideas I could use here in Cyrsti's Condo and the new book (title undecided). 

First of all a disclaimer...This worked for me, barely, and is only my take on a very difficult journey. Also, my age is a factor too. There was no internet or super social media for most of my 67 years.

So, my first stage was as a cross dresser or transvestite. I did my best to sneak around and hide my habit from the world, while at the same time doing my best to accumulate a small collection of girl's clothing and makeup etc. 

I separate my crossdressing stage from a different level of awareness when I began to feel just looking at myself in the mirror wasn't enough. There had to be more. Increasing a little voice was growing in my head telling me "There just had to be." 

I also equate this time of my life with leaving a fetish stage of my life. Perhaps you read many cross dressers/transvestites who seem to cling to a specific article of women's clothing. (Like hose for an example.) I am not saying it is right or wrong, to each their own, but I just didn't. I wanted to look the best I could, but increasingly being a woman was overcoming looking like one in my mind. Sure shaved legs and panty hose felt great for a while until the world awaited to see you as a total person.

Looking back, this part of my life was equally scary, exciting and confusing, all in one huge hot mess. Unfortunately, the "hot mess" was to continue for nearly fifty years before I had enough courage to look inside my soul for real answers.

In the meantime, stage two for me was taking tentative looks out side the closet to see what the world was, or could be like for me.