The "Flip" Side

Liz and I at Cincinnati Pride 

 The second part of my post I started recently which mentioned  being envious of missing the life I lived as a young boy who desperately wanted to be a girl.

All in all, my story isn't much different from most of yours. Where we all differ is how far we went to conceal hiding our authentic selves in the closet.

During my youth in the 1950's, information on any or all gender differences was out of reach to me. I felt all alone. I wanted a doll for Christmas, not the BB gun I was gifted  As it turned out, Christmas was just the beginning of my problems, Another example I remember like it was yesterday was when our family was on a vacation to Ontario Canada from Ohio. One day, as the trip was at it's most boring we pulled up even and passed a car in which a young dark haired girl approximately my age was riding. Almost immediately I wanted so bad to be her. So badly I put my pillow over my face and pretended to go to sleep.

My desire to be a girl went far beyond going on vacation. During junior high school (7th thru 9th) grades where I went to school, I ended up setting close to the same girl in many classes and study halls. As I slowly began to develop a crush on her, I started to notice I was somehow different. I didn't desire her sexually at all. I wanted to be her. So much so, I adopted her name when I hid behind my families' back and dressed as a girl, 

Somehow I thought I would outgrow it, the ugly idea the whole idea was some sort of an evil phase. Still, I felt so alone in my cross dressing closet. 

Alone I would stay through high school until I finally shared my not so minor secret to the woman who was destined to be my first finance, In return for a couple nights of passion when she helped be to dress up she later was the person who rejected me when I was drafted and had to go in the Army, At the time the whole process was devastating to me but later turned out to be one of the best happenings of my life. 

Sure I had to put my feminine clothes away for my first two of three years in the military, ironically I was still in the Army when I came out to the first people in my life who accepted me. Including the woman who was to become the mother of my very accepting daughter. 

My life after the Army was an alcoholic blur for years until I slowly realized I was in reality a member of the new transgender group of people. More on that later. 

Sign of the Times

 The post I was going to write today was in many ways a continuation of the post I wrote yesterday, plus a look into the near future. Tonight we were going to go to the transgender-cross dresser support group social at our favorite Mexican Restaurant. 

All of that was before Liz found out she was exposed to a person who was exposed to a positive covid person not long ago.

Of course that puts everything on hold until Liz gets her Covid test Sunday, which is the earliest she can do it. 

In the meantime, if you haven't been vaccinated...do it!

Ganging Up on Me

 

Pre Weight loss Picture. Liz on left.

Most of the time, I struggle with topics to write about here in Cyrsti's Condo until today when I came up with too many. So I had to choose one and save one for tomorrow. 

Todays post deals with the walks I have resumed taking since the weather has briefly cooled off this week. Also, I seem to be reaping the extra energy of shedding pounds on this new diet my partner Liz and I are on. So far, the ten or so pounds I have lost have given me extra energy. 

None of that though has anything to do with todays' post. 

Usually, on my walks, I don't see anyone else except the occasional young girl or girls riding their bicycles up and down the street. They don't ever pay me any attention as  I can tell. This morning there was only one girl pedaling across the street. As I glanced at her, I wondered how it would have been to live as my authentic self at her age. 

Realistically I know each binary gender has it's own challenges and sometimes the grass does look greener on the other side of the gender street. 

How would it have been to be the pursed rather than the pursuer in the dating world. Especially if I wasn't pursued at all? 

How would it have been to grow up as a second class gender citizen? 

Those are just two questions I have out of many. 

The bottom line is I would have not had to struggle with gender dysphoria which would have given me so much more energy to put into my life as a girl growing up.

It turned out being a girl was my natural preference but...

Living in the past or the future is a waste though. Being able to salvage the present and live as a fulltime transgender woman has made it all worth it. 

Zion Moreno

 Zion Moreno made a name for herself as a transgender model and then switched to acting, appearing in 

Netflix's "Control Z."

In 2020, it was announced that Moreno would join the cast of the reboot of "Gossip Girl" on HBO Max. In the first episode — which premiered this summer — Moreno's character Luna is one of the rich kids with a bad attitude. 

"Gossip Girl's" executive producer Joshua Safran told Variety that Luna is transgender in the series. 

More Comments

Old Trans Ohio Symposium Picture

 Connie sent me an email at Cyrstih@yahoo.com saying her comments to the blog were being rejected by Google. Since then, seemingly the problem has been corrected because her new comment came through just fine. 

Also I received another comment through WordPress  from Mark Earnest Johnson: "It is so much easier to open up anonymously, when the people reading your blog aren't looking at you as you find the words and try to force them out, when you can't see their expressions.

Introverts. We are the root of our problem. We want to be helped, loved even. But, we don't want to be bothered with people, and there are times when we don't even care if we are really understood and known.

Paying a therapist is like paying a plumber or painter, however. You are plunking down something for a particular service - to be listened to, heard, and counselled (given psychological treatment). When you don't disclose fully, it's like giving you doctor only part of the symptoms that forced you to make the medical appointment in the first place. If you feel you need to talk to a therapist for a particular reason, or reasons, the therapist should know exactly what those reasons are and what you really want to talk about. They need all the information they can get - and so do you.

As always, though, thank you for the insight and honesty."

Thank you Mark. I always have thought personally I communicate more effectively with the written word than the spoken one. 

And here is the new comment from Connie which just happened today: "I think, as with most things in life, you get out of it what you put into it. Part of a therapist's training is in getting reluctant people to open up. Some are better at it than others. The rest of their job, with the goal of helping people deal with the core problem, cannot be effective without the initial "coming out" stage. All I ever needed was to realize that being trans was never my problem; other challenges were only exasperated by my trans status. Once I took the "fuck 'em if they can't take a joke" attitude about being a transgender woman (not that it's a joke to be trans, but it is full of many twists and irony), I was able to relax enough to work on the rest. I was diagnosed bipolar by one psychologist many years ago, but he was approaching it with the gender issue being the main problem. Well, being trans is NOT a problem that needs fixing. I do know, now, that the woman I am handles the ups and downs of my bipolar conditions much better than the man I tried to be was."

Thanks Connie. My bi polar diagnosis was always treated as a separate entity, fortunately. I always thought it wouldn't be but my current therapist has always treated me being transgender as a separate but equal issue. 

As you can tell, comments make the blogging world easier to navigate when you attempt to write a daily blog. I really appreciate it!

Therapy

 

Therapist at work.

Since my fairly recent post concerning my therapist, I have received several comments, including a lengthy one from my partner Liz. Among others things, she was concerned with me wasting my time essentially hiding myself from my therapist. 

Through my WordPress platform I received this comment:  "I know you are not asking for advice, but if you can’t open up to your therapist perhaps you should find a different one or just stop going…that is the one place it should be safe to open up. If you aren’t getting that, at least you should talk about that."

Thanks! Liz mentioned that also. After all these years, I think I owe it to my therapist to at least bring up the subject of my expectations for her input.

Another comment came from Connie: "Well, I happen to be so cheap, ehr, thrifty that I have been completely open with any therapist I've seen. I don't like to pay for something I already know, and I want to give all the info I can about myself, so that the therapists can use their knowledge of how to make my life better. Of course, I've also had to educate them on what a trans person really is about most of the time. Unfortunately, I've had no luck with therapists making my life better - except for the one I saw for grievance counseling after my mom died my mom my mom's insurance covered it). He was from The Bronx, and had been a standup comedian before going into Psychology. The one thing he said, in his New York accent, that summed it all up was, "Fuck 'em, if they can't take a joke." I followed that with, "You mean that life is too serious to be taken too seriously?" He didn't even bother to ask if I wanted to make an appointment for another session. :-)

Thanks Connie, unfortunately I seemingly have lost the idea of free VA therapy somehow not being as important. When in fact it is. I had several different therapists I had to pay for out of my pocket and I expected more. Truthfully I didn't get more, I just didn't know what to expect. 

Heavy Weight Transgender

 On August 2nd, New Zealand's "Laurel Hubbard" will become the first out transgender athlete to participate in an Olympics. However, being able to compete has not come without it's challenges. 

The International Olympic Committee's medical chief has praised New Zealand transgender athlete Laurel Hubbard's bravery as a trailblazing athlete at the Tokyo Olympics.

Hubbard will become the first transgender athlete to compete at an Olympics when she starts in the heavyweight 87+kg category on Monday, a milestone Richard Budgett says is scientifically and morally justified.

Hubbard's participation has been a controversial topic. Australia's weightlifting federation tried to block Hubbard from competing at the 2018 Commonwealth Games, a ploy that was rejected by organizers, while British television personality Piers Morgan said her selection and approval was a "disaster for women's sport".

As you can imagine, there is much more. 

Vintage Drag

 I watch quite a few vintage movies on the Turner Classic Movie television network. Along the way I have discovered several "William Powell" classic movies. Especially the "Thin Man" series.

Yesterday I discovered a movie called "Love Crazy" in which Powell dons drag and impersonates a woman.  It's from 1941. Here is a picture.

Familiarity?

Pre Covid martial arts banquet.

 Every time I finish an appointment with my long time therapist, my partner Liz always digs deep to discover if I have told her (or anyone) of my deepest secrets.   Yesterday, I finally told her (Liz) no I don't go that deep with my therapist. I have a tendency to dance around any subject which pertains to me. We have been having sessions now for nearly a decade now so her familiarity with me allows me to dance away and rarely does she (therapist) catch me. 

I'm sure the reason I do it is goes back to the majority of my life when I struggled to hide my gender  dysphoria totally along with the inability to even understand what was going on with being bi-polar. Needless to say the entire process was very difficult and I became very good at hiding my true self from others. 

Even though Liz still has to take a pry bar to me to get me to show emotions, I am trying in my own backward way to be more outgoing. 

As far as my therapist goes though, maybe I should pull down the barriers and let her have it. Then again maybe not. My Dad was very emotionally withdrawn. It's just so difficult to overcome.