How to Love a Transgender Person

 So many transgender people, women and men have a difficult time finding love as their authentic selves. Why is that so?

I think the path we have to take to arrive where we are takes an enormous toll. Take my journey as an example. My wife of twenty five years accepted me being a cross dresser but drew the line at any suggestion of the transgender word. We fought tooth and nail primarily when I became moody due to my gender issues or dysphoria. Little did I know, life would intervene, she would pass away, leaving me so alone.

The "Sad Eyes" Picture
Credit Cyrsti's Condo

I was down on myself and had very much given up on finding anyone who would accept me the way I was. I know too I wasn't alone, so many transgender women and trans men are fated to follow a similar path.

I am a believer in you have to love yourself before someone else can love you. During all the messy breakups due to transgender issues, both spouses come out deeply scarred. Then, when you add in the affects of certain social media sites and everything becomes worse. Too many "male admirers" seeking gratuitous attention. Too few seeking solid relationships. 

I went through all of that through a myriad of dating sites while all along I told the truth about me being transgender. At the same time, I was hanging out in straight sports bars as I went out to be alone. What happened was I was destined to meet two cis women (lesbians) who I became friends with. Primarily due to the fact I maintained my interest in sports as they did. 

Then there was Liz. Literally she picked me up off a dating site when she responded to one of my pictures saying I had sad eyes. Ten years later, we are still together. 

From all the sorrow and angst I see on certain social media sites, I was very fortunate. Once I learned to accept and love myself for what I was, I was able to accept the friendship and love from others.

Certainly, it is not easy to love a transgender person. So many are too touchy about their pasts to easily let love happen.

I do think though, more and more it is happening and I am no longer the exception to the rule.
 

Calling all Doctors

 Seemingly this week, all my doctors have ganged up on me. 

On a tour of an Underground 
Railway house. 

Monday I actually had to go to an in person appointment with the person who is called my primary provider in the Veterans Administration. Similar to a civilian's family doctor. Our visit was a fun filled half hour as she went over my blood work, examined me and set up two future feminine related exams. The first is my yearly mammogram which I don't particularly like but I consider a rite of passage. The second turned out to be a bone density scan. Bless her heart, my primary said all women my age should have one. Ironically both have been scheduled within days of each other in a couple of weeks. 

Tuesday was my video visit with my therapist. This session seemed to go a little better overall but I can't truthfully say I went into any very deep issues. I'm working on bringing more up to her but it is difficult for a person like me. 

Also yesterday was one non doctor related meeting, a Dayton Ohio Elderly Rainbow Alliance Board Meeting. It was very short as there was little  to go over. However coming up in September there is a presentation coming up down here in Cincinnati which I am going to volunteer to help with. 

Today is my video appointment with my new hematologist. It should be interesting to see her ideas on my iron levels. I have a tendency to run higher levels of iron which can hurt me. If the levels are too high, I have to have a phlebotomy (blood draw) to bring it down. The results of my latest labs were within range so I expect the appointment to go well.

Also today, sometime we have to squeeze in an appointment to the grocery store. 

All of this leads me back to the idea I had when I first came out as a transgender woman. How would life be once I couldn't go back to hiding in a man's world. Definitely material for another blog post. 
 

What Have we Learned?

 As I made the final gender transition from male to female, hormone replacement therapy was one of the keys to living more comfortably as a transgender woman. I have mentioned many times the wondrous effects as my skin softened, my hair grew on my head (and stopped growing on my body) and my breasts grew.

None of that came even close to the largest changes I was destined to experience on the other side of the gender frontier as a transgender woman. 

As I learned to perfect my outward feminine appearance, my life began to change. Perhaps the first example I encountered was when my car broke down and I had to call a tow truck as well as deal with a well meaning sheriff. I found out very quickly I didn't really know the best route home to my own house. Later that month was the first time I was actively shunned from a group of guys mansplaining to each other guy stuff. I knew then my life was changing forever and yet it felt natural. I should have been dealing with it for years.

I'm on the Bottom Left. My first Girl's Night Out.

All along, before she passed away, my wife was telling me I didn't really know what being a woman was all about. Until I seriously went down the path to learn, I found she was right.   

What else did I learn? Mainly how important communication is (or isn't) is between the two main binary genders. I also learned how important it was to learn to understand the unspoken communication between women and of course how much effort should be put into blending. In other words, walking the walk and talking the talk. 

I don't know if I couldn't have accomplished this gender trip on my own. I was able to form close friendships with several cis-woman. Even though they didn't outwardly teach me anything, I was observing and learning how they dealt with life.

Jumping genders is not for the faint of heart. It is a mostly error of trial and error until you get it right. Plus, I am not so sure I ever got it right. 

As an old transgender girlfriend told me years ago, I didn't pass as a woman easily. I passed out of sheer effort.

Nearly daily I learn I still do.

Conquering Dysphoria

 As I was previously writing about, my post Army years became an alcoholic blur along with a mad dash to attempt to out run my gender issues. As my authentic feminine self continued to push for acceptance, my male self took the usual way out. Act as macho as I could and keep changing jobs and places to live. I was trying desperately to outrun the truth. Along the way, I lived in such diverse places as the metro NYC area all the way to rural Southeastern Ohio along the Ohio River and West Virginia. 

All in all I managed to be successful in my career as a restaurant manager and salvage my marriage with more than a couple close calls as I was not telling the truth concerning where I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. It all started innocently enough when I started to volunteer to do the family grocery shopping. In fact, one of my best days occurred when a bagger in the grocery store was blatantly flirting with me.  It could have been because of the fashionable mini skirt I was wearing. By fashionable I mean many women during that era wore their mini with oversize sweaters and flats. However, the end result was just to embolden me do do more cross-dressed. 

Time moved on until I got caught by my wife and agreed to seek counseling from one of the only therapists who dealt with transvestites back in those days and she was far away in Columbus, Ohio. This was all before the transgender terminology or lifestyle became prevalent.

When the transgender terminology made it's way to me, it didn't take me long to suspect I indeed was trans. What took me longer was to do anything about it.

In the meantime, I was desperately still hanging on to the idea I could keep my feminine self in the closet. I ended up trying to live part time in both genders and it nearly killed me. After I failed active suicide attempt I shoved my girl self back into the closet for the final time. It wasn't so long after I did it, my wife of 25 years passed away. Which opened the door for me to transition.

Even though this seems like a blur to me and it is impossible to write about all the learning experiences I went through as I decided to cross the gender frontier, it was actually thirty years of my life. I am counting post military until I started hormone replacement therapy. 

HRT was an entire other story. 

One final question, did I finally conquer my gender dysphoria? Probably not. I will probably die with it even though I have been fortunate enough to live fulltime as a transgender woman for nearly a decade now. 

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!