Mirror Mirror

 

Mirror Image Courtesy 
Jessie Hart

Yesterday in my post I briefly mentioned my life in the mirror as a cross dresser. As I remember I wasn't giving the mirror enough credit for running my life.  Then ss I concentrated more and more on my feminine appearance, the mirror began to take on an increasingly  important role. So much so my mirror worship began to extend itself into the public eye. 

What happened was as I began to explore the world as a girl, I sought out the nearest mirror to critique my appearance and reinforce the idea I was finally escaping my gender closet. I found and located all sorts of mirrors to occupy my interests. Examples included numerous mirrors in clothing stores all the way to mirrors in craft or warehouse improvement stores. If there was a mirror, I found it. 

My all time favorite as I remember was a mirror in a coat warehouse store I used to frequent. Somehow I picked out a light blue wool beautiful winter coat I could never afford. The closest I could come was to admire how good I looked with that coat on in the mirror. I am surprised I wasn't kicked out of the store for never buying it. 

The huge problem with using mirrors as feedback is, it is only one way feedback and highly biased. I can't begin to tell you how many times I thought I looked fabulous only to be immediately laughed at when I went out. It took so many years for me to realize my strengths and weaknesses I had a problem too of trying to validate myself as a woman with men simply by pushing the standards of classy dress into the trashy category. It all led to the mirror leading me into more than a few screenful situations when I went out. 

Finally I made it to the point where I could trust the mirror to tell me the truth. I backed it up with how other women treated me, Finally I learned to cross dress to blend. My feedback became from how I was treated as a person as my closet door began to open more and more. As it did, society became my mirror and I was able to afford clothes which better highlighted who I was trying to become as a woman in society. The clown wigs went away and were replaced by more realistic wigs which better reflected who I was. 

Even now though I still fight the mirror. Most mornings when I wake up I always fight the temptation to look at myself in the mirror. Most of the time I think who is the old hag staring back. Then I think well at least I am a 73 year old feminine old hag nd maybe with a touch of makeup I can improve my image, 

At any rate, by now I should know to never trust the mirror anyhow. Take the best you may feel you look and combine it with the worst and believe you are seeing your truth.  

One Little Word

 

Photo Courtesy
Jessie Hart

Often I wonder how one little word gained such power in my life. That one word of course is "she." 

From my youngest days I also wondered how magical it would be to be called the she word. It never happened. As life went on and I became a little more advanced in looking feminine, I dreamed of getting out of the mirror and into the world as a feminine person. Many, many times the mirror would lie to me and not let on to me how much farther I would have to go to achieve my goal. Plus the only time I was sneaking out of the house as a girl was when I snuck out a few times to walk down our longish driveway to the mailbox. 

Time went on and I stubbornly kept working on my craft...applying makeup and finally in my college days I gathered my courage to leave the house at night and drive to a local shopping center to see if I could see my reflection in the windows of the stores. A few I could and I was thrilled and encouraged at the sight. Still though, it was a lonely experience and there was no one to call me "she". I would have to wait many more years for it to happen. 

Next up were my Army days and it wasn't in the drill sergeants' vocabulary to call me she. Even my rather successful Halloween appearances as a woman weren't good enough to earn me the title. 

It wasn't until I began to become very serious about my appearance and experimenting with going out in public more and more did the she word become tantalizing close. What happened was the public I was increasingly interacting with indirectly was demanding I be more feminine. 

The tipping point came when I started hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I always considered HRT was the dividing point between my first and second gender transition. The first was when I was a cross dresser and the second was when I went down the transgender path. Finally the changes I was experiencing under HRT demanded she would enter the vocal format when it came to me. In no way shape or form I was a "he" anymore. 

Approximately during this same time period HRT made it much easier to transition my main pronouns from he to she. Relatively quickly I became so androgynous the public was becoming confused when they met me. 

It may have taken me fifty years to do it but people started to finally call me she. My authentic pronoun. I did discover also I was correct when I was young it would be a wonderful magical experience to be called "she". 

A Strong Woman

Female Body Builder. 
Photo by Ryan Snaadt on Unsplash

 Recently I have noticed a rebirth of the posts asking what is a woman. As always I see the entire subject as essentially unanswerable. A woman to me is a highly personal subject which depends on the socialization of the person. I believe no one is born a woman, or a man. In both cases, life socializes both genders into whatever life they end up living. 

Currently, especially with the latest Supreme Court decision there are different pressures on women. Perhaps now, more than ever it is more difficult to be a strong woman. And, as always being a transgender woman becomes even more tougher. 

In some circles, we transgender women are rejected by cis-women as somehow being bogus. Surely our route to womanhood is very different than theirs but who is to say it is a wrong one, or even a dead end. Reading all the experiences on Medium has helped me to reinforce my belief in following the transgender pathway as a true gender journey to becoming a woman. Often a stronger woman due to all of the life experiences we have faced. Following a path we have no real choice but to follow, we have to fight the effects of testosterone and the loss of male privilege. 

I met an example a couple nights ago I met in person a Facebook acquaintance who is also a part of the transgender-crossdresser group I am part of. She works in the healthcare industry and carries herself as a confident young (to me) woman. I couldn't help but be confident our transgender future is in better hands with people such as her in existence. 

It's easy to point out a woman is the stereotypical gentle mother figure. The glue who holds the family together. The truth as we all discover, a woman is so much more. It took me a while to learn what my wife was trying to tell me when she said I had no idea what being a woman was really all about. In fact it was just a couple days after I was mistaken for a cis-woman at a transvestite mixer I went to. I was on a cross dresser ego trip when she brought me down saying I made a terrible woman. I replied how could that be when I was almost denied admission to a mixer I went to without her. She immediately said she wasn't talking about how I looked, it was how I acted. It wasn't until much later when I really began to live a feminine life did I know what she meant.

I learned the hard way women live a much more complex life overall than a man. Everything from raising children to communicating a different way within their own gender. A strong woman has a lot to learn and keep up with. 

I have been fortunate to have known, loved and even learned from some of the best.    

Bi-Personality?

Photo Courtesy Jessie Hart

Along the way, of course I have read extensively on being Bi-Polar which I am and Bi-Sexual which I am not. 

Looking back, yet another of the "Bi's" I considered I was that I was Bi-Personality. Finally I determined all of it was just another phase I was going through to justify my gender issues. Along the way I had gone through a number of other "phases" or so I thought. One of the main ones was I cross dressed in feminine clothes temporarily to relieve the pressures of life. As I grew older and faced such pressures as college and the military, I would grow out of my need to cross dress. Wow! Was I wrong. The older I got the more I grew into my feminine self. Even to the point of coming out as transgender.  

One of the more extreme "phases" I went through was thinking I simply had two personalities, one male and one female. The more I considered it, the less simple it all became. What I refused to do was listen to my authentic feminine self causing great stress. Finally I could take the stress no longer and decided to begin hormone replacement therapy to start gender transitioning seriously. 

At this point I was interested to learn if my transition would have any serious positive effect of my Bi-Polar status. The short story was it didn't. I still suffered the same anxiety and depression I did before. So I could take that "Bi" off my list. Or one didn't explain the other. As it turned out, transitioning was going to solve another "Bi" in my life. Was I indeed suddenly sexuality attracted to men? Fairly quickly I learned I wasn't into men except in the rarest cases. Even though I felt a man's attention validated me as a woman, the final sexual result was not worth it. 

With the other two "Bi's" out of the way, the final one to be determined was I truly "Bi-Personality" or was one of the binary genders (male or female) more dominate. I am sure it is no surprise to all of you what the final answer turned out to be. The feminine side of me finally earned her chance to take over and run my life and essentially restored it from a very dark place. I have forever wondered just what I could have made of myself if I had taken the steps much earlier to live as my authentic feminine self. 

Perhaps of all the "Bi's" the personality one has been the most important. Of course the "Bi-Polar" made me miserable until I came to a place where understanding and medication helped to control it. Finally "Bi" Sexual was the easiest to solve.

In other ways also, the "Bi's" fit together in my life similar to a puzzle. I needed a therapist (which I found) who was willing to accept my "Bi Polar and Gender Dysphoria" were two aspects of my personality which didn't necessarily effect the other. And, my sexuality was left to me to determine. 

To finish off this post, should I say "Bi-Bi"?  

Bucket List

 

Jimmy Buffett Courtesy Sony Pictures

It's Jimmy Buffett day here in Cincinnati. Jimmy's concert has been an entertainment mainstay for years with people camping out a day early along the Ohio River venue to insure a good seat or view of the festivities. 

Every year the concert was one of the must do activities for my deceased wife and I to do. No matter what the cost I purchased tickets as close to the stage as I could. Plus we would gladly make the hour trip (one way) to get there. Of course all of these trips I made were as my old male self. I remember vividly being distracted at the concert by the other cis women and their clothes which sometimes bordered on the skimpy. My heart broke when I couldn't join them.

Ironically, in the present, since I moved to Cincinnati with Liz we only live approximately twenty miles from the venue where Jimmy is entertaining. Also the fact remains I have transitioned into a full time transgender woman so the opportunity to cross a Jimmy Buffett concert off my transgender bucket list should be one I could mark off my list...if I had one.

That's right, I don't have a bucket list. Throughout my life I have been able to finally find a way to do most everything I wanted to do. Most of it is to do with my major goal of becoming a full time functioning feminine person. My example is when I was growing up and someone asked me what I wanted to be later in life, my secret answer was always a girl. My thoughts continued all the way through adult hood till my deceased wife and I went on a vacation and it wasn't long until she started to ask me why I was miserable. Being the man I always tried to be, I apologized and didn't tell her the truth, I wanted to be on vacation with her as a woman. Very quickly my so called bucket list was history. Mainly because I knew I couldn't move forward and transition to a woman and preserve my marriage, job and many other aspects of my life. 

In many ways I felt I was swimming with sharks not unlike the central figure in Jimmy's Fin's song. If I varied my path one way or another, the sharks were waiting for me. 

Regardless, I still don't have much of a bucket list as I approach 73 years of age. Most I have are involved with staying healthy later in life. Long gone are the ideas of going to Kathmandu as we had a chance to do when I was in the Army in Thailand. Sadly, I know for certain my friends I was trying to go with have passed on. 

Perhaps you could also say my bucket has just rusted out. I keep thinking next year maybe the one I magically become healthy enough to brave the crowds and see Jimmy Buffett performing in Cincinnati before he retires. 

  

Mardi Gras

 

Photo by Ugur Arpaci on Unsplash

Several years ago, pre Covid, my partner Liz and I decided to take a bus tour down from our native Ohio to New Orleans for Mardi Gras. We had done a couple other bus trips in the past so I was ready for the rest room challenges I would face...I thought.  

Very early on I learned  the toilet on the bus would be off limits to all except those in dire need. Which meant the bus would make scheduled stops at certain rest areas. My first learning experience came when I stood in line with approximately twenty other women waiting to use the bathroom. At the time I thought I never signed up for this but the first couple places we stopped were in rural areas, so everything went fine. So, at that time I started to gain confidence that no one on the bus would complain a transgender woman was using the wrong rest room.

On the way down to New Orleans, things began to change. The rest stops turned into truck stops and other stops along state lines in deep southern states. The worst by far came when we stopped on the Mississippi/Alabama line. I was petrified but had to go so I had no choice to join the waiting line of women. Even then, all went fairly well until I was coming out of the stall I used and came face to face with two obviously disapproving women. I tried to speed up the process and get my hands washed and leave the bathroom before I happened to run into those women again. I was so scared I was worried about a state patrolman or local sheriff pulling the bus over for a check. Fortunately nothing like that happened  and the bus rolled on without incident. 

Ironically, the only push back I received from anyone on the bus was when we arrived in New Orleans and stopped to eat at an upscale seafood restaurant. After dinner I excused myself  to use the Ladies Room and when I stepped in the door, one of the other passengers was washing her hands. She looked at me and said with a little surprise "Oh you use the same bathroom we do." She did not refer to the experience again and life on the bus went on until we arrived at our destination. A beautiful restored hotel within walking distance of Bourbon Street and the French Quarter. 

We then took full advantage of the two unplanned days we had to take advantage of the "Big Easy". Also most ot the pressure of using the rest room was  taken away. Until the night of Mardi Gras itself. Since rest rooms were at a premium, venues were requiring a purchase to use theirs. We did make our way through the madness of Bourbon Street to finally learn a couple of the venues we could eat and use the facilities at were just a block off the strip. One turned out to be the oldest gay venue in the city which we stopped at and the other a tavern which served food which had a patio style courtyard  where we could eat. 

Before it was time to turn around and go back, I decided to use what could only be described as an out house with a flush toilet. It reeked of sewer gas, so I hurriedly took care of business and started to leave. Of course when I opened the door, a line of women had formed on the other side. I felt bad if they thought I had caused the odor, but it was time to face the long walk back to the hotel. 

As far as the entire Mardi Gras experience went, I wouldn't trade it for the world but it is certainly designed for a younger person than me. It's definitely the party to go to if you are worried about presenting as an out transgender woman. Obviously nearly anything goes. 

Restroom availability and usage are a different story. At some point you are going to have to pull down those big girl panties and go for it. You haven't lived until you have waited in a line of women at a rest room. Mardi Gras or not it is a rite of transgender passage.  

I "Doesn't Know It'

Photo by Simone Secci on Unsplash

The phrase "I doesn't know it" was often used by the Cincinnati Reds baseball Hall of Fame announcer Marty Brenneman.

I have borrowed it for this post to explain how I feel when someone feels like we had a choice to be transgender .For the life of me I can't understand why someone would think anyone would just pick  such a gender path because the whole journey would be so much fun. Maybe the person thinks we transgender folk are just trying to sneak behind the gender curtain to see how the other half lives.  

Somehow, they don't realize the danger we sometimes face as we just go about our daily lives. In fact locally to me a transgender man was just beaten up severely for just using his chosen restroom in a state park. I am fairly certain he didn't choose for that to happen just because he was having fun. 

Unfortunately, rest room abuse is not the only problem transgender women and men face during their lives. Personally, back in the day, I encountered everything from snickers and stares to strangers wanting to take my picture while I was minding my own business shopping. Plus I have documented my own issues using the rest room (ladies) of my choice. 

So, I doesn't know it when confronted by someone who considers being transgender is a choice. Maybe I could show them some sort of a measurement of the valleys of gender dysphoria don't come close to equaling the peaks of gender euphoria. Plus it is very difficult to explain the extreme problem of  just waking up in the morning trying to figure out what gender you (I) will want to be that day. 

All in all I am puzzled why anyone would even approach the subject of why I "chose" to be transgender and it has been years since I have been approached about the subject. As I think about it, being asked why I had the choice to be transgender is better than being threatened with physical harm. There are too many violent people in this country as evidenced by what happened to the trans man in the restroom.

I am biased but there seems to be more important concerns in society than bullying or terrifying transgender women or men. I doesn't know it how the issue will ultimately be settled. 

Still in Vogue

 This movie actually goes back to 2013 but it's  theme still remains true.

 

Growing up Dysphoric

I may be biased but I can't think of anything worse than growing up with a massive case of gender dysphoria. Of course the problem was compounded by growing up in the pre-internet, pre social media era. Unless you were fortunate enough to discover and subscribe to Virginia Princes' Transvestia magazine, you were basically cut off from the rest of the gender dysphoric world. In other words, the dark ages of locating any gender support at all. Dark times indeed for those of us stuck in our closets wondering if we were the only one anywhere who wanted to express themselves as the other binary gender.

Through it all, I felt I wouldn't wish my gender dysphoric impulses on anyone. There were so many times in my life I wished I could go back to being a man full time. After all I had spent so much time and effort to survive as something I wasn't, it seemed so unfair I couldn't enjoy any of the fun aspects of being a man. As time went on, the more time I tried existing as a man I was suffering from a severe case of impostor syndrome. The more time I spent discovering my authentic feminine self, the more natural and detached I felt from the masculine self I had tried so hard to become a part of. Try as I might I just couldn't feel natural around a group of men doing stereotypical men things.

I tried along the way to live with a foot in each of the binary genders or how I could exist and live equal time as a man and a woman. Naturally it didn't work as I encountered all sorts of problems remembering which gender I was operating as. Plus another problem arose when I began to feel much more natural as a woman, which led to me having an extra amount of resentment towards having to try to be a man at all. To make a long story short the whole ugly process led me to attempt a self harm attempt (suicide). It obviously wasn't successful and ultimately forced me down the path of least resistance...a path to being a full time transgender woman.

Even though I eventually reached my feminine dream I still have to live with the scars of growing up with gender dysphoria. I still wake up every morning seeking the reassurance of having my own long hair and breasts. Every little bit helps to remind me I am finally living my dream. Even still, I still wonder what it would have been like to grow up as a guy who didn't want to become a woman. 

It will be a secret I won't know until I make the final transition to the other side. Maybe then I will find out why I was chosen to learn how both genders live and exist. Maybe I was blessed or cursed.