The Pain of Gender Transition

Image from UnSplash

When anyone states gender dysphoric individuals or gender fluid folks who seek to live as their authentic selves did it because they  had a choice, I think they are crazy. They obviously don't  know anything  how much pain and suffering goes into our journeys.  Most of us from our earliest days grew up with unapproving parents. It took me until my early twenties to come out to my Mom. Which at that time I was rudely rejected by the offer of psychiatric treatment. At the same time I never came out to my Dad and both of my parents have long since passed on. In fairness to both of them, at that time, there was very little information available on any gender issues. 

Even still, none of that excuses the pain I suffered. I went through days and even weeks wondering currently exactly which gender did I want to be on any given day. Of course the more I researched my mind, the more I knew I wanted to be feminine. I just couldn't find a path to get there. Plus, once I started to find my way, I needed to figure out if it was the correct path and what were the roadblocks going to be in the future. As it turned out, there were plenty.

As I always mention, the thought of losing my male privilege's as well as friends, family and work consumed me. The pain led me to drink too much alcohol as well as developing an active self harm personality. 

As far as my male self went, I fought every feminine encroachment as hard as I could but it seemed the only way I could numb the pain was to give in to my gender desires. No matter how many times I tried to relieve the pressure to be feminine by cross dressing, all was good for approximately three days or so before the urge to present my femininity began to build to a pressure point I could barely maintain. In the meantime my old male self became a disaster to be around. To this day, I don't understand how the significant others in my life stayed around me. On many days I didn't want to be around me. 

As my pain and suffering continued and even increased the tearing of my inner self approached the point of no return. I made it to the point I thought death would be an improvement to the way I was living. A place I found no one should ever be but an overwhelming number of  transgender are. In itself, the threat of suicide should prove to the doubters being transgender is far from being a choice. It is a deep desire and need. 

Sadly the transgender transition path is lined with many obstacles along the way. Once we conquer one roadblock more complex ones crop up. The whole process again proves those following it are in it for the long term and it was never just a choice.   The pain was real.

Escaping the Closet

 

Photo Courtesy  Becca McHaffie
on UnSplash

During my long path to finally discovering I wasn't a man at all, I realized I made many mistakes along the way when I considered how I treated women. First of all, I was very shy around girls and or women, so I had a tendency to go slow when I actually met one. In fact my shyness held me back from really getting to know the gender I was so attracted to, for all the wrong reasons. By the wrong reasons I mean I didn't really want to date or be with a girlfriend, I wanted to be them. For this reason, I think most women weren't particularly attracted to me. I certainly wasn't one of the so called "bad boys" but came off as being too nice. I had one woman in college tell me something to the effect I was similar to dating a comfortable living room chair. Which was the last time I ever saw her.

I guess I was trying too hard not to be the guy around me who only mentioned a girls' physical attributes. When at the same time, I secretly wanted to be the girl the guys were making all the fuss about. In turn, these girls were the focus of how I wanted to look like in front of the mirror when I had the rare privacy to cross dress. My feelings also carried over into my sports activities when I would watch the cheerleaders instead of concentrate on my position on the football team. I again thought the cheerleaders had such an easier and glamourous life, so I wanted to be them. 

About this time, the military draft stepped in to change my life forever. I was forced to go to college earlier than I should have so I could put off the draft as long as possible,  The whole experience reinforced my inner opinion women had it better because they didn't have a forced military adventure in their future. For some reason, after my current fiancé and I called it quits, I decided to go it alone during my three years in the Army. Sure it was lonely and often I was envious when my friends received all their letters (remember them?) from home. The only correspondence I ever received was from my Mom. I learned the hard way what didn't kill you made you stronger. The true reason, deep down, I didn't follow up on any possible female attention I could have had was because I wasn't so sure of where my deep seated gender dysphoria would take me.

It turned out to be my own forced loneliness was the smart way to go. The whole process enabled me to see the extent of my gender dysphoria and try to come up with any sort of plan to deal with it. Of course that was easier said than done. When I returned to civilian life, I basically started back in  where I had left off. Secretly attempting to sneak in dressing in women's clothes whenever I could find the time and privacy. Plus the birth of my daughter, all of the sudden added another spectrum to my life. Like it or not, she brought stability. Which for me was often hard to accept. Even still, stability did not bring any major changes to my gender issues. During this time I was suffering from undiagnosed Bi-Polar mood swings and gender problems dealing from not being able to get out from behind the mirror and free myself from my gender closet. 

With therapy to help my mood swings and gender knowledge from the internet to help me, I slowly began to see the light at the end of the tunnel was not the train. In essence I had to set aside most of my past male self and learn all I could about living a life from a woman's perspective. The entire process was terrifying, exhausting and exciting all at the same time. Before I knew it, I could put a huge portion of my past behind and start building a promising new future. Free from my dark and lonely gender closet. 

No Gender Fear

 

"Rest Room Selfie" from the
Jessie Hart Collection

On the rare occasion I hear from someone who thinks I was brave for pursuing my gender dreams. First of all I consider the "brave" word should be reserved for those who really deserve it such as those in the military, first responders etc. I was just doing what I needed to do to survive my reoccurring gender crisis stemming from my extreme gender dysphoria.

Looking back, I can vividly remember all of the times I was positively frozen in fear when I was trying for the first time to express my femininity. The times when I felt all eyes were on me when I first entered a new  venue and the walk from the door to where I was going to sit seemed to be at least five miles away. I also felt as if my feet were stuck in sand as I tried to remember to mimic every feminine move. Of course the harder I tried, the more I would mess up. It wasn't until I became more relaxed that I began to do better and enjoy the experience.  

Then, there were the dreaded rest room visits. Since I was known to consume lots of beer, a rest room visit was more than a luxury, it was a necessity. I found out early in the presentation game to beware of women who would quickly follow me into the rest room. When they did, I needed to be especially careful to follow the basic etiquette of using the woman's room. There were so many (and continue to be), all the points would fill another blog post. Again, it took me awhile to settle down and relax before I could even think about being accepted. 

As I climbed the invisible ladder to being a more presentable transgender woman, it seemed the times I experience extreme panic would come and go. Many times I felt how my overall presentation was working dictated the results I was going to experience. Examples included the nights I hurriedly was  sent packing in a lesbian bar I was frequenting. From the well documented time I was forced to sing karaoke with a big butch lesbian in a cowboy hat all the way to another woman who said she ought to pick me up and take me home, my fear set in and I rapidly left the bar. After all, what would my wife say?

As you can tell, fear struck me in many ways. Since I was basically a shy person to begin with, I was extremely intimidated by the idea of talking to another person (woman or man) as a feminine person. On one hand I was flattered they wanted to talk to me but on the other hand what would I say. In those days I still basically was dealing with the usual male life topics such as work and sports. I was truly scared when I came to the communication aspect of transitioning. I never planned ahead because I never considered I would make it this far. When I did indeed scale the gender ladder to a point I could reach the transgender woman level, of course I was scared. Among other things, I was scared of losing my family, friends and living. I was never scared of anything more in my life. 

The farther I went in my gender transition, I was able to put my fear in my past. Mainly because for the first time in my life I knew deep down I was doing the right thing. It wasn't bravery, it was survival. 

The Sweet Spot

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart Collection

 Relax, this is not another post about food. Following my post called "Cake" I almost went searching through out  the kitchen looking for baking supplies to augment my non existent baking skills. This post on the other hand, concerns the gender sweet spot we encounter when we finally are able to align our inner feminine gender selves with the exterior we show to the public.

As we all know, attacking the problem of presenting a respectful exterior self to the public as a brand new gender is very difficult. We face all sorts of issues from the lack of peer pressure to having (or acquiring) a knowledge of clothing and makeup In other words, we had no mothers, sisters or girlfriends to provide feedback on our journey to public womanhood. Through it all the pressures of maintaining some sort of a male existence  while at the same time trying our best to express true womanhood seemed to be an impossible task.

For those of us left literally alone on the gender frontier, often the mirror became our only friend. The problem was the mirror only showed us what we wanted to see. Not what the public was seeing in reality. The process led me to suffer tough love when I tried too many fashion statements. To put it mildly, they were ill fated and led to public rejections. The extra pressure of trying to disguise my testosterone poisoned male body was intense. Following more failures than successes , I finally found what I was searching for... a chance to live my life as my authentic self. The basic lesson I learned was when I began to dress for other women and stopped dressing for my outdated ideas of what men thought women should look like.

What my new path set in motion was a chance to live a life I had only previously just dreamed of. Even though I had set my new life in motion, it turned out I still had a ways to go before I found my sweet spot where my internal and external feminine genders aligned.  I knew I was coming close to alignment when gender euphoria set in for any number of reasons.  Primarily, one of the main changes I went through was when I was forced into communicating with the public as a transgender woman. To more than a few women I knew I was a curiosity but it was all good because we were learning from each other. They had a chance to learn why a man would want to join their "club". On the other hand, I had the opportunity to learn from the women how it was to communicate one on one with another woman. 

The more I was able to explore finding my sweet spot, the more I knew I could never go back to my old male self. Even though I knew it was a certainty I could not go back, I still stubbornly held on to my past. For what ever the reason, it finally felt as if  I was jumping off some sort of a gender cliff. I was on a very slippery slope until I hit the very edge and I let go. I was fortunate in that I had friends to catch me when I landed. All were women and I can never thank them enough. The whole process was similar to going to some sort of a finishing school.

Locating my gender sweet spot was a lifelong journey and was often very difficult. Deep down I knew the process was something I just had to do and it all became worth it. 

Cake

Image from Katie Rosario 
on Unsplash

I'm sure you have heard the term "Having your cake and eating it too." In itself the term brings a complex meaning to the average transgender woman. If there is such a thing as an average. I equate having my cake when I reached a point in my feminine presentation when I found the confidence I could blend in with the public at large. Little did I know I would have such a long way to go to be able to finally taste the cake I so desperately wanted.

Baking the cake took longer than I anticipated mainly because life got in the way. Before I knew it, I was trying to mix in a liberal dose of cross dressing with attempting to raise a daughter and make a living. Also, several wives were mixed in, all of which knew of my cross dressing urges before the relationships even started. The problem was my cake recipe at the time did not include anything which remotely included dealing with transgender issues.. As I would discover over the years my cake recipes kept being ruined when I faced my gender truth. All my poor recipes were being destined for failure because I did not diagnose my own gender dysphoria as more than just wanting to appear as an attractive woman. I can compare the process as being given a great looking piece of cake only to find out it was dried out and nasty. 

At that point, following more than a few bitter battles with my second wife over what a woman really was, I began to adjust my gender recipe after deep research into what she really meant. It took awhile but I finally began to learn what she meant and I set out to eat my cake. The wait was worth it and my new improved recipe enabled me to live a life I had only ever dreamed of. I could live as a full time transgender woman and as my wife told me being a woman went far beyond just looking like one. Appearance just turned out to be just part of the recipe which included portions of ecstasy mixed in with a large portion of agony. There was nothing better than when my look seemed to come together and my presentation confidence reached an all time high and nothing worse when I ended up looking like a clown.

When I finally was able to bake my feminine gender cake with confidence, I was able to attempt larger more complex cakes and eat them too. I was faced with the massive challenge of communication for example. If I had taken my overall presentation to where people were prepared to talk to a woman, it was time to not disappoint them. I learned the hard way communication meant much more than how I sounded, I had to build into my recipe how what I was saying was important too.

I had plenty of time to perfect my transgender recipe, nearly fifty to be exact. I ended up eating lots of cake, along with wearing plenty of cake also. On occasion, I thought I would never be able to get it all together. Plus when I added feminine hormones to my recipe my future was decided for good. Of course I could always go back without my hormones but I never wanted to. 

As a self professed "gender baker" the time and effort I put into my cake was so worth it. The fun part is we all have the opportunity to bake our own unique and distinct cakes. 

   

The High Mainetenence Gender

Image from Amin RK on
Unsplash

I don't think I would receive much argument from women or men that women are certainly the high maintenance gender of the two. An example would be what a woman (trans or not) has to go through to appear well dressed in public. Instead of just putting on a nice shirt and pants as her man does, the woman in question has to make sure her legs are shaved all the way up her body to how her hair looks. Plus, I didn't even mention applying tasteful makeup and adding extras such as jewelry as well as other matching accessories. 

In addition to the physical aspect of being feminine, there is the actual bodily changes a woman goes through in her life. The major changes of puberty all the way to menopause isn't very long when you think about it and I am not even mentioning the impact child bearing has on a woman's body. Estrogen doesn't get the press testosterone does as being a powerful hormone but I can tell you from my viewpoint coming from being on both, estrogen does pack a wallop. Just consider the hormone surges a woman goes through at puberty and pregnancy and the reversal when menopause sets it and I wonder why I ever wanted to cross the gender frontier and live full time on hormones as a transgender woman.

As I look back, much of my love for cosmetics and the obsession with the way I presented as a woman was fun to me. Or at the least it was all very satisfying, when it worked. It's easy to forget all of the times it didn't work and I came home crying. Still I wanted desperately to become the high maintenance gender. I wanted to be the well put together woman if I was attempting to blend in as a business professional woman or a boho hippie. I was having fun doing what felt natural to me.

At the same time, I was leaving all the boring male trappings of society behind me. I was bored with all the same old drab colors and fashion which never changed. Being the high maintenance gender was heaven to me. Even as I become older and my introduction to estrogen has been part of me for awhile now I have even changed the way I think about pregnancy. Whereas before I always considered it "woman's work" to carry a child, now I consider it a blessing to be able to bring another new life into the world. 

I guess my life wasn't complex enough as a man, I wanted more. As a member of the high maintenance gender. This morning is an example. Just to go to the pharmacy, I had to make sure I was wearing a light foundation, eye makeup and lipstick. Along with my long hair pulled back. I wonder if my Mom would approve as she was the standard bearer for me as an example of the high maintenance gender. 

Life is Too Short

As I went through many years of being a cross dresser, I knew time was running short ( I was sixty) if I was ever going to make the big jump to living as a full time transgender woman. As life went on, two major ideas set in.. Perhaps the hardest one was facing my own mortality and knowing I had lived longer than I was going to live in the future. The writing on the wall was telling me I was entering my senior years and time was growing short for any major lifetime changes such as a gender change. Of course changing my gender involved the possibility of losing friends and family as well as my financial livelihood. 

Photo from the Jessie 
Hart Collection 

The second major factor in changing my gender closet was how natural I felt when I was out of my old dark and lonely closet. Somehow the gender euphoria which flooded over me when I was out and about presenting as a woman was a feeling I had a difficult time expressing. Because there was no one to tell how I was feeling. At the time, my second wife was completely against any idea of me pursuing a transgender lifestyle. Being a pretend male at the time, I did what I was trained to do...hold your emotions in and get over any problem you may encounter. Or, man up and get over it. 

For the sake of saving my relationship with my wife, I did my best to go against my own natural feminine instincts time after time. Finally, the stress I was living under became to much and I tried yet another very aggressive act of self harm. I have written about it several times here in the blog because it is so important to me to spread the word that suicide is never the answer to your problems. Mainly because life is too short as it is and secondly what is true today may not be true tomorrow.

In my case, I learned the hard way to accept my own mortality when close friends and my wife all passed on within a relatively short period of time. All of a sudden, the old "now or never" narrative set in on me with a vengeance. So, after exploring being a woman in all the various ways I knew how, I decided to jump off the cliff and transition. I started with hormone replacement therapy and never looked back. Again the more I explored the world, the more natural I became and felt. It got to the point when I was massively depressed when I had to face the world as a male. Mainly because the hormones stripped away almost all of my male privilege's by making my appearance highly androgynous. Plus, at that point, I hadn't made it to the point where I could sample any of the female privilege's. 

Finally, I got it through my thick, stubborn noggin that my life acting like a man was over. More so because the whole male gender process should have never been undertaken to begin with. The weight was finally taken off my shoulders when I decided once and for all to live a full time feminine existence as a transgender woman. Even then I knew the process wouldn't be easy. The time I spent exploring and learning to find my way around told me to be prepared for more hidden curves and walls on my gender journey. 

On the other hand, I had prepared myself the best I could with assets such as appearance and communication so I could begin the journey. I figured life was too short not to do it. There was no attempting to succeed, I was going to make it.

Dreaming Beauty Queen

I have written numerous times I am capable of having dreams in either gender on any given night. The truly unique nights are when I have both. I can start out as a guy and finish as a woman in a whole different dream.  It has been awhile though since I have outdid myself in the dream world. I have so many dreams, I don't remember all of them, unless they are very vivid.

Marilyn Monroe in the
Seven Year Itch 

Last night I had one of my most recent feminine dreams when I was in a beauty contest with an equally as attractive transgender friend. To make it more exciting and memorable, we were both wearing dresses and heels reminiscent of Marilyn Monroe's famous white dress in the 1955 Billy Wilder film "The Seven Year Itch." If you don't remember the dress (with Marilyn in it) I have added a picture. As you can see, if you are going to have to come up with a dream dress, this would be a good one to begin with.  This picture was taken with Marilyn supposedly caught unaware standing over a sidewalk subway grate in New York City. 

In my dream, all was going very well and I was even walking easily in heels. Something I have not been able to accomplish now for years because of a bad back. Also I remember how pretty my matching nails were on my hands and feet. My friend and I were certainly the belles of the ball.

For some reason we never made it to the pageant and ended up being confronted by several evil looking men. Plus, to make matters worse, my wig was starting to come off at exactly the wrong time. As I was frantically trying to find a place to fix the wig before the men noticed me, I woke up. I was so shaken by the dream, I was shivering for a couple minutes afterwards. Finally I calmed down and went back to sleep prepared for my next dream adventure.

Presently I have been very fortunate in that I have been able to stay away from many of the nightmares I used to have. I know the medications I am on to control my bi-polar mood swings can cause vivid dreams. In addition I wonder when the tipping point will come when I have more feminine orientated dreams than the old male ones. I guess I  need to keep in mind I did live most of my life in a dominant male world which continues to dominate my subconscious.

In the meantime, I have never been anything close to a beauty queen, so I guess deep down I wanted to always experience a little of how it would feel. Dreaming about it will be a close as I will come as a transgender woman. 

Transgender Euphoria

 

Photo Courtesy 
Jessie Hart

Yesterday was my quarterly appointment to see the dentist. Dental is the only medical related service I don't receive from the Veteran's Administration.

 Surprisingly (or not) I have never been mis-gendered when I have been there. Equally as surprising to me was the informational questionnaire I needed to fill out before my initial appointment. The questionnaire included a fairly deep dive into what my gender was and how I wanted my preferences as far as pronouns etc. to be. Amazingly, someone must have read my answers because from day one I was referred to as "she". Yesterday was no different. I was just there for a cleaning and my insurance unexpectedly covered nearly the entire cost so I was happy. I didn't have to fight for my gender and pay for the privilege. 

From there I needed to stop at a fast food drive thru and pick up lunch for my wife Liz and I. For as long as I can remember, drive thru's have always been a challenge for me due to concerns over my voice. I can't tell you how many times I have been called "sir" at the speaker and then be subjected to funny looks when I pulled forward to pick up my order. Yesterday was what I considered a neutral win because the woman was so busy with everything she was doing, she didn't have time to consider or even care about my gender. In no time at all, with no side glances or comments to other employees I was on my way with our food. 

My final stop of the day was a trip to the pharmacy to pick up medicine. Normally it is another neutral gender experience with no pronouns attached. But yesterday for some reason was different and the young man at the window unexpectedly called me "Ma'am". All of a sudden, in an instant, the sky was bluer and even the bitter taste in my mouth from what the hygienist used to polish my teeth went away. Gender euphoria was wonderful. 

The rare ability to be able to experience gender euphoria makes the process so wonderful when it occurs, even in so small doses. I wrote about it briefly in my "Customizable Gender" post recently. Among other points I attempted to go into, the process when we change genders stand out as important when we start all over to build a complex transgender woman person. Fellow  blogger "Paula Godwin" picked up on the idea and commented:

"I often reflect that one of the (few) advantages of being a transgender woman of "a certain age" is that I had opportunities that very few women my age had ~ in sport, music, education, and employment all of which definitely favored men." 

As always, thank you Paula for the comment. Indeed, when you have the chance to experience the privileges of living as both of the primary genders, you have the opportunity to be a better person.  Transgender euphoria only makes the experience more worthwhile.