Normalcy is for the Weak

 

Image from Joshua Rawson
Harris on UnSplash

Growing up, my expectations from "Greatest Generation" era parents were to fit into the square peg to square hole example. 

To me, it meant being a "normal" boy. Loving sports and playing in the woods next door. The only problem of course was I didn't want anything to do with much of anything associated with being a male. For years and years, I just thought I was not normal as I was sure there couldn't be anyone else who felt the same way I did. 

Ironically, for the shortest period of time, I did encounter a friend in my tweener years who very much leaned towards to being a serious cross dresser or transvestite as it was known back then. Before our experimentations into his Mom's wardrobe and makeup progressed too far, he moved far away. I was left once again thinking I was the only one into being feminine. 

As I went through life, I felt I was never "normal" primarily because of my gender dysphoria which I knew I had long before the term transgender was ever used. The farther I progressed however, I learned I was attracted to others who were not "normal" by society's standards. I think deep down I was attracted to them because I thought they would be the friends who would accept my authentic transgender self. Sadly, once I was starting to embrace my non-normal self, I was forced into the ultimate square peg into a square hole experience, known as Army basic training. BCT was the ultimate team building experience. 

Ironically, the exact opposite happened to me. Surviving basic gave me the tools I needed to further embrace who I was. I knew if I put my mind to something, I could be a success, even if it was in a so-called normal profession. Much to my parent's chagrin I ended up for years as a radio disc jockey. A profession long on enjoyment but extremely short on money. As I struggled financially, I added a daughter who directly caused me to seek a more settled environment. From there I found myself in a thirty year (plus) career in the commercial restaurant business. Little did I know, the food business back in those days was in an incredible expansion phase. Allowing me to jump jobs as I tried to out run my gender issues. From the outside looking in, I am sure I appeared a little more than a little crazy. During that period, I was fond of telling anyone who appeared interested I was not normal.

It turned out, through it all, I was normal. Once I did transition into the life of my authentic transgender self, I calmed down and began to realize all of the sudden once I was living as my true self, I was normal. 

The path I took to get there was not at all easy and not for the weak of heart. I just needed to be the round peg being pushed into the round hole.  

Mammogram Done?

Image from the National
Cancer Institute

This morning I went to a prementioned appointment for my yearly mammogram.

I knew going in it is never the most pleasant procedure in the world but very much better than the alternative of having breast cancer. The part of having a mammogram I had forgotten was how much of a contortionist I would have to become. To complete the procedure, the specialist giving the exam must take four pictures of each side or breast of your body. Since I do have mobility issues even to the point of standing sometimes, I needed extra nurses to get through the mammogram last year. 

This year, I managed to complete the process (I think) with the help of just one person. I say "I think" because I have not heard back yet from the hospital yet on the overall findings of the X-rays. So I can't do any celebrations yet until I do.

I think it is vaguely humorous the women in the radiology (X-Ray) department automatically assume since I am a transgender woman I don't know what is going on. The truth is this is actually my sixth mammogram prescribed by the Veteran's Administration because my maternal grandmother passed away years ago from breast cancer. So I am more experienced than they think. 

Other than that I didn't have any problems with not being respected. I wasn't mis-gendered or anything close to it. 

In a later post, If anything negative or hopefully positive happens with the mammogram I will let you know as I consider the entire process a rite of passage as being a transgender woman.

This just in...everything came back with no problems! So I am clear again for another year!

Living in Her World

 

Photo Compliments of Raquel who said I 
passed out of sheer will power,

Naturally, when I decided to go down the path of undertaking a Male to Female gender transition, I encountered many unexpected obstacles. 

You regulars to my writing know I often mention quite a few walls I had to climb such as perfecting some sort of an appearance which I could present as well as possible in the public's eye. Often the best compliment I could go on was when a transgender woman friend of mine told me I passed out of sheer will power. In other words, to me, she meant I just went all in the public's eye doing the best I could with what I had to work with. To this day, I remember the comment. 

Once I conquered the appearance aspect of presenting in public as a woman the hard work started. Living in her world just began to become serious and more difficult. It was about this time I began to compare the process to being able to play in the girl's sandbox. I knew again I would have to do it out of sheer will power. At the time, I couldn't afford or have the willpower to undergo any facial feminization surgeries, so what the other inhabitants of the sandbox saw with me would be what they got. Many days and nights I would just have to rely on my inner feminine self to get by.

The problem was, my inner self, even though she was feminine, was still learning too. We both had to learn the power of passive aggression which even extended to severe backstabbing from more than a few of the women I encountered. I can't tell you how many times I came home wounded by claw marks on my back. In a relatively short time I began to understand more and more on how different living in her world was going to be. My prime example was when I was told I was a good looking woman, the person (woman) who was saying it was really thinking, for a man. Slowly but surely I overcame all of that and developed a very uneasy confidence of my ability to build a life as a transgender woman. 

Through a series of unexpected happenings, the doors seemingly opened wide and my dream of living as a trans woman finally happened after a half a century of working towards a goal. At that time. it became evident it was time to turn what was left of my old male life over to my inner feminine self who had waited so long to see the light of day. My gender roles flipped flopped increasingly when  I had to cross dress as a man, I felt completely out of place, I was ready, willing and able to give up all the male privileges I had built up over the years to live in her world.

The final push turned out to be the hardest of all. When I needed to discard or donate all my male clothes and begin to acquire a feminine wardrobe to live daily, it was a big step. All of a sudden, the whole process of cross dressing became a game I needed to quit. I could no longer run for cover in my sometimes comfortable old male life. I was able to do it though and have never looked back. I found I never missed anything at all. 

Re-Connections

 

Image from Priscilla Du Preez on
UnSplash 

Often in life we are capable of living out full circles during our time on earth, if we live that long. 

My lifelong journey to find and live with my authentic feminine gender gave me the opportunity to go full circle several times and then reconnect with myself. My biggest issue was to finally establish myself as a transgender woman. To do accomplish my reconnection,  it seemed I had to live my way through being a cross dresser (on two stages) or a transvestite if you prefer that term. I say cross dressing on two stages because for the longest time I considered myself cross dressing as a woman while I was primarily living as a man. When in truth, I was just doing the opposite, cross dressing as a man when I was primarily a woman inside. 

Along the way, I experienced several confidence building experiences to help me along. Sadly, most all of the character building changes occurred to my male self and it took many years for my inner female to catch up. Examples included my successes in career fields as well as being able to influence how my daughter was being raised. Both came back to aid me later in my gender reconnection but at the time didn't seem so positive. The salary I earned at my jobs helped me to earn enough and accept an early retirement which helped me clear a path to transition. And, as far as my daughter went, later on in life she has gone on to be one of my staunchest gender allies. I don't know how my life would have been without her. 

The problems with re-connections if you have ever done any plumbing work, you have to make sure the connection is secure before you move on. I experienced many problems with my gender transition as I tried to move on. I stubbornly refused to dress my age and to blend in with other women around me when I first tried to leave my closet. The entire process caused me deep grief until I began to learn the basics of getting by when it came to my presentation.  When I finally developed the confidence to try harder to secure my initial connection, it seemed something else would appear and get in the way. It turned out, moving and communicating as a woman presented a much more difficult problem for me than the appearance part.

After a while, when I was extremely self destructive to the point of suicide,  it turned out I was going to live long enough to go full circle with my gender in my life. I was fortunate to find and keep a small group of women friends who helped me secure and adjust to the societal demands I  was going to have to face in my new life as a transgender woman. 

By this time I had gone full circle and put my male past behind me. My re-connections were secure and I had a lot of life to look forward to. 

   

Life Comes Fast

Image from Suraj Kardile 
on UnSplash

It seems like one moment you are a kid in a rural Ohio neighborhood and the next you are a senior citizen transgender woman. 

Life comes at you very fast. Sometimes extra fast if you are attempting to learn to live as your authentic self. Sometimes it seems the more you do to further your gender goals. A prime example would be when you have achieved a spot where you can present as a trans woman who can blend in, then you have to rapidly learn to put your appearance successes into motion. After all, if the public expected you to be feminine, you needed to do your best to do something about it. The whole process came on me fast when other women unexpectedly wanted to talk to me. I think most of them were just curious as they started conversations revolving simple things such as what I was wearing.

Through it all, I needed to quickly learn basic communication skills when I was intensely shy concerning my female voice. I just didn't foresee anyone wanting to talk to me. It turned out this was only the first of many ways life was coming at me fast.

Of course, there was my stint in the military which ended up coming up very fast after I went through years of trying to outlast the trauma of the Vietnam War. The war followed me through high school and then through college. At that point I was smacked down by Army basic training which I thought at the time would derail any dreams I had of ever becoming a woman. Amazingly, the opposite happened. Basic taught me to be more resilient and I was able to make some sort of future plans after I was honorably discharged three years later. Very directly, the Army sped up my life when I met my first wife in Germany where we both served. A couple of years after that, life came even faster when I learned I was going to be a parent of who turned out to be my only child. I secretly didn't desire any children because of the self doubts I carried with me because of my gender dysphoria. I was so wrong.

From my discharge forward, I relied on nothing much more than a series of Halloween parties to keep my life on some sort of a status quo. For the most part, life would come at me quickly again when I was successful in presenting as a woman at several parties. Years later I would wonder why more people didn't foresee my future coming out as transgender because of all the work I did to look good for the parties. But my macho male disguise was so convincing they never did and many were surprised when I let them in to my authentic self. 

More than likely, the fastest my life was ever sped up was when I started hormone replacement therapy or HRT. I just didn't expect the changes to my body to occur so fast and I needed to move up my time table of when I was planning to jump into a fulltime life as a transgender woman. It all worked out for the best because I was tired of my old male life anyhow and was ready for a change. Once I did make the change, my life slowed down and I was able to enjoy it again. 

  

The Gender Buck Stops Here

 

Image from the Jessie
Hart Collection

It took me over fifty years of cross dressing as a woman to decide I had enough and I finally decided to come out full time as a transgender woman.

At that point, I either threw out my old male clothes or donated most of them to a local thrift store which was the demarcation point of when I flipped the script and stopped cross dressing as a man. For awhile it was difficult deciding what I would wear everyday as a trans woman. I knew I desperately wanted to blend in with the other women around me but knew I had to put in considerably more effort than they did to do it. Plus the effects of the hormone replacement therapy I was on was beginning to drastically change my old male appearance. So a change was needed. My skin was softening, along with the lines of my face, so I was beginning to appear quite androgynous. 

With all these changes taking place, I finally had a one on one talking with myself and decided enough was enough. The gender buck stopped there and then. It was time to take advantage of a lifetime of preparation and cross the gender border and live as a transgender woman. All those years of admiring my self in the mirror and attending transvestite mixers in Columbus, Ohio would be put to the test. During the mixers I was able to see and meet many different types of cross dressers all the way to transsexuals to determine just where I fit in. It was about that time when the term "transgender" was being publicized and I immediately thought the term fit me. It turned out it actually did and my life would never be the same again.

When the buck stopped with me and I began to take complete responsibility for my gender questions, my life suddenly became easier. Even though I was still facing questions in the harsh light of the public's eye. I needed to learn being a successful transgender woman took so much more than just taking care of my appearance. Surely appearances were the path to opening doors but what happened after the door was opened became very stressful. How could I handle actually communicating with a man or another woman when I was so new at doing it. Possibly the most frustrating part of the whole communication process was how much it changed with each person I encountered. The process was not unlike playing tennis and waiting for the other person to serve. Finally I began to relax and make the best of a situation I never knew where it was going.

It turned out relaxation was another key to my new ability to exist in the world as a trans woman. I learned for the most part men left me alone and women were just curious as to why I wanted into their world at all. I valued my communication with other women because I was learning so much about playing in the girl's sandbox.  My confidence was high and I thought I had as much business as other women did in the sandbox. From there, I made the most of it. 

It is also important to note, when I determined the gender buck did end with me, there would be no turning back. I became so involved in learning my new feminine life and it felt so natural, I would actually take the gender buck and spend it. 

Into a Gender Corner

 

Image from the 
Jessie Hart
Collection

Through no fault of my own, or maybe then again it was all my fault, I painted myself into a gender corner over the years.

Similar to most of you with non-approving family structures, I did all I could to hide the fact all I really wanted in life was to live a feminine life. To get by in my secret world I initially "borrowed" my Mom's clothes until I quickly outgrew them. I then supplemented my meager allowance for work I did around the house by delivering newspapers. With the money, I again snuck out and was able to buy a few clothes and make up. 

Little did I know every success I had, helped me move a little closer to painting myself into a gender corner later in life. As I painted my way through life I was finally becoming semi successful in presenting successfully as a novice transgender woman after going through the developmental stage of being a cross dresser or transvestite. It is important to note during this time, the only other person I was receiving regular feedback from was myself. Because I was the girl in the mirror. The feedback was usually always positive no matter how bad I looked. My excuse was usually, I was only a nice wig and outfit away from being prettier. Which was true to an extent.

As I grew older and more independent, the faster I began to paint my new gender picture. Experiences became more intense as I attacked the world as a trans woman. I was meeting more and more people who only knew my feminine side at the same time I was attempting to still live part time as my old male self. He was doing his best to slow down the gender transition process as he fought giving up all of his hard earned male privileges. The problem for him became when the painting became so successful and pleasurable. For the first time in my life, I was able to experience living my gender dream and I was not scared to paint myself into a corner and see what happened.

In fact, I think I threw caution to the wind too many times when I tried to go too many places where I was well known as a man. Looking back, I think I wanted to be discovered for the true person I was. At any rate, I never stopped the route I was heading and kept painting. And, just when I had almost completed painting myself into a gender corner, along came destiny to bail me out. 

What happened was a triad of happenings which made it possible for my previous painting to dry and for me to walkout nearly unscathed. First of all was when my disapproving wife of twenty five years passed away, leaving me very lonely but with an unopposed path to a Male to Female Gender Transition. The second part of the triad was I was nearly old enough to retire and not have to continue working as I crossed the gender border. Plus, the third part of the triad was the circle of friends I had built up as a transgender woman. They all helped me to understand what I would need t to finish my paint job and not get into a corner as a woman.

I was able to find my way out of the gender corner I had built my way into before it was too late. Many times the process was difficult and I almost didn't make it. Which included several self destructive episodes in my life including suicide. But I finished my painting and I love it.   

Transgender Recipe

Image from Callum Hill
on UnSplash

Every now and then I am asked how I negotiated a difficult and often impossible gender journey. 

As I have been able to sit back and look at my path, I know my recipe for success is in some cases very different from other transgender women  but at the same time eerily similar. An example would be those of you of an age close to mine (73) needed to endure years in a very dark and isolated closet in the pre-internet and social media era. For years, I was convinced no one else shared my own gender issues. My own recipe for success as a novice cross dresser or transvestite (or whatever you happened to call it) turned into a recipe for survival.

Through all the down days of questioning what gender I was, life went on as I built into my recipe different ways to survive in a male world I wanted no part of. I mainly resorted to existing in a very lonely life as the girl in the mirror. The major problem was the girl in the mirror always provided positive feedback no matter how poor I really looked. The learning curve proved to be a challenge since I had no real peer influence to help me. 

My recipe didn't really change for years as I basically just bided my time until I graduated high school and college. Then waited for the military to draft me into their world which shattered any of my possible future cross dressing ventures. They would have to be on hold for my three year enlistment. Surprisingly my recipe did not include my first adventure in letting others in (or coming out) to a select few others. I write often about the Halloween party I went to in Germany when I had approximately a year left to serve, as a prostitute. Weeks later, when my "costume" came up among friends. over many quality German beers I admitted I was not wearing a "costume", I was a transvestite. Even though I felt as if the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders, I then had to begin to worry about being outed to my superiors and being ushered out of the military with a dis-honorable discharge. Fortunately, I wasn't. I served out my final year and was honorably discharged. With my gender issues safely hidden away.

Following my return to the civilian world, my interaction with others as a transvestite revolved basically around the various Halloween parties I went to as a woman. During the parties I was able to mix in interacting with the world as a novice transgender woman into my recipe. The lessons learned are basically too many to share in this blog post but the most important ingredient I added to my gender recipe was the fact I just may be able to exist in the feminine world as a full time transgender woman and most importantly how much I enjoyed it. 

From there my life became much more complex as I enforced my ever-evolving gender recipe. I was at once elated but  at the same time terrified to be giving up what was left of my male life. I suspect those of you followed a somewhat similar path as you wrote and followed your own recipe for gender success. It remains amazing to me how far I have come since the deep dark days in the closet I survived years ago. 

The Great Pivot

Image from the Jessie Hart
Collection

Very few human beings ever attempt such a major change such as crossing the gender border. 

For me, pivoting into the feminine world as a transgender woman took me years to complete. In fact some would argue I am still working on the process. A complete pivot doesn't end until you are safely in the grave with your chosen gender intact. In my case I am very fortunate in that I have two strong trans allies who I hope will survive me. Plus I plan on simplifying the funeral procedure to the maximum since I am requesting cremation and no services to speak of, unless close friends and family want to gather for some sort of a celebration of life service. 

Before you begin to think this whole post is going to pertain to death and dying, it is not as there is plenty more to discuss in a gender pivot. First of all, you have to figure out how you are going to appear as the gender you perceive to be your authentic self. Since many of us begin our journey in the pre-testosterone time in our life, the transformation into a girl is often much easier. Until the pesky masculine hormone began to make it's presence known and the process known as testosterone poisoning began to set in. All of a sudden, the great pivot became harder to pull off for most of us.  Unless you are one of the few males who are feminine in nature. I was not and the struggle became real.

As we grow up, society becomes a problem also. Peer and adult pressures combine to attempt to force us into pre-conceived gender norms which are difficult to escape. Again, I grew up in a very patriarch influenced world and being the oldest son, I was expected to conform to the expectations of the "Greatest Generation" made up of survivors of the Great Depression and  WWII. My Dad served in the war and one of my uncles was a drill sergeant. So you get the idea of what I was facing. I was so intimidated by the idea of letting anyone into my desire to pivot my gender, I waited until after my Dad and uncle passed away before I did it. As far as the rest of society was concerned, I finally arrived at the point where I didn't care.

The point I did arrive at was the point where I was able to pivot more or less gracefully in the public's eye. I say more or less because of the many blunders I made with my attempts at taking my mirror image public. I needed to conquer all the challenges of wardrobe, movement and communication before I could even conceive of moving forward. Slowly but surely I did learn and was successful enough to build the authentic self from scratch. 

Looking back now, I think learning all the basics of communication with the world as a woman was the most difficult part of my great pivot. Most likely, because I had all the time I needed to practice the art of dressing and making up as a feminine person. Interaction with the world in all situations was many times a shock and took me time to become used to.

In many ways, my pivot was a lifetime labor of love. One I had no choice in but then again wouldn't force it on my worst enemy. Then again, the whole process may do them some good.