Live Action Week

 

Alzheimer's LGBTQ Shirt 

For some unknown reason, I have had several scheduled and unscheduled appointments come up this week. One on top of each other. 

One of the scheduled appointments was today when my wife Liz and I had our yearly maintenance taken care of on our fairly new heat pump and hot water tank. Since the equipment is new and the work is already paid for in our contract, we did not expect many worries/.Which is exactly what happened. What I did not expect was the work which showed up without notice in our front yard this morning. It turns out, our internet provider picked today to replace service on our street which is all underground. 

To prepare to face all these expected and unexpected workers in our world this morning, I went ahead and shaved closely last night. The only other thing I was going to do was tie my hair back and try my best to be out of the way the best I could. It worked fairly well, since the two workers who needed to come in the house were courteous and did not mis-gender me one way or another.

Coming up in a couple of days, I will have the opposite happen to me when I need to go to my local Veterans Administration clinic to have my hearing checked. For the visit I plan to try out the new makeup I just purchased and do the best I can to present well as a transgender woman. Since I have had no real problems at the clinic recently, I don't expect any this time either. It will still be interesting since I need to interact closer with a receptionist to make another appointment with my primary provider, which is what the VA calls my family doctor. I have blood work to request for my endocrinologist and another nurse practitioner who monitors my psych medications. It seems like every six months or so everyone wants a shot of my blood to examine so I might as well get a head start on the process. 

Finally, for this month I have another Alzheimer's diversity committee meeting coming up and for the time being, it will be another virtual get together which is much easier for me. As always, I urge you to contact your local chapter if your are having potential or current dementia problems in your family. I have found the Cincinnati/Dayton groups to be very pro-LGBTQ+ friendly in their approach to me. 

I am sure I will have more to add to this post after my upcoming visit to the VA but for now, I hear the equipment working in the front yard so I don't have much faith in the internet staying on. 

Trans Lost and Found

 

Lost woman from UnSplash

During a transgender persons' life, we experience many enormous periods of  lost and founds. 

Perhaps the biggest loss most of us face is with our families. In the transgender transition process, often many in families choose not to understand our journeys to living as our authentic selves. I am very familiar with the process when my brother decided to end all dealings with me when his family decided they did not want me at a family Thanksgiving dinner. We have not spoken since and that was over ten years ago. Needless to say, I am not happy about all I lost with my brother. As I always write is how fortunate I was when I found other family to fill the void. Between my wife's Liz's family and the acceptance I found from my daughter's in laws, I found more than I lost. 

Another major portion of our old male lives we have a tendency to lose is much of the old baggage we have to try to bring along. Interests such as mechanics and sports are stereotyped as male and are frowned upon back in the day when transsexuals were expected to go through gender realignment surgery and then move away and start a brand new life. I saw the whole process as one of the biggest obstacles of me potentially giving up everything which I earned to start all over again. I wanted in a large part to have my cake and eat it too. Could I really, transition into a feminine based life and keep most of my interests? 

I was stubborn and found out I could when destiny led me to a whole new group of friends who helped me into a new world. In essence, I found more than I ever lost, even though going through the separation from my old male life was very traumatic and stressful. More than anything, the finality of the loss off of many of my old male friends to death was tough to take, including losing my wife of course. Before the found began to flourish in my life, it seemed the losses would take over and they almost did. 

It took awhile but slowly and surely. I began to climb out of my valley and begin to climb again at the age of sixty. I shed (or lost) almost all the parts of my male life and even though I was scared of the future, I could at the least look ahead to better times ahead. Finding more than I lost became a fun goal for me as my life changed. 

I hear from so many other transgender women whose lives parallel mine. Either they continued with a skill they earned earlier in life or were able to meet others who made their gender transitions so much easier. One way or another,  the losses didn't feel as bad. Sadly, there are the other trans women and transgender men who never seem to not struggle with their loss of family or employment. It is just another example of how being transgender is everything but a choice. 

Perhaps, as being transgender continues to be better known thanks to the internet, everyone will have the chance to pick and choose with more confidence what is lost and what is found with their life. Then have a chance to cherish what is found.

Fight or Flight

 

Image from UnSplash

Perhaps you have heard of the "fight or flight" reaction when you are confronted with a potentially dire situation. Or do you stay and fight or get the heck out of there. 

In the military, no matter how well you could be trained to be in peak physical condition or shoot a weapon with accuracy, the powers to be knew there was nothing they could do about predictable you would be when you were subjected to actual combat conditions. 

By now you may be asking, what in the world does all this mean when compared to the strain of changing genders. Since I am an Army veteran, here are my conclusions. 

First and foremost,  you learn as a man to control your fight or flight reactions in many different ways, most difficult. I remember a black eye I suffered when I refused to back down from a potential future bully all the way to surprisingly winning half of a hand to hand contest with the biggest guy in the platoon. Never mind, I just managed to make him mad and he came back to get even. None of it mattered, because there was nowhere to hide. Especially behind a dress. From there on I learned to at least put up a good front when it came to confrontations with other guys. After the problem I couldn't just run home and take refuge in my small collection of girls makeup and fashion. 

Of course all my ideas and reactions to confrontation needed to rapidly change forever when I transitioned into the life of a fulltime transgender woman. The prime example I always used when I was cornered and was facing a forced molestation action by a much larger man. The lesson I learned was to never get myself into that position again if I could help it. I couldn't just fake my way out of a situation just because of my male privilege's. The other example I like to use was when I was naïve enough as a novice transgender woman to walk alone on dark sidewalks and parking lots. It took me being stopped late one night when I was leaving a gay venue to learn my lesson once and for all. When I went back, I made sure I had a friend go with me.

Once I realized women learn early in life to not put themselves in dangerous situations to start with then rely on masculine behavior to bail themselves out. My "fight or flight" mechanism had come full circle in many ways from my old unwanted masculine days. I started looking ahead for potential problems. Another example was when I prominently began to use my cell phone as a prop when I was out by myself as an unescorted woman in a bar or restaurant.  My thought pattern was, if a potential unwanted suitor was watching me, he would see my phone and think someone was coming to join me. Those were the many nights when I was going out to be alone.

In the meantime, the entire "fight or flight" idea was just another example of my lifetime desire to follow a transgender path. For some reason I was shocked how important the idea was to my safety and lifestyle. Learning to do my best to not put myself in compromising situations was the best thing I could do.   

Joining an Inclusive New Club

Girls Night Out Image, I am on the
first row far left.
From the Jessie Hart Archives

 In many ways, this is just an extension of yesterday's post concerning transgender love affairs. 

In the post I mentioned indirectly when I was finally able to play in the girl's sandbox without having to deal with un-due harassment or even scorn. In my post yesterday (and often) I mention how difficult I had it dealing with my second wife dealing at all with me as a novice transgender woman. She was having nothing to do with the process, even though she knew from the beginning of our marriage I was a cross dresser. In no uncertain terms did my wife show my emerging feminine self any encouragement what so ever. She wasn't going to help me join an inclusive new club.

I accepted her ideas on my gender because we both agreed being married to another woman wasn't anything my wife ever signed up for. At that point was when I decided to go it on my own and find out if indeed I could carve out a life in a new gender world. Slowly and very unsurely, I found out I could make it as a member of a new club. Game changers as well as the occasional bouts of gender euphoria helped me along. Examples included the successful Halloween parties I went to. Compliments were easy to come by when people told me how good I looked as a woman. For the longest time, I didn't realize the true extended compliment was how good I looked as a woman, who was really a man. None of it mattered as I made my way along a path to becoming a fulltime transgender woman.

Overall, I am proud of all the work I put into joining a new very exclusive club. To begin with I faced the necessity of learning all the basics of makeup and fashion. Starting from point zero, compared to other girls, catching up was difficult. Especially when I really didn't have much of a feminine body to begin with as well as having a very non-approving male dominated family. More than anything else gender confusion reigned supreme in my life.

What I don't mention enough is the feedback I received later in life from other women when I transitioned. I get the idea from other trans readers I hear from, sometimes acceptance is not so hard to come by but is such a powerful tool when it comes to a transgender transition. We all know, women live a different more layered existence than men and a life which takes no small amount of work to learn. If you do learn the intricacies of what if being offered to you when you are invited to women's only spaces, you will know you have made it into an inclusive new club. Once you are there, chances are, you will never have to go back to an old unwanted male life.   

I will forever remember the  women who helped me along in my journey and opened their worlds to me. Being able to exist on my own in the girls' sandbox or club was something I never thought I could do on my own.

They will never know all they did for me. Even to the point of saving my life. It was the major spark I needed to discover my true sexuality and live as I always dreamed of.

Who Do You Love?

Image from Freestocks 
on UnSplash

Along my lengthy transgender journey I learned the hard way I had several love affairs. 

The main one I want to refer to is the love affair with my wife and  the one with myself. Or should I say my feminine self, since I had never really liked my old male side I never asked for. I think the worst part of having two love affairs was the guilt which came with it. I think my major problem came from how much I threw myself into the process of being feminine. If I wasn't cross dressing in front of the mirror, I was spending my time studying all the girls or women around me. I am sure along the way, my wife caught me daydreaming too much and wondered why I was not paying more attention to her and our marriage.

Along with the daydreams came the frustration I felt when my wife was able to do all the things a woman does in her life. Plus, she wouldn't let me in to her world very much and she infuriated me when she wouldn't. The entire process led me to try even harder to improve my makeup and fashion ideas since at that time I was far away from realizing looking like a woman was only the very beginning of my long gender journey. At the time also, since I was putting so much time into myself, I am sure my wife felt unloved and I am surprised we made it through twenty five years of marriage. 

Much later, after she passed away, did I learn to love myself. I learned then the fact you needed to love yourself before you can love someone else was so true. Once I started to complete my transgender transition, I did start to love myself. Or, at the least, I started to have more respect for everything I had achieved in my new world I had chosen to live in.   

It was about that time I was feeling deep frustration because of the way my life was headed. Although I did enjoy the small social group of women I was apart of, I still felt I was doomed at the age of sixty to live my life alone. I found I was still a social creature and did the best I could to change the situation. Fortunately for me, my attempts at dating when I was still a guy were miserable short term failures which led me to believe I was on the right path to living as a trans woman...even if that meant living alone. As a stop gap measure, I still had my friends to hang out with.

For the most part, my experiences in the on-line dating world were failures too. I tried every combination on the sites I could afford to list on. One month I would try "man seeking man" as a transgender woman, then the next time try "woman seeking woman". Again always being up front I was transgender. The only men who responded for the most part wanted me to dress them up as a woman or let them wear my panties, so they were out. 

There was a happy ending to my on line dating woes after sifting through tons of rejections and trash, my wife Liz responded to one of my ads. She lived fairly close to me in a city I had always loved (Cincinnati) so I was interested in knowing her more. After corresponding by text initially, I finally became brave enough to talk to her on the phone. I was so insecure of my voice. From there, our first date was a local drag show at a gay venue midway between our homes. From then on we became a couple for ten plus years until we decided to get married. 

I guess the moral to my story is, the darkest moments of your life can turn around if you continue to put yourself out there. Sure it hurts and is painful to be rejected but often there can be a light at the end of the tunnel. The sad part is, you went through a transition to find your authentic self and you discovered self love and now there is no one to share it with. 

On the positive side, I am seeing an increase in wives staying with their transgender spouses when they transition. I have the utmost respect for the love expressed by these women and wish we could all experience the same. 

Go Get a Life

Photo from the 
Jessie Hart Archives...

Following all the struggles with being transgender in my life, I finally decided I was living a lie and needed to go out and find an authentic life. An existence which helped rebuild my mental health and made me feel natural. 

My struggles have been well documented here in my writings. All the times, I faced the public for the first time as a novice cross dresser and came home in tears. Finally it all led to the magical evening when I decided enough was enough and I went out to intermingle with the world for the first time as a transgender woman and not a cross dresser. The difference was I was trying to become the trans woman I always dreamed of and not just looking like a feminine person. In spite of being scared to death, I managed to make it through the evening and even started a path where I could be a regular in the venue I went to. From there I was bolder and began to check out other similar venues which were much different than the gay bars I was going to because I thought I would have a tendency to be accepted more easily. 

Along the way, I found I wasn't easily accepted in male gay venues and in all but one lesbian bar I went to, so I kept going back to where I becoming a regular was helping me to build a whole new life. Through it all, the problem I was having was while I was on the fast track to achieving my gender dreams, I still had a wife and family to deal with at the same time. In addition,  I hadn't even thought about the possibility of losing my job. I was so busy learning about life as a possible transgender woman, I had a difficult time thinking of anything else when it came to my marriage and employment. 

The gender pressure I was under kept building until I could take it no longer and changes needed to happen to save my life. I was tired of all the self destructive behavior I was subjecting myself to over the span of my life. All the times I set myself up for failure in my male life had to change and for once I needed to succeed at something I really wanted such as living as a trans woman. I found going and getting a new life was going to be scarier and at the same time more exciting than I ever imagined it being. Somehow, I managed to barely hang on to my marriage when I was sneaking out behind my wife's back to explore the world. I was lucky I didn't lose my job because I was good at what I did and the company left me alone so, for the time being, the job was a non factor in my transition. 

What I never factored in were the times when I needed to interact with the world as a woman. How would I talk and communicate primarily with other women became a priority. Getting a life took on a whole new meaning. Plus, I can't speak for the others in the transgender community (women or men) gender affirming hormones were the tipping point for me in my new life. Once I started the medications, there was to be no turning back in my gender journey.

When I went out and finally had the courage to be me, I saved my own life. For once I was a success.

Being a Gender Victim

 

Image from UnSplash

Many years ago during my years of searching for my true gender self, I spent many hours and days being a victim of my circumstances.  In other words, I felt sorry for myself wanting to follow a feminine path in life. 

Primarily, thanks to input I received from my second wife, I began to pull myself out of the victim category and accept the way I felt. My wife kept telling me I didn't know anything about being a woman (which I didn't) so I needed to find out what she meant because she was not offering any help. Sadly it wasn't until many years later following her passing away, did I learn what she meant. Obviously, since she can not speak for herself, I think she was expanding on the times when she called me "The pretty pretty princess." Those were the days when I obsessed on how I looked as a cross dresser and not how I felt as a novice transgender woman. Had I not been so narrow minded in my quest for femininity, I think now I would have spent way less time feeling sorry for myself. Why couldn't I have hobbies such as golf rather than dressing as a woman.

My life turned out to be a double edged sword about that time. Not only was I facing pressure on the home front to learn more about the basics of being a woman, at work through promotion after promotion, I was feeling increased pressure to perform there also. To help me along, the many managerial training sessions I attended gave direction on how not to be a victim.

Finally, I slowly learned to attack my problems head on and not run from them. Often by putting on a dress and feeling sorry for myself. Slowly but surely, thanks to no small part to the women I worked with, I began to look beyond how they looked into how they acted and reacted with life. The whole process made me a better person and prepared me for a future living life as a transgender woman. I was becoming so much more than "The pretty pretty princess." At the same time, not being a victim was making life so much more complex. On one hand I was making strides with my makeup and fashion and on the other I was becoming very successful in my work. In fact, it was not becoming unusual for my wife to ask for my help with her makeup when we were going out to an upscale event.  Usually, after I did help her, she felt better and I was jealous I wasn't the one in the pretty dress. 

Throughout the entire process, I found I had more courage than I had ever thought possible. Perhaps the time I spent in the military prepared me with the confidence I needed to move forward and not be a victim to my gender issues. Every time I conquered a goal I thought was unachievable, I felt more natural with my life and my mental health improved. 

I put being a victim behind me and set out to be an out and proud transgender woman.

Changes and Trans Life

David Bowie and Changes

One of the only constants of life is change. From the day we are born until the day we die, changes are part of our life.

I am biased but I think all transgender women and/or trans men receive more than our fair share of change. Depending where your age may be in the spectrum of life and how long you are able to live, you may have to bring more baggage with you when and if you decide to take the huge step and decide to complete a transgender transition. 

In addition to the "Three F's" or family, friends and finances, there are other baggage items to consider. Such as how did you fill your time when you weren't working for instance. In my case, I was a huge sports fanatic and wasn't sure if my passion would survive as a trans woman. I was left in even more doubt when I began to not appreciate my time going to so called safe gay venues. For the most part, I didn't like the people, the music or being treated like I was an out of place drag queen. What ended up happening was, I went where I was comfortable as my male self. Venues where I could watch sports on huge televisions with beer to match. I figured if I was going to be made uncomfortable, I might as well use the change to try for better.

Most importantly, I found other women (Cis, not trans) who shared my passions for sports and gave us a reason to socialize. The whole process opened up the rest of my world to more changes. By this time, I felt as if I was right in the middle of the David Bowie song "Changes." When I looked around at all my middle aged friends stuck in ruts of life, I felt so liberated to be where I was although at times I was petrified of exactly what the future may hold when I transitioned into a fulltime womanhood. 

Little did I know, the biggest life changes were still ahead when I decided to throw caution to the wind and pursue beginning gender affirming hormones. In addition to the obvious bodily changes such as breasts, skin and hair growth, I also found myself reacting to yet another puberty experience in life. The first time I experienced a major hot flash still is a vivid memory when I think back to wondering if I was internally combusting. In addition, hot flashes and the hormones led to me all of a sudden being more emotional. As the world around me softened, I became more in tune with temperature changes and smells. It was my own special world and I loved it.

Looking back at the whole process of gender changes I went through, even though I knew deep down I never really had a choice, I cherish most of my life as it turned out. At the least, I was never bored and was always challenged to do better. First as a cross dresser and later as a transgender woman. I found the path was less traveled but when I discovered a fellow traveler, the meeting was normally positive. 

I also had privilege of living through the birth of the internet era, which in turn started the explosion of social media. Which brought the LGBTQ+ community together. All of a sudden it was easier to bring a little light into previously dark gender closets. 

Change is similar to a roller coaster ride. You can only hope the ride up is worth the ride down.

How Did I Know

 

Image from Shane 
on UnSplash

Every now and then I get asked how or when I knew I was transgender or at the least had issues with my gender.

In fact the last time I remember anyone asking was when my daughter and I were discussing her own child's gender issues and the extreme possibility the child was preparing to come out as trans to the world. To start with, my daughter has always been one of my strongest allies, supporting my gender journeys in everyway she could. So she knew more than a little about the process of joining the world as your authentic self. 

Regardless of all of that, I answered her question the only way I knew how. Even though I may not been able to vocalize my gender feelings in a way anyone would understand (including myself), I knew deep down something was wrong in my world. Perhaps my strongest indication was when I woke up in the morning saddened because I had just dreamed I was a girl. Somehow I thought most if not all the other boys I knew did not have their basic gender to worry about on a daily basis. 

The honest answer to the question became, I had always known I was born with a feminine soul and wanted to express her as much as I could. And I also learned the hard way to try to purge all vestiges of her existence was a waste of time and money. All it really did was depress me and destroyed my mental health even further than it already was. Since I had already been diagnosed with a bi-polar disorder, I had a couple of therapists try to connect the dots between my gender issues and me being bi-polar. I knew, one was separate from another and resisted their theories until I found a therapist who took the time and effort to understand where I was coming from. 

In many ways, the real question became not how did I know, to how did I cope with the change. Even though my grandchild was blessed with an understanding set of parents, they still faced the normal who, what and why questions any transgender person has to live with. When you pile on the normal challenge of life, the entire process we live with seems so unfair. But then again,(you undoubtedly have heard this before), who said life had to be fair? 

Another hurdle I faced when I was deciding to finally give up my male life and come out to the world was understanding myself. For nearly a half a century I fought my male self for dominance and when I finally decided to give it up, it was such a relief. The whole process felt as if I was taking a huge load of bricks off of my shoulders. At the time, I was very much out in the world as as serious cross dresser anyhow, so the jump I needed to make was not as far as it would have been earlier in life. So why not come out before I became any older. Since I was in my early sixties by then. I knew it was past time to live my truth.

One thing which makes me recoil in anger is when someone makes the statement I am less trans because I waited so long to come out. When in fact we all deserve the respect to come out as we please because every life is different.  The end result is all that matters. 

If you think you know you are transgender or are slowly coming along in your exploration process, all power to you. The bottom line is it your life, live it the best you can.