Saving my Own Life

Image from Alysha Rosly 
on UnSplash
 

 
I make no secret of my Bi-Polar mental condition which went undiagnosed for a good part of my younger life. 

Ironically, it was my first gender therapist who connected the dots and determined my condition when I told her I often spent days struggling to even get myself out of bed. I just thought I was riding the waves of gender dysphoria  which kept me so depressed or elevated when I was experiencing brief moments of gender euphoria. During this time of my life, I was far from being the easiest person in the world to live with. At the least, I was prescribed medications which evened out my moods. The meds also helped me sort out my gender issues and finally figure out one mental issue had nothing to do with the other. In fact my gender dysphoria was not a mental issue at all but instead an organic one. Had I listened to my therapist, she was trying to tell me all of that but I was unwilling to listen. Primarily because at the point of my life I was in, I was still a novice transgender woman and didn't know if I could live my dream life.  There were still too many gender bridges to cross such as telling family, friends and bosses I was transgender. 

The furthest I had come at that point was telling approximately five close friends and spouses I was a transvestite. A long way from living as a transsexual with all the resultant rules I would seemingly have to follow Such as major gender operations, moving away and then starting all over again. To make matters worse, I hadn't even thought much about my sexuality. Would I suddenly desire men sexually? I was overwhelmed with all the big questions and just continued my life as a very serious cross dresser. At the least, I was able to work on my presentation as a woman and go from there.

Even though, my solution was far from perfect, I was saving my life the only way I knew how. The problem kept reappearing when I started to go out more and more behind my second wife's back. When I did, I fairly quickly began to build up a robust life as a transgender woman. Every step I took, the more natural I felt when I could never see how I could go back to living a male life. The whole process created tremendous pressure on my already fragile mental  health. I became increasingly self destructive, all the way to an unsuccessful, ill advised suicide attempt. Essentially, from the point of suicide, I purged most of my feminine belongings and even grew a beard to prove to my second wife I could do it. By doing so, I was intensely unhappy for the short time she lived until passing away from a massive heart attack. I often wonder what would have happened with us had she lived.

Following the tragedy in my life, over a short period of time, I regathered myself and refocused  on a new feminine life. I quit dwelling on death and began living a preferred life as a transgender woman. By doing so, I was all of a sudden needing to quickly learn more than I ever imagined about my new life. Throwing out or giving away all my male clothes was at once liberating and  on the other hand, very scary. I had never purged my male self my entire life and he resisted. 

Regardless, scary or not, the process of a gender transition saved my life. Over a space in time, my mental health has stabilized and with the help of gender affirming hormones, for the first time in my life, my body and mind are beginning to mesh. The entire process took me a lifetime to figure out but as I always say, it all was so worth it. 

One Gender Size does Not fit All

Image from Grae Phillips 
on Geraldo television show.

 If the truth be known, all the way back when I was a kid struggling to understand what gender I was on any given day, I would have been known as gender fluid. 

Of course, gender fluid was a term which hadn't been invented yet. Anyone who was interested in cross dressing was branded as being a transvestite and even worse labeled as being mentally ill. In the middle of my gender vacuum, even I knew well enough I was not mentally ill just because I wanted to wear makeup and dresses. I hid my desires and hoped for the best, which mostly came when I was left alone to cross dress and admire myself in the full length hallway mirror at home. Most of all, I was trapped and could do nothing about it. Keep in mind, all of this was happening in the information "dark ages" before the internet and social media. The gender underground I was interested in came mainly from the pages of Transvestia Magazine and Virginia Prince. Even I knew the pages of the "National Enquirer" and other predecessors of Faux News who sensationalized cross dressers were not to be trusted.

Then came the barrage of so called reality television talk shows including, Donahue, Springer and Raphael. All of whom seemed to be pushing the theme of cross dressing husbands Except for the impossibly beautiful and talented "Grae Phillips" who put everyone else to shame. All of these shows probably did little or no good for my gender dysphoria except for publicizing the fact there were cross dressers of transvestites of all kinds at all. All I knew was I desperately tried to watch or tape every show I knew was coming up from my "TV Guide". My wife was trying to tape her soaps and I was trying to tape my talk shows and both kept us busy. Even though I still had to watch my shows in private attempting to learn anything I could about the outside world.

I did learn once again. my gender size was unique and did not fit all. In fact, I still felt out of place when I started to attend my first cross dresser - transvestite mixers here in my native Ohio. I discovered there were so many different levels of participation from transsexuals headed for gender surgeries down to the weekend cross dressing hobbyists.  For some reason, I was not part of either group and once again my gender size was not fitting in. The problem was, all of this happened before the transgender terminology was introduced. When it was and I started to have access to my first computer, I was able to research the term which was unknown to me. Suddenly I knew what had been missing my whole life, a gender size which fit me and I set out to discover more about being transgender. For me, it meant being part of a gender description which was somewhere in-between the spaces I had been in previously.

Even though my gender size did not fit all, finally I was able to locate my own niche to thrive in. Life became fulfilling, scary and exciting at the same time. I found out I was fine being who I was all along and it felt so natural. I was home. 

You got it...Now Live with It!

 

From the Archives, Club Diversity. Columbus 
Ohio.

For some unknown reason, I have been remembering more and more what my gender therapist told me so long ago, she couldn't do anything concerning me wanting to be a woman. Now I don't remember if she told me I could not do anything about it either. 

If she did and had I listened, I would have saved myself so much inner torment over the years from my gender dysphoria. At the time my male self was not even close to being ready to give up any claims to his life which at the time was becoming relatively successful. After all, he had worked long and hard to arrive at the point where he was. 

If I wanted to blame anyone but myself for not accepting my true authentic self, I would blame my home environment. I grew up in a very male dominated family. My Dad had two competitive brothers and his competitive personality filtered through to my brother and I. It seemed no one had girls in the family and if they did, they were second class citizens. How I existed was by keeping my true feminine desires a deep dark secret. I learned early the very male trait of internalizing any negative thoughts or ideas. The whole concept turned out to be very self destructive over the span of my life which included the years of being a very serious cross dresser or transvestite. The whole process nearly took my life before I finally figured out I had it, now I needed to live with it. 

All I wanted was the impossible. Give me back just a fraction of the time and effort I had wasted by trying against all odds to maintain any sort of a male life. The cruel and unusual punishment came in when the more I achieved as a guy, made it more difficult to give it all up. I had a spouse, family, friends and good job to suddenly consider. What would my daughter think? Not to mention my wife and brother. All of a sudden I needed to draw a line in my gender sand and decide which route in life I was going to take. 

Everything changed for me the night I finally decided I had put enough exploration as my feminine self to make the ultimate leap over the gender border. Needless to say, it was a huge weight off my shoulders. I had a chance to go back in life to a point where I was not so jaded by either gender and experience for myself what the future held for me. It was at this point friends jumped in and showed me the way I never thought possible. I found I had it all along. I was a transgender woman and now I had the rare opportunity to live with it. I discovered there was so much more I needed to learn when I entered the world as a trans woman. 

Plus it took a while for the overall excitement of transitioning into my dream life to wear off. Everything I did was new and different and even when I was not accepted, I learned from my mistakes and for a change, my inner stubborn streak served me well. I had it and now I was living with it. I guess if you are able to live long enough as I have, you have the opportunity to see life go full circle. I paid my dues as a guy and what he learned turned out to be beneficial in my new life as a woman.

Quoting the singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now",  only when I was able to see the world from both sides of the binary genders, was I able to relax and enjoy my life. All along I had it and just missed out on the real possibilities of what I was missing. Living with being transgender was all that mattered.

Smiles Equal Confidence

 

Go Ahead and Smile from the
Jessie Hart Archives. 

Where ever I go in public, I try to lead with a smile to ultimately disarm any potential transphobic individuals. 

I have to remember also I look better when I soften my face which still has a tendency to go back to my old male scowl if I am not careful. A male scowl in my world always comes off as a bitchy look which I normally am never feeling. 

The whole process goes all the way back to the days when I was cross dressing my way to the front of the mirror. Since all the ups and downs which followed, I needed to learn to put my feminine image in motion if I was to succeed in following my transgender dreams. Since recently I have been getting out into the public's eye more and more again, I have needed to reinforce wearing a smile to boost my confidence as a senior trans woman. This morning was no different when I went with my wife Liz to her eye doctor visit. 

After I applied a light amount of makeup to go with my casual outfit, I thought for once I looked presentable for the world. I even tripped off my gender euphoria for a brief second. My euphoria lasted until I went through the door into the doctor's waiting room. For the briefest of time the two receptionists just stared at me and finally said how could they help me. Not the friendliest of greetings and I became worried about my presentation. Since I had quite a while to ponder the situation, I came up with the problem and it was all me.

I had forgotten the most important part of my presentation which is my smile. For the greatest majority of the public I face, a smile disarms them and allows me to communicate with them on a one on one basis. Plus when I am smiling, I am showing the confidence I need to enable the people in my world to be more friendly also. Most importantly, a smile is my best accessory when I use it properly. Not using it at all takes me back to the day when I was shopping for clothes and suddenly nearly ran into a girl child who was darting between the clothing racks. When she stopped and saw me, she exclaimed to her Mother "Look at the BIG woman." I had long enough to consider the kid at least called me a woman. Then she ruined the feeling by calling me a "BIG Mean woman." From then on I resolved to try to put a nicer look on my face and not scare the public with my bitchy look. 

After living a long unwanted life trying to exist in a male world, some habits are still hard to erase. Putting a smile on my face shouldn't be such a big deal but it is. So big, the whole process is as big as makeup, fashion and hair. Putting the whole image into motion is what counts for me to be truly successful as a full time transgender woman.  

Tenacity of the Transgender Tribe

From the Jessie Hart Archives. I am
in the middle of two friends.

It's no wonder so many women don't trust a transgender woman's desire to play in their sandbox. In my case, it took me years to understand what my second wife was trying to tell me about being accepted as a woman in any form. It took more than just appearing convincingly as a woman to come closer to being one. I was far away from paying my dues and for the most part, she was against me doing it. So, I needed to step out on my own to discover the world on my own. Thanks to all the years of practice in front of the mirror with my makeup and fashion, I had a fairly good basis to work from as far as my appearance was concerned. The only real problem I had was living through my faux fashion adolescence when I tried and failed to dress as a teen girl. Once I made it through that point, I was able to blend in with other women  my age and discovered I had an easier time in the world.

The more I explored, I found I needed more and more tenacity to reach my goal of learning what living the life of a transgender woman could or would be like. At this point the true struggle began. Just learning how to communicate with other women on their level turned out to be the main problem. I learned the hard way women communicate on more levels than verbal ones and often say things of a passive aggressive nature such as, you look good...for a man dressed as a woman. Or they were just trying to find out what you were doing in their world. On too many occasions as I was learning my way around the sandbox, I ended up suffering serious claw marks up my back. Another way to put it might be to equate the acceptance process with trying to jump on a moving merry-go-round and claim the prize without doing any of the work such as having periods. Rejection was not rare. 

It was on nights such as those, I went home in tears wondering if my whole transgender dream was worth it. On those occasions, something told me it was and my tenacity kicked in. Even with more explorations to do. I just had to continue until I got it right. Finally I did and I moved along to adding gender affirming hormones or HRT to my list of exploring ways to better femininize myself. Perhaps then and only then did other women see I was paying my dues to be admitted to their world. I had the tenacity. 

As I reach the age of seventy five, I think now, more than ever before in recent history the tenacity of the transgender tribe of women and men is being tested. Here in my native Ohio, the gender bigots in the state legislature are once again trying to push anti-transgender restroom bills in the statehouse. Hopefully, once again, more rational minds will rise up and reject the measure. If not, I wonder how the whole law will affect me using the restroom which matches my transgender status in the future. Needless to say, I am scared.  I mean how will such a law even be enforced if I am just trying to go to the bathroom. I don't want to even know. All I do know is I won't go back to using men's bath rooms after more than a decade using the women's room. 

Finally, what the bigots don't realize is, the trans tribe has been around forever and is not going away. We just need to move forward as a group to fight. Once the bigots see we are not going away, they will have to find someone else to harass and our tenacity will prevail. 

Transgender Pressure Cooker

Image from Jeshoots.com. 

When someone writes or says something about me being a transgender woman being a choice, I have to laugh. 

I'm sure those of you who have gone through life the way I have with gender issues would agree. Primarily because we have given up so much to cross the gender frontier. Primarily, I am referring to losing family, spouses, employment and gender privileges to transition. Just losing male privileges alone is a major issue. Very quickly I discovered I lost a portion of my intelligence when by accident I became involved in a conversation with several men. I found I was not respected in their world until I finally got tired of being ignored and left the group. Then I began to not speak much until I was spoken to until I began to gain more confidence. 

When I began to be successful, the pressure to be even better as a transgender woman started to increase. For several reasons, my fragile mental health became worse as I started to try to live a life situated between the two main primary genders. In other words, I was stuck in a gender fluid universe I did not want to be in. Living one day as a man and the next as a transgender woman, nearly killed me.  It became so bad I needed to make a conscious effort daily determining what gender I was going to be that day. How was I walking and talking were just a few of the many gender considerations I was going through as the pressure kept increasing. 

All of a sudden, I was able to establish a whole new identity as a trans woman. I was talking to other women and building a small circle of friends which taught me so much about the world I so much wanted to be a part of. I kept going because the process became so natural to me and very soon the main source of pressure came from having to return to what was left of my male life. Even thinking about going back caused me stress and added pressure. 

Finally, I knew I had no way around it and never really had a choice with my life. As a gender therapist told me so many years ago, there ultimately would be no choice for me if I was a transgender woman. Sadly I did not believe her and stubbornly went on to fight a losing gender battle for years before I gave up and faced my gender reality. By doing so, I tried very self destructive measures including suicide and excessive alcohol abuse before I started to live my truth. 

I had no choice and needed to give up all the pressure I felt to transition into a feminine world before it all literally killed me. Thank goodness for all the friends and family I had who helped me through my difficult pressure packed days. The more good days I had with them led to my belief I could live my gender truth full time. Ultimately transitioning was similar to sliding down a hill towards a steep cliff for me. I had others around me who took the pressure off and made the landing a soft one.  

A Point of No Return

 

Image from the Jessie Hart
Archives.

For nearly a half a century I considered myself a more or less serious cross dresser or transvestite. In addition, I considered the transvestite label little more than just that, a label which was appropriate just to  use around others. Even though I rarely told anyone else about my gender issues.

The only people I can remember telling would number under ten before I finally came out into the world as a novice transgender woman. The first people I ever trusted enough to share my biggest secret oddly enough were friends I had in the Army. My disclosure came after I risked what was left of my time in the Army by dressing totally as a woman for a Halloween party.  Following the party, several weeks later under the influence of great German beer, the subject of the party came up. Of course then, the conversation went to what our costumes were. 

When the subject turned to me and how good I looked, I gathered the courage and told the three others the night was not the first time I had cross dressed as a woman and in fact I was a transvestite. I ended up taking a major leap of faith telling them because I still had approximately six or seven months to go on my enlistment and conceivably I could have encountered problems if the gender information I disclosed got into the wrong hands. After making it so far towards an honorable discharge, I certainly did not want to destroy the time I had put in. Plus, what would I tell my friends and family at home when I arrived back there early. 

To make a long story short, nothing negative happened with telling my friends I was in reality a transvestite and the experience was very liberating. On the other hand, I was not going to tell the rest of the world my secret. Of importance is the fact one of the people I told that night turned out to be the mother of my child and future wife. So I did not have to worry about telling her once we became married. I see her to this day and we still get along. Sadly, the other two friends I told are now deceased and I lost track of them almost completely before they passed. 

All of this brings me to the next person I told which was my Mom. It happened one night shortly after I was discharged and I was living at home for a very short while. One night when I came home from partying with my friends she was waiting up for me just like back in my college days. Somehow the conversation turned to my life and what I was up to. Out of the clear blue sky I decided to tell her my deepest secret about being a transvestite. I was still feeling liberated from telling my friends in the Army and felt secure in telling her, betting she would never tell my Dad. Just about the time I was feeling good about including Mom in my world, she turned around and roundly rejected me. All she really did was offer to pay for psychiatric care to solve the problem. Very quickly I rejected her offer and said no one was going to, in essence, plug me into a socket for electro-shock therapy.  From then on until she died, the subject of my growing gender dysphoria was never brought up again. 

The last person I came out to when I was still in my gender closet was my second wife. I write extensively concerning our gender battles but the fact remains she supported me as a cross dresser until I began my transition into a transgender woman. In essence, over the span of our twenty five year marriage, we just grew apart until her untimely death. 

Once I reached the point of no return in my male to female gender transition. there was no point in worrying about telling anyone I was transgender. It was obvious to the public who interacted with me what I was and they were left to draw their own conclusion. All of a sudden, all the pressure was off of me. All I needed to do was to do my best to present to the public who I really was. Plus, I would be remiss if I did not mention the roles gender affirming hormones played in my experiences. I was so happy with the results I was experiencing, I never wanted to go back to a testosterone filled life. For once, a plan came together for me and the point of no return never had to be challenged. 

Close Encounters of the Transgender Kind

 

Image from the 
Jessie Hart Archives.

Very early in my life, similar to so many of you, I suffered many close calls when it came to being caught in my feminine clothes by my younger brother or worse yet my parents. 

As with most inquisitive younger brothers, if I was out of his sight for any length of time, he wondered what exactly was going on. To make matters worse, we were just a couple of grades apart at the same school, so we rode the same bus home and arrived at the same time. Leaving me very little time to cross dress and admire myself. I even had to hide out in the woods when the weather was good to dress up.

My parents were partially a different story. My Dad was a banker and Mom was a high school teacher, so they arrived home usually in time to sit down to dinner. If you remember those days. My point being, seemingly for weeks at a time I couldn't find a way to explore my gender closet at all and the pressure to do it just increased to the point of no return. Which meant I needed to take risks. We had two bathrooms in our house and sometimes I could barricade myself into the one which contained most of my Mom's makeup. When I combined her makeup with mine, I had plenty to experiment with. 

On the exceedingly rare days I was left all alone, I went all out. Even to the point of being able somehow to get away with shaving my legs. I was completely in love with how wonderful the air felt on my freshly shaven legs when I took the chance to walk to the mailbox which was some distance away. No matter how good I thought I looked, the biggest problem I had was with my hair. In those days, I was stuck with either the ultra short burr haircut my Dad had or the equally as bad crew cut. A wig of any kind to me in those days just seemed like the impossible dream and it wasn't until my college years when I could afford to buy a nice wig I cherished for years. I even hid it, as well as other cross dressing necessities away when I went away to the Army. Hoping they would not be discovered. They weren't. 

Even with all my precautions, I still ran into the times when I had to hurriedly wipe the makeup off my face and change my clothes when my parents came home early. I don't know how but I somehow survived without a gender confrontation which would have been a disaster. At the time, I thought when I became older I would have more control over my cross dressing desires and life would be better. In no way did I feel as if all of the sudden I would wake up with no gender dysphoria and life would be much better. On the other hand I still felt I would not have to hide my true self to others. To compensate, I developed a very macho exterior self and avoided making very many friends who I may have to come out to later. A process I would come to regret later in life.

It turned out, mainly because of my wanting to not come fully out as a transgender woman, hiding away my true self from a loved one would reach new heights of desperation. The loved one I am referring to is my second wife who knew from the beginning of our relationship I was a cross dresser and accepted it. Everything in our relationship was good until I finally faced the truth of me being transgender, which my wife soundly rejected. Increasingly, when she was working nights, I was out exploring the world as a trans woman to primarily see if I could make it or not. When I found I could, I began to go out more and more which led me to having more chances of being caught. All of which led to huge fights when I came home as my feminine self and she was waiting for me. It was like I was a kid again and resented the process completely but it was like a train wreck waiting to happen.

Our relationship became so strained, my wife told me things like why didn't I just man up and live as a woman. A great point which I never did while she was alive. Somehow, it was similar to me trying a last gasp attempt at saving what was left of my manhood at her expense.

When she did unexpectedly pass from a massive heart attack, at the age of sixty, I finally was able not to worry about any close gender encounters. I had paid my dues and was so happy to fully come through an often very uncertain life and live in the world as a fulltime transgender woman with no negative people in tow. A dream I thought I could never achieve.   

Gender Euphoria

Image from Mohammed Nohassi 
on UnSplash.

During my circle of life which I am fortunate to still be living, there have been tines of intense gender euphoria. Those times seemed on occasion to correspond with  my severe bouts of gender dysphoria. 

Examples of euphoria came when I gathered the courage during a cross dresser-transvestite mixer I attended to have my makeup applied by a professional makeup person. He ended up working miracles on my face and I looked great (in my humble opinion) which was to be proven later that evening. What happened was I ended up tagging along with the "A" list cross dressers or transgender women in the group who always continued the party at an outside venue after the main mixer closed down. The first venue we went to was a large gay and lesbian dance club which I never really liked but I went anyhow. 

During the evening, the group broke up even further and we went to a much smaller venue which I couldn't tell was gay or not. All I knew was I enjoyed the music better and the place had pinball games I could entertain myself with. In a case of timing wasn't everything, about the time the remaining "A" listers wanted to call a cab and leave, I was approached by a handsome man who wanted to buy me a drink and play pinball. It turned out to be one of the pivotal moments of my cross dressing life when I politely declined his invitation and left. I was then forever caught wondering what would have happened if I would have stayed. Primarily I didn't because I would have been stuck in a strange city which I had very little knowledge of with a man I didn't know. On the positive side, I was the only one in the group who was approached by any other patron at all. In that moment my gender euphoria reached one of it's peaks. Perhaps the best part of the experience were the advanced makeup tricks I was able to understand and remember later. 

Of course there were other moments of intense euphoria such as the night I needed to show my male drivers license to be admitted to another transvestite mixer I went to. The greeters at the door thought I just had to be a cis-gender woman. Sadly, with every success I had with these cross dressing experiments, there were the downsides also. Mainly because of my ego which still in many ways was dictated by my old male self. For lack of a better example, every up comes with a down and when I crashed over a gender euphoric high, I was not an easy person to live with. To make matters worse, my crash was so bad, I couldn't keep my mind on anything other than the next time I could cross dress and go out as my feminine self. None of which my second wife approved of. Looking back, I don't see now how our twenty five year relationship survived. 

Regardless of these few and far between gender euphoric moments, I can safely say gender dysphoria ruled my life. Starting with the days when I was a kid wondering if I was a boy or a girl and continuing into and with daily combat with my mirror. Again and again I suffered the gender torment of seeing feminine in the mirror one moment and masculine the next. It was during my darkest moments when I found I could indeed lead a life as a transgender woman that got me by in life, barely. 

By the time I had reached my sixties and had started HRT, I knew I would never have wished my life's journey on anyone else. Going behind the gender curtain and learning life from both sides of the binary gender spectrum had certainly taken a toll on me. On the other hand, the experiences I went through taught me to be a better human being. 

Balancing gender euphoria with massive gender dysphoria in life can be a daunting task and one which should not be taken lightly as it can effect a person's overall mental health. Gender is one of the deepest emotional issues a human can have. It can never be taken for granted it seems with a transgender woman or trans man, unlike a large portion of the rest of the population. Which could be a topic for a future blog post.