Damn it is Complicated

 

Image from Amanda Dalbjorn
on UnSplash

Crossing the gender border is never easy for the average human being. 

To begin with, you need to be very serious concerning your gender passion. You need to trust your instincts, close your eyes and leap. I took over fifty years before I could come to the point of being able to trust myself. After all, I had spent all of the time as a very serious cross dresser exploring the world to see if I could survive as a transgender woman. Some times I was good about making plans, sometimes I was not. As I took the good with the bad. Ultimately, taking the good with the bad, just walking a path I knew very little about. 

As I walked my new path, there were several points of reference along the way. Such as the mixers I was attending in nearby Columbus, Ohio. Many were big and more than a couple were very small and intimate. Regardless I learned from both and how internally complicated they were. All layers under the so called transgender umbrella attended one or the other. Everyone from seasoned transsexuals to very novice cross dressers often out for the first time in their lives away from the mirror. Through it all, I was trying just to find my way to discovering who I really was. All I did finally learn was I did not fit the mold of a stereotypical transsexual or a weekend cross dresser. I was somewhere in between. I found I was not everyone's cup of tea, I enjoyed being my own. 

Examples were everywhere, including the guys who cross dressed for certain mixers but not for others all the way to the impossibly feminine transgender women who made their appearance. I was drawn to the feminized crowd but often I was left out because of my looks. I had a long way to go with my appearance but I was trying hard. With the help of a professional makeup artist provided by the group one night, I learned the intricacies of applying makeup and could really help me because he explained everything to me. Thanks to his magic, I was able to move up in the eyes of the transgender or transsexual crowd. Even still, mainly because they shunned most of the rest of the average cross dressers, I stayed to myself. Except when the trans women went out to other gay venues after the regular mixers were over. When I did so, I was exposed to a whole new world of exposure in the world in my own transgender universe. 

As I did, my life became increasingly complicated. I needed to overcome inner clashes with my genders as well as trying to deal with the problems of dealing with my second wife who was against any idea I was transgender. The major problem, every bit of my self was telling me being feminine was the only way I could survive. All of my turmoil just led to more stress to my already fragile mental health. I ended up in therapy again, which did some good but were for the most part wasted because I refused to face the truth about myself. My authentic self was feminine and I needed to express it. The only thing therapy did was make my wife think somehow it was going to magically "cure" me or at the least, I was trying to help the situation. Which at the time was growing into a major problem between us.

When I first looked into the mirror as a kid so many years ago, little did I know how complicated my life would become as I grew into my gender issues. My gender path was so convoluted as I followed it, I often became lost. The only aspect which kept me going was the deep down knowledge I had been born to be a girl. Dealing with it was always the issue.

It's All in the Eyes

Sad Eyes
Image from
the Archives.

Over the years, my eyes have helped me out in many ways.

Of course there is the obvious reason such as the blessing of eyesight but then, life steps in- very importantly for a cross dresser or transgender woman trying her best to improve her makeup art. For me at least, the hardest part of conquering the mystery of makeup  involved making up my eyes. At the time, I equated it with applying paint to the plastic model  cars I was fond of building because I struggled with both. Ironically, at the age I was at, I am fairly sure my Mom would have did her best to forbid any use of makeup at all by the daughter she never knew she had. 

Still I persisted and grew more proficient with buying then applying my eye makeup, The availability of all the colors fascinated me. Along with the chance to match colors up with my limited fashion choices I was capable of finding. It was close as I could come to all the girls around me who I admired so much. 

Fast forwarding many years, my eyes continued to be a focal point in my makeup art. I had learned along the way women communicate through the eyes in many ways. Much more than men who rely on vocal cues. I knew as I transitioned into transgender woman, I was on the right path with my makeup techniques. All the years I put into my art was worth it.

Perhaps the most rewarding feedback I received from my eyes came from my wife Liz. For all the wrong reasons. We met on line when she responded to a post I listed as woman seeking woman. Keep in mind I immediately pointed out I was a transgender woman. Thankfully, none of my gender issue mattered to Liz and she said she was attracted to me because I had sad eyes. If the truth be known, during that part of my life, I did have sad eyes. Over the past two or three years before the picture, I had just gone through very dark portions of my life. Primarily due to death of my second wife and four of my closest friends, mainly to cancer. Along with the loss of my business, I had lost nearly all the self confidence I had ever had in myself. In fact, the only concrete thing I had to grasp onto was my identity as a trans woman. 

Regardless of my sad eyes, my girl self became my deepest passion. In many ways, just to get by, I needed to become a deeper researcher of women. Instead of becoming my father's son which I had chased for many years, I became my mother's daughter she never wanted, to my knowledge. The gender guilt I felt was only grief with no where to go. 

Led by my eyes when I communicated with other women, I found my way out of the darkness of life I was in and regained my confidence. Even though it was a different confidence than I had ever felt before. My confidence as a transgender woman was a hard earned quality which went all the way back to the days when I was struggling with makeup and shaving my legs when I was a kid. Living and learning was always an exciting experience. Even in the days when I was a dismal failure in the world. Somehow, deep down, I knew I was doing the right thing by pursuing a life as a trans woman. 

It was always in the eyes, I just had to learn how to use mine. They were such an important part of my life when it came to communicating with other women. Perhaps it is true when it is said your eyes are the window to the soul.

Bonding with Yourself

 

Club Diversity Image. Columbus, Ohio

As strange as it may seem, it took me many years for me to fully bond with myself as a transgender woman.

For years I wondered if I was a woman or a man. Everyday was like groundhog day when I woke up in the morning. Some mornings I felt more like a girl and others as a boy before the reality of my existence set in. No matter how gender fluid I felt that day, I needed to be ready to compete in my unwanted male world. I wish I could say the competition just made me stronger as a male but it never did. Most of the time, the competition just made me want to head home and cross dress as a girl. Plus, I was put into an even deeper frustration place when my brother was home and I didn't have any privacy to try on my feminine wardrobe. 

Bonding was difficult when I was not allowed into the feminine world at all and was destined not to until much later in life. In the meantime, I struggled from one gender struggle to another, All the time, hiding my authentic self from everyone in the world. I suffered so much, I needed all the help I could get to maintain my life as a man and still have any sense of stable mental health. Especially when I was diagnosed with having Bi-polar depression. If you are not familiar, I suffered from terrible highs and lows. When I was up I could do anything. Including transform myself into an attractive woman and when I was down, all I wanted to do was lay in bed and sleep and try to drown out my gender issues with alcohol. Finally I was diagnosed by a therapist and was prescribed medications to help me out.

As we all know, the medication has not yet been invented to relieve the pain and tension of having gender dysphoria. Even now I suffer from dysphoria when I wake up in the morning and look at myself in the mirror. After all these years, I have learned to take the good along with the bad and take the middle road. It has been a good coping mechanism for me. Along with those mechanisms, I learned other ways to structure my life so I could finally bond with my myself. When I did, I found I was a stronger human because I had the chance to experience life from both sides of the binary gender spectrum. Since it is the rare individual who can claim to be all male or all female in the gender spectrum, I was able to find my special place where I could exist in society. The question always was, was society ready for me or any other transgender woman or trans man.

I quickly discovered most of the world did not care if I was trans or not. They had lives to live and were busy doing it. On the rare occasions I did encounter a negative transphobe, my strong personal bonds gave me the confidence to survive. 

Again, bonding my unwanted male self with my stronger, more natural female self took me years to complete. Mainly because I did not have the courage to admit who I was to my true self. Once I did close the gap, my long awaited bond was complete and I could move on in life as a total person as a transgender woman but never forgetting the man who helped get me here. A topic for another blog post. 

Ditching Good with Better as a Trans Girl

 

Archive Image
from Witches Ball
Tom on Left.

Ditching good with better has always been a difficult obstacle in my life. 

I always blame my parents for my feelings on doing the best I could on anything I tried. Nothing I did was good enough. If I got B's they should have been A's was a prime example. Even though I was an above average student, I don't remember ever being told I was doing a good job. I think now, their influence carried on with me in every facet of my life, including when I was a novice cross dresser and budding transgender woman. 

It all started with my appearance as a girl. When I was younger and before I went through any testosterone poisoning at puberty, it was much easier to look like a girl. But just looking like a girl was never good enough, I wanted to be a girl and enjoy their life. Or at least as I perceived it to be. I guess my parents attitude was rubbing off on me. At the time, all I could really do to further my looks was to over achieve with my meager allowance and take on a rural newspaper route. Between the two, I could sneak out to the store and buy the occasional wardrobe item or makeup I could experiment with. I was doing my best to ditch my good with better as a trans girl during my early age. If I had given the same effort to everything else I tried during that time, at the least I could have received better grades and my parents would have been pleased. 

On the other hand, my parents in no way would have been pleased if they had known I had issues with my gender. I shudder to think what would have happen to me if they had discovered me dressed in my feminine wardrobe and makeup. At the least, I know I would have been sent to a therapist during a time when even being a cross dresser was considered a mental illness. I never wanted to even consider what the worst could be. Perhaps since we were not particularly religious, Christian conversion therapy would not have been in my future. The only thing I know for sure is, I would not have had any understanding at all. All along I did the best I could and was able to hide my cross dressing with the world. How I don't really know.

The older I became, good certainly did not become enough. A prime example would be the Halloween parties I went to when I was first testing the world  I started with just trying to be a sexy sleaze of a woman thinking I would receive some sort of a validation. Several parties later, I grew more bold and wanted to see if I could be mistaken for a real woman, so I wore my business attire and then waited for reactions. Overall I was received well with strangers who did not know me mistaking me for a woman who did not have a chance to dress up for the party. I was discovering better was always best when it came to how I presented as a transgender woman in the world, under the cover of Halloween or not. 

All of my experiences led me to establishing myself in a new feminine world. I needed to try very hard to do away with all my old values to do it. My whole world became a concentration of new friends and life. In my own way, I needed to be better than the world to succeed in chasing my dream of living full time as a transgender woman. Sure I needed to look the part but suddenly I needed to be the part which meant moving and communicating as a woman. 

Ditching good for better in my transgender world was one of the best moves I ever made. By the time I was medically cleared to begin taking gender affirming hormones or HRT, I was more than ready for the results. Almost instantly I knew I made the right decision.  Since my parents have long since passed away, there is no possible way for me to communicate to them they were right. For all the wrong reasons. Their resistance  to giving me any positive feedback early in life made it easier for me to find my own path in the world as a trans woman. A place where good was never enough for me.  

Gender Expectations

Image from the JJ Hart
Archives

As I progressed through my gender transformation, I had so many expectations.

All I really wanted to be when I grew up was a woman but I had no idea of how I was going to achieve my dream. Unlike most of the major professions available to me, there were no schools I could apply to to be femininized. I just wanted to find my passion and follow it. 

To do it, I finally had to be free of the mirror and join the world. Even when I discovered that, I had to often snatch defeat away from the jaws of victory. Or I was defeating myself by going exactly the wrong way with my women's fashion, hair and makeup. At the rate I was going back then, there was no way I was ever going to exceed, or even make it, to my gender expectations.

Another problem I encountered was the complexity of the new life I was trying my hardest to live. Every time I turned one corner it seemed I had another blocking my way. I began to see life as a series of walls I needed to climb. For example, if I couldn't learn to communicate with the world, how could I ever hope to bring my dreams to life. Many times as I journeyed out into the world, I was flying blind not knowing what to expect. The whole process was at once scary yet exciting. It took me many evenings out on my own to establish myself in venues I wanted to be secure in. At the time, I was doing my best to separate myself from the gay bars I was going to where I did not enjoy being treated as a drag queen. 

It was very difficult at first to be accepted as a single transgender woman in the sports bars I was going to. Often I resorted to using my cell-phone as a prop to fend off anyone who thought I was going to be alone for any length of time. It was during this time when I started to meet a trans woman friend of mine and socialize in many venues I was fearful of going into by myself.  There seemed to be an extra amount of security when I was with a friend. When we were together my gender expectations were satisfied because I was allowed to relax and be more social in the world.

From there I transitioned into having my lesbian friends and had a chance to really blossom. All of a sudden, I did not need a man to validate my existence as a woman and they helped me climb another big wall towards achieving my dream. My experiences at lesbian mixers, roller derby matches and even professional football games helped me to come out of my gender shell fast. By doing so, I needed to free my long dormant feminine inner being so she could help me to become a new person. She gladly did so and took off tons of pressure from my gender expectations. If I did not know what to expect, she did and took charge and maybe most importantly gave me the chance to build a quality trans person. I had the rare second chance in life to learn from my mistakes as a cross dresser and a man.

I finally ran the string out and had seen all I needed to see as a transgender woman and couldn't wait for the gender affirming hormones or HRT I was approved to take to take further charge of my body. All my expectations had been exceeded and there was no way I could have dreamed of coming this far in life the first time I slid into hose and a bra when I was a kid. 

I don't completely know why I made it but I sure am happy I did. Along the way, my gender expectations were often confusing to me and impossible to explain to others. Even though internalizing my feelings was brutal, good therapy helped my mental health. Even more so if I had listened to my gender therapist years ago who told me there was nothing either of us could do about my desire to be a woman. Of course I was stubborn and did not listen. If I had, my gender expectations may have really changed for the better much earlier in life.

Buckle Up!

Image 
from the 
Jessie 
Hart
Archives

Recently, I have happened across several posts on my social media feeds from novice transgender women just beginning HRT or gender affirming hormones. 

In many ways, as I look back on my hormonal experiences, I am envious. Mainly because my experience was so exciting. Possibly because I was finally realizing my attempt to take a major step forward in my transgender transition. For years, I had dreamed of starting HRT, much to the chagrin of my second wife who was completely against it. She had always told me, she did not want to live with another woman and the hormones would take me dangerously close to doing it.

When I actually started down the HRT path, little did I know how right she would be. I was naïve and I thought my new journey would involve growing breasts and hair but never dreamed of all the other changes which would take place. My skin softened along with my facial angles which helped  my feminine presentation in the world. I could use much less makeup and do away with wearing wigs because I was fortunate I did not inherit any male pattern baldness.  

Before I knew it I really wanted it to happen, I was becoming very androgynous and had to do something. With my hair, breasts and skin alone, it was time to begin to think about the circumstances to what I was doing. Plus, I have not even mentioned all the extra benefits of going through the second major puberty in my life. When I did, I discovered so many new things about myself such as when my sense of smell suddenly improved and my body's thermostat went away. What happened was I was cold all the time and suddenly understood women were not making it up all the times when they said they were chilly.

Then there were the onset of emotions I went through when I started HRT. Previously in my male life I had become very insulated when dealing with my emotions. Sadly, I became so callous, I had a difficult time shedding a tear when my parents passed away. Suddenly, one night, when a late summer thunderstorm moved in, I sat alone on my side porch and started to cry for the loss of my old male self. It was such a powerful moment in my life, I will never forget it. 

Of course if you are just starting down your path to femininizing hormones, there will be many peaks and valleys or ups and downs. Similar to so many others, I questioned the gender path I was taking. Was it the correct one? So, I buckled up for the ride. I'm not sure now if I was ready for the first hot flashes I went through which hit me when I was out in public and I ended up wondering if the world had noticed I was getting ready to internally combust. Perhaps back in those days, the worst part of my gender journey was I had no one to share it with. I was just getting to know the small circle of women friends I started to hang out with on a regular basis and knew they would only say welcome to their world if I brought up anything such as hot flashes to them. 

After awhile, I came to the conclusion I had buckled up for one of the best roller coaster rides there were. The best part was, for the most part, I had no idea what was coming up next. When I was approved for larger dosages under the care of a doctor, changes continued to come at a rapid pace. Under medical care, I went from pills to patches which supposedly helped with the wear and tear on inner organs such as kidneys. Life was good as I adjusted to the new hormones and I felt as if my body was telling me I was a natural for gender affirming hormones all the time. 

The very few people who knew me pre-transition said it the best, I just seemed more relaxed and happy now as a transgender woman. I never said anything but I gave most of the credit for my new found joy to the hormones I was on. HRT had helped me to sync up my internal and external gender feelings. It would have been "TMI" or too much information for the average person to understand. 

I will always wonder how my deceased second wife would have reacted to me as a transgender woman. Would I ever have paid enough dues to move out of the pretty pretty princess mode she threw me in and ascend to the woman mode she was so afraid of. I would like to think at the least we still could have remained friends.  I will never know.

At the least, your journey will be different than mine in many ways and will include many twists and turns. Just try to enjoy the journey many others will never have the chance to take.

Cha-ch Changes

 

Vote BLUE!

After many years of keeping the blog title the same, I have decided to modernize it to reflect the name I adopted as my legal moniker approximately seven years ago. 

How I came by my final name change requires a little explanation. As many of you know, my daughter was and has been one of my biggest supporters. In a very short period of time she brought up the idea of where did I come up with my name of Cyrsti. Even though it is spelled different than the usual Kristi because of the way a light reflects when it goes through a prism. My daughter did not like it. Regardless of any of that, my daughter and I had a quick meeting of the minds and decided I needed to come up with a different name. Mainly a name which would be easy for my three grandkids to deal with and remember.

For a name, I decided to go back into my family history and select from the people I respected. For a first name I decided to go with a femininized version of my paternal grandfather's name. Then for my middle name, I decided to go a little rogue and honor my Mom by selecting her first name as my middle name. I say rogue because my Mom roundly rejected me when I came out to her years ago when I was home from the Army. As the years passed by and I became mellower with age, I began to have a better understanding of where she was coming from. 

She was firmly planted in the WWII/Great Depression mentality. Which left little room for understanding so called radical ideas such as gender issues. After her rejection, I was left to deal with my gender dysphoria on my own and we never discussed it again before she passed. I came to look at it this way, she put in the effort to birth me and raise me, so I could honor her as the daughter she never had. 

Happily, the name change has worked well. The kids seem to like it and outside of a very few instances. I have had no problems remembering  not to sign my old dead name. 

To preclude any added confusion, Cyrsti and JJ are the same person in the blogging world although Cyrsti does not exist anymore in the real world.

On another topic, even though I was saddened to see Joe Biden step down for reelection, I am extremely excited to see the quick progress Kamala Harris will have to get up to to speed and beat the former president who I have ranted against so often. If any knowledge you may have gained about Project 2025 has not swayed you against him by now, I can't say anymore except you are done living in a country we all used to know. 

Running from the Pain

 

Image from jc 
gellidon on UnSplash

Most certainly, I know I am not alone running from the pain of my gender dysphoria.

Most of you have been through it also. You know it takes a great amount of effort to out-run your issues. For me, it has been a survival of the fitness scenario. I was stuck between the proverbial gender rock and the hard place. Exactly between the two primary binary genders, or male and female. Of course I was raised male and often resented it. When I did resent where I was in life, I just became more and more frustrated and the pain set in. 

As the pain set in I had two alternatives as I saw it. Internalize the fact I was transgender or run from it. At the time, I hit a personal wall I didn't even know was there. When I became tired of totally internalizing my gender issues, I set out to outrun them. I ran from my native Ohio to the suburbs of New York City then back again to rural Southern Ohio along the Ohio River. At the same time, I was switching jobs almost as fast as I was changing my shoes. I was fortunate in that I was in an industry which was expanding rapidly and there were quite a few new job opportunities to be had. At least when I landed a new job, I had the opportunity to take my mind off of my true problems. 

None of the running worked and the pain increased. The only things I learned were there were pockets of acceptance wherever I went, including unlikely ones such as Parkersburg, West Virginia which had a small but active LGBTQ community. The problem became I could not become too involved with any transgender related activities without resistance from my second wife. So again my frustration and pain increased because I was so close yet so far away. 

Finally, I could stand it no longer and needed to face up to my gender problems. At the time, I was increasingly exploring the world as a transgender woman. At one point, I was even living half and half male and female. I was learning I had much more energy when I was in the feminine world than when I was living as a man. Even when I faced giving up all my hard earned male privileges. Increasingly, I shed a majority of my gender pressure and decided for sure I was transgender and then go for a life which reflected my new decision.  Since I had cross dressed so long I figured I was doing something  right especially when I felt so energized and natural in my life. I will forever remember the exciting yet scary night when I decided to do away with my male life and transition into a feminine world.

By doing so, I put my pain behind me and could stop all the running I was doing. It felt so good to relax and take a breath after all those years of running. Initially, I did not know how to act with all the gender freedom I was experiencing. Of course I learned to live a new life I had only ever dreamed of and was able to actually bring a portion of my old male baggage with me and discard the rest.

Baggage is actually a topic for another post but simply put, trying to carry all the extra baggage of two genders was exhausting. I don't see now how I did it but I survived, barely at times. Running from my pain nearly got to me and led me to suicide. Life then went full circle and I was paid back with the help of friends together we pushed back what was left of my male self and my female self prospered.

Much More than a Phase

 

Civil War Cemetery image
from the Jessie Hart Archives. 

When I was first experimenting with wearing woman's clothing, I worked long and hard to hide all my feminine wardrobe and makeup. 

Due to transportation and financial constraints I always had a difficult time adding to my very limited collection. Plus, I always wondered if my Mom ever really discovered her clothes and others I managed to "borrow" for my cross dressing trips to my mirror. If she did, she never confronted me about it. Perhaps she thought it all was a phase and I would grow out of it. Similar to the fallacy, being transgender is ever a choice, I learned my gender issues were much more than a phase.

Very early on, I discovered a lesson I should have relied on but kept on ignoring. The lesson was, I wanted to be a girl, not just look like one. The very beginning of the realization I was transgender as I envied everything girls around me did.  Which went far past their pretty clothes while I was stuck in my drab male clothes. All along I was stuck in a family which valued male superiority and I wanted to rebel but couldn't. I often wonder if I had been born into a more diverse family (if that was possible back in those days) I could have made my feelings known and thrived. Instead, I did the only male thing I knew how to do and internalized all my inner feelings. I even thought, if I ignored my gender issues long enough, they would turn out to be a phase and go away.

Of course my gender dysphoria never did go away and just grew worse as I began to understand the full depth of what I was facing. As I look back, Halloween parties were my first indication I could do more than living a shallow life in front of the mirror as a cross dresser. I learned the hard way, heels weren't so much fun when I first wore them on long walks all the way to how much fun I had experimenting with the clothes and learning from the parties as a whole. Another step towards showing me my phase was not going away, I was just growing into it.

Halloween parties proved to be false feedback in many ways. Most people who saw me were friends who thought Haha I was the clown dressing as a woman for a laugh. Even though I was going as far as shaving my legs. In my mind, my legs alone would do the trick and everyone would know I was much more than a once a year man putting on a dress. At least I wanted it to as I grew confident I could present more and more as a real woman at the party. When I had achieved my goal, I felt I was ready to pursue a future as a successful transgender woman. 

When I did, the work really started. Life was so much more challenging as I left my male phase in my past. I wonder now if my Mom ever thought my simple love of girls clothes was a phase, what would she think now. Outside of the one time I tried to come out to her as a transvestite and she rejected me, we never discussed it again before her death. I can't help but look back and regret how much life I may have lost if she would have ever accepted me. I on the other hand took the high road and honored her by using her first name as my new legal middle name.  

Normally, phases come and go but certainly none of it applies to being a cross dresser or transgender person. Once the public at large learns to accept we are not a phase, trans kids especially could benefit from more understanding when they are young. Parents and siblings could have a more serious outlook of what being trans is all about, helping the whole situation. Or, leave the phase out and help the person.