Torn Between Two Lovers

 

JJ Hart in Key Largo

For too many years I care to remember, I was torn between two lovers.

The lovers I am referring to, were my second wife and my inner feminine self. The battle was often intense as both of them decided to take no survivors or prisoners.  Plus, the problem intensified when I became immersed in the feminine world and my second wife grew increasingly resentful about it. Which meant when and if I went to her for any assistance, I was rejected. In fact, on the rare nights when she had to come to me for makeup advice, I could tell it really hurt her to do it. 

I distinctly remember one night she agreed to go out to dinner with me cross dressed as my increasingly important self. I knew at the time, if I was to have any hope of acceptance from her, I would have to make my attempt to dress like her. Which meant I needed to pick out my best jeans and blouse for the date. I even went as far to be careful to tone down my makeup. Predictably, all of my efforts were not enough. She made it clear she did not like or wanted to do anything with me. It was the last "date" I can remember. 

The gender conflict caused many rifts and giant fights between us. When the fights happened, somehow, we were able to patch up our relationship. Often with the promise I would never go out of the house into the world again. Which led to a huge problem. Deep down, I knew there was no way I could keep my promise. Because, at the time, I was so into the scary, exciting new world I was exploring, there was no way I could go back. The problem was, I felt so natural as a transgender woman. 

It turned out, the emergence of my novice transgender self-began to make my wife and male self very uneasy. After all, their very existence was being threatened. 

The whole process tried to destroy me. It was often too much to take when the battle for myself reached an all-time high intensity. Certainly, being torn between two strong women was no fun and I would not wish it on my worst enemy. 

I did not know for years how strong my inner woman was. The years she had spent being hidden away had taken their toll. She became strong on her own by default. Sadly, the battle ended without a true winner when my second wife unexpectedly passed away due to a massive heart attack. By default, my stronger feminine self, pushed my weaker male self aside and took over. 

I had lived through an unique transgender situation. I was torn between two lovers, my wife of twenty five years and my developing inner feminine self who was busy telling me she had been along for the ride for my entire life. I suffered through it all and came out on the winning end. As I said, being torn between two lovers was no fun. 

Writing Your Own Script

Carla Lewis

 It is difficult enough to go through life trying to live up to the expectations of others around you. 

In my case, and maybe you too, you struggled under the burden of living up to the demanding expectations of a male world. Perhaps, you achieved some sort of success in the male world as a method of self-survival.  Bullies were everywhere and ready to pounce and you had to be ready. I used the world of sports to hide the fact in truth I wanted to be a woman as I progressed through life. An example was, when I was playing football on the high school football team, I would stare longingly at the cheerleaders who were practicing nearby. Of course, it was my deep, dark secret about how badly I wanted to be one of them. 

About that time, destiny set in for me and it was time for me to step up and serve in the military. Little did I know, later in life, all transgender military members would be banned from serving by a self-serving draft dodger.  Or as trans woman "Carla Lewis" famously said, "I fought for your right to hate me." Now, it is even worse. I fought for your right to ban me.

Regardless, I kept my head down and served my time in the Army. I never labored under the impression the experience would make me a better "man." Looking back, as I was writing a new script in life, the entire process made me a better woman. Why, may you ask? Mainly because I was taught in basic training what extremes I could endure and adjust to in the military. Plus, I learned to always look ahead in life and not backward which would serve me well as I became a serious cross dresser. When I hit the rough spots which always come when you try to cross the gender border, I used my military lessons to always go back to the drawing board, try harder, and move forward. 

When I did move forward into a new scary, yet exciting life, writing my script became so much more intense. I needed to just to get by. For example, what would I do when I needed to put the carefully crafted feminine presentation I put together over the years into motion. The need to move like a woman and communicate with other women were and are prime examples. To make matters worse, I had no workbook to work from. I was completely on my own and made my share of mistakes before I began to be successful.

As you progress with your own life's script, adding being transgender into it adds a certain amount of intrigue. Especially, these days when we are under attack from so many politicians.

Trans Girl at the Roller Derby

 

Transgender Roller Derby Woman

Way back when, as I was building my transgender confidence, a group of lesbian friends invited me to tag along to their roller derby experience. 

Even though, I was slightly petrified to say yes, I enthusiastically went along with the idea. What could possibly go wrong with a small group of lesbians drinking one dollar beer watching women's roller derby in Cincinnati? Actually, nothing did go wrong, and I ended up having a great time. 

Also, I was amazed at the number of women in the crowd and on the rink who were more masculine than I still was.  All of them helped me to calm down and have a better time at the event. The only problem I almost encountered was when I used the women's room. It involved an evil stare from a woman coming out as I was going in. It also turned out to be one of those days when I was wearing more makeup than the majority of the women in the venue. Of course, I tried my best to apply the bare minimum of makeup so I could blend in, but it turned out to be impossible. There seemed to be no one wearing any makeup at all. I guess I identified as a "lipstick lesbian" for the afternoon. 

After I settled in, I found I could even enjoy the action on the rink, even though I did not understand all the scoring moves I saw. Plus, I had read the story of a transgender woman who had skated for a Long Island, New York, team who had fought and won her right to to participate. This was way before todays bigoted transgender backlash around the country. 

Sadly, I never went back to the Cincinnati Roller Girls matches again. My excuse is I was never invited back until my mobility issues made it difficult for me to do. Plus, my small group of lesbian friends drifted apart. In the meantime, I was able to check off another item I did not really know I had off my bucket list of things to try as a transgender woman. My friends were doing a wonderful job of pushing me out of my gender shell and if they wanted to do something as a group, I was included.

Everything I was able to check off enabled me to grow my all-important confidence in the world. From there I was able to begin going with my future wife Liz to "Meet Up" groups in the Cincinnati area. "Meet Up's" are groups of strangers who get together to discuss all sorts of topics from writing to knitting and beyond. Meeting strangers again did wonders for my confidence in the world as a transgender woman. I equate the whole process as building a new foundation in life away from anyone ever knowing my old male self. 

Finally. the wall became thick enough and high enough my old male self was completely shut out and he became the one stuck in a dark gender closet. My trip that afternoon just became one more success story on my journey to transgender womanhood.

Creating Gender Tension

Image from Tim Mossholder 
on UnSplash.

 
I am aware of the natural tension which goes on between the binary genders of male and female. 

I am also aware of the added tension which goes on when a transgender woman or trans man tries to cross the gender frontier to live on the other side. For me, at least, the tension became ridiculous and ruined my mental health which was already fragile. Before I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, I was diagnosed with being bi-polar also. At the time, the diagnosis seemed to be a double-edged sword because I was wondering why I suffered from deep mood swings and blamed the swings on my gender issues. When I found I had deeper mental health issues, in many ways, it was a relief they were not tied in with my cross dressing. On the other hand, ideally, I could treat being bi-polar with medications and move on with my life.

My worry was any future therapy I might seek out, would involve the therapist attempting to tie my mental health in with my need to be a woman. Even though it was true, my gender needs did conflict with my mental health and cause tension, they were both separate entities and needed to be dealt with separately. I was fortunate in that I had two long term therapists who agreed with me, and I was treated as such.

However, my gender tension never went away, and, in many ways, I just learned to live with it. What I did was, resort to what I did when I was younger and try to cross dress my way through my transgender life. Predictably, when I was cross dressing, life was good and when I was not cross dressing, it was not. I was mean and tried to take it out on the world around me. I became so mean on occasion; I lost a job because of it. What no one understood was, I was being tougher on myself than anyone else. In typical male fashion, I was internalizing my feelings until they exploded. I even used therapy as a crutch with my second wife who had to put up with me. The best way for me to explain it is, I would never quite tell my wife what my therapist said. The prime example I can give you is, very early in my sessions with a certified gender therapist, she told me there was nothing to do concerning me wanting to be a woman. Sooner or later, I was to just have to follow my instincts.

There was no way, I could tell my wife that when I was supposed to be undergoing therapy to save our marriage. So, I ignored what the therapist told me and predictably, the gender tension continued and even became worse. I did my best to tread water and try to live a life divided between being a man part of the week and a trans woman when I could the remainder of the week. It nearly killed me as I tried my best to maintain an impossible life. My best was not good enough and I attempted an ill-fated suicide. When I woke up the next morning after taking all the pills I had and chasing them with alcohol, self-preservation kicked in and once again I made the wrong decision and resolved to purge most of my feminine fashion and make up, then go back to my male life. 

We all know the majority of gender purges don't work. Certainly, it did not work for me, even when I grew a beard to satisfy my second wife that I was not doing anything related to cross dressing at all. Once again, my gender tension rose to a very ugly level, and I was very unhappy. Little did I know, my life was due to change in a very tragic and dramatic way when in approximately six months, my wife passed away from a sudden heart attack. 

The life changing experience led me back to my feminine self and I never looked back. When I did, the gender tension I was suffering from disappeared and I felt free.  

Nobody Understood

 

Virginia Prince

What really hurt me when I first realized I had gender issues was when I had no one to share them with. I was all alone with my problems, or so I thought.

I lived in fear of discovery all the time from my parents or my slightly younger brother. Even then, I knew discovery meant an unpleasant trip to a psychiatrist. The closest friend to me who may have shared a few of the same feelings, ended up moving away. With him, both of us were allowed to experiment wearing his mom's old clothes and putting on her makeup. It was the closest I would ever come to having anyone to share my true life with. Ironically, we never talked about the cross dressing we were doing. We just did it. 

As I said, my friend and his family ended up moving far away and years later, I often wondered if he had any gender issues too which stayed with him. Plus, as I always point out, I spent my youth and the years leading up to college in the information "dark ages", or the time before the internet became so popular along with social media. All I had was my cherished copies of Virginia Prince's "Transvestia" publication to get me by. At the least, "Transvestia" showed me there was a community of others with the same gender leanings I had. Also, in my well-worn issues I saw meetings or mixers within driving distance of me which I could go to. I was excited when I learned I could actually meet other self-proclaimed transvestites in person. The problem was, once I learned I could meet them, was I brave enough to do it. 

You all know, I was brave enough to meet them but then I encountered another problem. No one at the mixers still seemed to understand me. I was too much of a woman for the cross dressers and not enough of one for the transexuals. This was back before the transgender term and meaning was even used and popularized, so once again, I was stuck with no one to understand me.

Finally, the world began to catch up with me and I understood where I was when it came to the cross dresser - transgender community. Even better, with the help of the internet and social media, I began to stay in touch with others with similar views. Suddenly, in many ways, everybody had some sort of an understanding about how I felt. It may have taken me a lifetime to do it, but I made it into the only community who knew what I went through.  

Maybe the problem with the world as we know it these days has been influenced by people who have never met a transgender woman or trans man at all. To understand a trans person, it certainly helps to have followed a similar path. Even briefly. 

In recent years, I went from no one to understand me to having a whole group of people who have not taken the time to even accept me on a basic human level. It seems, I have gone full circle to arrive nowhere. 

Once Your Eyes are Opened

 

JJ Hart, Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio

In my case, once my eyes were opened as a transgender woman, I could never close them again.

Perhaps it is because I went through so many trials and tribulations to arrive where I wanted, or even desperately needed to be in my life. Since I had so few natural feminine traits to work with, I really needed to work hard to achieve a feminine presentation. I tried all sorts of ill-fated ideas before I ever got it right. Yes, it was me making the routine cross-dressing mistakes such as attempting to dress as a teen aged girl when I was thirty and had a testosterone poisoned body. All I accomplished was directing unwanted attention to myself. 

 It took me awhile to realize what I was doing, and my eyes were finally opened to what I was doing. The perception I had was I was dressing for men, when in fact, I should be doing the opposite and dressing for the women around me I needed to co-exist with. I learned the hard way, women ran the world I wanted to be part of, and I needed to do my best to get there. All of this meant I needed to keep my eyes open and do the best I could to study the women around me. Or how did the women react to the world around them, good or bad. 

Sadly, blocking my way were women such as my second wife who wanted no part of living with another woman, transgender or not. She was content with letting me learn on my own what women needed to survive in the world. Looking back on it, her process for me was the best way to go because once I learned something in my new transgender womanhood, I never forgot it. Also, magically, once I opened one door to my new life, my eyes were opened to another door. 

As I opened a new door, I knew I could never go back to my old male life which was bringing me down. I felt so good and natural in my new life, there was really no choice to be made. The only problem was what was I going to do with all the male baggage I had acquired over the years. Similar to most of you, I had the usual assortment of spouses, family, friends and employment to deal with. Fortunately, I started my transition process with the person who turned out to be the most accepting of all my family and friends. I am speaking of my daughter and her immediate encouragement helped pave my way to more attempts at telling the world about my authentic self. I ended up going one for two in the family process when I was roundly rejected by my brother and his family. He opened my eyes to what transgender rejection could really be like.

Still, I persisted, knowing I was on the right path and my eyes were not deceiving me. It took me awhile, but I finally gained the confidence to look another woman in the eye and communicate one on one with her. To do so, I needed to not concentrate on how I sounded and instead put an emphasis on what I said. In order to survive, I needed to keep my eyes open at all times because certainly every other woman was not going to be my friend. 

I did keep my eyes open and learned the hard way to keep my head on a swivel. There were many claws I needed to be aware of. Quickly, I was hardened to what the new world was like around me. More and more, I could never go back to the male privileges I had before. Even though, I lost much of my intelligence according to most men and especially lost my personal security, I still wanted more and more of my transgender womanhood. 

You might say, I acquired new 20-20 vision and it was perfect in many ways. It was a long and difficult learning process, but it was the best life I could have ever imagined, and I just felt I had done it sooner. 

Nice to be Wanted

 

Image from UnSplash.

This morning, I had several errands to run. 

Neither of the errands required much prep time on my part since I knew ahead of time what I was going to face. Speaking of face, almost all that I did this morning was shaved mine. After a very close shave and an application of moisturizer, I was almost ready to go. 

When I arrived at my first destination, it was mostly empty, so I headed directly for the greeting/birthday card section. The pressure was on to buy the right cards to the best of my ability. The first card I needed was for a longtime friend of mine whose mother who is turning one hundred this year. I was thinking what in the world type of card could I ever get which would be appropriate for a person reaching such a wonderful milestone in her life. I think I picked a card which would be fine for the occasion.

The second card I had to pick out was for my wife Liz's brother who was reaching a milestone of his own. His 60th birthday. In addition, he has a very dry sense of humor, so it was difficult to judge which, if any, card would work for him or Liz. One way or another, in a vacuum, I made a decision for better or worse and moved on to the other items I needed to pick up. 

My first interaction face to face with a person in the store was with a clerk who was checking me out. In more ways than one, I think. To be clear, I don't think he found me attractive, but I do think he knew I was transgender. The reason was, he was very, very nice to me and made me feel very welcome as I left the store with my cards and other items I needed.

After a couple of other stops, equally as positive, I finally stopped at a coffee shop drive thru to pick up coffee and breakfast items for Liz and me. After the give and take with the guy at the speaker and window, I received my order and was pleasantly surprised when the name on my cup said, "You Rock!"  

The whole morning was obviously very supportive for me, and I am fortunate to live in a liberal suburb of Cincinnati and it showed this morning. Plus, I was waited on by younger men who seem to be more accepting to an obvious transgender woman. 

Changing the subject now, my resignation from the Greater Cincinnati Alzheimer's diversity council when they decided to drop the "diversity" part of their name was accepted so it now is a part of my past. I am saddened but was something I needed to do and not be a hypocrite.  

Finally, today, I am awaiting news on my request to renew my Estradiol prescription with my VA endocrinologist. The whole process used to be fairly routine but now, I am not so sure. When I hear back, I will let you all know. 

For me, it has been a busy day.

In a further update, my request to renew my Estradiol patches has been approved, so I am very relieved! 

The Comfort Zone

 

My trans friend Racquel

As a transgender woman or a trans man, you often encounter major barriers when it comes to reaching our gender comfort zones.

We have all sorts of setbacks such as family and spouses, employment and potential loss of friends. Giving up the life we had been leading is never an easy decision to make. It's definitely more than just an easy choice which a percentage of people (or transphobes) think it is. For some reason, they think it is just a matter of transgender people putting away their clothes and returning to their birth genders. They don't understand how deep our experiences run. Along the way, we become very resilient in our journeys and for the most part, our tribe is strong.

We are strong, in part, because of the time and experiences we went through to reach our comfort zones. I know I had to endure stares all the way to out and out laughter in the early days when I went out and challenged the world. Catching up with all the years I lost not growing up as a girl really came back to haunt me when I had to struggle to catch up. No one taught me the basics of fashion and makeup. More importantly, I did not have the confidence I needed to move forward to even learn if my gender dreams could ever become a reality. Which was the most important thing to me.

Slowly but surely, with success, my time in the comfort zone came around and I survived. It was never easy. To this day, when we traveled to the Florida Keys recently, after all I had been through in my life chasing my gender, I still was very nervous about several things I would face along the way on the bus tour.  I did not know how I would fare as a transgender woman on a bus full of strangers. Especially when it came to having restroom privileges as we traveled through the deep south. However, I can't spotlight the deep south for its anti-transgender laws when my native Ohio recently has passed some of the most restrictive trans laws in the country. I guess you could say, I could run but I could not hide.

Quickly, my fears dissolved as the other women on the bus began to not so slyly question my wife Liz and I's relationship. The reason was one woman said to Liz, she thought we were sisters. Which really increased my confidence and put me in a comfort zone which would last for the rest of the trip.

My comfort zone expanded, and I was able to enjoy my new reality of acceptance in my transgender womanhood. Of course, it was all challenged when I caught Covid on the way back to Ohio and ended up in a suburban Atlanta hospital. I was fortunate in that I had my Covid vaccine three months before and my case was lessened in its severity. My three days stay in the hospital really challenged my comfort zone because I have never had any gender altering surgeries. So, even though the staff initially thought I was a woman, it quickly became evident I was still a biological male. Hopefully, I won't have to go through an experience such as that for a while again.

As we all know, comfort zones are fleeting and have to be earned. You need to be patient and do the best you can until your confidence as a transgender woman or trans man comes along, and you are finally comfortable in your own skin. 

Tomorow is Here and It Is Ugly

 

Image from 
Charlesdeluvio on UnSplash

Back before the election and I was voicing my concerns about a tRumpt presidency, I received a comment from a self-professed transgender woman who said she was a conservative and supported the felon. 

Her reasoning was, he had not been that bad during his first term. She also mentioned nothing about all the negatives he spewed about the transgender population. Well, he is here now and in all his glory has shown an indication to destroy the foundation our country was built on. It turns out, the self-professed "king's" attacks on the transgender community were just the beginning. In fact, the attacks on DEI have reached down as far as my association with the local, Cincinnati, Alzheimer's chapter. 

For those of you who did not know, I have been a member of the local Diversity Commitee for the past several months or nearly a year. Very recently, the message came along from the council saying the Diversity Council would be changing its name. They were removing "Diversity" from the title. Naturally, I was shocked to say the least. The long tentacles of hate from the new felon's administration had suddenly become a stark reality to me. 

Since that time, I have decided to resign my spot on the committee in protest. The remainder of the group can pursue their new "health initiative" without me. 

With everything else happening in our country right now, I wonder what all the transgender women or trans men think now. 

As far as I go, I live in fear of my future. Not as far as being attacked is concerned but what potentially is going to happen with my Veteran's Administration health care benefits. I have a potentially key appointment coming up soon because my Estradiol prescription has run out. So, I will see if a problem getting my gender affirming hormones is going to be a problem or not. 

Looking further ahead, I fear after the Musk/tRumpt social security purges, what will happen with my future payments I use to live on. 

Bottom line is, I resent all the challenges I have to deal with at the age of 75. Just because a bunch of billionaires can increase their wealth. To hell with being a conservative or liberal, I just want to live and can't help being deeply resentful to all who support the king felon. Tomorrow arrived for me, and it is ugly.