Breakfast with the Family

 

JJ Hart.

Just a short post today since I spent most of the morning at breakfast with the supporting side of my mini family.

By “mini”, I meant there were only four of us, my wife Liz, my daughter, son in law and me of course. We met roughly halfway between Dayton, Ohio (where they live) and Cincinnati where Liz and I live. To do so, I needed to take my walk early, which was not a bad idea anyhow because of our ongoing heat advisory.

Because of all of that and the half hour drive, I needed to back time the rest of my activities such as shaving, applying makeup and brushing out my hair. Since we were meeting at a casual breakfast venue, I chose a nice tan sleeveless top with a pair of leggings and flats. As always, I wanted to be comfortable and blend in with the other women. The only hold-up we ran into was the first venue we always went to was closed, so we had to choose another close by. Fortunately, we were near a major interstate exit, and there were a couple of other major breakfast food chains nearby. Plus, the one we chose was not full and we were seated quickly. Sadly, we could not find any locally owned venues to support.

As always, it is about this time, after all these years of being out in public, I still have a little amount of concern over being read in a negative situation. Nothing of that sort happened this morning and I had a great time. The only drawback happened when we discussed how my first wife was doing after her husband passed away last week. She is the mother of my daughter, and she is quite close to the situation.

My kid is a glutton for punishment and even went to an extended family reunion (from my wife’s late husband) last week. You may remember, she has a trans child who she completely supports and is quite liberal, in the middle of a bunch of tRumpt loving cultists. Including a friend of mine from long ago who keeps asking how my dead name is doing. He refuses to call me by my new legal name. Since I never see him anymore, I could care less about him and his political beliefs.

Other than our brief political discussions, we had a great morning and better yet, no one questioned my gender.

 

 

 

Meeting Your True Self

 

Image from Caroline Veronez on UnSplash.

Perhaps you remember looking into the mirror and seeing your true self peeking back at you for the first time. I know I do.

Ironically, I don’t think it was the time when I was looking at myself after trying on my mom’s clothes and working with her makeup. I am sure it was much later when I improved my makeup skills to progress from looking like a clown in drag. Most certainly, I could not see the true me yet but there was still hope that I still would. I had an ideal to work towards. My ideal was I wanted to be a pretty girl and admire myself in the mirror. But even still, I knew deep down I wanted more than just looking like a girl, I wanted to be a girl, in the worst way.

My biggest problem was I did not know how to achieve my goal of being much more than a part-time cross-dresser. I was still in the pre-information stage on the internet dark ages and had very little idea there was anyone like me who was questioning their gender. Even though, I finally did meet other cross dressers or transgender women but still was coming away confused on who I really was. It wasn’t until I gathered my courage and put my ego away to undergo a professional makeover at one of the mixers I went to, did I finally see the potential of who I was overcome my male self in the mirror. Better yet, the make up professional was able to explain to me what he was doing as he did it in a way I could understand and repeat the process.

As I began to enter the public’s harsh eyes, the pressure was on to up my fashion and makeup game so I could blend in with the world as a novice transgender woman. Increasingly, I was pushing my male image aside and concentrating on my feminine look in the mirror. I was coming close to seeing the true me for the first time in my life. Once I met her, I knew there could be no turning back. I needed to step up my public game to meet my gender urges.

It turned out, the public did my work for me. As I established myself as a regular in a few special venues I was going to, other women began to approach me for friendly conversations. For most, it was nothing more than idle curiosity about who I was and why I was there. Whatever the case, I needed to develop a more complete personality quickly. No longer could I sit there by myself and watch the world go by and enjoy myself as others were watching me. My true self came out quickly and she was aided by my long dormant feminine self. She had waited long enough for her turn to do more than survive, she wanted to thrive. I was surprised at how well she thrived. She did not care others knew she came about her femininity from a different route than she did. She just knew she was finally there.

Since I don’t rely on any facial surgeries to help my look, I am very much into what you see is what you get these days. I have had to rely on makeup skill and the effects of gender affirming hormones to get me by in the world. For the most part these days, I present as old more than anything else but again, I needed to meet my true self. Finally, I could take denying reality any longer and moved to accept my true self. The meeting was long overdue and was so much fun, I was sad I put it off as long as I did.

No Easy Way Out

 

JJ Hart doing Trans Outreach Work. 

Like many of you, I struggled for years to escape my dark, lonely gender closet.

As I beat my head against the closet walls, I stared longingly into the mirror, dreaming of the day I would find an easy way out. As I did, it became increasingly evident to me that there would be no such escape from my dominating male self. He would make life miserable for years because of my indecision.  One day I wanted to be a boy and the next I wanted to be a girl dictated how I lived.

After years of despair over my gender dysphoria, I began to see a sliver of light in my closet when I briefly opened the door to look out. At first, I was getting the door slammed back into my face when I went out in public. Too many people were laughing at me to my face or worse yet, I could hear their comments behind my back. I was sent home early many nights in tears, wondering what I was doing wrong with my feminine presentation. Following intense introspection, I discovered what was wrong. I was letting my old male self-make my fashion decisions and dressing for men instead of women who were for the most part controlling my destiny as a transgender woman. Without the support of women, I would have never made it out of my closet at all.

Even as I learned my lessons on presentation, I still found there would be no easy way out of my closet. I discovered the more walls I scaled on my path to transgender womanhood; the more walls would appear to challenge me. Mainly because I was out in the public eye so much more, and I was challenged to find the proper wig to wear all the time as well as find better fashion to augment my wardrobe. There was no way I wanted to wear the same outfit day after day when people began to recognize me. To offset the extra attention, I needed to increase my visits to area thrift stores to find bargains I could afford, and more importantly, fit me. I was obsessed with outdoing myself when it came to my feminine presentation.

It turned out, the public was noticing as I lost nearly fifty pounds and started taking better care of my skin. If I behaved myself in the world, and was friendly, I crossed the line into communicating with other women. Of all the walls I needed to climb, communication skills were the hardest to scale. The change was dramatic because I needed to change my communication from direct male to indirect female as I learned women often talk with their eyes. Thus, I needed to get better in looking another woman in her eyes when I talked with her. Often doing it as a man was a threatening option, while doing it as a woman was not optional. I needed to learn to do it. By doing so, often I could see what they thought of me. Did they think of me as a woman or sort of a man seeking admittance into their world.

Mostly what I received back was curiosity. What was I doing in their world? And I think they understood my interest in being admitted to the girl’s sandbox went far beyond just putting on a wig, dress and makeup. One way or another, the process was extremely challenging and kept me guessing every night about what I was going to experience because some nights I was tired of climbing walls. I kept looking for the last one to climb, but found I was not even close. Mainly because the gender club I was seeking to join was so complex. On the other hand, the process of totally leaving my closet and male privileges behind was still quite scary and I needed total confidence in what I was doing before I made the final jump.

My introduction to HRT or gender affirming hormones gave me the confidence I needed to keep going. Suddenly the hormones helped me to sync up my external feminine self with my internal one. It was the final shove I needed to get out of my closet and live a new life as a transfeminine person. It turned out there was an easy way to escape if only I possessed the inner strength to look for my truth. Once I did, my fragile mental health improved, and I set my sights on enjoying my family more since a huge weight had been lifted off my shoulders. In the end, it was all worth it, but it was never an easy trip to go on, or I could find no easy way out.

 

 

 

 

Too Low on the Down Low

 

Image from Ky Nang
on UnSplash. 

I describe my life when I was cheating on my second wife with another woman(me) as being on the down low. Especially when in the early days I was hanging out in gay bars.

On occasion, I feel as if I make the process of transitioning with or without my wife’s support a little too exciting or even fun. I need to make it clear; it was anything but. It all started with a deal my wife and I made which I could go out in the public as a woman, only if I did not do it from our house. I even went as far as renting out motel rooms to apply my wardrobe, makeup and hair as I got ready to go out into the world.

Of course, with my mentality, that was never enough, and I started to break our agreement to never go out cross dressed from the house. The more I did it, the more I wanted to do it. That is when the going on the down low really started as I was sneaking around behind her back as a novice transgender woman every chance I got. I was stuck in life between not breaking our agreement and feeling so natural every time I went out in the world. During my life, I had always prided myself on being very honest, so I was not happy with the way my life was headed when I needed to lie to my wife when it came to explaining what I was doing in my spare time. Or why I was not successful in removing all my makeup when she came home.

The next biggest problem I ran into when I was on the down low was what was I going to do about the women who were approaching me. It was not as if I was being bombarded with romantic advances, but I did have some slight pushes. I felt bad because I never had any intention of ever physically cheating on my wife. However, I had always been a bit of a flirt which carried over from my days of being a male. There were occasions such as the night a man tried to pick me up in a bar after a professional makeover that I wonder what would have happened had I stayed. I didn’t and I will never know as well as what would have happened had I pushed a little harder to get to know a certain man with a motorcycle I was becoming close to.

I guess I had reached the bottom of my down low except for some stolen kisses from my lesbian friends. I internalized my feelings and waited for them to come to me, just like my male days. Then, when my wife unexpectedly passed away, everything changed and at the least I had purged my feminine life the best I could for the last six months of her life as I did not want to lie to her anymore. After she passed, all my barriers were removed and the first thing I needed to do was determine my sexuality. I thought to do it; I needed to go on public safe dates with a couple men I had met. I had a great time with Bob who was passing through Dayton on business, but he was married and lived far away. I did not have to worry about being brought home to mom in our brief relationship.

On the lesbian side of my life, things were decidedly different since I was no longer on the down low. Since HRT had effectively did away with any masculine sexual advances, I needed to learn new techniques. If I was brave enough, I found with the lesbian culture I needed to move slow and let them make the first move. I basically ended up with a group of three women I was close to. Which was all I needed. From the three, Nikki was never a real possibility because she was too much younger than me and I think would have recoiled at the idea of ever having relations with any sort of men (including me) at all. She was just an entertaining drinking buddy. Kim and my future wife Liz were in totally different situations. Both had lived difficult lives and were closer to me in age so they could relate to me being in a rebounding situation from all the death I had went through. In the end, I decided to move in with Liz in Cincinnati and are still together over a decade later, so I made the right move. Although every now and then I hear from Kim.

One way or another, life on the down low was never any fun for me. I constantly felt as if I was cheating on my wife. It was a relief to finally let it go and live my life authentically as a transfeminine person.

 

A Tale of Contrasts

 

Image from UnSplash.

No matter how you cut it, our gender is a tale of contrasts.

From the earliest age, we are forced into rigid gender roles, who for most people, work out quite nicely because they never question their assigned roles. Then there are those of us who just as early in life begin to question our placement on the gender spectrum. In my case, I knew something was wrong, I just could not figure out what. Then, as I became older, I made the discovery every morning when I had to determine what gender I had to be for the day. A jarring discovery to be sure.

Naturally, since I was born male, I needed to own up to the fact I had to do my best to face the world each day as a guy until I could slip behind my own gender curtain and put on women’s clothes and makeup. Early on, as I lived my limited feminine life in the mirror, I thought appearance was my number one goal towards living my gender dreams. It was not until much later in life did, I began to understand how wrong I was. There were many more contrasts between men and women that I ever dared to think about. Mainly because I was viewing how women live only through rose colored glasses as I thought they had easier lives than men.

It wasn’t until I began to pay my gender dues as a transfeminine person, did I begin to see the reality of what I was looking at if I decided to transition. As I was making my way into what I call the girl’s sandbox, I was getting tested regularly to see if I belonged. On some days I was successful and happy and on others, I was getting beat up (or clawed) and needed to retreat before I came back for more. One thing was for sure, all of this testing from other women was doing me good, because I never quit trying.

The main thing I did learn was one that I vaguely knew, women had their own world away from men and had their own alpha’s who ran the show. Once I was accepted by them, the rest of my life as a transgender woman was so much easier. But, on the other hand, the testing process was so much harder because the alphas were so much more wary of me wanting to be in their world. My second wife was an alpha and she made sure I worked long and hard to even try to earn a spot in the sandbox. An example was one of the many times she told me there was so much more to being a woman than just looking like one and it took me years to understand what she meant.

Perhaps the second most difficult part of being accepted in the feminine world was being able to communicate with other women. Out were the days of trying to bluster my way through a conversation and in were the days when I needed to look another woman in the eye and appear to be less threatening. While at the same time having eyes on my back for a passive aggressive attack. I learned the hard away on that to never trust a smiling face completely.

As I learned to communicate with other women, my life in public became so much easier and I could begin to relax more as I was beginning to put my entire feminine picture into focus. I could forget about completely focusing on my looks and movement and could concentrate on being social with the world. Which was important to me since I had always been a socially active person. Plus, as I always mention, men were never much of a factor to me since most of them ran and hid from me completely. Which was OK since I did not really know how to handle them as a transgender woman either.

My life of contrasts was coming to an end when I entered the final chapter with gender affirming hormones or HRT. The hormones were magical when they started their changes on me. I think most people consider external changes such as skin, breasts and hair to be important, and they are but to me, internal changes were more important. In a remarkable short span of time, I became more emotional as my world softened. Making me into a complete person.

I am biased, but I think my tale of contrasts made me into a better human being as I could understand both binary genders better. Since I had lived in both. Plus, after having the chance to live as both, I made the right choice to live as a transgender woman, even though at times, it was an intensely lonely and difficult journey. Which could be another blog post.

Who "Ya" Going to Call?

 

Image from Beth Macdonald on UnSplash. 

For many cross dressers or transgender women, our gender pursuits are very lonely. If you are of a certain age, you remember lonely with a capital “L”.

You remember the pre-internet and social media days when any information on being a transvestite or transsexual was very difficult to come by. This is where I always mention Virginia Prince and her Transvestia publication and how it brought a sliver of light and hope into my dark closet. Virginia was all I had; there was no one else to call. My gender workbook was blank.

From the pages of Tranvestia, I learned of the nearby mixers I could attend and for the first time in my life meet likeminded individuals. I was naïve and thought I could meet others I could call and or meet on a regular basis. Instead, I met many people I did not understand and did not want to socialize with. Either I was too much of a woman for them, or not enough it seemed. I was caught in sort of a “Goldilocks” zone with a blond wig and still no friends to socialize with.  I selfishly wanted someone just like me on the gender spectrum.

Slowly, all of that began to change when I started to attend diverse gender mixers in nearby Columbus, Ohio. I started to come out of my shell a bit and began to meet others who I enjoyed their company which was a great start to finding my way out of the “who ya going to call syndrome”. From parties I was invited to, I actually had people I could call and be invited to come along to excursions such as the Andy Warhol main exhibit at The Ohio State University followed by a visit to a well-known Columbus gay venue I had never been to. I had a great time.

Of course, when I did begin to get out more in the world with or without my new transgender friends, I wanted more. Which left me in a really bad spot with my second wife and my male self who were increasingly putting up resistance to every move I was making. In my own mind, for the first time in my life, I was making progress towards learning if a transgender future was possible. Every step I took was resisted as the other two wanted nothing to do with my progress.

As I continued with building my own confidence as a transfeminine person, my circle of friends began to increase also. I was coming full circle into my own as I was the one setting up our social events and I even quit going to any other mixer in Columbus. Saving my time and money for the monthly lesbian mixers I so enjoyed in Dayton, Ohio. The only problems I still had were coming from my second wife who I loved very much and my male self who kept whispering in my ear was I doing the right thing by just giving all my male privilege away. I did my best to stay in the middle of the gender road while not getting hit by oncoming traffic.

Ironically, I had built such a good wall between my gender selves with my friends, I could not talk to them either. A prime example came when I tried to explain my first hot flash to a good lesbian friend of mine and all she said was welcome to her world. Lesson learned. From then on, I let her take the lead when the conversations became very personal because I knew she had a lot going on in her life, and at least I could be a good sounding board or listener.

I adjusted from moving from the very few male friends I had who had passed away to a very few new women friends who helped me to escape the severe loneliness I was feeling when my wife passed away. In ways they never knew, I was calling a friend and having the best of both worlds. I had reached my own “Goldilocks” zone as my friends were easing my solitude while at the same time, teaching me what it meant to be a woman. Primarily a woman who did not need the validation of a man to feel good about herself. Which was a direct conflict from the old ways of going through genital realignment surgery and then disappearing just to resurface in a new life with a man.

What was left of my sexuality after HRT remained with my lifelong admiration of women, so I did not have to change, which was a welcome discovery. Now, I am so fortunate to live with and have married the only person I need when I am feeling down or even gender dysphoric. I can talk it out with my wife Liz, and she is like I have my own in-house therapist. My problem is opening up after all these decades of closing myself off to the world. I was very good at the job.

 

 

 

 

Can You Ever Enjoy the Ride?

 

Image from A. C. on UnSplash.

Lately, it has occurred to me how often I did not pause to enjoy my gender journey.

Perhaps it was because for the longest time I experienced very little gender euphoria for two reasons. The main reason was, I was never raised to feel any joy in my life. Nothing was ever good enough. So, when I entered the world as a novice cross dresser or transgender woman, life was very tough. The other main reason was, I was approaching my life from the exact wrong way. Deep down I knew when my “buzz” went away so soon from merely dressing up in feminine clothes in front of the mirror, I was doing something wrong. I did not know then my gender issues ran much deeper than just a love of fashion and makeup.

Before I knew it, I was in a vicious gender circle in my life when I needed to dress up rather than wanted to. There was a huge difference. When I needed to cross-dress, I had the tendency to take more chances and jeopardize my life as I knew it because I knew there was no way my parents would ever understand how their son was really their daughter. Plus, there were many other distractions too, such as not being able to afford my own wig until I was well into my college years. I hated running around with a towel on my head fantasizing that I had a full head of luxurious girls’ hair.

There was always something I was reaching for which ruined my present enjoyment. Such as a better dress, shoes or makeup which could help me look better as I had neared an impossible ideal of attractiveness. Facing my reality of appearance when the only feedback I had was in the mirror. As we all know, the mirror has a tendency to lie to you if you are not careful, and I needed a way to test my presentation as a transfeminine person in the public’s eye. Easier said than done, when I was busy living my own down low in a male life I was frustrated to be in anyhow.

Very quickly, I learned the mirror had been lying to me as I was rejected by the public. To succeed with my dream, I needed to pause my life and attempt to find out why I was having all the problems I was having. Almost immediately, I determined I needed to get my male self out of the way. He was dictating how my fashion presented itself and it was all wrong. For any number of reasons trying to dress sexy in the wrong places was getting me into trouble. My guy was dressing me for other guys when I should have been dressing for other women. Once I figured out, I was not a teen aged girl, my public life became decidedly better.

So much better, I was even able to enjoy several of the solo nights out I went on to be by myself. Even though I knew I was a transgender woman, I was just being me, and the public (amazingly enough) was accepting it also. My mirror even came back into play, and I used it more often in places such as women’s rooms to adjust my hair and makeup.

Life then began to roll on very fast. All the way to the point I was having a difficult time keeping up. I was learning so much about the feminine side of life, it was too late to turn back then and more and more, I was discovering how much I loved this new side of life I had always dreamed of.

Also, my life was reaching a new level of complexity as I was shutting down the male side and giving full access to my female side who had waited so long to be free. My problem was I was still trying to live part time in both genders as I transitioned, and I was afraid of what would happen when I lost all my male privileges. Finally, my mental health could take it no longer and I had to jump off the gender cliff I have written about.

As I jumped, the ride down was scary but fun in its own way, not unlike a big rollercoaster at an amusement park, the ride up in many ways was worth the ride down. All the fear and terror I had experienced when I had come out to a close family disappeared when I was accepted by my daughter and my wife Liz and a warm set of relief sat in. I could not wait until I could get back in public and live my true existence out of the closet. I was creating my own universe for a change and not relying on someone else to do it.

I began to build my own female privilege and thrive in it. It continues till this day and is the topic for another day. In the meantime, I often try to pause my life and enjoy where I am in my life.

 

 

Creating a New Life

 

JJ Hart, Club Diversity, Columbus, Ohio

As transgender women, we have a unique method of creating a new life.

Obviously, we cannot host a birth ourselves, so we do the next best thing, allowing our inner feminine selves to flourish in the world. For some of us, the process takes a long time. I was referring to myself as a late in life transitioner. Occasionally, I still receive the comment I was not transgender enough to transition. Or why did I wait so long. Comments such as those used to bother me until I grew confident enough in myself to ignore them. We all have our own path to creating a new life. How we get there, and our methods are our own business.

What is lost on most civilians is how difficult it is as we create a new life. Which is even more difficult because we are only bringing out what was always there. It took me decades to discover I had all my gender issues backwards. Life became easier for me when I learned I was a woman all along, cross dressing as a man. As with many or all of you, I set out to convince others of my true self.

At first, I needed to prove to strangers I was so much more than a man putting on a dress parttime or a drag queen in my days of hanging out in gay venues. It was not until I began to leave my comfortable closet and take on the straight world, did I begin to improve my confidence and overall presentation. As I went out, I took my bumps and bruises and invested heavily in my future as a transgender woman. I finally learned it was time to cash in my gender chips and go for it all. Each chip was a unique experience I learned from as I learned how to create my new life.

When I had started to test out the ciswomen gatekeepers and was accepted, I knew I had reached the now or never stage of my life. It was time to face my true inner self and live my truth. The secret of making my trip personal was a scary step. I needed to risk strangers taking advantage of me, or my emotions which had been badly damaged after the death of my second wife. I thought I had effectively shielded myself off to the world as a novice transgender woman, but the opposite happened.

As women have a way of doing, they read the true damaged me and a select few reached out. The main one was my wife Liz who I have been with well over a decade now. Just when I was hopelessly online seeking a date with another woman, she responded to me, and we started to communicate back and forth. Liz, as well as my daughter, were instrumental in me creating a new life. They were powerful feminine role models who I could (and can) fall back on to this day.

In many ways, I could resent being born with gender issues as a problem I did not need, but what good would that do. I would never have had the chance to look deep inside me and create a new life which started with hidden glances in the mirror and morphed into a full-time life as a transfeminine person. I would never have thought it possible.

 

 

Cutting a Life in Half

  

JJ Hart at Witches' Ball

Cutting life in half is difficult.

Perhaps I am biased, but I feel transgender women and transgender men feel the cut deeper than the rest of the population. Some of you may even remember the days when a transsexual person was expected to go through gender realignment surgery, then move to a completely different town and start all over with their life.

At my age, I remember all of that, and it was one of the reasons I balked at going through a major gender transition in my life. However, I was fortunate. I had two transsexual role models who were determined to do the gender change in their own way. One was a Columbus, Ohio fireperson who restored her own house in German Village, an upscale historical area of Columbus. She was preparing to retire from the fire department and there was no way she would move after surgery. It has been many years since I have heard from her and the last, I had heard she and a lesbian had moved in together.

The other transsexual I briefly knew was a beautiful woman who was going to complete her gender surgeries also. As I remember, she was an accomplished electrical engineer who would have no problem finding a job wherever she decided to go. We were never close, so I lost contact with her too.

Back in those days, I was very naïve and considered a very feminine appearance was all it took to cut your life in half and start all over. I had not yet even begun to pay my dues to be able to slip behind the gender curtain. One of my main considerations back then was how far did I want to go to cut my life in half and start all over. I certainly did not have the money saved up for gender surgeries and loved my wife and new family. A lot to consider giving up. The only thing I did know was, I thought about it continually.

Then I began to explore seriously what it would take to cut my life where it was the beginning again and I could start all over as a transgender woman. Another problem I had was, the more successful baggage I accumulated as a man, the harder it would be to stop the train and go back. I was stubborn and tried to take the middle road. I worked on my makeup presentation and fashion and shopped till I dropped for just the right piece to add to my closet. At no point did I ever consider myself attractive, but I did feel I had done enough in my appearance to live that way for the rest of my life if I needed to.

As I reached the point of no return, it was time to cut my life and start all over again, but I did not. Sure, I had given away what was left of my male clothes to charity, but I did not give away my lifelong love of sports and women too. I found the big sports bars I used to frequent as a man were also welcoming to me as a transgender woman. And most amazingly, I learned my sexuality did not have to change either. I had more cisgender women and lesbians approach me as a new transfeminine woman as I ever did as a man. Dispelling another myth from the old days that when your gender changed by surgery, your sexuality had to change too.

What I did get rid of was any pictures or awards from my past. When other women talked about their families, I could talk about mine also, but just to a point. I found out the hard way, there would be no hint given at any time that I was a veteran and drafted during the Vietnam era. The entire process turned out to be a sure-fire way to out myself and draw reference to my male life if I was not careful.

Cutting and resurrecting a long life is never easy. Especially when people are curious about you. I went through tons of trial-and-error conversations before I finally began to get it right. Now I save details of my life for people like the prying woman a couple of weeks ago at the graduation party I went to. She went to the extent of calling me dad because of my daughter so I went to the extent of telling her I was drafted in the military during Vietnam. Plus, to confuse her even more, I told her my first wife, and third wife were sitting at the table also. After that, she gave up and left. It’s rare I have ever had a chance to pick and win such a battle.

In no way though, do I ever want to make any of this sound fun, because it is not. What stays and what goes away is always such a difficult set of decisions to make. I hope you can make yours easily.