Painting a Picture

 

Image from Vinicus Amix
Amano on UnSplash.

During my life, I have never been accused of being an artist. In fact, I would mess up drawing stick figures.

The best thing I could do was connect dots. Which I needed to do quite often in my gender conflicted life. Basically, the main dots I needed to connect were, was I a boy or a girl. It ended up taking me far too long to finally connect those dots and attempt to draw my gender picture.

When I began to experiment with makeup, I learned the basics of facial artwork and even I could make myself look better in the mirror. Mainly, though, I struggled along until I summoned the courage to request a makeover from a professional makeup person at one of the transgender-cross dresser mixers I went to. He did a miracle job and transformed me into a woman who I only had dreamed of. Most importantly, he was able to explain to me what he was doing in a step-by-step format that even I could understand. I looked so good, I was invited along by the “A” listers, as I called them when they went out to explore other venues after the mixer was over. I even got the last laugh over all of them when a man tried to pick me up in a venue we were in, and they were not.

Sadly, the success I felt from the mixer did not last long when I had to go back to the real world, I was a part of. When I did, I became mean and nasty to my wife and others around me. All the way to almost losing jobs because of my attitude. No way to paint a picture. Somehow, I needed to get better before I self-destructed my life.

I hung on until I did get better when I had the chance to leave my closet more than once a year for Halloween parties. I was aided by the fact that my artwork with makeup and clothes continued to improve until I looked better than some sort of a circus clown in drag. I simply had to if I was ever going to have the chance to live my dream. Through it all, it did occur to me how difficult the process was going to be. I was painting two pictures at the same time, one as a transfeminine woman. One as a successful man. The stress of doing so nearly killed me. Being a man was easier because of all the white male privileges I had gained but being a transfeminine woman felt so exciting and natural when I painted her.

By the time I had gotten this far, I found I had painted myself in a corner. I could see the finish line for a change, while at the same time, I had a wife I loved, a family I loved and a good job to protect as a man. Decisions, decisions were wearing me down. Primarily because it was so frustrating to me to have worked so hard throughout my life to paint two pictures, only to have to finally choose between the two. What I did was let the public choose which picture they preferred. Since my transgender woman had an unfair advantage, she won the contest easily. She got to start all over again and learn from all the mistakes her male counterpart made and go from there. Time and time again, the public picked her.

Putting the finishing touches on my feminine portrait proved to be easier said than done. First, I needed to come out of my closet to what was left of my blood family. I received a 50/50 reception when I was accepted by my daughter and rejected by my brother. By this time both of my parents were deceased. Predictably, both coming out events were scary and quickly resolved. My daughter wondered why she was the last to know while my brother did not have the courage to stand up for me to the rest of his extended family. We have not spoken now in over a decade. Sad but true, he never wanted to see my finished portrait. Conversely, my daughter and I are closer than ever.

But then again, are our portraits ever finished until we die. Shouldn’t we always be making small upgrades the best we can? Plus, age should put us in a better position to do it. Sure, painting two completely different gender portraits at the same time was difficult and at times required tons of skill to keep one hidden. But somehow, I was able to gain the artistic skill to make it happen.

The powerful draw of an overwhelming dream was all the motivation I needed to become a better artist and provide the background I needed to live a life as a transgender woman.

The Biggest Lie

 

Image from Dave Goudreau 
on UnSplash.

Sadly, the biggest lie I’ve ever told in my life regarded my biggest truth.

The lie of course, regarded my gender identity. For simplistic reasons I could say the problem I faced early in life was having a complete lack of information to lean on. It was back before the internet information years, and I thought I was the only boy in the world who wanted to be a girl part of the time.

To compensate for my cross-dressing activities, I was prepared to lie my way through it. If I was ever caught red handed because of leaving lipstick on my fingers. Due to whatever circumstances which were beyond my control and very lucky, I was never caught by my family. Although I always have wondered if my mom somehow knew but hoped my fascination with her clothes was just a phase I would grow out of. The best part was, I never was caught or questioned so I did not have to lie my way out of an ill-advised trip to a psychiatrist. Back in those days, being a transvestite (the term which was used) was a mental illness problem. Not something I wanted to face. So, I hid in fear.

As I weighed the two alternatives, fear or lying, I chose to internalize the fear I was feeling every time I put on feminine clothes. Once again, I was able to put off lying to the one biggest person in my life…myself.

All was well until I was discharged from the Army and returned to civilian life. Once I did, I began to pick up where I had left off with my gender issues. I even went as far as almost telling my first wife who was also in the Army and was being discharged several months after I was, to expect a totally different me when we met again. I was totally thinking of meeting her as my transfeminine self. As much as I secretly wanted to, deep down I knew I was not ready for such a big move, so I hid my feelings again and lied my life away, for a while.

You know what they say about lies, the more you lie, the more you have to. Just to stay above water. Before long, I was drowning in my own personal lie, until I met my second wife. She was much stronger than my first wife who never said anything negative to me at all considering my gender issues. I often thought wife number one would not protest at all if I told her I was leaving for a period of time for sex realignment surgery. She was just too easy, and I divorced her to be with my second wife who also knew of my cross dressing. Which started out good but deteriorated

I say deteriorated because my second wife did all she could to support my growing gender issues until I had outgrown both of us. All of the times she encouraged me to go ahead and rent a motel room and spend the day out as a woman taught me valuable lessons. First and foremost, I could make it in the world as my feminine self after all. Then, the big lies started as I began to go out on my own when my wife was at work, from the house. Which was something I told her I would never do. By doing so, I began to live the biggest lie of all, as I was increasingly aggressive in my attempts to do more and more in the world away from my masculine self.

Naturally, the tailspin I put our marriage into put a strain on both of us. Especially when she caught me going out. When she did, a massive fight would break out for days until somehow an uneasy truce would be called. At times, things would be so bad, my wife told me just be man enough to be a woman. The problem was, I was still lying to myself thinking I could keep my married life balanced with my transfeminine one. I just was not that good a juggler to do it. Again, mainly because I could not face my truth.

Sadly, my second wife passed away before I faced my truth. Being the wise one in the relationship, she knew me better than I knew myself. Pushing me to pay attention to what it really meant to be a woman.

Now I just wish I did listen to her and went ahead and transitioned. Sure, it would have been difficult but living the life we lived was difficult too and I could have started living with a clear conscience. Being the stubborn person that I was, I kept on living a lie until I could take it no longer and finally made the move into a life I could enjoy as a fulltime transgender woman.

By the time I transitioned most of the important friends I had known (including my wife) had passed away. Leaving me alone in the world to carve out a new life in my sixties. It would have been very difficult, but I wish I had listened to my wife and been man enough to be a woman sooner.

 

 

Building Bricks as a Trans Girl

 

Image from Marcus Spiske
on UnSplash. 

If nothing else, my long life has been a series of gender building blocks.

Ironically in my youth I spent hours building small houses with a set of plastic building blocks I was gifted. That was until I discovered the joys of mom’s clothes and began to admire myself in the family’s hallway mirror. Little did I know, from those humble beginnings, I was heading towards building a lifetime of building blocks. Transphobes as well as other assorted bigots were ruining my early days as a transfeminine woman. Which meant I needed to sort through my gender bricks until I could survive.

Very early on, I knew I needed to build a strong closet. To quote a famous “Doors” song, I was a “Rider on the Storm.”  Somedays my storm would be less as my gender dysphoria subsided on others it was unbearable and all I did was think about the next time I could cross dress in front of the mirror. It was on those occasions; the mirror would play tricks on me and tell me I was an attractive woman. I say tricks because on a good day, I had not mastered the art of makeup or fashion. I needed to be persistent in my building blocks because I would never have been successful if I did not. My dream of living a life in a transfeminine world was proving to be much more difficult than I ever imagined.

It turned out my wife was right, I did make a terrible woman until I paid my dues, but I couldn't pay my dues until I built enough gender bricks to be allowed behind the gender curtain to learn the nuances of doing it. One thing I did know was that I was my gender journey of a thousand miles did begin with that single step in front of the mirror. To keep up with my journey, more and more bricks would be needed for me to succeed. Once I was behind that imaginary but so real curtain, I became a complete sponge to be the best transfeminine person I could be. Some days I was thrilled to be where I was and on others, I was scared to death. Building a new life from scratch with very little help proved to be intimidating.

I learned and became better at dodging the barbs and smirks of the haters in the world. I had built enough bricks to replace my old gender closet with a new one which was built to last me. The new closet was good enough to take me to the point where I could authentically begin a new life as a transgender woman. Which meant I needed to be better than the average cisgender woman just to get by.

The women around me who helped me build my new gender fortress were the gate keepers who never knew how much they helped me live my dream. I was able to layer my feminine experience all the way to success.

Little did I know when I was a kid trying on my mom’s clothes for the first time, how far I would need to go to survive. My last adventure turned out to be my best.

 

The Big Risk

 

Image from Joshua Rawson Harris
on UnSplash.

When you jump from one of the main binary genders to the other. In my case of course it meant leaving all my hard-earned male privileges behind and move into a largely unknown world.

The risk was tremendous the farther I went along. Mainly because I was accumulating an increasingly amount of male baggage. Such as family, house and good job. At the same time, I was perfecting my transfeminine appearance, which encouraged me to move forward in the world. To be sure, I was involved in being tested with a double-edged sword. Or which way should I go? I spent many wasted hours trying to obsess over my future, which was still very vague. At that point I did not even know if I could even exist in a fully transfeminine world. On nights I was accepted by the public, gender euphoria told me I could. Then, on the nights I was rejected by the public, I thought there was no way I could ever live my dream, and it would remain just that…a dream. A dream which never would go away. 

Through it all, the idea of risking all my existence remained with me and naturally scared me to my bones. I was hiding away my biggest secret and even though I did internalize it well, it was a drain on my mental health. Which is a side story I tell often because it is something I think more transgender women and trans men can learn from. At least I hope so.

Something else, I don’t think the average person understands about us, is this is not a casual joke to us, and we just cannot stop putting on a dress on a whim. We are ready to risk it all to live an authentic life as our true selves. Free from our closets. The problem was at the end of a day out, most of us must go back to our old unwanted male selves (or female selves for trans men). For me, it was always a heart-breaking experience as I tried desperately to maintain my male façade for my wife and work.  The only alternative I had was to attempt to live part of my life as a trans woman and the other half as a macho man. It tore me up.

The entire process just became worse and worse when I began to carve out an all-new life in a feminine world. The more success I felt, the less I wanted to go back to my old life and began to research the prospect of living my lifetime dream. In fact, all I can remember all I really wanted to be when I was young was, I wanted to be a woman. Which of course, I needed to keep to myself. I was miserable as I felt as if I was the only boy in the world who felt that way. It took me years to learn I was not the only male in the world who wanted to be female and was prepared to take the risk to do it.

I was able to find a couple of real live acquaintances who took the risk, almost, so I could judge what it meant for me if I decided to follow in their footsteps. I say almost because one the transsexual women I knew was a very attractive retired firefighter in Columbus, Ohio and had a very good pension to live on. The other trans woman I knew was even more attractive in her own right and a very accomplished electrical engineer and would always find a job. I had a good job but not one which would carry over to a gender transition. So, I had much more to consider, not to mention neither of the women I mentioned were in a serious spousal relationship and I was. Right in the middle of a twenty-five-year marriage. I would later come to know how similar yet drastically different our transgender community is.

The pressure I was feeling to take the final risk continued to build. Aided by the success I was having in dealing with the public, I was encouraged to take the final risk in my life. At this point, destiny stepped in to show me the way. My two major stopping points were my second wife and what I would do for an income after I transitioned.

My wife tragically died, leaving me with one to speak of to object to me leaving my old life behind and beginning a new one. Then, by that time, I was in reach of being able to retire on early Social Security income plus what I could sell online. In many ways, the lightning did come right before the rain for me and then the sun came out. When it did, I could see my dream life had arrived and I could live how I wanted to.

 

 

 

A Trans Girl in the Arena

 

JJ Hart at a Witches Ball. 

Or, should I say, a scared trans girl in a new arena.

As I started my gender transition from male to female, I truthfully did not have an idea of the complexity of what I was getting myself into. I had closely studied the ciswomen around me for years to try to see what made them tick and how they survived the challenges in their lives. I also learned the hard way; I could only go so far until I was allowed behind the gender curtain.

My first initial shock when I entered the arena of life as a transfeminine person was everyone would be looking at me. Sure, I was used to the fact that all men looked at women and judged them, but I was not prepared for women doing the same thing and even more so. Since I was never the most attractive woman in the room, I did not have to worry about most men giving me a second look. Except those men who desired me for what I was, a transgender woman.

Women were a completely different deal. I found quickly how another woman could look you up and down, and head to toe. Judging me without saying a word. It took me awhile to get over the experience and plan for it. If I was going casual or professional, it did not matter, I needed to be perfect in my presentation. From accessories to shoes, I needed to shine, or blend. In other words, I needed to be better than the average ciswoman to survive in the new arena of life I chose. An arena where everyone noticed who I was or wasn’t.

After the initial shock wore off, I learned that this part of my new transfeminine life was just something I needed to get used to. For the most part, I was used to men shunning me and women showing interest in me because they were curious what I was doing in their world. I ignored the men and concentrated on the attention I was getting from the women because I was learning so much from them about how to survive in the new gender world I was in. Sure, I suffered several bumps and bruises along the way, but I survived and moved forward. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly until I found my way.

Being a trans girl in a big arena surely brought on a new set of challenges when I lost all of my male privileges. Such as my right to personal security and my right to express myself to the best of my ability. I was used to being able to scare off most all of potential physical danger as a man, which of course was all lost as a woman and I was nearly attacked several times before I learned. Also, being excluded in conversations simply because of who I was became a common place. Both aspects of my life were something I did not quite bargain for when I entered the new arena I was in.

The nuances of living in a new arena became a common place for me. As I transitioned from cross dresser to full time transgender woman, I knew I was in the right place, and I could see the so-called finish line ahead. Or so I thought.

Now at the age of seventy-five, I can see the finish line but for the most part it has nothing to do with my gender arena. The finish line I am seeing has to do with my own mortality and how my family will remember me. In many ways, I am the unintended role model for my transgender grandchild who is facing an uncertain world. I say unintended because I had nothing to do with my grandchild’s life choices. They (choice of pronouns) are just fortunate in that their parents are so supportive of the life choices they make coming from such a diverse family environment.

I believe we will never stop transitioning in our lives. We keep transitioning all the way to the grave as transgender women and trans men whose families refuse to bury the trans people as their authentic selves. The final battle and insult. The arena never seems to be quiet at all.

At the least I could say, the journey to the gender arena and the successes and failures on how I survived were never boring and not something the average human will ever know. Perhaps, it is part of the reason we have been demonized by a certain political party when most of the population has never met a transgender person. If they ever stepped into our arena and saw our life firsthand. They would know, we are not such monsters after all, just average people trying to make it in the arenas we chose.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Trans Girl and her Hair

 

JJ Hart and Mega Hair. Most of
it is tied up behind my head.

Certainly, one aspect of life transgender women share with cisgender women is the love of their hair.

Very early in my life and for years following, like so many novice cross dressers, I had no access (financial or otherwise) to buying a wig, nor did my mom wear one. I was stuck wearing a towel around my head and imagining I had beautiful flowing hair.

I needed to wait until my college years before I could afford to buy a wig, which supposedly was for my fiancé who I desperately wanted to not like it. To me, it was long blond, thick and beautiful, and I couldn't wait to try it on. I was still firmly in the closet to her in those days, so I needed to figure out an excuse to wear it.

Finally, I could not take the pressure any longer and came out of my closet to her and asked her to dress me head to toe as a woman with (you guessed it), that beautiful hair to finish off my outfit. As it turned out, that one day of satisfaction of cross dressing would come back to haunt me later. To make a long story short, she held my gender issues against me and threatened to leave me if I did not tell the military draft board, I was gay when they came after me during the Vietnam War. We broke up when I refused her demands and fortunately, I got to keep the wig. Years later, I found I received the better end of the deal.

After I was discharged from the military, I did have the financial resources to purchase more wigs and was able to be successful on occasion when I did not simply try to buy the longest hair in the wig shop, I went to. I normally traveled at least fifty miles to get to a quality venue to purchase a new wig. I was obsessed with my hair; it was the crowning glory of all the work I put into my fashion and makeup. As with many other aspects of learning to blend in with the other women around me, I took the wig obsession too far. I was beginning to be involved with the public far too often to change wigs every day. They were beginning to know me looking a certain way and I needed to stay on course to carve out a niche as the new transfeminine person I wanted to be. My clown wigs, as I called them, went into a storage bin, only to be seen again on Halloween…maybe.

The biggest jump from there came when I started to grow an amazing amount of my own hair when I started gender reaffirming therapy or HRT. The prescribing doctor told me that I would grow a lot of hair, and he was right. He noticed at the age of sixty, I had no signs of male pattern baldness which I carry over to this day.

Another person who noticed my hair was my daughter and for my first birthday following coming out to her, she offered me a trip to her upscale beauty salon for a color and style of my new hair which was all mine! Naturally, I was scared to death to go but the experience opened so many doors for me. The main door was the understanding of why so many women make a priority of going to a hairdresser to look good. As I soaked up the atmosphere at the salon, I thought I could skip my daily dosage of estradiol tablets I was on at the time were not needed because of all the estrogen in the air. Even though I was still frightened, I still loved it as I was the center of attention for my hairdresser and my daughter who was hovering nearby.

From that point onward, wigs were in my past and I needed to concentrate on my own hair. An immediate problem was I couldn't see the back of my head and did not have a wig head to rely on to turn the hair around and see the back. It did not take me long to master the art of holding another mirror up, catching the reflection in the main mirror so I could see the back of my head. Initially, I compared it with seeing the dark side of the moon.

I know my experience with hair turned out to be very lucky in my world of genetics. While I did not have to put up with expensive wigs, going to a hairdresser is certainly not cheap. Plus, for me at least, I think the ability to go without wigs was one of the most important aspects of me presenting well as a woman.

Maybe it was karma making up for all those years I had to have short hair, when I was finally allowed to grow it out. Whatever the case, I share with women everywhere, trans or not, the importance of having good hair. Plus, you can still have great hair with your wigs, if anyone asks if it is your own hair, you can truthfully answer, yes! I bought it.

 

Jumping Through Hoops

 

Image from Jennifer Mela444
on UnSplash. 

The more involved I became in the transfeminine world, the more I found myself jumping through hoops. Many times, in my heels.

It seemed, every time I became comfortable enough in my transgender womanhood, something would come along to set me back. Sadly, most of my setbacks came at the hands of my deceased second wife. She was accepting me as a cross dresser but recoiled and drew a line in the sand when it came to any idea, I was transgender and wanted to move forward to gender affirming hormones. As much as I wanted to argue (or plead) my case, she still said she did not want to be married to a woman.

It was my fault I did not have the courage to tell her she already was married to a woman. Like it or not. So, since I lacked the courage to follow my gender instincts, I did the worst possible thing and tried to hide all my activities such as leaving the house dressed as a woman. One of the things I promised I would never do. But, as hard as I tried to hide it, she always would somehow catch me coming home when I was cutting my time away too closely. To save what was left of our twenty-five-year marriage, I went as far as seeking therapy. I went to therapy mainly to provide my wife with an idea I was jumping through another hoop to save our relationship.

I have therapy to thank for helping me to strengthen my mental health, but my wife never knew it was not helping our marriage. In fact, one therapist even told me she could do nothing about my desire to be a woman at all. Leaving me with no hoop to jump through at all, and I would have to find another way. In the meantime, I knew just sitting around the house admiring myself in the mirror was not going to cut it in any way. Once I had jumped the hoop and was successful in the public’s eye, there was no way I could ever go back to my old life.

Deep down I knew, I had to keep pushing forward as I set gender goals for myself such as taking the giant step of leaving the gay bars and seeing if I could be accepted in sports bars. When I found out I could, I was ecstatic and kept on going. However, through it all, jumping through hoops was never easy as I kept on doing stupid things such as overextending the water-balloon breast forms I made in my pre-silicone days. Of course, I had one of them break and created a mini flood at one venue I was a regular in. As I said, I needed to very quickly upgrade to silicone breast forms to prevent any future disasters. I had enough other problems to worry about. Such as, what was the new person I was creating be like.

Suddenly, I was beginning to understand when my wife called me the pretty, pretty princess and told me being a woman was more than just looking like one. Most importantly, I was in the middle of learning exactly what she told me. When I was going to my venues and socializing as a transgender woman, I was jumping all the hoops I needed to get by. More precisely, I was learning the layered life a woman lives when men think they are running the show. On more than a few nights, I became so tired of jumping hoops, I just gave up and headed home exhausted.  Along the way, I was facing passive aggression from ciswomen who really resented my presence at all. I learned to leave the other women behind and move on to people who at the least did not dislike me. Life was too short to waste it on bigots and haters.

Tragically, my wife passed away before she was around to meet the new and improved me. It would have been interesting to see if she recognized I took her up on her advice. I tool a crash course on her instructions that a woman was far more than appearance. My period of exploration was intense and to the point and I could deflect my future any longer. I needed to take it upon myself to finally achieve my lifelong dream of living a transfeminine life.

My hoops became so much more real than the earrings I was wearing. I was finally in the process of paying my dues my wife had talked about. What she never told me was, I would have to be allowed behind the feminine gender curtains to really could do it. One led to the other and while it was never easy, similar to jumping all the hoops I needed to jump, I made it. Heels and all.

 

Here we Go Again

 

Image from Pau Casals on UnSplash.

A very short and sour post coming up:

Here we go. The convicted orange felon and his minions in Washington, DC, are in my life once again. For those you who don’t know, I am a Vietnam Era veteran who is under VA medical care.

Now, in addition to staff cuts, he has given permission to Veteran’s Administration doctors and presumably other personnel to not treat transgender patients. According to the “Guardian” here is how the unhinged executive order reads:

“While medical staff are still required to treat patients regardless of race, color, religion, or sex, new rules at the VA have explicitly removed protections based on political party affiliation, marital status, and national origin, The Guardian reported Monday. Huh? The staff is required to treat me, but they are not going to if I am trans or a democrat?

To be clear, in my long time VA medical care history, I have yet to be discriminated against in any way because I am transgender. I would hate to see that change just because the incompetent head bigot wants it to.

What I will never understand is what a total crazy man is doing in my life trying to ruin it. He has no business doing it. I guess what frustrates me the most are the transgender women I know who voted for him. Saying he would not be that bad. Well, he is, and I hope you are satisfied.

Maybe he needs his diaper changed more often since his birthday military parade was such a failure. And he decided to take it out on veterans everywhere who had faithfully served their country. Which is more than he ever did.

I better end this post now before I get into more trouble than I ever thought possible.

 

Making Gender Decisions

 

JJ Hart

Living my truth as a novice transgender woman proved to be more than I bargained for.

Like many of you, I started innocently enough as I rummaged through my mom’s clothes for anything I thought would fit me. Too soon, I found I had fallen in love with the feel of feminine clothes such as undergarments and panty hose. The biggest problem I quickly encountered was the buzz I felt when I cross dressed in front of the mirror just did not last. In the space of a couple days, I yearned to repeat the process of doing my best to look like a girl, repeatedly. I did not know it then, but my mind was attempting to tell me I was transgender and not a cross dresser. In those days, the transgender word was years away from being used or understood.

When I finally reached the age to go out on my own, the mirror remained my best friend. All the way to the point of going places where I could enjoy seeing my transfeminine reflection. I would even go to the big home improvement stores to check out their mirror selection when in fact, I was checking me out and reinforcing my feminine image in my mind. Finally, even my simple search for gender acceptance proved to be too much to take on a regular basis. I needed the public to be my reflection which mattered the most. Or I began to interact with more clerks and servers on a one-on-one basis to see their reactions. The more I explored, the more confident I became, and life became so much easier. In fact, too easy.

The first main discovery I made was the fact that women were much more interested in me than men. It did not matter, if the woman was a clerk, a server or a stranger off the street, they all seemed to share a curiosity of why I was in their world. Many times, there was too much curiosity going around on both sides, I was as curious about them as they were about me. It was about this time when I began to really live my truth as a transgender woman. I always reasoned too, more than a few strangers were drawn to me for that precise reason. They knew I was living my truth. Certainly, there were haters and bigots along the way, but not enough to slow me down. I ended up learning to stay clear of them very effectively.

Confidence was always my key as I learned to live my truth. I knew I was transgender and anyone who paid close attention at all to me, knew I was also. With that out of the way, we could get down to real life and very soon the typical stranger realized I was not the normal cross-dresser they saw on television on one of the many talk shows. I was real and not evil in any way. It worked with other women I encountered and almost never did with any men. So, I was satisfied with my results. I was kicked out of the men’s club and that was the way I wanted it. I guess you could say I was in some sort of a new layered gender reality as I tried to live my new truth.

I would be remiss if I did not bring up how intensely difficult all of this was to the progress of my mental health therapy. Per norm, my therapist said it best when she told me there was nothing, she could do about my wanting to be transfeminine. If I wanted to enough, I would make the sacrifice to do it. All my visits were pointless until I faced my own gender reality. My excuse continued to be, leaving my male life with all the comforts of the privilege I had built up was very risky, so I continued to put it off until it was almost too late and I tried suicide as a solution.

Naturally, the attempt did not work, because I am here writing attempting to help others with similar gender issues as mine. I learned I wanted to live and needed to make the right choice with my life to do it. I was stubborn and waited until the age of sixty to make the change from living a partial male life to a full time female one. All the lessons I absorbed along my long gender journey came back to help me in my final decision. I still remember vividly, when I sat alone and decided to donate all my male clothes to thrift stores and give up my male life forever. A tremendous weight immediately came off my shoulders and I knew I had made the right decision.