Halloween?

Even though October is still a couple weeks away and the weather is shifting back to summer like conditions, thoughts turn to Halloween. Naturally, my favorite holiday. 

Halloween Witches 
Ball 

Halloween means so much to me because it allowed me to experiment living as my authentic self in a semi feminine world. I say "semi" because I was normally around people I knew when I dressed up in my so called "costume" so even though I craved compliments, I still had to act as if they meant nothing to me. Perhaps the best compliment I ever received was when a couple of cis women friends said something like if I would ever want to go that direction as a woman I wouldn't have any problems. Little did they know how prophetic it was to say that but on the other hand, problems would be many as a life in transition  went by. 

Halloween became so important to me I normally couldn't think of much else as early as a month before the actual party date. Many times I would stress on my outfit. Part of me wanted to be as sexy as I could be. On the other hand, I wished I could present well enough as a woman to be mistaken as the person (female) who didn't wear a costume. 

Another major problem I had was the industry I worked in. I worked in high volume restaurants as a manager The jobs precluded me from dressing up because of mainly safety issues at work. Plus normally I worked most weekend evenings when all the best Halloween parties took place. As the years went by, I finally was promoted up the line enough I could set my own schedule and make certain I had the proper nights off to attempt a Halloween party. I say attempt because my second wife kept a tight reign on any Halloween escapades I may try.

Since I only had such a small window to try to live my dream of being feminine and even perhaps discover if I could ever live full time as a transgender woman.

Over the next month I am going to feature several Halloween posts which hopefully will describe the path I took. All the way to attempting to set up my own Halloween party in June. Which backfired when only I showed up in costume as a trashy woman.

In the meantime, on occasion I am sad my favorite holiday has been reduced to looking for other men dressed as women. Times change.  

Thank You! And More

 

Photo by Howie R on
Unsplash

Thanks to all of you who took the time to congratulate Liz and I on our upcoming marriage vows. The response was overwhelming to both of us.  As I have written several times, the actual ceremony will be October 16th. 

In the meantime, it is therapy week for me on Thursday and Friday. Since I am bi-polar, I have a separate nurse practitioner to monitor my medications from the Veterans Administration doctors. It is a very in depth process since along the way, years ago, I admitted to the depression which led to to a very serious suicide attempt. So, just to be safe, I have to check in every three months. 

Friday is a different story. Every two weeks or so I have my regular appointment with my psychologist/therapist.  She is the one who over the years has helped me with securing hormone replacement therapy, legal name change documents and gender change documents within the VA. As you can tell, we have been together a long time. 

She has been with me from my time as a nervous cross dresser exploring HRT all the way to the present as I have lived as a full time transgender woman. I have shared all my insecurities with her. Especially the one of how it would be to throw out all my male clothes and take on the world. Important also was the fact my therapist is LGBTQ educated and could make the separation between my bi-polar moods and my transgender adjustment. I can not stress it enough, there is a HUGE difference between dressing up as a woman for special occasions to spending your life in a feminine world. I still have my problems with going into male dominated settings such as mechanics shops and even one trip to a junk yard. 

By now, I am sure you are thinking, what does this all with wishing you all a big thank you. I really appreciate too all of you who have taken the time and money to subscribe to Medium and those who comment on Google.

As far as my repeated warnings on the difference between being a cross dresser versus a transgender woman, I realize many of you can't make the jump if you wanted to. Been there, done that also. Be ready though life can change in a moment.  

Legally Complete

Dinner with Liz on the right
Jessie Hart

Yesterday, Liz and I made the big step of going to the courthouse and obtaining a marriage license following eleven years of knowing each other. No need to hurry, right? 

After walking what seemed like a mile to me to get to the courthouse, we made our way by elevator to the tenth floor where marriage licenses are done. As I waited for the process, the more nervous I became. How would the clerk perceive us and would there be a bias. At the least we would be perceived as two women getting married and at the worst I would be outed as a transgender woman marrying a cis-woman. It turned out the only major problem I was going to have was my own fault. There was a pre-certification process I had to fill out before we went to pick up and/or do the licensing process.

For one, somehow I filled out the wrong question concerning my deceased wife and they had me as divorced at the time of her death. If all of that was true (it wasn't) I would have had to come up with a divorce decree. I was able to convince the clerk I filled the form out wrong and I was definitely still married to her when she passed away. 

Once I passed that hurdle, I had to go way back in my old noggin to 1978, to my divorce from my first wife. I was able to search county records on line from my hometown and actually located the file of our disillusionment I was looking for. Ironically the hardest part of the entire process turned out to be the part I did correctly because the clerk said all my information had been accepted.

From then on, it was clear sailing as we filled out the rest of the necessary paperwork and paid out the seventy five dollar fee. By the way, no bias was shown due to our gender situation. For all the clerk knew, we were two women getting married. Just the way I wanted it. The only thing that made it difficult was my own mistakes filling out the information.

We are all set now until the official wedding date of October 16th. Liz in particular is excited for her first marriage. 

Last night we celebrated by going to our favorite Mexican restaurant to have a Margarita and talked about our past, present and most importantly our future. Somehow I have always felt two is better than one so yes I am excited about the future.