Member-only story
Early on in my life, I was all in on pretending to be someone I thought I was not. (a girl) I was reinforced by all the lonely times I spent in front of an admiring mirror which was telling me I looked wonderful as a girl. All along, the mirror was just reinforcing what I was pretending to be. Feminine (or what I perceived it to be) dominated my free time thinking. I wrote “what I perceived femininity to be” because as life went by and I acquired more experience cross dressing and/or being a transvestite. I was so protected back in those days, I didn’t even have the time or access to really consider what either term meant. In either case, I discovered both were just labels anyhow.
The whole gender process I went through ended up taking me nearly a half a century to go through which sounds intimidating. The trip also was very laden with various ups and downs which I revisit frequently. I do it in the hope others who are considering such a venture can learn from my successes or failures. Similar to everything else in life, we have to learn from our failures and move on until we can finally experience the successes. I experienced more failures than successes before I finally learned to present as well as I could as a woman in public. When I did, I needed to settle on one look and build my new self from it.
