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Living a transgender life can often be nearly unbearable. I found it to be especially so when my male self was refusing to give up a losing cause and I was still trying to discover the wonders of living as a novice transgender woman.
In many ways, I don’t blame my guy for holding on because of all the work he did to arrive at where he was in the white male hierarchy he grew up in. By jumping genders, I was risking it all. My job, my family and friends could conceivably all be gone. The pressure was on. In one way I admired the men around me who didn’t have gender issues to deal with but on the other hand, I felt so alive and natural when I was expressing my transgender self. More and more, I so admired the women around me even more than the men.
All of this envy led me to a major point in my life where I finally needed to decide my future gender. In many ways, it was my own fault because when I started coming out, I was more successful quicker than I ever thought possible. Very early on, I was just going out cross dressed to see if I could and then discovered it was going be easier than I thought to build a new life as a woman. To my surprise, strangers wanted to know me. Especially other women who wanted to know why I wanted to be in their world. At the time, I had just lost my wife and most of my close friends to death, so I was extremely lonely. Any attention I received was a surprise and…
