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Welcome to Hell

JJ Hart
3 min readOct 22, 2023
Image from a Casa Susanna Retreat

My early days of dealing with a severe case of gender dysphoria can only be described as being in hell.

For those of you who can remember the dark days of information before the internet and social media, you also recall the days of being completely alone in your dark gender closet. Since I was raised in a very male dominated family, I knew escaping my own closet was going to be difficult at it’s best. I was forced to sneak around behind my family’s back to steal away the time to cross dress in my small stash of girls clothes and makeup. I even resorted to storing away my clothes and a spare mirror in plastic bags in a hollowed out tree in the woods next to our house.

Through it all, I knew the whole process of dressing as a girl made me feel better but somehow would have to be enough to get me by. I followed the vicious cycles of feeling the gender euphoria of being feminine in my mirror with deep depression when I was denied access to my clothes. I learned very early I wanted to do more than look feminine, I wanted to be feminine. Way before the term transgender was ever invented. to put the date in perspective, I would have been in the 1960’s before I hit my teenaged years and still years away from my military duty and discovering Virginia Prince and her “Transvestia” publication which only dealt with so called heterosexual cross dressers or transvestites. I mention “Tranvestia” again…

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JJ Hart
JJ Hart

Written by JJ Hart

Thanks for stopping by! I am a married Transgender veteran author and blogger. I write in the hope of helping others with similar gender dysphoria

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