I ended my last segment with the questions “What if those
things I had wrestled with all my life were not an aberration? What if they are
not something I must be ashamed of and hide? What if that is really who I am?”
As I share the process by which I explored and came to affirm who I am, I’m
going to be as candid as I am able. It scares me to do so, but I hope it will
help you better understand not only me as an individual, but what it’s like to recognize
oneself as a transgender person. Thank you to all of you who have expressed
your appreciation and support for my writing. It really sustains me as I put
this out there for you.
My journey to finding myself was not a straight line
process. I didn’t sketch out a plan, set goals and measurable results along the
way. I just started exploring. I began reading things online, usually linked to
my growing engagement with feminism. I took my first step in self-expression by
buying some undergarments in the women’s section, which is a very awkward
experience when you are still presenting as a male. Don’t linger too long.
Don’t look too closely, and if anyone questions you, indicate that you are
looking for something for your spouse (whether you have one or not).
Undergarments are a “safe” place to start because, of course, no one sees them,
unless of course you are married, which presents a problem. So you start
developing a routine to avoid being “caught.” As you start expressing yourself
physically you often have to hide even more.
My former wife wonders to this day why I didn’t share this
journey with her from that point (if not sooner). The best answer I can give is
fear and shame. I was afraid of what she would think, afraid of her rejection
and still feeling a lot of shame because of my background in conservative
Christian culture. I did not have the courage to open up to her, and the result
probably would have been painful even had I done so at that early point. But I
wish I could go back and do it differently. My one real regret in embracing
myself is that I wasn’t open with her from the beginning. I wish I could
communicate to her, and to you, the terrible power of fear and shame when you
are gender non-conforming or sexually non-conforming (LGBTQ).
I also hesitated to open to her in that early period of
exploration because I was still trying to determine whether this is who I
really am. If it’s not, why trouble her with something that proves very
temporary? When she first discovered my clothing, which I had thought I had
carefully hidden away, she confronted me about it and I broke down in tears and
retreated, acknowledging that they were mine but begging forgiveness for my
transgression (still being caught in the old mindset that this is wrong and
sinful). It didn’t help that at the time I was at a meeting in Russia,
suffering the side effects of a new medication that was giving me panic attacks
and dealing with major jet lag. But I didn’t own my truth at that point.
Despite my mea culpa to her, I found that I returned to my
exploration after a short hiatus, still drawn to understand who I was. My first
purchase of outerwear was a skort, which I would wear when I went jogging (a
short-lived and unpleasant phase I went through). I would go at 5 AM when it
was still dark out and very few people were about, as it was the only time I
felt comfortable to be myself in public. Eventually I added a couple tank tops,
a black skort and a pink one. Because I worked at home and my wife and children
were away during the day at school and work, I had a certain amount of freedom
to be myself during the daytime, as long as I remembered to change before the
first person came home. A couple times my wife nearly surprised me with an
early return, sending me scrambling to change before she walked in on me. The
fear of being open with her continued to dominate, even as I found freedom in
being myself. The feelings of shame also continued. Though I was coming to
understand that these were a legacy of a very narrow view of the world, they
had deep roots in my mind and did not relinquish their hold easily.
Over time my wardrobe grew, though it never consisted of too
much, as I didn’t have much opportunity to wear things. I would look at dresses
in stores and online at times and longingly wish I could buy one and wear it,
but didn’t want to invest the money when I had no idea what would fit me and
when I knew that I could only wear it in secret at home. A couple of times my
wife would find an item that I had failed to carefully hide away, like a pair
of leggings I once left out but had thought I had put away. She would question
me about them and the pattern of pleading my guilt and sorrow would recur,
followed by some degree of purging myself of the offending items. Later, when I
picked up a book about cross-dressers (men who occasionally like to dress like
women but still identify as men, which is initially what I thought I might be),
I learned that this is a common pattern of behavior, especially for those who
are married. Surprisingly that first skort survived all the purges and is still
in my wardrobe, which kind of makes me happy, as it’s an artifact of the first
stages of my journey.
This period of exploration, discovery, retreat and denial
lasted about four years, until last fall. Over time, but particularly in the
final months, I came to recognize and accept that I really was more comfortable
when I could present myself as a woman, but these opportunities were still
always in private (or at least what I thought was private) and still always
accompanied by an element of fear and shame. For the sake of length, I’ll
continue my story tomorrow and share how I finally broke through that fear and
shame and the ensuing results.
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