Yeah to this one too

Unprofessionalism 
DARING FIREBALL | TUE, DEC 24
http://pulse.me/s/JHzAa
Allen Pike: The behaviours that make us human are not professional. Honesty, frankness, humour, emotionality, embracing the ... Read more

Indeed

The Internet: A Mob Without Consequence 
DARING FIREBALL | FRI, DEC 27
http://pulse.me/s/JMCKl
Good piece by Nick Bilton: The immediacy and fast pace of the Internet can be magical. But when someone makes a comment ... Read more

"Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:32 NKJV)

Though finding acceptance in my wife's eyes removed a huge weight from my shoulders, it hardly meant the end of my (now our) struggle. We still had to consider the reaction of the entire rest of the world, most importantly our children, family, and friends. We decided to attack this problem the same way we approach every question in our lives: by seeking and accepting the truth.

This truth business is not easy. Truth can be elusive and destructive. My "version" of truth may differ from yours. Worst yet, I may be blind to the truth. This last point is particularly vexing. So many things can skew our perception of the truth. Our experiences, desires, age, and a host of other influences all affect what we perceive to be the truth.

My personal belief system holds that God serves as the single source of universal truth. Because there is one source of truth, the truth can become known to us. There is no gray; only black and white, right and wrong. This belief system in no way implies I have all the answers. Witness the number of years I have struggled with the basic questions of why I have these feelings, are they innate, or even if they are "right". What makes seeking the truth work for me is a desire to seek it with all my heart and mind plus a willingness to accept the consequences and living the truth and, yes, changing my mind when I find I am in error.

I've been back and forth on these questions many times over the years. I've prayed, I've meditated, I've read of other people's experiences, and I have read scientific literature. No matter what I do or how many times I have changed my mind I always end up back at the simple truth that I am a CD, God loves me, and my wife loves me. All things considered, that is not a bad place to start from.

So where does that leave friends, family, my employer, and the world at large? Well, no matter how much I may wish for acceptance from others, it is not in my power to control. They will accept me or they will not. I choose to live my life in a way that reflects the truth that I am different. It is within their rights to view that however they may, but is not within their rights to choose my life for me. It is within their power to withhold affection, love, respect, and job advancement, but it is up to me how I will react. In choosing to live by the truth that I am a CD I am also choosing to accept the consequences of that truth.

How this played out in my real life is that Tonya and I chose to share my secret with immediate family and close friends, including our children. None of these people were asked to keep the secret to themselves and none were asked for their acceptance. Some asked lots of questions. Some said, "Well, that explains a few things." Some had little to say. No one said, "We disown you."

Now, the truth is that not everybody though it was the greatest thing on earth. Some family and friends think my predilection for wearing women's clothing is strange or sinful, and thats OK. I am not asking them to agree with my choices, but in order to remain a part of my life they must accept them.

I hope I don't come across as harsh, uncaring, or arrogant. I love the people in my life. They wouldn't be in my life if I did not love and respect them. But I spent a huge chunk of my life absolutely hating myself because of my CD desires. For many years I literally thought I was the only person on the face of the earth that had this desire. I could not develop a relationship with God because I was twisted. No one could ever love me because of this. The depth of loathing caused by being a CD is almost impossible to capture in words. The closest I've seen anyone come is the following lyrics from The Cure song, "Last Day of Summer":

Nothing I am

Nothing I dream

Nothing is new

Nothing I think or believe in or say

Nothing is true

All that I have

All that I hold

All that is wrong

All that I feel for or trust in or love

All that is gone

The truth is that I may be wrong about it being OK to be a CD. The truth is that I may lose people in my life, I may lose my job, or I may lose my home. Those things are temporary, though. They can be replaced and after you die they are meaningless. The one thing that endures is self. That's all that any of us really have. Now, go back and re-read those lyrics again. Imagine if that's how you viewed yourself. I may not know the truth of everything, but I do know it is true that I will never again view myself through those lyrics, and no one that truly loves me would ask me to.

Merry Christmas

For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. (Luke 2:11 NKJV)

I'm a CD and that's OK

After Jesus, the greatest gift God ever gave me is my wife, Tonya. The first time I ever saw her she was sitting on her front porch with her 5-year old son.  Now, her neighborhood was primarily inhabited by doctors, lawyers, professors, and local politicians so the logical assumption would be that she was married. As for myself, I was in a five-year relationship with my girlfriend and we had a three-year old child. Despite all this when she said, "hello", I knew immediately I was going to marry her.

Suddenly I began seeing her everywhere: at the grocery store, at the mall, strolling downtown. Though I did not know at the time, she took a job where my mother worked and they became close friends. A year later we met for the first time when we found ourselves working for the same company. As it turned out she was divorced and, though I didn't know at the time, my girlfriend was in the process of leaving me for another man.

The next severl years were a whirlwind as we dated, got married, had two children and started our own business. We were, and remain, constant companions. Since the day we first met we have always worked together and in our married life we have virtually never spent a night apart. We are so close that people began referring to us as, "Chonya", a contraction of "Charlie" and "Tonya".

February 15, 2014 Tonya and I will celebrate our 23rd anniversary. I have no doubt that Tonya and I were literally created for each other. Our strengths compensate for the other's weaknesses and neither of us fit the stereotypical gender roles: I do most of the cooking and she does home repairs. We fit; like puzzle pieces.

So, why did I choose to hide my CD desires from her for five years? Fear, of course. I had found out the hard way that women don't always react well to the discovery that their partner is a CD. Fear of rejection, fear of being outed to friends and family, fear of job loss, fear of being labeled a freak: these are all powerful motivators. Fear is one of Satan's most powerful weapons.

Most crossdressers are well acquainted with what goes through a CD's mind when they enter a new relationship. There's the fear of the consequences if your secret is revealed of course, but there is also the belief that getting married will put an end to the desire. On top of that, my wife and I were both finding ourselves drawing  closer to God during this time period, and that brought along a whole new set of challenges for me.

The first five years of our marriage were adifficult  personal journey for me. I was "successful" at ridding myself of CD desires many times in this period, only to have the desire come back stronger than ever. Each time the desire returned I found myself pushing the envelope more and more. It was during this time that I began acquiring wigs, breast forms, and makeup as I increasingly had the desire to go out into the world in the female form. Tonya started noticing little things like missing clothing that turned up later in another location and eventually she amassed all the circumstantial evidence she needed to ask me, "Are you a crossdresser?" I know my wife well enough to know this was a rhetorical question; she already knew the answer. I also know her well enough to know that she had done her homework on the subject, i.e. she knew to use the term "crossdresser". So, I had no choice but to be completely honest.

Just like that, with a single question, my soul was laid bare. My secret was out. This was the beginning of the end. Except it wasn't the end. This was the beginning of something wonderful. My wife accepted and supported me - the whole me. We spent the next several months exploring this new aspect of our relationship and before I knew it I was going out as Jocelyn and interacting with regular people. Finally, after nearly 25 years of struggle, I could say, "I'm a crossdresser and that's OK." 

Backstory

Perhaps the most interesting element of my story is just how ordinary it is.

I was born in 1962, the first of two sons born to a mixed-race (black/white) couple living in a small town in West Virginia. Our parents split up shortly after I entered first grade and my mother, my brother, and I lived with her parents until I graduated high school.

My mother and grandmother were awesome role models; my grandfather, not so much. It's not that he was a bad person, he just wasn't that involved. Perhaps the most significant male in my life was my slightly effeminate gay uncle. He's the one who taught me how to ride a bike, shave, and drive a car. Everything else about being a man I learned on my own.

Despite the lack of a true father figure I grew up feeling very much male. I played sports, wrestled, burned green army men with a magnifying glass, and had loads of friend. My earliest memories of feeling the slightest bit different came around 10 years of age when I developed a fascination for my mom's bras and playing private dressup. It wasn't until puberty that the sexual aspect of crossdressing reared its head That's when the familiar signs of shame and guilt appeared. Thus began the lifetime struggle with alternately trying to understand and trying to rid myself of this strange, unwanted compulsion.

I've spent more hours than I care to remember trying to understand why I have a compulsion to CD. Is it the lack of a significant male presence in my childhood years, the strong female presence, or something else? Maybe it's genetics. Maybe it's a complex combination of factors. Eventually I simply stopped worrying about the reason and began to embrace the truth: I am a crossdresser.

Welcome to my world

Hello

I am a Christian, a husband, a father, a brother, a son, and a crossdresser. While all of these labels accurately describe me, no single label defines me. The only label I find truly appropriate for anyone is "human".

This blog is me thinking out loud about the world I live in. I may write about gender issues, being a Christian, my new phone, or music. I'm not sure of the purpose of this blog. I just know that a quiet voice is driving me to write. I recognize this voice as the one I heard the first time I saw my wife. It is the same voice that told us to quit out jobs when she was 8 months pregnant and use our entire savings to start a business. It's the voice I have learned to listen to; it is the voice I know as God.

Perhaps this blog is intended only for me; a way to work out issues of my own. Maybe something I say is intended for a single person in Peoria, or maybe a much larger audience. I don't know. I'm just going to write.

On labels

I recently read an article that talked about how the human brain reduces the world to a series of patterns in order to manage the massive amount of information we have to process. Perhaps this explains our need to incessantly categorize everything we see.

When it comes to discussion on gender issues I just refer to myself as a crossdresser. Over the years I have self-identified as a CD, TV, tranny, T-Girl, transgendered, bi-gendered, and let's see...did I leave anything out? Truth be told I prefer the bi-gendered nomenclature, but that implies only two genders so now we have to go down that path and, frankly, I find it exhausting and pointless. CD works for me.

If I could snap my fingers and change my physical appearance, I would give myself feminine hips and breasts, remove the facial hair, and keep the penis. I would still crossdress, but then the "fake" part would be in service of appearing as a male.

Though she wouldn't be an enthusiastic supporter of this scenario, my wife would be supportive if this is something I truly needed to be happy. Still, it would definitely be a loss for her in some ways and I'm simply not willing to withhold those aspects of myself that are important to her. So, things remain as they are and we both get to be happy. At the end of the day isn't that all we really want?

~ Jocelyn