Closing doors behind me

I actually love it when a fellow TG blogger writes something that brings to mind an incident in my past where I have felt marginalized by having undue attention brought to me because it allows me to close a door once held open by other incidents in my life which have caused great pain and despair.  (If you’re interested, see To pee or not to pee at Short but Fast.)

When I was in my early puberty period in Junior High School, I found the need to go the boy’s room between every class to relieve myself of a tingling sensation at the tip of my urethra, which is to say the tip of my penis, where men actually are most aware of the urge to go.  The problem was that once I was at the urinal, if anyone else was in the bathroom, I just couldn’t relax enough to start and even having started, keep it going.

This got me and two of my sympathetic buddies into trouble once when a couple of other boys decided to hang out to smoke cigarettes and a male teacher caught us all in there past the bell and made us sit in the back of his class for a while. The mortification was compounded because my buddies and I had to not only report to the assistant principal to explain ourselves, which I was too mortified and unwilling to do, we also had to sit in detention after school for being late to our choir practice, which was a substitute for the regular music class required of all students.

For years afterward, in High School, college and beyond, I often had dreams of being caught in the girl’s room with my pants down, wearing girl’s underwear.  This dream actually became more prevalent later in life because of my secret need to “dress up” in women’s lingerie in the privacy of an empty house, right up to when I finally discovered why I was doing this.

There really isn’t much I can do with this revelation now because I am quite comfortable with whom I am and I simply love the fact that I can now wear women’s clothing without being self conscious about it, except, of course, wondering  “Does this make me look fat?” or “Do these two pieces go together?”

I hope talking about this has finally closed a door left painfully open by those reoccurring nightmares of my past now transformed by my new happiness and comfort in myself.

While I’m at it, another thing came to mind from the post that had to with something I have been wanting to get back to doing, with my hips all but fully recovered from surgery last summer, but haven’t.

I haven’t gone hiking since I came out publicly in late November last year because even though I sometimes approach my own toilet at home facing forward when wearing pants but never when I’m wearing a skirt, I don’t know quite how I’m going to handle the situation if the need ever arises out on the trail. The idea of wearing a long skirt on the trail actually appeals to me but I know it would look strange and be impractical.

Elsewhere, even though one of my anti-androgen hormones is a diuretic, I have learned to ignore the usual first telltale signs of men having the need to pee that make women wonder why men seem to have to go to the bathroom much more often than they and why men are willing to pee just about anywhere, even forbid, a ladies bathroom stall, and more importantly, have probably done so.  I also know that women who are not suffering from incontinence, are quite adjusted to the fact that they may have to wait in line for a time far longer than any man would be willing or able and can often see the wait as an opportunity to get to know their neighbor.  I haven’t yet run into this situation, but sooner or later, as I get more comfortable with myself in public, it is bound to come up and I actually am looking forward to it.

Some random thoughts, but yet quite important for me to notice, as closing doors behind me can allow new ones to open before me that I never thought possible.

Deanna Joy