I grow old, I grow old
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled. . .
Or something like that. When Philip Marlowe (Raymond Chandler’s detective) was asked what he thought those lines meant, he replied, “Nothing at all.” I’m inclined to agree with him. In any case, I’m not so old yet. And in any case, I don’t want to wear trousers, either. So forget that.
And yet things are different from the old days. I remember the buzz of excitement long ago in my early adolescence when I was embarking on my journey of self-discovery—or rather the discovery of the mystery and beauty of feminine attire. I wasn’t thinking at all about my self in those days—or for many years thereafter. I was just blindly doing what was so sweet to me.
And now the buzz is gone. I know that a lot of the girls still get a real buzz whenever they dress, but it’s not like that for me any more. So many years I went without dressing at all, thinking that that was all behind me, a completed chapter of my sorry past. As was to be expected, I was wrong about that. But now that I’m back into it, it’s not the same. The buzz is gone.
So why dress at all if the buzz is gone, you ask? Because it’s more beautiful now than it ever was before. Lately I’ve had a lot of girly time, a number of days I call “Annabelle Day”, when I get up in the morning and get dressed and spend the whole day and evening without wearing a stitch of male clothing. And it’s beautiful.
Getting dressed is routine—no excitement, no thrill, no different from getting into drab in the days when I thought drab might be what suited me. So how can it be beautiful? Because it simply feels like me. It feels like at long last, after all my wanderings and hesitations and painful and fruitless detours, at long last I’ve come home.
I’ve been asking myself, Am I even a crossdresser? And I can hear the world chortling in derision. “Will you not take a look in the mirror, you silly girl/boy? What by the beard of Jove do you think you are?”
A part of me knows they’re right. Yet another part of me, a part that is now bigger and richer than it used to be, is hurt and baffled. “How can they be getting it so wrong? Crossdresser? What line have I crossed? I’m just here, where I should always have been, going nowhere, taking up my station where I always should have. What I wear is appropriate to my station, my nature, my heart—whatever you want to call it. I embrace it because it is my self, the self I never wanted to consider for so many years. So in what way am I doing wrong, how am I doing anything laughable? Am I really crossdressing? They may say so, but it doesn’t feel that way to me.”
Some girls have their fantasies of really doing themselves up for a special evening. That would be fun for me, yes, but it isn’t my fantasy. What I fantasize about is quiet, steady, placid, enduring, that deep satisfaction I now feel, those little moments that you string together to make a lifetime. I fantasize about what I now have. Long may it continue.
The buzz is gone. Do I miss it? No. What I now have I find more beautiful.
Best wishes, Annabelle
