I'm writing this because this forum is really my only contact with people of a like mind. I don't know what I expect to get out of writing it, except maybe the cheap therapy of getting this off my chest. And so...
I'm about this close <----> to attempting to seal off the part of me that wants to crossdress. Again. I would like to say I'm quitting, but if I'm being honest - and that's the point of this exercise - I really just don't know if that's possible. I want to believe it is.
But the time I've spent chatting in here has done nothing to instill confidence in me. What's the old mantra? "Girl, don't purge! You'll be back!" Some souls will inevitably point to the fact that no-one has ever come back and reported successfully quitting. People say the same thing at AA meetings about drinking - no-one ever comes back with a success story about quitting who didn't use the program. Of course, that's a fallacy - people do it all the time. They get tired of the BS and just decide one day to cut the crap and stop. Of course they don't come back. Why would they? They're not under the spell anymore. Why is it so inconceivable to extrapolate that to crossdressing?
Here's why I want to stop:
-It makes it nearly impossible to have a dating life. There's the business of hiding all your business all the time, and the stress of having it one unfortunate search for a can of beans away from unbearable discovery. There's the anguish of having to reveal to someone you really care about. And for me, there's the thought that I'm going to grow old and lonely, dressing up in my studio apartment, taking selfies of my wrinkled, foundation-covered face to share on a website for comfort because I have no-one. And I'm not talking about some crappy DADT junk, or the whole "supportive, but not involved" pile of schlock. If someone's going to know about me, they can either want that part of me, or they can leave. I'm not compromising. If I can't have the whole banana, then I don't even want to look at the fruit. And I'm not willing to risk suffering such a high probability of ultimately being alone because I won't get rid of a bunch of high heels.
-I'm always only a couple of missteps away from being discovered. I realized this a couple of weeks ago. My dressing has been dormant for many months now, so everything's been packed in totes in my closet, and in the back of the closet in the guest room. My mom was guesting for a bit, and she was trying to be helpful by cleaning. I thought there's no way she'll want to lift a bunch of stuff to get to those totes. But I come home and she says she thought she'd clean my closet out for me, but she wanted to wait 'til I got there, and didn't want to go through my stuff. Well, I maintained calm while my bowels spontaneously evacuated, but it got the wheels turning. I mean, this is partly my fault for being unwilling to just up and come out of the closet so the fear of being outed isn't a blade I might accidentally fall on. But, I'm just not willing to do that. No. I'm not. People don't need to know this about me, and I'm not prepared for it to suddenly be the thing that defines me in the eyes of those who know, which it inevitably will be, knowing those people. Because...
-It's not that big of a part of me. "Well," you might say "it must be, if you are sitting here at 10:54 on a Tuesday writing this big thing about it." And I might not really have an answer for that, except maybe that I am sitting here writing this at 10:54 because the idea of quitting is a big idea. And it has failed before, to be perfectly honest. But the dressing... hell, it comes and it goes. And it seems like it comes when I am bored, or romantically unfulfilled. And I do it for a while, you know - the pink rush, or whatever - and then the wave subsides. There I am, dealing with the contradictory nature of it in relation to my guy-ness, which I don't want to give up. I want to lift weights, and ride my bike and run around in the woods like a lunatic, which inevitably leads to big muscles that don't fit into dresses, and skin that's shredded and looks terrible in anything. Nevermind the fact that I can't grow facial hair, which - shock and horror for one of us to admit - I like, and often actually prefer. Add that to my already dubious ability to look hot because of my natural male structure, and I'm dissatisfied with my efforts in the whole process. I can't have the best of both worlds, so I'm choosing the one that my heart is in 95% of the time.
-Speaking of time, I don't want to be a slave to this, not in terms of money, not in terms of time. The whole premise of crossdressing seems to be based on the notion that we accept that women must dress a certain way, must shave certain parts, yadda yadda. And if I subscribe to the notion that I want to look like some hottie walking down the street, I have to invest a black hole's worth of time and money into doing so. Well, eff that. I'm tired enough of being a slave to purchasing this and that which I need just to live in general. And to add this whole alternative identity composed almost entirely of minutiae that I have to buy and invest time into learning how to use, because I didn't learn it at age 6 like a GG would? I can't deal. I won't deal. I had the good fortune to live in remote Alaska for a long time, where simplicity was of the essence. Everything I needed to live I could pack up and carry in three bags. When I was there, I learned just how much I could do without. And now I can't forget that lesson, and it's very much at the fore of my mind at present.
So here's why I think I can move on without dressing: This whole thing is a construct, anyways. Society defines what is male and female. Tights, skirts, long hair, makeup, pink, blue, etc - these have all been associated with masculinity and femininity at various points and times, and in different idioms. So there can't be a basic biological need to wear these things because these items don't exist as innately masculine or feminine in nature. The only conclusion left to draw is that my urge to look all hot in a pair of fuchsia pumps and a sweater dress is a manifestation of something else entirely.
Why can't I find other ways to express that underlying cause without being caught up in something that's a giant pain in my ass? Of course, that's the trick. And I don't really have any concrete theories about what that cause is. But I firmly believe that I can express my feminine side without being a slave to all of this flashy, material accessory stuff. How to unlock that box is the mystery.
Anyways, thanks for listening. And keep your eye out for my upcoming post in the classified section within the next couple of weeks. I'll be cataloguing my stuff and having something of a fire sale rather than tossing it all in a dumpster this time. At least I've learned something from the past.