My Journey Thus Far

Someone asked me to post this, so here is the rough story of how I got to this point.  One warning:  the following is equal parts sexy, tragic, and deeply personal.

My first ever experience happened when I was 8.  I found a plastic egg while walking to school and discovered a pair of pantyhose inside.  (That's how they used to sell L'eggs back in the day.)  I was curious, so I took them home and tried them on that night.  It felt amazing, not just physically but also stirred something deep inside.  Through items pilfered from old clothes boxes and laundry in the house, I added panties and bras to my collection.

This all created a lot of confusion about gender and orientation and I had nowhere to find answers.  (This was 1978.)  My mom took me to a counselor to help me deal with some family stuff (mainly my mom's divorce and immediate remarrying) and I asked the counselor for help.  She told me that "gay stuff" was bad and that I should never talk about it.  Yeah - terrible advice that I took to heart for way too long.  I threw out my collection of clothes and tried my best to be a good cis-hetero man.

I met Desiree at a local junior college when I was 18 and it really was love at first sight.  In my search to find myself, I joined the Navy at 19 and proposed to Desiree right after boot camp graduation.  We finally got married at 21.

After a couple years of marriage, we were living in San Diego and I started to talk to Desiree about my "forbidden" fantasies (being bi and having a love of women's clothes), but she was as clueless as I was.  One night, she decided to indulge me.  By candlelight, she shaved me from the neck down.  She then gave me a gift box that had a matching bra, panty, stockings, and garter belt set.  The effect of putting all that on was electric.  I think the intensity of my reaction scared Desiree because she never again offered to help me dress and told me she wanted a "manly" husband.  I did seek out help from a counselor, and he suggested I might be gay and should explore relationships with men.  This freaked Desiree out so much that she left me and moved back to Chicago.

I used our separation to seek out some men and had a string of disastrous experiences. I also met a woman named Debby who helped me find my femme self. Mia was born with her help.

Shortly after that, I left the Navy and went back to Chicago.  Desiree came to me and told me she still loved me and asked if I felt the same way.  I did, very much, and decided my bisexuality and crossdressing was a small sacrifice for the woman I loved.  We ended our separation and stayed married for the next 24 years.

In 2022, Desiree was running late to work, rolled through a stop sign, and was hit by an SUV.  She died at the scene.  To say I handled it badly is an understatement.  I crawled into a bottle, lost my job and my house, and stayed that way for about a year.  After surfing the sofas of friends, they finally had an intervention to help me get back on my feet.  I'm currently living in a recovery center that helped me get sober and sane again.  It was one of the counselors here who encouraged me to embrace Mia and integrate her into my life.

Now, I'm standing on my own two feet again and will soon have a place of my own, somewhere that I can start to bring Mia to life.  I'm grateful every day for this journey.  I feel like I'm both truly in touch with myself and comfortable in my own skin for the first time ever.

Sorry for kinda oversharing, but that's one of the side effects of recovery.  I am so happy to finally be able to talk about all of this in such a supportive place.  Thank you all for making me feel so welcome and safe!