Hi Jackie,
Excuse the essay 😉
I’m sorry to sound cryptic, but a good many years ago in another area of my life I felt I needed to sit my wife-to-be down and ‘have a talk”. I knew if I didn’t that things might crop up later, and enter the familiar can of worms of ‘trust’ and ‘openness’. The question then arose “Were her kids old enough to both understand and cope with the necessary secrecy?” No, of course they weren’t, they weren’t even double digits old. So adjustments were made. When the time came a lot later I sat them down too. They didn’t care one way or the other, but had gained a maturity to deal with things themselves.
I did it to be honest to myself and to them, and unashamedly for selfish reasons too. It meant I wasn’t especially hiding the person I was and could live a freer life. And meanwhile, good friends who I was still in contact with from early days, had known all along and didn’t give a damn.
How does this relate to ‘coming out’. Well number one, cross dressing does not so far dominate my life – it’s part of me, but not all of me. (just me! – not a general observation) and number two, what am I coming out about? (Cross reference to ‘what sort of cross dresser are you?’ – my answer is ‘I don’t know’). So already, I’m reluctant to be typecast because I’m just not that confident enough as to quite who I am in this respect. Instead I find aspects are leeching into ‘my’ – that is me, me, me – ordinary life, so in one sense I am drip feeding a more complete myself into the outside world. It suits me, and it doesn’t overload people on the outside.
So this xmas, I’ve found myself introducing a silly little thing like ‘dangly’ earrings to my life, hopefully my everyday life. Not very common around these parts – the odd sleeper style maybe, but so far only a local vicar who sports a dangly christian cross on his ear. And I feel confident to deal with any observations or snide remarks with insightful remarks like “why not?”, or “big deal”, or “up yours!” if called for. But the idea is to be open about it, and not something I hide away for private moments. It’s hardly coming out, is it? But another little piece of the jigsaw I’ve found and fitted.
Just some of my thoughts, if you don’t like them, don’t worry, I have others, lol. (Edit: A joke! Plagiarised from Groucho Marx)
Marti xxx
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