transretrogurl

Going for a twofur today, this will be a little piece on an observation I’ve been making lately about, err, the condition I find myself in. The second will be a proper full-on gush around one of all time favourite purveyors of frocks, HellBunny.

In some of my more reflective moments I tend to try and analyse just what the compulsion I have to be Sarah is all about. Depending on the time of day, amount of alcohol, time since last self-pleasuring the answer is always different, often all over the place, but if you take a step back, admittedly a large step, it actually becomes very clear.

There are two reasons, and two reason alone, as to why anyone does anything in this world – need and want. If you need to do something it’s a compulsion, if you want to do something, it’s for the pleasurable reaction you get.

Pictured – pleasure 🙂

I’m firmly a ‘want’ girl, although recently I’ve started to get the ‘need’ urge, which isn’t as much fun. Most gender-dysphoric people suffer from the ‘need’, which leads to a mixture of guilt, sadness and depression in some cases, because it’s a drive that makes them need to embrace their femm side. Most cross-dressers do it from the ‘want’ perspective, although that want can be driven by some urges as well.

Where was I going? Oh yeah, from my perspective I want (sic) to stay a ‘want’ girl, not a ‘need’ girl. Lately I’ve been jonesing (a term I picked up from various books that most people over on this side of the pond don’t seem to recognise – it means to crave intently, as ‘I’m really jonesing to put on a petticoat and a floaty dress rather than these drab clothes right now’. Which is brutally honest) for the feel of feminine clothes, that delicious restrictive feel when all the under-garments are in place and the dress hugs tightly to the corset-induced curves. Which strictly speaking isn’t a ‘need’ because I want the effect.

Pictured – corset-induced back pain 🙂

I also think that the pleasure I get from the feeling is my ‘dope of choice’. That and, because I’m a ‘product’ girl and not a ‘process’ girl (see various other of my posts for that little chestnut) the ‘want’ of the photos, which are the delicious currency I use to get from one Sarah moment to the next, however distant it can be.

It makes me sad that some people have to suffer the compulsion side of this. I’m hardly one to talk, as my OCD when it comes to logistics means that often I find myself, stripped to the waist and shaven, sat in Cindy’s makeup chair literally wondering how I got there. In order to full enjoy the sensations of being Sarah I need to be in her mindspace, which takes a little while of just sitting quietly and shedding the scabs and mannerisms of the drab life. But often, because of rushing around London and an obsession of everything being perfect, I find myself having the foundation applied and not being in a femm mind state at all. And that’s that annoying balance of fighting the ‘need’ to be fully prepared and planned with the simple pleasure of ‘wanting’ to be fully Sarah-ised.

At the end of the day, for me at least, it’s finding and holding on to that little thrill, the moment when your breath catches in your throat when you look in the mirror and see someone new, someone different, someone of a completely different gender, and that sparkling moment of realisation when it hits you that the girl there is you.

Pictured – me. Or her. I get amusingly confused.

I’ve said it before (and I’ll say it again a lot) but to re-discover the inner woman when you get older is a bittersweet but wonderful thing. You’re older, so you appreciate moments more, and the addition of makeup can, and often does, take years off of your appearance.

For me it’s more profound than that. I’ve never taken an interest in my appearance as a bloke, and for the whole part it’s been a pleasure. Not having to worry about hair, being able to slouch out of bed, chuck on a T-shirt and jeans, and be in the car in around two minutes, It’s easy. So to find out that with a little degree of effort (not mine of course, I am lucky enough to know an expert and have enough disposable income to let her to her magic every once in a lot, I mean while) I can be feminine was a lovely revelation.

Pictured – a 49 year old man with a history of depression and obesity. 🙂

Now a radical thought. I think all children, at some point in their education, should experience at least a day as the other gender. Not from any thrill sensation perspective, but simply to open their eyes. A lot of the crap I went through as a pubescent and then someone who was in a massive closet with the word DENIAL painted on it in fifty foot letters for too long a time, could have been gently averted by an introduction to the sensation of femininity at a younger age and in a controlled fashion. An understanding that gender is a choice, not a mandate. And it should be *your* choice.

It’ll never happen of course. Closed minded people, sadly enough most of them with impulses they don’t understand or hate due to poor education, would baulk at the idea. They’d proclaim perversion in the loudest, shrillest voices possible, all while missing the whole damn point.

You see, if people are happy in themselves the world is a better place overall, Everyone needs that little frill, I mean thrill, occasionally. It makes being alive feel like you are alive.

If Sarah has taught me anything, and she has, it’s that life can be richer, brighter, genuinely more fun when you embrace the inner person.

I’m starting to sound like a self-help tape now so I’ll stop there, turn on the gushy love of fashion and write another blog, but thanks for reading so far. Be good to yourselves, let the inner you up to the surface occasionally. You never know what she, or he, will tell you about yourself.

Stay beautiful and take a little time to indulge. You’re only here once…..