I’ve kept myself out of sight, showing up only in the dark of night or the dreary light of a secluded place. That is where my being a girl shined so to speak. Dorothy’s goody, goody girl look not. I liked fashion and to see my curves strutting their stuff.

But why the image of the Yellow Brick Road, why Dorothy? Dorothy was easy enough. I did and didn’t want to be Dorothy, but the paradox. I had lived on a farm, rode a tractor dragging a four-row plow and had gotten greasy dirty as any guy.

It wasn’t Kansas but it could have been. My Grandpa wasn’t open to listening to me, and Grandma did what she could but wouldn't be caught contradicting Grandpa. She did not understand why I liked dressing as a girl. She got me to the doctor, but he wasn’t any wizard. Though he had tricked many into thinking he was. The best that could be said: he wasn’t against surfing the web with symptoms seeking cures.

Unfortunately, he chose to accept those who said I was sick and that there were cures. He took me down a dark dirty road of warped ideologies that thought I was sin-sick. The Yellow Brick road was seen by him and others as a tempting world deceiving people into sick lifestyles.

I found it as something I needed to travel further down to find who I was, Beyond the Yellow Brick Road. But what was I going to find? Was there a wicked old witch who’d work to stop me? I experienced the doctors as phony wizards. What would I find, Beyond the Yellow Brick Road?

I traveled the Yellow Road for many years, waiting for ruby red slippers to appear. Could I find them to wear and click magically to find my way? But ‘no thanks,’ I didn’t want to go back home at least not yet.

There was a good witch or two, they helped me to see things differently; helping me to accept I wasn’t crazy but normal, normal for me. I agreed and admitted to myself that I was a crossdresser. Finally, I admitted there was more, It was a gold star day when I embraced the girl inside and that I’m transgender’.

But I had become comfortable in the dark shadows of the Yellow Brick Road.

Then came the scariest discovery of all. I had become another of the dreaded wicked witches. I thought my problem was due just others for so long. Yes, there were problems with coming out and it gave no guarantees that I’d have enough time to enjoy me. But I had bought into the idea that I was weak and could not take what others would say.

Gone were the days of the prom dress or when I would have looked my best as a girl, or now as a woman. I’m a woman now and not so young. The good news was I had discovered there’s so much more to being me, being a woman. I like who I am.

Do I grieve that I had not come out before; had never gone to the prom or been in a bridal party?

“Yes, I do.” There were friends in the past I wished were girlfriends, who would help do my hair and makeup. I would have loved to just be another girl among a group of girls. I don’t know who would have accepted me and who wouldn’t have. My parents died before I was ready to talk. I think my mother might have known. There was a time or two she might have tried to talk about it. There was a time I hinted about it, and other times I stuck close to her or a girl cousin.

My Grandparents were nice enough to take us in and there were good times if we only stayed in their world. There was the time Grandma found me getting into Cousin Hattie’s clothes. It was not good. There was another time Grandpa ordered me to wear odd pieces of girl clothing. It wasn’t a nice matching of clothes making it a nice outfit. But I gloried in the oddity as they were girls clothes and the right size or close. I went out to play and was going to go to a movie in the town or a bite to eat.

I would have even gone to church the next day. Back then people didn’t see God as accepting me as I do now. The ideas that generally separated people I saw as people thinking. That guy Paul in the Bible said in Christ there was neither Jew nor Gentile, male nor female, slave or free, but that never made it to a church banner or bumper sticker.

I have found some places I’m accepted. If people are not pressured by others. I find more people accepting of me and others.

I’m beyond the Yellow Brick Road, but I’m not accepted by family, but I'm happier that I told them. I’m happy and comfortable doing what I can.

Even now I find I’m in a world that has trouble letting others and me be in the light of day. I thought in the sixties that we dealt with race, we were more affirming of women and accepting of others. Are we now before, on or beyond the Yellow Brick Road? I guess a metaphor is not a real place to live.

Solo