On the Subject of Family

I haven’t really spoken to my mother that much since the post where I touched on the fact that I was molested as a child.  If you will recall, in that post I stated that “…and I don’t want to name them either because this person is no longer alive and I don’t want to cause their family pain.  I have never told anyone else the identity of this person and that information will go with me to my grave because enough pain has been caused by their actions, there is no need to cause more.” And I still stand by that statement which is one of the reasons I believe that she has completely avoided me since I told her that I didn’t want to tell her the name and that I wouldn’t until I was ready.  You see, after that post, I got an email from her demanding that I tell her who the individual was that molested me and despite my attempt to compromise and give her a description instead of a name she doubled down and I had to give her a firm “No” because I am not ready to tell anyone exactly who he was and I asked that she please respect my wishes on the matter.  Since that last message to her there has been silence from her end and I don’t know if this is some sort of non-verbal punishment or if this is her way of respecting my wishes on the subject. 

Since I have come out to her, things have been a bit rocky and she has spent more time trying to convince me that I’m wrong about having suffered from gender dysphoria, that I’m wrong in feeling the way that I feel and wants some sort of physical proof that my brain and body don’t match up, than she has shown support for me as I go through the extremely rough process of transition.  She also claims that I have never exhibited any kind of behavior that would indicate that I was a girl internally as opposed to a normal boy but I think that might be because she doesn’t want to see the signs that were there.  Yes, I tried to hide my feelings at the time for my own safety but I honestly don’t think I was that good at hiding my feelings, after all, if that were the case, why would I have friends that have given me the “it’s about time” speech.

I understand that she is afraid of losing the person that she thought was her son but, the simple fact is, she isn’t going to lose me, her child, unless she pushes me away.  I told her when I came out to her that IF I felt that I needed to cut her out of my life for my own mental health, I would; but I also told her that I didn’t want to do that.  I wish that I could somehow show her that she isn’t losing a son because she never really had one when it comes to me and that the child she has had all along, her daughter, is still here.  I haven’t gone anywhere nor am I planning on going anywhere, I am just tired of hiding and pretending to be something I’m not.  I know that it will take time for her and, for that matter, my brother and his family to come around to seeing that to be the case, much less accepting (if they ever do) the fact that I have always been a daughter, sister, and aunt as opposed to the son, brother, and uncle that they thought I was. 

I am trying to be to be open and honest with them about who I am but they have to want to see the truth as opposed to clinging to the person they thought I was.  I tried to be that person, I tried so hard for so many years and I failed.  I just can’t play that role anymore and I need to be honest with myself as well as the people around me.  I love my family, I really do, and I want them to love me for who I am, not who they expect me to be.  They are one of the reasons I started this blog, so that hopefully, if they ever should read it, they will get a little more insight into why I am transitioning and what I have experienced in my life to have led me to this point.  I want to make them understand that I am not doing this because I want to, I’m doing because I have to do it.  If it were as simple as continuing to live the way I was living I would, mainly because I hate change and the risks that come from the unknown, something that transition creates a lot of.  After all, the only reason that I now say I wish I would have transitioned sooner is because of how much better I feel and how much less some of the people that I care about the most would have been hurt.

I want my family to feel free to grieve for the person they perceive that they are losing because that is natural to do so and going through that grieving process will help them to move forward but at the same time, I don’t want them to forget that I’m still here.  I want them to feel free to ask me questions so that I can answer them to the best of my ability but I also need them to understand that fact that they are never truly going to understand because they have never experienced what I have.  Cisgender people tend to take both sex and gender for granted because they never really had to struggle with the two conflicting and, while it would be so much easier to explain it to them if they have experienced it, I am glad that they haven’t.  It was killing me, as it has done with numerous transgender people before me, some of which it actually did kill, but I’m getting off topic…  The point is, I am trying to make this as easy on my family and loved ones as I can while moving forward as I necessary for my own health.

I don’t want to lose my family because of my transition but if they choose to lose me, then there is nothing I can do to stop it.  I spent so long running from who I was while trying to hide it from everyone else and in the process I damaged my relationships with both my mother and my brother.  I want to get to know them better, to make up for the time I have lost in my attempts to remain hidden.  With my brother, I find this to be especially important because I spent so many years thinking he hated me because I thought that on some level he could tell something wasn’t right about me.  With my mom, I spent the last several years distancing myself from her, partially in an effort to protect myself.  I have put up barriers between them and I did it all in an effort to maintain a safe little bubble with which I could insulate myself from the world.   With time, I have come to realize that the other part of the reason I distanced myself was actually an effort to protect them from me in the event that I did, one day, succeed in a suicide attempt.  I think that on some subconscious level, I knew things were boiling to a head, no matter how much I tried to deny it and either way I wanted to minimize the fall out for them.

Now that I have chosen to live no matter what it takes, I want my brother to get to know his sister, something he has never had the chance to do before, just as I want to get to know him.  I want my mother to get to know her daughter, even though she denies her daughter’s existence, and to be able to have some of the mother/daughter experiences we both missed out on.  I know that will probably never happen because she more than likely will never accept me as he daughter, but that doesn’t mean I can’t want it anyway despite that fact.  She has already told me that I have always been her son and always will be her son as far as she is concerned.  I love my family, I miss my family and I wish this were easier on all of us.

- Arylin Michelle

Amendment:  I find it ironic that I have amend this post like this but yesterday, the day before this post was scheduled to go up, I heard back from my mother finally.  While I am not going to talk about what was said, I will say that she has now made it clear to me that she does not and will not ever want to get to know her daughter.  She has also demonstrated that she has no respect for me or my wishes in certain matters and because of her recent behavior it is clear to me that she does not care about having me in her future.  In light of that, I am, for the time being, not going to have anything to do with her because I need to focus on myself and my mental health right now.  I love my mother and it hurts me a lot to do this.  I hope that in the future we will be able to have a relationship again but until then, I'm done.

Since the whole point of this blog was mainly to let her get to know the real me better since I hid myself for so long but since it is apparent that she has no interest in getting to know me better, after my follow-up AMA post (assuming anyone ever asks any questions for me to answer) I will more than likely stop posting anything else to this blog but we will see.