This isn't really a coming out letter as I came out to my mother a year ago. But as I'm beginning the process of medical transition and it's all becoming very real to her, I think she's getting scared and possibly desperate. She sent me this e-mail today:
Brittni,
You know I love you with all my heart and soul. But I can not stand by and watch you ruin your body and your life.
BRITTNI [LAST NAME] is Always welcome in this house, but Devin who ever is not.
Have you considered anyone else in this house hold, and the effect on them if you go forward with this "Transistion" ?
I have been through too much mental anguish in the past 10 years that I can not and will not be a party to your venture.
So if you are going go forward with your plans, then you need to find somewhere else to do it. I cannot let you disrupt my life and your sisters lives
with this procedure and nonsense.
You have some hard thinking to do,
I love you,
MOM
At first I was planning on just ignoring the e-mail as it seems to me a desperate attempt to force me to change my mind by leaving me without a place to live. But I began, in my usual fashion, to organize my thoughts on the matter into a word document, which after several hours became this letter. I warn you, I'm not a very emotional person and it's reflected in the language of this letter. Sometimes I think I may be part Vulcan.
You see I knew that's exactly what you were going to say, which is why I didn't call. There's no need for over-emotionality here. That won't help anything. It's easier to be logical, reflective, and level-headed in e-mail form.
"I have some serious thinking to do". What you don't seem to realize is that I've been doing very serious thinking for over seven years now. To put that in prospective, that's more than a quarter of my life. And when I say I've been thinking about it for seven years, that doesn't mean seven years ago was the beginning of my feelings. My feelings of not belonging in a female body extend back much further than that. Even when I was little daydreaming about what I wanted to be when I grew up, I always pictured my adult self as male. Every once and awhile it would hit me that my dreams were inaccurate and I wouldn't look like the me in my head and I'd get horribly depressed until I was able to repress that fact and go back to picturing myself as the muscular secret agent or whatever I was picturing. I cried quietly to myself for hours when I got my first period. In high school when Chief told me the female uniforms didn't fit me and I'd have to wear a male uniform, I was in heaven because in my head I always pictured myself wearing the male uniform. Those thoughts and feelings go back a very long time. Seven years ago at the beginning of college, I started daydreaming about getting breast cancer so I could get a double mastectomy. I knew those thoughts weren't right and I was severely disturbed by the fact I was wishing something so horrible on myself and that's when I came across information about ->-bleeped-<- on the internet and it fit everything I'd be feeling for years. That's when I began doing my serious thinking and doing everything in my power to feel comfortable in my female body. For seven whole years I thought every day about it and attempted to do everything from changing it to ignoring it to running away from it to a convent. This decision does not make it necessary for me to do serious thinking, as you implied. This decision is the product of year upon year of just that. This the conclusion of those years and years of thinking-- the end of the consideration, not the beginning.
As for your mental anguish these past ten years, that anguish was not yours alone. I lost my grandmother, the one person who always accepted me for who I am and would surely have accepted and supported me, Brittni or Devin. My father went to jail just as your husband did. I've suffered all that anguish right alongside you. The only difference is, at the same time, I was suffering the anguish of not being able to be myself and struggling in a vain attempt to change who I was. Of having to wear a mask every day and act like and be treated by everyone I encountered as someone I'm not, not being able to share the real me with a single person in my life, including myself. I tried everything to make myself happy in my female body. It didn't work. I knew if I revealed the real me to people-- even my own family-- they would react the way you are, which is why I put if off for years until I was absolutely sure there was no other way. And there is no other way, I assure you. That's the conclusion I've reached after over a quarter of my life spent trying to find another way. I can't go on living pretending to be female any longer. Really I have only two options-- live as a male or cease to live. If you would rather have a dead daughter than a live son, that's your choice and you are entitled to your feelings. I personally, however, would rather live a full and happy life being who I am.
I regret that I am no longer welcome in your home and I regret any further mental anguish I may cause you or any other member of our family. I really, really tried to avoid this whole situation, and I wish I could make it all go away to save everyone, including myself, the anguish transition is sure to cause. But after years of struggle, I've come to the conclusion that it is better than the only alternative I see for myself. I hope someday you will be able to accept me for who I am, but this is absolutely unavoidable and thus I will adjust my plans for my future accordingly and find another place to go to after I'm finished at the school.
After you've taken some time to process and consider all I've told you in this e-mail, if you have any questions about the long and difficult process by which I came to this decision or what my decision entails, please ask. If you can understand where I'm coming from and the complete hopelessness of this situation, perhaps we can begin to move towards accepting it together.
I will always love you, even from afar.
What do you think?
