It has to happen today. I've tried and failed for the past three nights of my visit to start the conversation but keep losing my nerve. Well, except for last night when my family decided that it would be a fantastic idea to play an incredibly sexist and gender normative game called Battle of the Sexes in which the men are paired against the women and asked to answer questions that supposedly straight men wouldn't know about women and vice versa. Thank god my ex-wife came out to visit with me and put her foot down on enforcing gendered team assignments, allowing me onto the women's team, or things could have been a lot worse. Still, a lot of awkward questions from my dad about why I know so much about the various cuts of diamonds and America's Next Top Model. That wasn't an atmosphere in which you tell your Republican father that you're divorced, you've legally changed your name and gender, and are a month and a half along with HRT.
I am so very very scared. This is the last hurdle I have to leap before going full-time and, while I see my parents only once a year and we speak maybe 4 times a year, I am utterly horrified of what will happen. There are so very few people in the world that I'm close to and I've already lost one of them when I came out to my wife. I don't feel emotionally capable of handling the loss of my parents. I know that I'm likely psyching myself out and that it will go a lot better than I am thinking, but that doesn't stop the thoughts. It has to happen today. I have to make myself take that first step and let the conversation play out as it will. I can't control their reactions, I can only start the talk and struggle to not become defensive. I can do this. Like one of my favorite Mountain Goats' songs says "I am going to make it through this year if it kills me."
