An in-a-nutshell rundown of the situation (sorry it's so long-- believe it or not, this is the abridged version): 2 years ago, I moved out of my Mom's house and 800 miles away. We stayed in contact, and I visited a couple times a year for holidays. She has always been pretty luke-warm about my transition. She freaked out when I first came out about 4 years ago, then in the year and a half after I moved out, she slowly started to adjust. By last fall, we were back to being in regular contact and fairly close, as we had been when I was younger. It was great, because I had missed having my mom as an active and accepting part of my life! Needless to say, I was very excited about going to spend Christmas with her, her partner, and my brother.
...but then, at the end of what I thought was a fantastic week visiting family, I recieved the following e-mail from my mom:
QuoteDear [birth name],
Yes, I am aware that it is not the name you choose to go by. But are you aware that according to your current choices I am not your mother? Not only have you chosen to change the name that tied you to our family, but you have also recently insisted that the memories I hold dear to my heart, and that formed the basis of my bond to you as your mother, must be denied to fit with your current identity as one who not only is not my daughter, but evidently is not my child. Thus I choose today to speak to my daughter whom I am mother to and whom I happen to love.
Last night during our family's Christmas dinner you voiced an objection to the concept that [brother] was asked to propose a toast as the man of the house. Your argument was that you were older and a male. I shall address each of these things separately.
First, to be the man if the house you must, if course, be male. You, my dear, were born with a vagina. That, by definition, makes you a female. However, beyond that, your physical appearance, your mannerisms, and your behavior are all so extremely feminine as to make the concept of calling you male nothing short of ridiculous. One can not possibly even consider you a somewhat masculine female. You are and have always been extremely feminine. When you begin to behave as a man, then perhaps others will find it less difficult to consider the possibility that you are a man trapped in a woman's body. However, at present going along with your wishes and calling you a man and using the pronouns he and him are on par with going along with a small child who insists that they are batman. And indeed, it is little different from your fantasy that you are a puppy. However, as you are an adult and not a small child, this is much more difficult for others to tolerate than they would a small child's fantasy play.
This brings me to the concept that you should be considered the man of the house because you are older than your brother. While it is true that you were in fact born three years before your brother, it cannot be said that you have more maturity. Your behavior this week has been hugely reminiscent of a four year old child in need of some serious discipline. Unfortunately, as an adult, you are no longer within my power to discipline. You have been disrespectful, rude, and extraordinarily childlike in virtually every interaction you have had during your visit this week. You have requested that we respect your choices. I can honestly say that I have given my best shot at attempting to understand and respect those choices, but I find that your choices involve letting go of every value and moral you were ever taught as a child. These values and morals were taught to you by me, your mother, because they were values and morals that I firmly believed to be important for a variety if reasons. The fact that you have opted to abandon them frightens me for your sake on a number if different levels, but it also sickens me as the opposite of values and morals would be immoral, self centered, disrespectful. Sadly, I find that your behavior demonstrates these things to me excruciatingly well, and leaves me unable to respect the decisions you have made for yourself. Respect is something that must be earned. My love I have and will always give freely. But my respect is something which you have lost in the course of your recent "choices." This saddens me hugely, for it is very difficult as a parent to find that the child you love with every inch of your being has grown into a person you cannot respect. None-the-less, however hard it may be for me to come to grips with, the fact remains true. I love you dearly, but at present I am not able to respect you much at all, and I do not like not am I proud of the person you have become. You were, in fact, more mature as an actual four year old than you have become as an "adult."
You are find of blaming your behavior on Aspergers, but in fact that is not accurate for Aspergers cannot account for regression such as you have demonstrated in the recent past. The one aspect that I would agree may be the Aspergers influence may be the fact that you are currently clearly in the midst of some serious obsessive fantasizing and that appear to be unable to separate these fantasies from reality. That much I would agree may be accentuating things at present. However, you have effectively tied my hands to help with the Aspergers so I cannot consider that a viable "excuse" for your behavior.
I do love you, in spite of all of this though, and pray that one day you will grow enough beyond all of this to see that in fact it is my love for you which has prompted me to finally be true not to the fantasies you currently insist to be truth, but to my own heart. I am here for you, should you EVER need or want me to be, but I cannot and will not attempt to support what I view as harmful or dangerous to the well being of those I love, even if they ask it of me as you are now. Thus while I can say that I can and will continue to offer you my love and my support for your well being, I can only do so as your mother. I shall therefore follow my own heart as your mother. This means that to me, you shall be [birth name], my daughter. This is not what you want at present, but it is what is honest to myself. I hope that you can come one day to appreciate the love that is behind this act which I suspect you may see as an act of rejection in your current frame if mind but which is fact exactly the opposite.
Love Always,
Mom
Tl;dr version of that letter: "You're not a man, you're a whiny little girl!"
When I pressed for more details as to her sudden change of heart, it turned out that she had dug up my blog and discovered that in addition to being trans (which she already knew), I am also involved in the bdsm community and identify as polyamorous. She insisted that I was being brainwashed by my new "friends." When I told her my identity was my own choice, not something forced upon me by other people, she effectively disowned me and told me that if I wanted to live this lifestyle, I was no longer her child and she had no reason to continue paying for my phone (my last financial tie to her). So, like the whiny 4-year-old I apparently am, I calmly mailed my phone back to her and bought a phone and plan of my own.
Half a month later, I got a new follower on Tumblr... only to discover that it was my mom posting diary entries she wrote when I was a baby. Creeeepy.
A few weeks later, she e-mailed me to inform me that the blog was her
birthday present to me (double creepy) and that she had changed her mind and decided I should keep the phone (an offer I turned down, having already gotten a new one) and that we should "compromise" by talking things out. I agreed to answer her questions if she could be civil about it. The e-mail Q&A session went on for a few weeks, but eventually dissolved into her equating my being trans/pansexual/poly/kinky/etc. to self harm and telling me that if I ever have kids, I will ruin their lives, so I gave up and stopped responding.
That was almost 4 months ago. In those 4 months, we haven't really had any actual conversations, but she periodically sends me e-mails or posts on my Facebook wall to say usually-mysterious things. She'll send me links to videos she thinks I'll like, respond to other people's posts on my wall, etc. When I got my appendix out, she responded to the Facebook announcement with a cryptic "Hmm" Recently, she posted a photo of my high school class ring on my wall with the caption "Howling to the moon..." (the ring has a wolf on it). At one point, she sent me an e-mail starting with "It would appear that you have stopped speaking to me, for reasons I am uncertain of."
Which brings me to my actual question:
How should I respond?She clearly isn't going to leave me alone, no matter what I do. She clearly isn't going to respect my life, no matter what I do. She just kind of lurks in the background of my life, making cryptic comments and feeling sorry for herself. Should I continue ignoring her? Should I confront her about it (as politely as possible) and let her know that she's being kind of creepy? Should I continue trying to work things out and hope she'll eventually get it, at the cost of my being perpetually emotionally exhbausted until she either gets it or gives up and properly disowns me?
This whole situation has been causing me a lot of anxiety and frustration. I feel guilty for not responding, but every time I respond, things just escalate and she starts guilt-tripping me about my life. I used to be very close to my mom, and since she has a lot of health issues, I'm kind of terrified that she'll be gone before I manage to fix things with her.
Has anyone else been internet stalked by an unaccepting family member? Or been through the "my parents can't decide if they're disowning me or not" ringer? If so, what did you do about it?
