Quote from: Wesley Cole on November 07, 2015, 01:27:32 PM
I wrote a fairly long letter to my parents and put it in our mailbox, then explained the rest later.
I never really got to discuss transgender issues with my mom before she died. My mom and dad always taught us to be open minded and tolerant but after my mom died my father made a number of comments about people in general that got me believing he was not as tolerant as I was raised to be. :/
I felt it was important to come out to my dad and sisters. We were separated by a fair amount of distance so I thought a letter was a better way to go. I wrote a 15 page rambling letter and sent a copy of "True Selves" which my dad and older sister didn't read.
My little sister read both the book and, more importantly, my letter.
Right off though I was very defensive with my family and with the world in general. This was right at the dot-com bubble burst and my dot-com was part of that bursting followed by 9/11 which left me in a pretty screwed up frame of mind.
I left my wife, disappeared for a few months to Canada and then returned with the assumption I could pick up the pieces. My wife was willing but we had both dug so deep in bills I needed my dad's help. He refused to help other than to give me a few thousand to move to another state (even further away) and start off there. Instead I spent a lot of time couch surfing. My dad made it clear he was, essentially, paying me to leave my wife. More than ever I was pissed off. This was June of 2002.
This is rambling a bit, but, there's a reason... bear with me...
I came to my new state, changed my name (somewhat ironically on my dad's birthday), and other identification data. I did not speak to him nor my little sister once I left California.
I had it in the back of my mind after a couple years that my father had died. I don't know how I knew but I knew. Its not like we were close and we were not blood related (I was adopted)
I tried, several years later, reconnecting with my sisters by calling my older sister. She was cordial but a liar. When pressed about my dad's health she said he was doing well. He had, actually, died, by his own hand, five years previous, not long after I left California. I also pressed her on how to contact my little sister because the numbers I had didn't work. I attempted for a couple months to have some sort of relationship with the older sister and gave up. Four years later I was contacted by lawyers informing me of my little sister's death as well as my father's.
There is a lot of tragedy here but my point is not to garner pity. I got a lot of attitude, a chip on my shoulder and was more responsible for isolating myself from my family than my family was. My dad and older sister were being really
>-bleeped-<ty but they were not refusing to deal with me.
Some families, when a trans person comes out, do disown them or otherwise push them out of their lives but that was not the case here.
I think about my mom, though. I lost her to cancer nearly 20 years ago. I never had the chance to frankly discuss with her who I really am, how that shaped who I was as a kid and how, in a very bizzare turn of events, had a truly negative impact on our relationship.
I have told myself over the years that "Mom would have been cool with it" but I don't know that and I suspect she would have had a lot of difficulty, but I will never know.
There are definitely times when coming out is detrimental, sometimes, even, physically dangerous. Quite often socially so and even financially so. Its important to weigh these things before making the decision to come out. Its important to do so with as open a mind as you expect the people you come out to to have.
Your family are the only people who know you your whole life. There's a history there and it's not just the formal stuff but also the goofy stuff. My wife recently died as well and the thing that stands out to me most is that, now, I have nobody to remember my family with.
