Come out before leaving home, or after?

[Adamant]

Hey everyone! I've really only posted here once, almost exactly a year ago, and... well, to put it simply things have changed a lot. I've finally come to terms with being transgender and understand now that it's not a phase for me. Making some kind of transition towards masculinity will be inevitable, which makes me feel relieved compared to how I felt about it last time I was here, but it also brings with it the question of coming out.

The situation is that I currently live with my mom and two of my siblings (I'm 21). I was planning on moving out-of-state this spring, but I'm going to have to postpone that until sometime around August, because this summer 1) my mom is getting re-married and 2) we're going on a sort of family trip to Europe for almost a month, within a month of the wedding, and so it seemed better to save my money and stick around a bit longer instead of pay rent on a place I won't be living in for a couple of months/pay airfare to go back and forth for the wedding and the trip.

So basically I'll be living with my mom longer than I had planned. Which has made transitioning and even just the idea of coming out to her complicated... by moving out earlier, I could start transition sooner, etc. Right now though I'm just more concerned about the timing of actually telling her that I'm trans. Do you think it would be better to come out to her while I still live at home, making sure to do it well before the wedding/vacation so she has time to adjust? I don't want to ruin those things for her if it goes badly, but I also feel like this is something I should talk to her about while I'm still living here: it might be weird to leave home and then tell her soon afterwards, "oh yeah, I'm trans by the way" and start making all these changes – and the next time I visit home potentially look a lot different than when I left. Not to mention it sounds complicated to try to communicate something like this long distance, but I'm not sure.

I couldn't really tell you how I think she'd react to me being trans, because I honestly am lost. She can be really back-and-forth about her views on things. I tend to err on the side of believing she wouldn't disown or kick me out, but as far as acceptance/being uncomfortable, I've got no guesses. The other part of the coming out is that I still have to come out to one of the two siblings and my mother's fiance, both of whom are far less likely to be okay with it. But telling my mom is probably the biggest concern to me because she is more or less my only parent.

I guess it comes down to should I tell her before I move out and give her time to adjust but possibly make the 8 months I'm living there/her wedding/our trip more uncomfortable, or tell her once I've left home to give her space, but have to stay in the closet longer/figure out a way how to communicate something this personal from a distance and not freak her out when everything starts to change once I've left? Waiting would be hard, but if I had to do it I think I could manage.

Not really sure what I'm looking for at this point, because I know that situations are different for everyone and that ultimately only I can decide when to go about this. But does anyone have any advice or opinions on this that they would be willing to share? Thoughts one way or another? Any kind of input would be really appreciated!

[LivingTheDream]

It depends on what you wanna do mostly.

I think I would recommend waiting a bit to say something, unless you have some plans in place to deal with the worst case scenario-being thrown out, disowned. If that were the case, may be uninvited to the wedding and the Europe trip. I am a planner, I plan and obsess over everything, trying to go over scenarios and what happens then and such and such, just in case. If you do have plans, a place to stay temporarily if things go bad, money to support yourself, then I would say tell her whenever you feel up to it, ready.

If it is to the point where you are obsessing about it all day and night, need to tell her, need to move forward, can't wait, then tell her if you need to. I been there, still kinda am lol, it sucks, it's scary, it's hard, but I guess sometimes you just need to get it over with. Hopefully it turns out not to be an issue at all and you can finally relax and stop stressing and pulling you hair out worrying about it and start moving forward with things.

I would definitely avoid saying anything around the wedding time though, I'm sure she will be crazy and stressed enough about that as it comes closer to the date, so ya, can't imagine that going good at all haha.

I think mentioning it before you move out is a good idea too. I also would prefer to do so in person. Showing up looking like a completely different person later on would be quite a shock for her I am sure!

Hope this helps some?

[Ms Grace]

First time I tried to transition I was still living at home when I started HRT but moved out before I started dressing in girl mode and telling people. Didn't tell my mother until a whole year after I moved out - just figured it would be easier that way and until I was further along there was no point in her worrying about anything.

[JoanneB]

I live in the don't say anything to anybody unless there is an absolute need to camp. A transition takes lots of time. I am sure you have a big list of things you would like to do ( with a lot not screaming "Look at me, I am trans" ) for yourself. If not, perhaps a good place to start is thinking a lot about what sort of steps you feel you can take to make life a bit better for you.

I am also firmly in the baby-steps camp. Which is great because the last thing I wanted to do when I took the trans beast on.... again, was transition. Been there, tried it twice before in my early twenties. But I never worked on myself before. Not my emotional health not my spiritual health. The single greatest thing I ever done for myself was to finally reach out for help and going to a trans support group. It took a lot of work just to do that! You accumulate a lot of baggage being trans. Actually not dealing with being trans.

First good question to ask yourself is are you one of the lucky ones? Lucky as in not living in the transition or die camp? If you aren't, then you have a lot more options on how to deal with this.

You know your mom and her future husband best. Just how badly will dropping the T-Bomb be? Likely, it will initially be bad to very bad for mom from what you posted. Moms tend to never be easy unless they were the extremely rare "I always thought so" types. How important is it to say anything while you are living there?  Perhaps low dose HRT is a short term possibility? Low dose HRT save my sanity several times over the decades.

Considering ALL the circumstances, I sure wouldn't want to bear the responsibility of being the person who just may A) Ruined my mom's wedding and B) Ruined the dream family European vacation she dreamed about for years.

YMMV

[Adamant]

Thank you all so much for the wise words, I really appreciate it. It means a lot to hear from people who have lived it and kind of been there, done that themselves.

(Possible trigger warning: suicide mention)
For the question about transition or die, I've had some major depressive episodes and a few that have led to suicidal ideation/impulses this year because of the discomfort; however these have happened in past years so it's not necessarily new to me, just a bit harder. I don't know when another one of these might happen, but I think waiting could be easier knowing there's a more concrete deadline to look forward to.

I've talked to a gender therapist about it and she agreed that making some kind of steps towards transition would probably help with this.

If an opportunity to talk about it without jeopardizing anything seriously doesn't come up, I'll probably try to wait, either until I've moved out entirely or if there's a period of time after the wedding/trip but before moving out so I could still talk to them in person about it. I really don't want to screw up things for her either. It's just hard to think about being stuck here that long.