Coming out to friends and family

[JamieLee]

I've finally decided I need to come out; that I'm ready (at least as ready as I can be) I think I'm going to start with two friends, and then my mother, father, and sister.

My plan is that I'm going to be visiting my cousin and his fiancé in a couple weeks (I'm going to a 200 Years of Australian Wedding Fashion exhibit and high tea with my cousin's fiancé ) where I plan to give her the below letter, which I'm hoping I have enough writing paper for, and hope she's accepting, and by extension my cousin. I think she may have an inkling about me. At this past Easter they came back home and she was surprised and showed interest in my hair length, my Kate Spade wallet, and the fact I went and had a manicure (I got a lovely nude pink colour My mother drove me). It would be really nice if she does have an idea, because this apprehension about staying with them and giving them the letter is really bad for my anxiety issues  I'm debating whether I should mail her the letter so she reads it before I actually go down there

The other friend is pretty much my best friend. She got married this year and is currently touring around Europe (mainly Viking-centric places). I plan to send her the wedding gift I got her (an illustrated Viking poem book) and the below letter when their honeymoon is over. I had always thought I'd be coming out as Bi to her, which I was always OK with because she herself is Bi But for some reason telling her I'm trans scares me now (I was actually going to send her this letter so much sooner, but out of fright-induced-procrastination I kept putting it off).

And then there's my immediate family. My mother is classed as my carer, and in general I can't even imagine doing anything medically without her help, so I really need her support to start the transition process. I think coming out to her should go well as she knows and seems to support my stance on LGBTQI issues (she might think I'm gay already), which I can get quite vocal and enthusiastic about My father I don't really know how he'll react because I don't really talk to him about stuff like I do my mother. My sister should also go well (an example of why is that she was so proud at her young daughter telling an older lady at a birthday party that one day she might marry a girl, not a boy, when asked about marriage. Plus she's fine with me playing female characters when gaming - board or otherwise - with the niblings), at least I hope. As for my niblings I have no idea of what to do. I do have a copy of "My Dad Thinks I'm a Boy?!" by Sophie Labelle on the way, which I think will be handy

By the time that I finish writing this letter, I imagine that I will have been working on it, on-and-off, for several weeks. I intend to take great care with it, because what I want from the outset is for this letter to pre-emptively explain away the things you may wish to know, and to answer the questions you will want to ask. Regardless of my wishes and best intentions, there will remain things that you do not know, and there will remain questions that need asking. It's just the nature of things, I guess, so I suppose all that I'm wanting to say with this disclaimer is that I'm going to be trying as hard as I can.

And the reason I'm taking so much care, putting so much effort into making sure that what I say is what I really and truly want to say, how I want it said, is because I am writing this to tell you that I am a transgendered human being.

This is not as jarring of a statement for me to make as it probably is for you to hear.

All my life, I have felt wrong. And I do mean all my life, since before I could even put a full definition to what gender even was. I had thought that my diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome explained those feelings of wrongness, which it did to some degree. But it didn't help explain why I have always felt off in my own body, as though the world I expected and desired did not sync at all with what was happening around me, happening to me.

I have the brain of a female. Likely it is biological, caused during foetal formation by little more than a slightly "off" series of hormonal developments. My mind is a girl's, but it's in the body of a boy, and it has been this way for the entirety of my existence, regardless of how I've been raised or how my worldly experiences have influenced me.

Imagine for a second here what that would be like. Imagine you, a girl or boy, in the opposite body, and unable to do anything about it. You see the world as a guy or girl, but must live as a girl or guy, pushed along by societal current, tradition, and bare survival instinct into positions and identities that are increasingly uncomfortable to you, unpalatable to you. Everything about your existence is laced with lies, and it feels like there's nothing that you can do about it.

This is how it is for me. This is how it's always been for me.

For years I felt that there was nothing I could do about what I felt, and so for years I didn't intend to do anything about it. Unsurprisingly, this did not work. A transgender identity, I have found, is not a habit you can break, a mindset you can force your way out of, or something you can treat with drugs. It is a genetic construction that will never, ever change.

But as it turns out, there is something that can be done about it. I've always known it was a possibility, but until now I've been too terrified to make it a reality. It took time, it took lots of time, for me to build up the courage to admit to myself that it would be a mistake to continue living as a male, and to understand that any apprehensions that I had about doing anything to solve my problems were very much outweighed by the problems themselves, and the implications that they would have on my well-being for the rest of my life.

So, I'm doing something about it, and I'm going to begin transitioning from male to female. It's the only cure for my condition, and I am more than happy to take it on.

Here's what this means. It means that soon, I will no longer be living as, or identifying as, a male. It means that I will be undergoing hormone replacement therapy to cancel out my body's male hormones with female ones. It means that I will be physically developing as a female. It means that I will be a female.

It means that I will stop dressing male and begin to dress as a woman. It means that I will no longer be an outsider to the world of fashion I so adore. It means that I'm going to spend lots of money to hire a professional to shoot my facial hair to death with a laser (or electrocute them).

It means that I will be undergoing a long and tedious process to shift every bit of identification related to me to reflect my female identity, though not my name. I used to say I hated my first and middle name (Jamie Lee). The reason? I'm named after Jamie Lee Curtis, which I could never be happy about, right? What boy wants to be named after an actress? But the thing is I loved my name, only externalising my hatred for it because that's what I thought I had to do. It wasn't "manly" to be proud to share the name of an 80's film heroine.

But I still love my name, and I will always be Jamie.

Above all the rest, this is the part I want people to understand the most. This is the part where I'm going to be emphatic. This is the part where I want to make clear that this is not a choice. I am not deciding to become a girl. This is me allowing myself to be who I am, and it is the only route that I can take, because I am done lying about who I am. In transitioning from male to female, I am going to become a second-class citizen in the eyes of many people. I am going to be opening myself up to discrimination and hate. I am going to jeopardize my likelihood of finding a life partner who accepts me. I am opening myself up to abandonment and rejection. I am diving headfirst into what is really a whole world of social trouble, and it is not something that I would choose to do. I'm going to go into debt hundreds of times due to medical bills, and this is not something that I would choose to do.

This is the next step of my life, of my existence and of my development as a human being, and this was always going to happen, because it was never my choice.

Coming to grips with this has been an absurdly hard process, and it has constantly sent me into depression and loneliness. Nearly every personal problem that I've had over the course of my life, I can trace back almost certainly to repressed questions of gender identity. Making myself realize it and embrace it took years, and even after that the fear and uncertainty of what to do about it made me miserable.

I never told anyone. I lied about what made me sad, or I just didn't say. Coming out and telling someone "I'm transgendered" was a prospect far, far too scary to even consider. Instead I sank inside myself, jealous of people braver than me and all full of self-pity, and it's all because I was too scared to just tell anyone that there was something wrong with me. It took being completely low, down, and beaten for me to finally write this to you. And I'm writing this letter to you so that you can know what I'm going through, because I feel like it would be unfair for you to not know. I know you didn't ask for me to spill my heart out like this, but I just don't want to give you the wrong impression of me anymore, and this letter is my first step in showing you who I really am.

I can't ask for acceptance from everyone. I don't even really expect it. I just want everyone to know.

For the near future, know that my transition will be beginning. Things will hopefully be changing about my dress, my mannerisms, my voice, my looks – but keep in mind that beneath it all I'm still the same person. Same likes, same dislikes, same jokes, same taste. I know it's going to be strange, I know it's going to be different, and I know you may have never had to go through this before. It's okay, I haven't either. I know there will be awkward situations. I know I'll be accidentally referred to as a male, and I know it will feel weird having to correct yourself when it comes to these things. I expect it, and I'm fine with it. I also expect questions, lots and lots of questions, and I want them to be asked without fear. I'm an understanding person, and I understand how weird this might be for you, and I want to minimize that as much as I can—for everyone's sake.

I do feel like I should say sorry to you for keeping this a secret for so long, for building up a wall between us that I led you to believe didn't exist. I'm not sorry for who I am, but I am sorry for who I made you believe I was.

Since coming to terms with all of this, I'm already a happier person. I am taking my short life into my own hands, and I'm going to live it the way that I deserve to live it. I refuse to go on acting as I've felt the world would like me to.

This is my story, and I'm going to write myself the way I want to be.

—Jamie, forever and always

I'd struggled to write something for the longest time, until I found a letter someone had shared online of their coming out and it spoke to me. When writing something like this I would usually bounce ideas off my mother, but I can't do that in this instance. I've edited it here and there for myself but I wanted to bounce it off someone else, like I would do with my mother. What do you think?

[Kendra]

Jamie your letter is incredible. 

I didn't write any letters as I wanted to speak directly from my heart.  You letter accomplishes this. 

[JamieLee]

Jamie your letter is incredible. 

I didn't write any letters as I wanted to speak directly from my heart.  You letter accomplishes this.

Thanks Kendra I'm really grateful for your very kind words I feel a bit better now. I've parked myself in front of my pad of paper so many times over the past couple days, intending to write. But when I go to start I've got a tremble and it would get so messed up if I tried to write

On an upside I've just contacted the only local place that offers reputable laser hair removal When they get back to me, and if everything goes well with that, I may re-schedule coming out to my mother to before visiting my cousin. I seriously can't withstand shaving anymore, so I've got to start doing something about it.

[JamieLee]

I finished writing the letter late yesterday. It ended up being around 10 pages on the paper stock I chose. It took a lot of tea to calm myself to finish it... It also took a lot of tea before I could calmly talk to my mother, which I did half an hour ago!

I gave her a hug, and she asked "What's wrong?", it seems I hug her when there's something bothering me, and I feebly said "Would you be able to read something for me?". She looked at her iPad and I had to tell her that I wrote a letter for her to read. I imagine she knew something was up at this point. I went and got the letter, gave it to her, she opened it and exclaimed "You wrote this??" after looking at it for a second. I nodded, bundled my cat up off the floor and went upstairs to my room.

Now I had meant to ask her if she could read something for me, and when she said yes I was going to ask whether she would prefer to read what I typed or what I wrote. I was going to ask this because her eyesight is really quite terrible and she can find it hard to read at the best of times. But all of that left my mind and all I could accomplish was handing her the letter before making a tactical retreat.

I'm not sure how long it took her to read it, I don't think it was very long.

When I heard her coming up the stairs and knock on my door I started to cry, something I've started to do a lot of recently. She came in and said "Oh sweetie. I'll always love you no matter what" and "I've suspected something like this was going to happen for a long time", or at least to that effect (I was blubbering way before she said anything). She talked about needing to see our GP to find out what to do next. I informed her of what will happen next and she was up for it

So I think coming out to my mother went well Though she agreed that coming out to my father might be a little different. We don't know how he'd take it. She did also say that it'll be like with her when I tell my sister, but that's for another day. I think I've got a stress migraine (or like a migraine from the release of stress) now, which is totally worth it.

[Kendra]

JAMIE!  I am so proud of you!

Reading this gave me goosebumps.  I can only imagine how you must feel now.  And your mother is sooo sweet.  Wow.

Kendra

[KathyLauren]

Jamie, congratulations on coming out to your mother!  It is a huge step, and you took it with style and grace.  That was a beautiful letter you wrote.

[JamieLee]

JAMIE!  I am so proud of you!

Reading this gave me goosebumps.  I can only imagine how you must feel now.  And your mother is sooo sweet.  Wow.

Kendra

Thank you so much Kendra! I'm still in a bit of disbelief to be honest. I've woken up these past couple mornings and it took me a second to realise what happened. I got the biggest smile when I did I didn't stick to the order of coming out I had thought up But I'm glad I told my mum first.

Mum was really sweet about it (I was terrified, to the point of shacking), she held me and we cried a lot together. She was surprised about me crying actually, since the last time I cried was years ago. I've begun feeling things since admitting I'm trans (my Asperger's was always to blame for my lack of emotion and emotional ineptitude, which I think is still valid, but I feel things a lot more now).

She even brought up, by herself with no prodding from me, that I did indeed love dressing up when I was younger and that she always thought I was feminine, both in mannerisms and my interests, and never quite quite fit into my assigned gender. She also said "Mothers always know." and that I really did look like a girl when I was younger, in reference to me telling her the sisters-bike-happiness story The funny thing about all this is apparently she was talking to one of her distance cousins who lives in the UK a couple weeks ago about transgender type things.

Jamie, congratulations on coming out to your mother!  It is a huge step, and you took it with style and grace.  That was a beautiful letter you wrote.

Thank you very much Kathy I'd been dreading the day I did this, for years. But I now think why didn't I just do this sooner, you could have been happier years ago. And I pretty much said this to my mother, and she said back "Well honey you weren't obviously ready to confront this back then" and I got all teary again. I'm very glad it went well, to say the least Now she says that she'll talk to my father the weekend I'm away visiting my cousin, which I am truly thankful for. Then to tell my sister

[JamieLee]

I sent the letter to my cousin and his fiancé via Facebook messenger this afternoon. I decided to send it to them digitally because the sheer stress I felt when giving it to my mother wasn't something I wanted to experience away from home, I'd be more than likely to have a panic attack - and those aren't fun, so I just couldn't bring myself to give them the letter when I go down to visit them.

Apart from my immediate family I was most concerned about telling my cousin and fiancé. I'm very close with them, and I hold that closeness very dear to me. My cousin and I use to tell people we were brothers during primary school, and people believed us. I remember my time at school with him being some of the only truly happy memorise I have of the seven years of primary school. And I absolutely adore his fiancé. We go to art museums and exhibits together when I visit them and I'm really very comfortable around her

******

Again I drank lots of tea, and procrastinated for most of the morning.

Once enough courage had been accrued I messaged them if they could read something for me and then sent it to them when they agreed...I actually sent it to them and then turned off messenger notifications for a long-ish while, because I was so very nervous and anxious about their reply, even though I had been more than confident it wouldn't be bad.

Their response, half an hour after I sent it (it's the weekend):

Thanks for letting us know Jamie. [Cousin] and I want you to know that we support you and accept you. See you in two weeks!

I didn't even properly open up the message, I just saw the message box that sprang up when my notifications turned back on. That little *ping* and message box made me cry. I was looking at the screen, at the words she wrote, and tears ran down my face... and then I blubbered on the floor, if I'm being truthful

[JamieLee]

I've had a couple big weeks the past fortnight!

At the recommendation of my mother I came out to my father a couple weeks ago. I left the letter I wrote on the kitchen table for my father to find and read on a Saturday morning. I was terrified all Friday night night and early Saturday morning.

I was a coward. I slept EXTRA late that morning, only coming downstairs after my mother sent me a message:

It's all good with your dad.

I was relieved. And what happened when I saw him was surprising, to me.

He hugged me and told me that he loves me and always will. Now I haven't hugged my father in a long while, and he's never really initiated the hugs.

******

Then a couple days before my trip to Sydney to visit my cousin for the weekend (which was a super great weekend!) my mother asked my sister to read my letter. I didn't know she was going to do this so I sweated bullets when she told me she had.

I had been having trouble coming out to my sister, which my mother knew, not because I necessarily feared a negative reaction, but the possibility of jeopardising the relationship I have with her as her 'Big Little Brother' and my relationship with my niblings (which mean the utmost world to me) frightened me to death. I just couldn't work up enough courage to send that simple message to her. I think my mother saw me agonising over it and decided to intervene

My sister was so good. She also said she had inklings this would happen She sent me a message of support and said I didn't need to respond to it, but I feel I want and need to. But I just can't think of how to put my love for her into words (if I was down in Melbourne with her I would just hug her and cry a little).

******

Lastly I came out to my Christian GP last Thursday (the day after my first laser hair removal appointment), who I have been seeing since before I was born (so technically been seeing him as my GP for 28 years). My mother made a double appointment (one for her and then one for me right after) so she could talk to him.

The morning of my appointment I was having mild panic attacks and stimming, and was a hairs breadth away from the foetal position. It was not a good night or morning. And again my mother saved me.

She had gone into the first appointment and did what she had needed to do, but then talked to him about me being trans and my concerns with coming to him. He was saddened that I felt the way I had. But not saddened that I would possibly feel like that, but sad that he had made me so hesitant and anxious to come to him (I hope that made some sense ).

They came out of his office, without me knowing that my mother had already talked to him, and my doctor ushered me into his office (I felt like a small critter caught in headlights at this point). He sat me down and I can't rightly remember too much after that. I do remember he was exceptionally proud of me, happy for me, and that he would be right in my corner throughout (and that 'God loves everyone. If he can love me you can be sure that he loves you!')! I do remember hugging him and holding back tears, as well as finding out I'd lost 12 kilograms

He sent me for baseline blood tests (which I had done last Friday, and nearly fainted from - oh, and I needed a sick bag My body REALLY hates bloods being taken ) and I see him this Wednesday. He said he was going to find a psychologist to refer me to (there aren't any options locally so I'm probably going to have to travel a bit to see someone).

[Kendra]

Wow - yes, you certainly have had quite the two weeks.  You're nailin' it!  Nothing will stop you now.

Congratulations!

[LizK]

That was a wonderful surprise to have your Dad respond to you in the way he did. I could feel the nervousness in what you wrote. Fantastic hope things have worked out so far...sounds like a great bunch of people

[Megan.]

Brilliant news,  lovely to hear. X

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[KathyLauren]

Jamie, I am so happy to hear that things are going well for you!

[steph2.0]

Yes, Jamie! Your experiences parallel mine in many ways, including passing out when getting stuck for blood draws. Well, with the notable difference that I'm more than twice your age at 59 years old, and with a wife, business, and mortgage. But so far, like you, everyone I've told has been accepting and supportive. I envy you your early start, but since HRT adds 5 years to the lifespan, I figure I've bought myself a little more time to live authentically.

Congratulations and go go go!!

Stephanie

[RavenMoon]

I sent emails and Facebook messages to a few close friends and my older brother. I stated it was less awkward that way. Everyone was very supportive. That was like 5 years ago.

More recently I told a few newer close friends. There's only one person I told in person, and that's my current BFF and my singer/song writing partner. She's a cis female. But we spend so much time together it would have been obvious to her, even though I'm still living as a guy, albeit a very androgynous one. She's been very supportive and even offered to help me finance my transition for things like FFS.


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