It's over. I can't do it. Becoming a woman has too high a cost.
I had an appointment Tuesday with my parents and therapist. Mom came loaded for bear, skinned me alive, burned the remains, and dropped every thermonuclear warhead in the arsenal.
It was everything I expected, and worse. I have damaged my relationships with everyone. I knew it would happen yet pressed on, and it was all a mistake. As far as I'm concerned, optimism is a mental illness.
Dad's initial openness was bluntly ignored, and he didn't try to stick up for me. My brother-in-law's wary acceptance was overruled by my sister, who now may not let me be alone with her children.
Mom wanted to confront my therapist head-on, without me, but he would not allow it. By the end, I'm pretty sure she thought he was a quack.
Mom, by way of talking to the therapist, attacked me from every angle, blaming Asperger's for everything, and saying that because I had shown no feminine tendencies through high school I couldn't have gender dysphoria. She pulled out everything I had done or said in school as proof that Asperger's was responsible. (It's a long story.)
After a half-hour, my therapist talked to me alone. He said Mom was the toughest/most opposed family member of a trans client he'd ever talked to. Then I had another hour in a private room with my parents.
She framed my face in her hands while she did the first half of this, until her knees gave out.
Some quotes from Mom, as best I can remember (despite hitting "record" on the brain, so to speak, it was overwhelmed):
"Tell me WHY this would make anything better." The answer "because it might make me not hate my body" was not acceptable. "Because I want to be happy" was not acceptable. Nor was being shy, or being comfortable in women's clothing, or hating being male in general.
"How am I supposed to be supportive of my son who wants to be a daughter? I already have a daughter."
"God made you male. I have a son. His name is [birth name]."
"You have male hands, male feet, and you're bald. No one would ever date you. You would make an ugly woman because you are a handsome man."
"Why the hell would you want to wear a skirt?"
If I had shown any outward signs when younger, "we would've taken you to a psychiatrist and gotten you straightened out."
If I transition, "I will never support you." She would not want me home ever again and would demand I stay out of my hometown.
When I tried to point out that I would still have my interests, "Then do that as a male." The few groups I do have "will never accept" me as a woman.
"You need to get a therapist who will help you accept being the man you are. ... Make the brain match the body."
"Did you think of what this would do to US?" She is supremely pissed off about being told this time of year. "We will not get used to having anything but a son."
"Think about your grandmothers. How would they react?"
She can accept having a socially inept boy who will die alone, but not a transgender girl who might find a way to be happy. It is clear she would prefer a dead son - metaphorically or literally - over a live daughter.
She had talked to my sister, who told her she would cut me off from the kids if I transitioned. The only statement in my favor was that Mom didn't think I was a pedophile - and yes, that was the word she said. "The kids can't be told about this. They won't understand."
The only hormone she'd be in favor of is testosterone - which, despite my protestations that it would do everything to my body and mind I didn't want, said would be better.
"Think of all you will lose. Will it be worth it?"
I spent time after that talking to my brother on the phone, then therapist again before he left, then relatives who were supportive of me but shocked at the depth of Mom's reaction.
I stupidly answered the phone when Mom called hours later to see if I had returned, but I hadn't. Mom said she loved me, but now I know that means "unless you do that thing. Then we'll disown you." She has complete power over me and knows it.
I have no choice. I would lose the only things that are right in my life. I must live decades more as I have lived the last 20 years of my adult life- as a genetically doomed pathetic freak and failure who doesn't deserve happiness.
