Crap! I can't seem to make a post without writing a novel but there's a TL:DR version near the end. Sorry.Things like this are so interesting for me to read and I've learned so much more from this site about the lives of other folks and how they have dealt with all this trans business being a part of their life. Things were really different for me. I came through this phase in my own life in an isolated bubble of blind ignorance and then pretty much buried my head in the sand about it all for forty-five years. Thank all of you for helping me better understand the broader transgender experience beyond that of my own which it seems was an exercise in tunnel vision?
I've tried to put myself in your shoes and to imagine what it is like to "come out" about being trans. Wondering who to tell first, who to trust and who you know or think will be supportive and who won't be? Wondering what your parents or siblings will think, wondering if your job and the people you work with will accept you? Wondering what to even say? I never had to deal with this like that in quite the same way.
Some of these things I can relate to though. "Coming out" is a thing for me too but from the other direction. People don't know I wasn't born female and I prefer it that way but a couple of times, there have been people I've wanted to share the trans part of my history with and it provides a comparable about of internal debate, angst, uncertainty, indecision and fear about doing so. I even made a thread here somewhere about my dilemma over telling a young woman friend I've become close to. Doing things from this angle can change how people look at you just as much as your coming out does so this is something we do have in common.
Fortunately though, this is something I can be somewhat in control of. I don't have to tell anyone and life can go blissfully on but for most of you here making an initial transition, you aren't afforded that opportunity. You can't exactly keep that you're transcending gender roles, boundaries and your body under your hat and that seems a lot harder and much more to deal with than something I don't have to if I choose to not. I recognize my privilege in this but I don't feel bad about it as I've paid my dues in one way or another like all of us here have or will.
I didn't have to come out to anyone about being a girl. Everyone, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins had always just thought of me and treated me as a girl and even though no one knew a damn thing about "trans", clearly I wasn't a boy making my life in the outside world where I was supposed to be one a constant struggle of moving to different schools because the harassment became intolerable or I was asked to leave because my gender atypicality and long-haired femme leaning androgynous presentation was considered too disruptive. I went to 14 schools in three different states to make it through the 6th grade and things were chaotic. I didn't know how to do things differently to be seen as a boy but believe me, others didn't have any problem pointing out what I was doing wrong but I just didn't care. I wasn't a boy so why should I have to play by those rules was my mindset and I wanted nothing more than to just be known and seen as a girl which would have brought a lot more serenity and normalcy to my life but such things were simply unheard of when I was young so I just went on being that boy that looked, acted like and grew up to be a girl which was not only mind bending and extraordinarily difficult but also pretty ridiculous. Thank goodness in today's world there's at least a clue what to do with kids as screwed up as I was.
That was fine and dandy until I was a sophomore in high school and nearly killed in a homophobic assault by a group of boys on my way home from school one day for being a queer homo fairy ->-bleeped-<- because I was too "girly". That was absolutely the last straw for me. It wasn't a coming out, it was more of coming to an understanding but during the month I was home from school recovering from my injuries, I told my mom and step-dad I simply could not continue to live being known as a boy any longer and that there was no way in hell I was ever going to grow up and be a man which to them wasn't the least bit surprising and more of a Captain Obvious, no duh moment. They said they "always knew" and were just waiting for me to verbalize it which I thought was crap and it made me angry. I reminded my mother I had told her this constantly in kindergarten and the first grade until I learned I could do what I wanted, act like I wanted and have the toys and playthings I wanted as long as I kept my mouth shut about being a girl. After the 2nd grade, I was even allowed to let my hair grow out. Before they were divorced, my biological dad's "encouragement lessons" about not saying anything about it had become ingrained. Physical abuse can have that effect so I just lived who I was, showed it in my everyday life as best I could and didn't talk about it.
There really weren't terms or language to discuss this anyway even when I was 15. I had no idea what trans even was and although I had heard about Christine Jorgensen, I simply couldn't make the connection to my life. All I knew was I was a girl which I'd always made obvious through my personality, behavior, interests and appearance and that things would be a lot less insane and dangerous if I just wasn't supposed to be a stupid boy. I honestly don't know what all my folks knew about trans as they'd seen something like this coming my whole life but they just thought I was gay too (which was okay with them) until I straightened them out on that after which they basically sat me down and said there wasn't anything they could do about it but that they fully understood where I was coming from and knew how hard it made things for me.
This happened in 1970 and the concept of 15 year old boys becoming girls and going to public school (or any school really) was unfathomable and undoubtedly illegal as well so I had to keep using that boy's name until I graduated but there were things that could be done in spite of my parent's concern about putting myself in more danger and by the time I was 16, it was literally impossible for me to even pass as a boy, not that I ever really had or ever been accepted as one before that anyhow. My folks began to use the girl name I would have been given if I was born female and she/her pronouns. My mom spread the news when it was time to switch names on to the rest of my extended family and nobody batted an eye because it just seemed to make sense for me even if it didn't. Everyone had just seen what I grew up to be and I didn't have to come out to anyone because I'd always been out and everyone had seen how challenging life had been for me and I think everyone was relieved there was some end to this madness in sight even if that end may have seemed a little mad in itself? Even though I'd been seeing psychiatrists and counselors since I was 10, it wasn't until I was 17 that I was officially diagnosed with transsexualism and started HRT.
As soon as I got out of school, I got my IDs and paperwork changed over when I was 18 but nothing else changed about me except who I was and the way I was and looked had become normal and able to fit in and function in the world without fanfare or notice and everything became more calm and relaxed and natural with the social things all sorted out. I got my first real job beyond babysitting and domestic work at 19 and got on with a quiet life as a regular late adolescent girl and a few years later, I discretely finished up the medical side of things with SRS in 1977 when I was 22.
My biological father had no idea about any of this. I'd last seen him when I was 14 and my unrepressed femininity and girlishness was more than he could handle so the feeling of not wanting to see each other was quite mutual. I didn't even know what state he lived in and didn't even care to know because we'd never gotten along well and I had a lot of bad memories about how he treated me when I was little so I was perfectly fine with letting all this and him just fade out of my life.
My mom had other ideas. She was ill with less than a year to live. Knowing I wasn't close to my step-dad, that I had no siblings and my extended family had either died or moved far away, she didn't want to die and leave me completely all alone in the world so without my knowledge or permission, she tracked my real dad down through some of his relatives back east and called him up and filled him in. That was in 1979. It had been ten years since I'd seen or spoken to him, I was 24 at the time, had been on HRT for 7 years, "full time" for six and it had been 2 years since I'd had surgery and he had no idea I had become his daughter. I have no clue what she said or how she told him but I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that conversation as I imagine it was pretty interesting? Apparently it went well? She called me at work and asked if I could take the next Friday off but wouldn't say why other than she needed me to take her somewhere. I got the okay from my boss and called her back to let her know and she asked me to come over and make dinner that evening. I did that a couple times a week anyway when she wasn't well enough so it wasn't that unusual.
That's when she told me what she had done and I was none too happy about it but she said he wanted to meet me and that her and I were taking a road trip the following weekend to California to go see him. I was dreading it and nervous as heck because if I disgusted him as a kid, he surely wasn't going to like me any better as a young woman and I only did it to make my dying mother happy but I was totally wrong about how seeing him would go. Either my mom had said some real powerful things to him or he was just blown away I was pretty, attractive and kind of hot but things went well and he treated me with nothing but dignity and respect mixed in with a little awe and disbelief how I'd turned out so well. I'll add setting this up and acting as a go-between/mediator between my dad and I along with the rest of the family to the long list of things my mom did to help me even though initially I wished she'd kept her nose out of my business. Over the next 20 years or so, I saw my biological dad four more times and we wrote letters back and forth and sent Christmas cards before he too passed away. He even got to meet my husband twice which was something I wished my mom could have done.
So, TL:DR version, I didn't have to come out to anybody about being trans or that I was really a girl. I still may have cousins somewhere but wouldn't know how to find them and haven't seen any of them since my mom's funeral in 1980 so for all practical purposes, I have no family at all and don't know anyone that knew me during those years when I was known as that most unusual boy. In the last 20 years or so, I've told two cis people about my history and one of those not until we'd lived together for two years however, there's two people in my life now I'm contemplating "coming out" to about my childhood and teen years which is just as challenging, awkward and perception changing as what you all might be dealing with.
I'd like to offer comfort and say it gets easier or offer some advice on the timing and I do have the luxury of not saying anything if I don't want to but sharing my history with someone comes with a lot of internal emotional wrestling and is as hard for me as it's ever been if not even more so? I can see the difference though when these things are your future and not your past but it still isn't easy, I never know the right timing and I still don't know the right words to use so I generally exercise my privilege and don't say anything but that doesn't mean I can't empathize with or relate to what some of you are going though. How any of us find the strength and courage to get through this is really nothing short of incredible but it just shows what incredible and resilient people we are and how strong and powerful the need to be ourselves really is. We should all get together and talk about this on the internet or something!
