Hello, everyone! I am Riley, amab, and I came out as bigender and transgender almost a year ago (last June). It's been amazing since I came out, with a lot of depression and stress feeling like it was lifted straight off my shoulders. I grew up in a very religious household (my father is a Baptist minister) and when I was still a young child and my parents found out I was questioning my gender and sexuality they lost their minds. I'd never seen them so angry and I was afraid I'd be disowned and dropped off at an orphanage over it. Looking back, I don't think they were quite that upset about it but to a child things tend to seem worse and I was absolutely terrified. I burried everything, boxed it up and shoved it into the darkest, most unvisited corner of my mind, afraid to revisit anything to do with gender and sexuality for a very long time. I considered myself asexual for a very long time simply because that made it easy to avoid having to deal with revisiting thoughts about my sexuality, which in turn would bring up thoughts about my gender.
Finally, after years of repression, depression, anger, and denial, I finally found myself in a place in life where I felt safe enough to finally process through everything I'd been avoiding for so long. My chosen family has supported me and helped me every step of the way, and without them I am not sure I'd still be here. I've gotten bold enough to talk to one of my siblings about being transgender, and she is fully supportive (and turns out is gender-fluid herself). Sadly, she and I don't feel we can talk to our parents about any of this, at least not at the current time. I meet this week with a gender therapist to finally get my letter to start HRT, and I am very excited (and also very nervous because, change, lol). I am very blessed to have a great support system where I live, and they are just as excited for me as I am for myself.
I am a military veteran, and the VA is promising to help me with my transition somewhat (hormones and voice training, but not surgeries) though I am also pursuing things through the civilian channels as well (the gender therapist I'm seeing this week is not VA-connected).
