I decided, since I managed to sneak in a visit with my therapist for this afternoon, that I needed to put the father point to rest before talking to her again. I wanted to talk to him last night, but I passed out from exhaustion. I considered talking to him before work, but I knew I needed the sleep and he didn't need to hear this that early in the morning. But I went on the principle that "there's never a good time" so I decided I had to tell him.
I paced for half an hour before calling him and asking to talk on his lunch break and another half hour for him to come home.
Of course, as soon as he walked in the door mom 'woke up' and came out. "Oh what a wonderful surprise, hi! blab blab blab blab blab, chit chat chit chat, Autumn has an appointment this afternoon..."
"Yes, mother, that's what I'm going to talk to him about," with a glare and flick of the neck to get her to leave. She always, somehow, ends up being in the wrong place every time.
Everything I had planned kind of fell apart conversationally. Although my quip about "I need to fix my life... I'm converting to Christianity and joining the military. ... Just kidding" to "establish a baseline of insanity so we have a point of reference" worked pretty well.
He didn't really know entirely what to make of things. He's got no clue at all about trans except from hearing the word associated with gay and lesbian pride. So I kind of expected him to know more, which caught me off guard. That's probably why I've gotten away with what I've gotten away with for so long.
I filled him in the best I could. And the fact that I've been behaving the way I have for several years made sense, he agreed. The time spent, and the $10000+ I've already spent so far, did seem to add significant gravity to it to him so that he recognized it's something serious.
He says he doesn't condone surgery and he's afraid of hormones because of doping scandals in sports. We didn't have much time to talk, so I tried to cover things briefly. "Medicine is a lot safer now than it used to be... they used to only have supplemental estrogen derived from pregnant horse urine." "
Who the hell thought that was a good idea?"
he's learning.
My stomach is still pretty sick about the whole thing. But I'm not homeless or beaten and he's going to talk to mom, and myself, later about things.
So I may have wished for him to understand everything and embrace me wholly, but it took a long time before mom could listen to me without screaming and yelling. And... it just occurred to me that yes, while I've had years to come to this point, he apparently had no idea until now. So I'm hoping he becomes more adjusted to it in time.
It doesn't really matter that he doesn't condone surgery, that's a long time from now anyway and he really has no part of that.
Of course... I don't know what may change in the future. He is a good man, a provider, and not like so many men.... I'm still nervous, but then what the hell, at what point during any of this are we not?
