Susan's Place Transgender Resources

I feel like I have hurt my parents because of what I am. I don't think I ever stopped to consider what I was doing to them. My dad is now in complete denial of the whole situation. My mom has turned heavily to alcohol. When she's not drinking she is rather nice to be around and she has slowly come to accept me.
I destroyed their son, but I can never be their daughter. 

Quote from: Hippolover25 on February 17, 2013, 10:02:33 AM
I feel like I have hurt my parents because of what I am. I don't think I ever stopped to consider what I was doing to them. My dad is now in complete denial of the whole situation. My mom has turned heavily to alcohol. When she's not drinking she is rather nice to be around and she has slowly come to accept me.
I destroyed their son, but I can never be their daughter.

First off, you are not responsible for your mothers alcoholism. Chances are if she is doing it now, she has been drinking for a long time. So your dad is in denial, so what? Is that your fault? I suppose I can understand the point that parents invest many years and sacrifice to bring a child into the world and raise the child and they have high hopes. They want a child to grow up into a better world than they did. I get that. The problem is that they only thing they read about as far as trans in the papers, or news is about death and misery. Happy trans people are literally invisible to the world, yet we exist.

Your life is your life. I can't say my parents were bad people, they gave me plenty of opportunity to figure out who I wanted to be, never pushed things. There hearts were in the right place, but their minds were blinded by religion. I also have a brother and a sister. My brother who is 1 year younger joined the air force shortly out of college and landed a dream job in the military, reporting to the secretary of the air force. Despite all the outward success, he was ripped internally and tried to commit suicide twice until he finally admitted he was gay. He ended up having to quit his position in the air force, and did not talk to my parents for over a decade. They refused to accept a gay son. They had prayer vigils for him, everything. Looking back, the surreal and utterly silly nature of the whole thing, it boggles the mind. Boy oh boy was the pressure on me. They really wanted me to "man up". My mother would have some women come by the house with daughters the same age as me, to see if it would spark any interest. Until that point I had never dated and they knew I liked to "dress up" so they feared I might be that way out shade of gay where I dress up like a girl and have sex with strange men.

At the same time my brother was coming out I was busy wrestling my own alligator. Eventually my TSity had to come out. I guess a gay kid was one thing,but a trans female kid, well that was quite another thing. No way they could handle it.

I was going through my therapy at the same time, and that's when it finally dawned on me that I was living my life to make "everyone else happy" while I was walking around like a miserable sad sack. It was then that I realized that being true to myself was not a selfish act or being cruel or a dishonest lifestyle or even a "lifestyle". When I came out to my brother his words to me were: "what took you so long? I knew you would eventually do this.". When we talked about the idea that this was a choice or a lifestyle, my brother said something to me that I will never forget. He said, do you honestly think I made this choice so that I could be disowned, treated like less than a human and do this just to have sex with another man in the privacy of ones own home? He had a good point.

It was then that I realized that I would have to say goodbye to my parents for the last time and just "fade away". It was the only thing left. So struck out in the world, on my own, my first apartment was a studio apartment, no bedroom, just one big living room/bedroom, an old kitchen and a bathroom. It wasn't much but it was mine and I was finally out from the tyranny. That happened 20+ years ago. I have not talked to them since then. We would be strangers now. It's sad to me to see 2 people so blinded by religion that they won't talk to 2 of their 3 kids. 2 of us will not be there when they finally pass on, but I am guessing that this may not exactly be the thing they want, because now that the icy hand of death is at their door, they are reaching out to me and my brother looking to be friends once again. Sadly that may not happen either. But sometimes it's the thing that needs to be done.

If its any consolation, my father had a problem with drinking when I grew up. He was never violent or hurt any of us, but a drunk is a drunk is a drunk. I didn't make him drink any more than you put a bottle in your mothers mouth. Don't ever blame yourself for that. Being around a drunk must have helped because I turned out to be the tea totaller of the family.