[EDITED: TRIGGER WARNING for this whole post. In case.]
Also, longpost is long.
In response to all those who have responded (redundant I know, ha ha,) I thank you for giving perspective to this strange predicament. I intend to take measures to establish more autonomy than I currently have, whether my mother likes it or not. In the long run, I didn't want to believe that my mom, or anyone, would willingly lie or go behind another person's back. Call me naive, or even maybe autistic (though that is very un-PC to say, I'm sorry,) but I have to survive in this world and it is very difficult to know what is real and what is not, especially when so much of my support network seems to depend on my living up to unspoken standards that I am just magically supposed to intuit.
(I have spoken with the aforementioned therapist about this, and we have both agreed that I have to live by my own standards even if it produces anxiety, which it will. Can't be half-gangsta.)
In response to androidnick, et alia who want to clarify things, I am twenty-five years old. I have been out to my family (mom, both stepdads, grandparents, aunts/uncles, etc.) since I was approximately eighteen. They know. My maternal and paternal grandparents, both my (maternal) aunts (mom's sister and mom's brother's wife) and one of my uncles (mom's brother,) also my one male cousin on my mom's sister's side, have seen me, identifying as male, wearing men's clothes, full beard, male name and all...and they still seem to use female pronouns behind my back. My mom was lamenting my lack of contact with my grandmother after my grandpa died, and she wanted me to write a letter to my grandma. Being a person who loved the written word, and who was seen as incredibly gifted IN the written word, I steeled myself and wrote a letter to her, to try to stay in contact. My mother had told me that my grandmother would appreciate it so much, AND that grandma had finally come around to fully accepting me as the man that I am. I wrote and sent that letter. And several months later, (as I am being kicked out of my mom's basement for standing up to her, pretty much,) Mom gives me a card from grandma. She's finally written me back. And all I see are FEMALE PROUNOUNS all over that thing, as though none of this acceptance bull->-bleeped-<- even HAPPENED.
But what did I expect? I was living in the basement of a man whose common-law spouse still insisted on referring to her son as "she" and "her." Just to not make waves. Just to keep everything...copacetic? Quiet? I don't know. I will never guess my mother's motives. I suspect more and more that she is a sick woman, who, unfortunately, I am having trouble establishing independence from. Financially, transportationally(?) or otherwise. Social anxiety is very real, and it is crippling me. I live in an apartment that my mother pays for and have neither a car nor a driver's license, because said social anxiety is keeping me from looking for a job and I still have pride to preserve that I do not want to compromise.
Also, my profile picture is inaccurate. I don't look like that anymore. I don't post a new one because I don't want to be identified. Let me just say that I have a full beard, dark messy greasy hair, pale skin and baggy clothes that are often filthy right now--and I've gained back a few pounds on booze. I've gone back on T (axiron, since July of this year, I'm not messing with injected ever again,) so for what it's worth I've got dudehormones coursing through my bloodstream again. And I drink a lot, which, weirdly enough, seems to make my voice deeper and my brainfog less thick.
I've probably had the most messed-up transition in history. Transitioning via people who are financially supportive but emotionally/psychologically violent and destructive is probably going to drive me psychotic in about three years. Still have to do what I have to do. I have my priorities, and they might be kind of screwed, but I'm not just whining over nothing. I mean, when I'm talking about my mom, this is the woman who willingly sent me to a troubled teen program much like
this one. Though it was less overtly religious/homophobic. A lot of the same crap went on, for the same reasons. Just sneakier. My former friends are all out of my life. Yet, even since I've cut them out, one or two of them have tried to come bother me and re-establish contact again. I am not a perfect person, and I have probably done some crappy things that weren't fair. Still, that bridge is pretty much burned, but the things they said have stuck in my head, in certain ways, and I'm still trying to dislodge it all.
And the part where I talked about being undermined for passing *too* well, that is an issue. People around me see me begin to pass completely as cismale, they get uncomfortable with it and/or get weird about my being "presumptuous" or "uppity," or take it as a personal insult that I'm not being a GIRL for them, (though if I ever try and confront them on it--i.e, I try to say, yo, don't expect me to act like a girl anymore because I'm not a girl and you can't humiliate me anymore by expecting me to do that for you, just to make you feel better, and you can deal with your own insecurities on your own darnded time--all they will do is look confused and say, whaa? I never did that, no, not at all, you're just oversensitive oh noooooo not me! How could you possibly think such a thing? Because we Completely Accept You *tm* and we would never be uncomfortable with you being a man. It's just that when you sit with your legs THAT far open, it looks GROSS so cross them in a more polite/demure manner, it's nicer okay?)
And then they start in with pressing the insecurity buttons that they themselves installed. Manipulating fears such as "being rude." Or "being a hypermasculine douchebag." Being "just like your father/stepfather." "Trying too hard." "Not understanding men." "Using your gender as an excuse to be a jerk/abusive/an abusive jerk." "Just think you should have a penis because you want a weapon, you abusive penismonster rapist piece of scum, you're not really a man just a sick sadist." Even "smelling bad." (Smelling bad was a big one, when in the prehistory of my life I started insisting on keeping my armpit hair intact.)
It gets to a point where I second-guess my own mannerisms, mindset and behavior on their behalf, because whenever I'm in a state where I pass very well, unambiguously, the immediate family/people who knew from before get weird and twitchy and angry around me, as though I'm being impolite to them. And I have found, strangely enough, in society, whenever I do the things they told me I had to do be polite/demonstrate respect, the more I have the _exact opposite_ reaction from the people around me. Men in particular, but also women, though less so because probably they see it as me either being flamboyantly gay or flirting with them or some odd combination of both. Saying "please" comes off as rude now. Doing that whole reticent "umm, can I maybe, uh, like, I dunno?" routine is rude as shiitake mushrooms these days, being perceived as male. People react to such behavior as though it is rude and condescending and patronizing. Because for some reason, performing those politeness gestures that I've been taught is seen differently. Is seen as my being snobby and prissy and pulling a better-than-thou routine. Demonstrating that supposed "delicateness" around the feelings of others through hedging and wiffle-waffling is instead seen as my snobbish refusal to acknowledge another person as fully human. Which, ironically, is the exact opposite reaction that all the people (mostly women) in my life have told me such behavior would elicit.
Why can they not recognize that, because I am a man now, there are different things I have to do and different standards that (culturally) I have to hold myself to for social survival? And how can they, in any conception of fair and just behavior, take it upon themselves to out me as transgender behind my back because they are uncomfortable with the degree to which I have to perform socially-acceptable masculinity? A large part of me does not want to accept this as real. A large part of me still clings to the idea that my family is open-minded and completely understanding. They "get me" because they said they did, don't they? Aren't I just an ingrate? Good grief, they're not a bunch of christians. My family are all pretty much atheists. My grandpa was a psychiatrist! Shouldn't they be the least judgmental people on earth? Like they pretend to be? So maybe I'm the one who is just imagining things, I'm just hearing them use female pronouns in reference to me amongst each other, they're not really doing that, are they? Because they're accepting. Because they are supposed to be, and they said they were.
Gawd. I'm...sorry. This situation is more messed up that I should be indiscriminately spewing on the internet, whining like a hound dog.
But really, thank you all for your advice. I appreciate all of it. I am working on means of transportation and finance that circumvent any channel my family could have access to and/or control over. This whole entire thing is, IMO, proof of how pathetic and sick the people are in my immediate environment--I never thought, or wanted, this cold-war bull to be reality instead of paranoid science fiction, but it is, and I can't stick my head in the sand anymore. People do bad things, and they enlist other people to help them do it.
Human nastiness knows no bounds. But right now...I'm gonna say, "bring it."
