So, this is my first time posting here, but I've been viewing these forums for more than a year.
I figured today was as good a day as any to make my first post, because tonight is the night I finally tell my parents that I'm transgender and if I'm perfectly honest, I'm utterly terrified. Both of my parents are not only conservative Christians who totally don't believe being transgender is okay or even remotely biblically acceptable, but they are also actively involved in Christian ministry. I have no idea how they will react to the news.
A little over a year ago I didn't so much come out, but was rather unwillingly dragged out of the closet by my mother when she confronted me about being gay. Much to my surprise my family took it better than I could have hoped. While my mother still refuses to actually refer to me as being gay (it's a "spiritual stronghold" of some sort in her mind), they at least didn't throw me out, and still seem to accept me.
For some reason I feel like coming out as trans is so much bigger, and much more difficult. I've struggled with telling them for a long time, when one of my friends and my college's LGBT Resource Center recommended that I try telling them through a letter instead. The resulting letter is what I've pasted below, and what I intend to give to my parents tonight along with a photo of me expressing as a female. I don't know if I came here looking for support, because I'm scared, or because I just needed literally anyone to tell. I suspect it's a little of all of those things.
Regardless, you can read my letter to my family below. Wish me luck. God knows I'm going to need as much of it as I can get
Dear Mom and Dad,
I've struggled for a long time to figure out how exactly to write this letter. I know what you are about to read is going to be extremely difficult to understand, and even harder to accept, but I need to be honest.
I am transgender. I always have been.
Please, please finish reading this entire letter, before we talk. I realize that you may be in shock, and that you likely have a lot of questions, I promise I'll answer anything you ask, but simply finish reading this first.
I desperately want you to understand that I did not suddenly make the decision to just suddenly be transgender. My dysphoria with my body and my gender identity is something I've struggled with secretly for my entire life.
Mom, you may or may not recall the day you first confronted me about being gay. I'll never forget that day. Ever. It was one of the most emotionally exhausting days of my entire life, and I suspect today will be much the same. That morning, when you confronted me, you asked me two very specific questions. You asked me if I was gay and you asked me if I wanted to become a woman. I was so caught off guard that for the first time in my life, I was honest with you about who I really was, at least partially. You see, your second question was so close to who I really was that it terrified me. I wasn't ready to tell you the truth. I still don't know that I am, but I've come to the realization that if I continue to hold these feelings in, I will continue to spiral downward in a manner that is slowly killing me.
See the truth is, I don't simply want to be a woman. I am one. I always have been. A little girl trapped in the wrong body, and scared to express those feelings out of fear of rejection.
I know you both are not blind, so I also know that you had to have noticed that something was wrong with me over the years. Once I became a teenager, my feelings of dysphoria became more and more intense. I became very deeply depressed. Like, scary depressed. Surely you saw how unhappy I was. I was mercilessly picked on at school, I gained excessive amounts of weight, lost my faith, and generally stopped caring about everything and everyone. Every day I would look in the mirror and see a stranger staring back at me, and every day I would become just a little more bitter, and a little more empty.
Just as you surely must have noticed my downward spiral through high school and into college, you must also have noticed my recent shift in attitude. For the first time in my entire life I feel, if not tangibly happy, then at least like that happiness is within reach. You see, just a couple months ago, one year to the day I came out as gay, I finally made a resolution. That no matter how difficult it will be, no matter the consequences I will face, I need to be true to myself. I need to transition from the gender I was assigned at birth, to the one I've actually been my entire life.
I hope with all of my being that you can accept this, as my greatest fear in all of this isn't how others will react to the news, but the fear of losing the both of you in my life. Regardless of how you take this news, I hope you know that I love you both more than I can put into words. If I have hurt you, please forgive me.
Love,
Felicity
Edit: And if anyone can tell me how to add stuff like a profile picture I would much appreciate it
