Mistake?

A big part of the reason that I haven´t been blogging much lately is because I sank into depression. I did mention this at one point, when I tried to blog again and spewed out a few lame posts. After these posts, events occurred that yet again caused me to hate myself and withdraw from the world.

I posted earlier this year about attempting to get into a comprehensive gender services program. This is turning out to be more difficult than I expected, and believe me, I expected it to be pretty f***ing difficult.

In the beginning, my therapist was an issue. She had been my therapist for two years and thus (I had assumed) was well aware of my needs. Apparently this was a very wrong assumption to make, because she was "not comfortable recommending me for hormones at this time."

I really didn´t feel like fighting with her. This woman wanted to talk about nothing besides my birth mother. Any and all other events, circumstances, emotions, or coincidences were linked to my birthmother, according to this woman. I´m sorry, lady, but I´m just not comfortable blaming my own feelings about my own damn self on a woman who was so absent in my life that she wouldn´t have known what I looked like had she not owned a mirror. She may be responsible for my variety of physical and mental health issues, seeing as the fact that she was pregnant didn´t stop her from drinking, smoking, and taking I don´t know what all. But how I think of myself has to do with me. ME, lady! ME! Me and other people and events that have been PRESENT in my life and thus made an IMPACT.

I solved this issue by dumping her. I feel better already. I can find other sources of my problems besides my bastard heritage and actually fix them instead of yelling at a headstone. I don´t think the headstone heard me when I tried to accuse it of things. At least, it didn´t respond.

My latest problem, however, has been my mother.

I can only guess my mother´s motivation for behaving the way she does. I´ve narrowed it down to:

1) She doesn´t understand, and is therefore pretending that the thing she doesn´t understand does not exist

2) She´s afraid of change

3) She thinks my transition is a way to get back at her for something she imagines I blame her for, such as a miserable childhood or being a bad parent (neither of which are true)

4) She´s afraid of what people might think of her if they find out her kid is trans

5) She is genuinely ashamed of me

Something I don´t think that my mother will ever understand is that my transition has nothing to do with her. I love my mother very much. I had a wonderful childhood and she is an exceptional parent in many ways. This change that I´m making isn´t about humiliating anyone, and nor is it about projecting blame onto anyone. It´s just something that I NEED TO DO. More than that, it´s something that I´m ready to do.

I´m not sure my mother realizes the damage she´s doing.

When the doctor I´m seeing in order to be admitted to the comprehensive gender services program asked if we could have a meeting with my parents, my heart sank. If he was going to form any of his opinion of me based on what my parents had to say, I was royally f***ed.

Still, I agreed to the group session. One of the reasons I´m taking this long and painful route to transition is because it has done much to reassure my father on the subject. He has admitted that he still doesn´t understand my transition, but the fact that I´m willing to go through such a grueling process has led him to understand that my feelings are genuine; that I´m concerned for my own safety; and that I am taking into account how other people feel about this.

In my lifetime, I have met far too many people who say, "If they can´t accept you for who you are, then they don´t deserve you."

Folks, this is a really popular phrase.

It also does not apply to me.

Think of me what you will, but I am extremely close to my family. Walking away from them is not an option. In all practicality, I can´t go anywhere within the state and not come across someone that one of my family members knows. I cannot effectively disappear when my family members will constantly be updated on my whereabouts and well-being whether I like it or not. But on a deeper level, these people are an essential part of my daily life. I live with my cousin. I work for my father. My house is around the corner from my grandparents and three streets away from my birthfather. Two of my cousins attended my previous college with me, and one of them attends the one that I currently go to. I see a dozen family members a day, whether it´s at work or at school or on the street. They had committed to me just as much as I have committed to them. Walking away would NOT be an act of self-preservation. It would serve only to alienate and isolate me.

So, when my father tells me that I am showing that I am considering how other people feel about my transition, he´s right, to a degree. I´m certainly not trying to be obnoxious about it or rub it in anyone´s face. It´s just that it´s a physical transformation as well, and I feel that other people need to at least be aware of what´s going on. Otherwise I could show up at my next family reunion and scare my grandmother to death with my new beard.

As far as I can tell, my mother´s problem with my transition is that she takes ANY information I offer as me rubbing her face in the issue.

For example, before I ventured out for Ecuador, I started packing. In the most politically correct sense of the definition, "packing" refers to your pants. A lot of transmen pack. Including me.

Now, I´ve heard horror stories of transmen being hauled off by airport security and asked to remove their pants because the security guards don´t actually know what a pack is. This, from my point of view, is understandable. If you haven´t come across something before, it´s ridiculous to assume that you can be able to identify it through magic or telepathy. And security has gotten increasingly tight at airports in the last few years. My mother´s water bottle and my brother´s shampoo were confiscated; so when you come across an unidentifiable object in someone´s pants, what else are you going to do?

This is not to say that I agree with transmen having to yank down their pants for an audience. I think it´s humiliating and it´s something that I never want to encounter in my life. However, I had never before travelled while wearing my pack and I wasn´t entirely sure what might happen.

I weighed the options of not wearing my pack, and carrying it in my suitcase. I opted against this because I didn´t want security to tear apart my bag if they couldn´t identify it. If it was attached to me, at least I could offer an explanation.

Now, imagine that you are a parent. If your child, even an adult offspring, were undertaking a journey on their own, and they got searched by security, would you want to know?

Most likely.

I am confident that my own parents would want to know.

Now, imagine that your adult offspring, about to undertake this journey, knows that he/she/ze is a potential security risk. Would you still want to know?

Maybe.

Imagine that your adult offspring knows that they are a potential security risk, does NOT tell you, gets dragged off by airport security, and is made to remove their pants in order to prove that they are not actually carrying anything dangerous. And imagine that you hear about this incident after the fact. What would your likely response be?

I am relatively sure that, after verbally abusing the security guards to hell, my parents would ask me what the f*** I was thinking and want to know why I didn´t tell them if I knew that something like this could happen.

With this in mind, I carefully approached the subject with my mother. I would have even left the contents of my pants out of it, dropping the subject after mentioning that security might examine me, except that she wanted to know why.

This woman would not let go of a subject if you tried to pry it away from her with a crowbar. I even wound up admitting to her that I´d injured my wrist while tied down to a bed and enjoying an evening with a partner of mine, because she wouldn´t stop asking how I hurt my wrist! I gave her a variety of vague answers that did not satisfy her, until at last I burst forth with the incriminating information. My mother didn´t speak to me for the rest of the afternoon.

So I was cautious about telling her why I might be a security risk. But she had asked why, so I indulged.

The first thing out of her mouth after I explained was, "(legal name), it is entirely inappropriate for you to tell me what you´ve got in your pants!"

Yes, mother. The next time I decide to be publicly humiliated, I will politely keep the information to myself.

Airport security gave me no trouble, by the way. But the risk was significant enough that I deemed it important for my parents to be aware of what could potentially happen. But, as usual, I judged wrong.

Oh yeah, and despite a year and a half of knowing about my transition, my mother continues to call me my legal name.

Like I said, I don´t know if she realizes the damage she´s doing.

She and my father came along with me to the family therapy session. I was not aware, until the session began, that my mother had written out a "list of concerns" that she wanted to share with the doctor.

I was horrified to discover that my mother´s "list of concerns" was more like a list of accusations. She had come up with every reason she could think of that I should not transition.

She brought up some of my past psychological issues, which are now under control due to medication.

She brought up various interests of mine that are "girly," such as the Barbie collection that SHE provided me with and my favorite color being purple.

She brought up past incidents that I had wanted to forget, seeing as they were not some of my proudest moments, that had nothing to do with my transition.

My mother made me look like a desperate liar who will do anything for attention.

To her, it does not matter how I behave. Any attempt at putting on the façade of a lumberjack or frat boy only results in her accusing me of just that: putting on an act. However, any attempt to act like myself, do the things I like and behave in a manner that is comfortable to me, just becomes ammunition for her to use as evidence that I am, in fact, a girl.

I wouldn´t be half as upset if my mother had accused me of these things to my face. But no, she had to tell all of this to my doctor. The man who is supposed to be trying to get me into the gender services program. My father and I both have every confidence that he will approach the subject objectively and not let my mother´s accusations affect his decision. But I´m human. A small part of me is petrified that the doctor is going to tell me to get the hell out of his office, I am not and never will be worthy of medical treatment through their clinic.

I don´t know what to do any more.

What do you want from me, Mom?

Why can´t you love who I am...

...instead of who you want me to be?