As of this post, I am about seven and a half months into my transition (mtf). I’ve had talks with all of my friends, and all of those went great! I have been overwhelmed with the love and support from everybody. Some of those conversations were scarier for me than others, but none of them were as intimidating to me as a conversation with my parents.
I don’t live with my parents, and I haven’t for a long time. I have a complicated relationship with them because my childhood was less than ideal, but they recognize that they did a bad job, and we are all in much better places in our lives. Since we’ve all been living well, I’ve been making an effort to try to become better friends with them. This meant that I would probably have to talk with them about my transition some time, because it was getting more and more obvious in my appearance.
Yesterday, I took my mom out to try sushi for the first time. We talked candidly about a lot of things, but I didn’t feel like the middle of the sushi restaurant was an ideal place to spring transition news. I had a really great time hanging out with her, and she said that she did as well! That was the first time the two of us had hung out since I can remember. The interaction was so positive that it made me feel guilty for not being open with her about my identity.
That guilt kind of ate at me for the rest of the day, and so in the evening I sent her a message to schedule a call. She responded very quickly to tell me that she was open to call immediately, and I took her up on it. After some pleasantries, I informed her through tears that I am going through a transition, and have been for many months. She calmly listened to my explanation, then tactfully replied that both she and my dad already knew this, and figured I would probably want to talk to them about it some day.
I do not know why, but this made me want to throw up. Something about Dorothy peeking through my Wizard of Oz curtain, seeing me handling the levers and dials, and then waiting patiently for me to decide that it was time to address it gave me an unpleasant taste. Truthfully, the talk went about as well as I could have expected. Once we got past the, “Uh, yeah. We could tell,” part of the conversation, she made sure that I knew that the two of them love me, and they are happy that I am happy. She said it in a way that conveyed she didn’t know why I was doing it, but would love me through whatever. That didn’t surprise me at all, and was fine.
Despite the talk going pretty well, I have spent the past day flashing back to that conversation and wanting to scream lol. It has been a while since I’ve seen a therapist, and I have a feeling that I might have some complicated emotions bound up that I’m not consciously aware of. Because I have been feeling so strongly about it, I thought perhaps writing it down and possibly getting some input from fellow trans people might help.
tl;dr, Told my mom I was transitioning. Apparently she already knew, and nobody was bringing it up. Made me feel ill, like screaming, etc. Unsure why, talk went fine.
