My therapist’s eyes went very wide for just a split second; I could see her mind struggling to work out a response.
“Ohhhhh kaaaaay,” was all she could muster at first.
She furrowed her brow and frowned slightly, a subtle drop in her professional facade. My stomach dropped–it was enough to make me want the floor to open up and swallow me whole.
It was the first time I had ever told another person that I was transgender; I knew in a heartbeat that this person I trusted didn’t know what to do. Then she told me that I definitely had to tell my mom.
We’d been meeting weekly for about a month having semi-deep conversations about my panic attacks. None of it was helping. I had known deep down, even at such a young age, what the underlying issue was; I knew I was trans, and I was very much repressing that side of me in an effort to fit in and survive. At great cost to my emotional wellbeing.
In the rush to advise me to talk it over with my mom, my therapist hadn’t done any other work. She either didn’t know how to discuss trans identities, or didn’t want to. I felt like I was stranded on an island by myself waiting for a passing ship to come rescue me. How could I explain to the most important people in my life how my gender works if I couldn’t even get a professional to help me learn the right words to use?
A few weeks later she cancelled my appointment, citing a personal matter; there wasn't another appointment scheduled for the following week. I never saw her again.
My dad was a physical education teacher and coach for two sports at a nearby school; the paragon of masculinity for several generations of schoolboys. My mom, gentle, always loving, was a kindergarten teacher. One cool fall afternoon, while I knew my father was out of the house, I asked my mother to come into the living room with me. I had something I needed to tell her.
My stomach was doing back-flips. I debated it again in my mind. “Would she hate me? Would everything still be okay if I told her?”
I told my mom of my love for girl’s clothes and tried very hard to explain how I experienced my gender, but I didn’t have the right words to even describe myself. I stopped short of saying the words “I’m transgender”–partly because I had no concept of the word.
Back then, people mostly knew people like me from the Jerry Springer Show or porn. I was a teenager–I didn’t want to have to bear all that social stigma.
My mom handled it with grace. She was supportive, if confused, and asked me to model some of the girl’s clothes that I kept hidden in the back of my closet. I hurried excitedly up to my room and changed.
As I descended the stairs, the sound of my heels reverberated through my brain. I’m sure my mother could hear as well. As I turned the corner to the living room, she audibly gasped and showered me with praise. It felt amazing to be affirmed. We spent the rest of the afternoon like mother and daughter.
So much to-do is made about the sexual aspect of being gender variance; to have the girl in hiding be met and welcomed and adored by her mother could have been so empowering. I stress could.
Like all good things, the afternoon was coming to a close. “Okay, I think you should get changed now, dad will be home soon.”
My heart sank. I didn’t want to change. I refused.
“No, really you need to change, dad can’t see you like this.” I told her that I was tired of hiding and that I didn’t care if he saw me like this.
“Honey, he’s not ready for this. Please go change but I promise that I’ll work on him for you and then we can tell him.” I went upstairs and changed.
The subject of my gender didn’t come up in conversation for a good while. It started to feel like the elephant in the room. I was having a particularly rough day at one point when my mom found herself alone with me. She told me that she’d done a lot of research about what I had told her, and that she had a few questions for me.
I wasn’t in the mood but acquiesced to her request anyway.
“Do you feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body?” No (yes).
“Do you feel like you should try to start living as a girl?” No (yes).
As she started her next question, I just wanted out of the conversation entirely.
“I don’t know mom, I think it was just a phase,” I told her. Her whole body relaxed, she audibly sighed in relief.
She didn’t want me to be her daughter.
My stomach flipped. I nearly vomited. I went back into the closet.
I was sitting in my car in the driveway sixteen years later. It was the middle of summer. My garage door yawned open in front of me.
The constant buzz of gender dysphoria swirling around my brain was killing my job productivity. I was 33 years old and had never received even a promotion. The dysphoria dominated my life–every glance at my body hair or my receding hairline. I just couldn’t take it anymore. Always panicked, always nervous; I had been suffocating on the inside for a long, long time.
I parked the car in the garage. I left the engine running. Someone would find me eventually. They’d be better off without me anyways.
I received a text from my mom. I don’t remember what it said–it was enough for me to glance at my phone.
I turned the engine off. I googled gender therapists in my small town.
When I met with her, I poured my heart out almost from the first second. My new therapist was the first person to ever hear me say the words “I’m transgender,” and she responded with support, kind words, and understanding. We took a trip through my trans history, and she helped me conceptualize my feelings. Working with her helped me become comfortable with who I was.
One day I told her, “I think I’d like to come out to my mom.”
A few weeks later, I’m sitting across the restaurant table from my mom, fingering my food with my fork. Since I had been the one to invite her out to “talk about something,” it was on me to begin the conversation, yet I still hesitated, that old familiar fear of rejection gripping my throat. As mothers usually do, mine knew something was up and broke the ice herself. She knew I had been seeing a therapist for panic attacks again and asked me how that was going.
I looked at my mom across from me, her face a little more lined than it was the last time. I was finally ready and knew what to say.
“The truth is, mom, I am transgender,” I said as tears gripped my eyelids.
She paused for a moment–I could see her mind working through it. Then she leaned across the table. She told me that she would always love me and support me. My tears had nowhere else to go but down my face. She asked what my next step would be and I told her that I needed to transition to living as a woman. She asked me about my wife and kids; divorce is the likely outcome.
She asked me if I’d consider not transitioning–
“No, mom. That’s not going to happen.” I explained that I wouldn’t have bothered coming out to her if this wasn’t vitally important to me. I told her about how I had planned my own suicide a few months earlier. I told her how happy trans people are post-transition.
This wasn't a matter of realization, of being comfortable as myself. This was life.
My mom thought about this for a minute, glanced away and turned back to me and nodded, “Ok… So how are we going to tell dad?”