*Originally posted 3-18-2019*
While most of my online friends were spending St. Patrick’s Day drinking beer, smearing green on their faces, and making merry, I was having a much more…sober experience to say the least. The difference, I suppose, lies in the activities. There was no merrymaking in my house. No joyful celebrations or imbibing on green beverages with friends. The truth is, it was a shitty day.
Because I came out as transgender to my family.
For reference, I come from an evangelical background. My parents, although divorced, are still very much involved in their respective churches. We go weekly to services, pray over our meals, and have centered our lives in our faith since before I was born. It’s a part of who I am as much as being a man is, and I carried the awareness of my family’s beliefs with me when I came out. I knew they would not accept me with open arms like I wanted to.
It wouldn’t be malicious, but it would be painful.
I decided to drop the metaphorical bomb with a family-wide email to my siblings and my parents. It would give me the space to explain myself and my reasoning, to ask they use my new name and pronouns, without getting emotionally overwhelmed or feeling attacked. I sent it in the very early hours of Sunday, tried to sleep, and had nightmares about waking up in a house of people who hate me.
I figured it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. I’ve been vocal about my support of the LGBT community and how they fit into God’s vision of the world. To a select few, I’ve even made it known that I felt more “masculine” than most women. I had been using careful language for years, trying to keep my conservative family appeased while also toeing the line. First it was cutting my hair, wearing masculine clothing, and adopting nicknames with my closest friend that were male. Then I started voicing my hatred of my breasts, stopped shaving, stopped wearing makeup. I avoided calling myself a male and said I was non-binary out of fear.
I surmised that anyone who was watching, really watching, would see this as a natural step. I was finally brave enough to accept who I was, and in my very naïve, somewhat enthusiastic brain, I hoped they would be supportive. Sad, but accepting at least.
My mother waited three hours to speak about it after I got up. She pretended nothing was different, and then, like all good mothers do, she wrapped me in a hug. She whispered that she would always love me. We shared a tearful conversation that she would not call me Connor or my pronouns, that she did not agree with me, that she didn’t understand transgenderism at all actually…but she still loved me. She still wanted to be apart of my life, however that looked to me.
I’m hopeful that someday, a few years down the road, she’ll see me pursuing my life as a man with a joy radiating out of me I never got to claim before transitioning, and she’ll realize she gave birth to a boy all those years ago. She’ll call me son, and maybe, just maybe, she’ll say my name. But I know that this is hopeful thinking, and so I try to content myself with what I can have. It is enough. More than many trans folks are gifted.
My two eldest sisters did not respond with the same grace, and I cannot describe to anyone the utter anguish of receiving their joint email in response. It was…is, likely, the most painful thing I have ever had the displeasure of receiving. It wasn’t filled with the outright hateful words that I had feared—those might’ve been better, actually-- but instead with carefully veiled disgust, disappointment, and fear. I was told that it was their feeling that I had died to them. I was also told that they would not use my pronouns or my name (I expected this) and that I would not be allowed to interact with my nieces as long as I was ‘choosing’ this lifestyle. They could not ‘walk with me’ as I delighted in sin (that’s almost a direct quote, btw). They made sure to tell me that they loved me, but that I was only welcome in their lives as a female. Anything else…well, just wasn’t tolerable.
In essence, they have disowned me.
Trying to navigate the feelings of betrayal and heartbreak associated with this letter have left me feeling thin. Too much toast and not enough butter. The good ole stretch til you snap. I have tried to put myself in their shoes, to imagine how they must fear my influence on their impressionable children, and I have to admit…I am at a loss. Perhaps it is the notion that someone would willingly choose to shun their family member for something out of their control that baffles me. Maybe it’s because I’ve been living a lie for so long that I just can’t empathize with that kind of intolerance. Or perhaps, it’s just too soon. Too raw a wound to try and heal.
Either way, I am left battling my own bitterness, trying to give myself enough grace to grieve even as I recognize that how I am being treated is fundamentally wrong. I love them, and yet, they cannot love me as I am. In their words, “We do not know a Connor”. And they don’t want to.
I have heard nothing from my father or brother yet. As their silence stretches longer, my anxiety grows deeper. I wonder if they’ll leave me as well, and every hour I am entering into deeper levels of understanding of what trans people go through when they come out. For every story of acceptance, there are a million of fractured families. I can only hope that they choose to love me for who I am, and not who they want me to be.
The brightest ray of sunshine in all of this is my eldest brother, Gavin, who also came out as trans at the same time as I did. It has been a painful journey for us both, and it looks like it might only grow worse from here…but I am comforted knowing I am not alone in this. He has kept me sane, kept me from hurting myself, and kept me level as we’ve walked towards being honest together. It’s a gift that we are both alike, one I am thanking God for even now.
Pain aside, it has been liberating. I remind myself that every battle worth winning comes with the price of bloodshed and heartbreak. This is my reckoning day, and I’ll have to keep fighting for Connor if I want to survive this.
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