- I came out to my elder brother, who was surprised but supportive.
- I came out to one of my friends, who seemed bemused & couldn't relate to what I was saying, but then she's a very 'girly' girl so that's hardly surprising.
- I came out to my husband. Which was a HUGE deal, and will cause us a great deal of trouble over the next few years.
Firstly, my brother, who was my best friend growing up, said he had no idea that I was going through what I was going through at the time. He remembers me as being a 'tomboy', and when I mentioned how I hated wearing girls' clothes he remembered me feeling that way, but he hadn't put two & two together (he described himself as 'Captain Oblivious', but in all honesty he's always been more like 'Captain Self-Centred').
He asked me loads of questions, which I answered as honestly as I could, and he encouraged me to tell Hubby the bad news. I'd been dreading doing so because I know where it will lead. Hubby pretends to be all tolerant and easy-going, but that's just lipservice: any time an LGBT person comes on the TV he makes some sort of disparaging comment. The final straw came when the whole family was watching a music video ("Black Heart" by Stooshe) and he kept making very rude comments about one of the women in the band (Karis). He said that she looks like a 'tranny' because of her strong facial bone structure. And to make matters worse, my kids laughed along with him.
I was really upset. Not directly due to the rudeness of his comment (that was only somewhat annoying; after all, I don't personally know the lady and I don't particularly care for the band)... but because of what it revealed about his true feelings on several subjects. Such as transgendered people. And femininity. And how women 'should' look in order to be considered 'real' women. And how ridiculous people look to him if they don't fit the gender stereotype he expects them to hit.
All of this happened while I'm going through the most extreme period of gender dysphoria I've suffered in many years - the worst since my breasts started growing & my 'childbearing' hips began to spread.
So I basically called them all out on it. I told them that they were being cruel and offensive, and that it doesn't matter what her face looks like, she is a singer in a successful band and doesn't deserve that kind of disrespect. Then I told Hubby that there is something important we need to discuss, and that I'd talk to him later.
Hoo boy.
So later came. I called him up to our bedroom, sat him down on the bed, and started the conversation by listing the various issues in our marriage about which I've been increasingly dissatisfied over the past 15 or so years. I won't bore you with the details here, but suffice it to say they are serious issues that I've spoken to him about several times before, and despite his promises to improve in certain areas he has never been bothered to try.
Then I finished the conversation by saying that all of the above may well prove to be irrelevant anyway, because... I'm transgender. I outlined briefly the fact that I've never felt comfortable in my body, that I've known my whole life that I'm not a 'girl' and that I've been struggling to do what was expected of me my whole life. I gave him some background, and then told him that I have contacted my doctor about investigating this to see which path I need to take.
He was furious. But rather quiet.
The one question he did ask me was this: if I've never felt like a 'woman', why have I grown my hair long at times in the past?
And the honest answer is this: all my life, everyone around me has been telling me that I'm female, that I'm supposed to like 'girly' things, wear dresses, behave in a 'ladylike' manner (thanks Mum!) etc. etc. and the whole time they've been saying that to me, it felt wrong. But I guess I just took their word for it that this was what I had to do in order to fit in & be accepted, so I tried emulating the behaviours that they demanded of me.
I tried so damn hard.
Even going so far as to fall pregnant (twice), which was a surreal experience because although I knew I had a child (or in one case, children) inside me and was doing the most definitively 'womanly' thing that anyone can do, it still jarred with my inner sense of myself and I was surprised that pregnancy, childbirth and breastfeeding were still not enough to make me feel like a 'woman'. All of those events just felt like I was fulfilling a biological function, rather than something to do with my gender identity.
But I've come to the point in my life now where I can't sit back and accept other people's shit, and I'm sick & tired of constantly trying to live up to other people's expectations of who I should be. So it's time to face reality for the first time in my life.
Hubby said he'll be supportive, but in all honesty I know this is just lipservice. Just like the lipservice about us having a third child (which never happened); or him pulling his weight financially (17 years after meeting him I am earning more than double what he does, and he hasn't done anything meaningful to improve his situation as it's easier to let me do it); or towards putting me first in his thoughts (such pretty little words, such a pity that he didn't really mean them - after all, if he wanted to put me first, wouldn't he have moved heaven & earth to ensure I didn't have to give up my babies at 3 months of age so that we could pay the mortgage).
Hubby, if you ever read this... know that if you'd put your money where your mouth was instead of taking me for granted, isolating me and leading such a boring, geriatric life that I had to be the one to book anything we'd do, I would probably have been able to ignore my gender dysphoria for much longer, if not for my entire life, because I might have been happy being part of that great relationship we once used to have. You fucked up majorly in 2006 (when I was made redundant) because all of a sudden you didn't have my cushy salary to fall back on, and you couldn't take the pressure of being the only breadwinner. Which is something I'd done before and quite enjoyed, if you recall. And when I was diagnosed with Asperger's and needed your support and encouragement to help me through it, what did you do? Fuck all. You tried to pretend it wasn't there, and you left me to cope with a huge, lifechanging diagnosis all by myself. Big mistake... because that was just another instance in which outsiders (such as my bosses) were more supportive of me than you were. The more you do things like this, the more I notice that this seems to be your modus operandi, and it's totally at odds with the ground rules with which we established our relationship.
The way you treated me after our kids were born, but particularly after 2006, left me feeling very lonely indeed, and it gave me all sorts of time to think about my life. And since I was so damn unhappy with so many things about my life, it's only natural that I had a huge think about things this year and decided to stop letting the world in general (and you too) make me feel so damn miserable about myself.
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