Recently I dreamed - for the first time - of coming out. I'd come out to my mother and given her my letter which I've prepared (and have been holding for nearly six months). And you know what? She completely, unwaveringly accepted and loved me. When I woke up I was nearly in tears. The past week has been especially hard for me, but this dream really stood out. I can't remember a whole lot of details, nor what happened after I "came out." But the one thing that rung in my ears was the word acceptance. I realize that this is the one thing I want most, right now, in my life. Just to have my family still be my family, when it's all said and done. To have my father and mother proudly refer to me as their son. To have be siblings see me as their brother. While my dream may not come true, I still have to try. Even if my family doesn't end up giving me the acceptance I crave, maybe I can do it - and accept myself, accept others like me. I do know my family loves me, and the time for me to really come out is advancing quickly. I suppose I wanted to write this to share with you, a piece of what I'm going through, and to let you know that I'm very grateful to have EC here to accept me. Hopefully I can give back to this community through my experiences. If anyone has any personal stories about their families (or anything related to this), I'd love to hear them.
I can totally relate. In fact, yesterday night I finished my letter to my mother and went to bed. Then I started to panic and think, what if she doesn't accept me? What do I do? I had to talk to a friend on the phone at two in the morning to calm down. Acceptance is as wonderful as rejection is terrifying.
I dream and daydream of this all the time. In real life, my friends and one cousin know and they're great, my dad has left hints that he knows (even called me his son) so I feel somewhat secure about that, and I've gone so far as to actually say the words to my nan - she doesn't believe me. It's my mum I literally have no idea about and that terrifies me. So I dream about that a lot. Sometimes she's very accepting, other times she's... not. It leaves me feeling very strange when I wake up. I don't know what to do. It's probably the main reason why I haven't come out yet.
I feel ya. (*hug*) I don't really have any hope for acceptance because most of my friends are creeped out by trans people, and my dad... Well, don't get me started. My mom might accept me though, and that's what I hope for. We can all wish, right?
I actually just came out to my mom too, or maybe it was more like she pried me out. I've been dropping hints about it now for months. I had removed all family members from my FB page so I could freely express myself with my friends, and 2 weeks ago I added mom back to my list and told her about how I'm seeing a therapist at Sunserve (which is an LGBT outreach center) for my depression. Then I told her what days of the week I would go see my therapist and that I would go to a support group after our sessions. Now, there's only 2 support groups that happen on the day of my sessions, and they are a trans/genderqueer group and a trans men group. I basically just wanted to tell her what was going on in my life and let her do the research and come to terms with it on her own, and a few nights ago she called me (while I was writing an email to her to come out as transgender). She asked how my therapy was going and we talked for hours about our experiences growing up. Then she asked "So what is all this stuff about being transgender?" She was confused and concerned, she worries that I'm being influenced be others or that I'm too depressed and confused to be sure about this, and she tells me she never saw any "signs" of this in me and that makes it hard for her to understand why I feel this way. She just asked me to take it slow and really think about what I was doing. At the end of the talk, she said that she will always be proud of her CHILD, and that she wanted to say "daughter" but she didn't know if she should. I told her "child" is perfect for now, and that I loved her too and understood why she felt the way she did. I asked if I could email her some resources on transgender people, and she said she would read anything I sent her. I then hugely edited my email so I could send her some links and talk to her a little more in-depth about my feelings and experience growing up. She hasn't responded yet, but asked me today how my cat was doing. :lol: I'd say it went well! Better than I hoped, and worse than I wanted, but all-together I feel very lucky. The first 24 hours after I hung up with her, I had some *major* anxiety and doubt well up inside me, followed by a wave of dysphoria at the thought of staying female forever, but I came on EC and talked it out and I'm back to feeling confident about who I am. I know I'm on the right track, even if my family doubts me. I hope they will come to understand me in time.
I want to come out, like just flat out tell my mom I'm trans. But if I did, I know it wouldn't end well. For the past week, I've been experiencing extreme dysphoria and keep dreaming/day dreaming about coming out to my mom. One dream ends with me leaving with social services, the other ends with me trying to kill myself by stabbing a knife into my gut. Yeah, my mind can be pretty messed up at times. I live in Staten Island, so everyone here is either a wanna-be gangster or an asshole. Sometimes both. None of those people would accept me, and would most likely harass and try to beat me up. LGBT is very small here, and is NOT accepted by most people. You can clearly see it when you're sitting in class and your teacher and bitchy classmates start ranting about how bad Caitlyn Jenner is. When I got to college, I'm going to jump straight into transition and disown my family. If I have to leave home/hell earlier than that for whatever reason,I'll just start earlier and say "FUCK YOU!" to my community and leave it all behind. I'm going to come out at some point, when it happens depends on how things work out the next two years. I'll probably use multiple methods as well when coming out to different people. Like Facebook for friends I can trust, and verbal to new people I meet, etc. <3
I believe a parent should love their children unconditionally - however life is not all lollipops and puppy farts and this is not always the case. Remember that we have no control over how others think or what they say but we owe it to ourselves to be happy and if that means coming out, so be it? The advice would be to use your instincts on that person. If you feel a family member will accept it, have a word with them about those you doubt. They may be able to support or reassure your fears?
