Back in August I attended the Trans 101 training offered by Transgender Resource Center of NM. The trainer, Adrien mentioned that the Center also offers Panels where trans and non-binary folks will come and share their story and answer questions. I decided to volunteer to be a panelist (in spite of my introversion!), and this Sunday was my first panel.
I got nervous and kinda forgot the script I had in my head but it went ok anyway. But what brought me to my blog was a question that one of the audience asked: "How did your family react to you coming out as trans/non-binary, and how is your relationship now?"
My answer was as follows: "I came out as a dyke in 1995, and most of my family was like, 'uh, yeah. We know.' My mother in spite of "knowing" continued to say things to me like 'some day you'll meet the right man and you'll want to get married and have babies.' It wasn't until she saw the movie Boys Don't Cry that something finally clicked for her and she stopped, and in fact since then she has said things like 'is it ok if I call you my "girl".' But I've never come out directly to my family as non-binary; granted any of my family who is on facebook sees all of my shit posting and is aware, but I just haven't had the energy to put the emotional labor into coming out to my family."
Maybe saying "coming out to" my family would be better stated as "having a conversation with" my family. As the words were coming out of my mouth it occurred to me that maybe I wasn't being fair to my family...by not sharing all of myself with them, and by not trusting them to hold space for me to be vulnerable with them. Maybe. I mean my mom has opened the door for the conversation, but also I don't have a relationship with my mother that involves me being emotionally vulnerable with her. My mother is not someone who has ever been a person I got to with emotional vulnerability; I tried a few times as a child the the consequences were quite traumatic.
Besides the fact that I don't have an emotionally close relationship with my mother, many of the conversations I have with her devolve into her telling me how much she loves the giant orange shit stain, or some idiotic BS about immigrants that I have to correct her about. And because of this, I basically call her for Christmas, her birthday, and mother's day. That is all I can handle. Although it was not my intention, I spent my entire therapy session today talking about this issue, and one of the things that I came to is that I have been especially hesitant to talk to my mother because I think one more conversation that goes south with her will result in me going fully no-contact with her. She's 94, and I know she won't be around that much longer, but I would like to have as civil of a relationship as possible until she passes. And I think avoidance is the only way that that can be achieved.
There's another family member who I have been working on my relationship with who I was thinking I should really have a conversation with. I texted them today, just a "hey, how's it going." I hadn't heard from them by the end of the day, and I recalled a FB comment they had made on one of my "Hey, this talking head wants me dead-if you love them you can unfriend me now" type posts that I couldn't quite get a read on. Either I had pissed them off, or they really got how hurtful the person I was posting about was being. Long story short, after a short investigation it turns out said family member has blocked me.
Pretty sad when a family member choses a famous racist, homophobic POS over their family member. But, as it turns out, I was right in not wasting my time on the emotional labor with those two. There are family members whom I'd be "safe" with having conversations about my gender journey, but they're also not members I necessarily have phone conversations with (or email, or snail mail). I've been a country away for most of the lives of my nieces and nephews, and honestly when I was still in the same state when many of them were old enough to remember me, *I* wasn't emotionally available to them. I regret that, but I know where I was, I just wasn't able to be there for them, or with them.
The good news is that there are a lot of people who love me. There are a lot of people who will support me, who will fight for rights, who will protect me...and likewise I will do the same for them. I am lucky to have a helluva a community and support system, and I've gotten a helluva lot better and recognizing who those people are.
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