Lucy Grey: Gendernaut

This is so heart breaking. This conversation, flipped genders, is the secret fear I harbor inside—and the reason I may never tell my parents.

Don’t get me wrong—I love my parents, and deeeeeeeeeeeeep down in my heart, I think they’d come to understand and accept me. But the fear of something like this happening is paralyzing. I’ve had so many times when I’ve wanted to just blurt it out to them—especially in the last few days.

Dad has discovered Facebook, and has been spending a lot of time trolling my posts and notes there. There’s no hint of my gender deviance posted there, so him finding anything out from there is pretty nil. What he does find are all the things I’ve written and posted there. Yesterday, he called me as I was driving home from work. We had a great talk about my day, and as most of my phone conversations with him go, we ended up on the subject of Me and Advice For Me. He told me he knew I felt computer science wasn’t my dream career, and encouraged me to write more. He likened me to Tom Clancy and Clive Cussler, two of his favorite authors, and lamented that I hadn’t written anything since seventh grade. He said I’d gone so many different places, met such a myriad of different, interesting people, and viewed the world through such a different light, how could I not be writing about it?

Dad, you see all of this, completely ignorant of my own revelations and the things I’ve hidden from you. You’re seeing all the puzzle pieces here, why can’t you put them together and see the end picture? I squeezed my eyes shut as he said these things, the truth of them ringing through me, wanting to say, Oh, Dad, if only you KNEW. I’d love to share the things I’ve been writing with you, but I’m so scared that you won’t understand, that you’ll reject me.

Now, Dad’s left home for a retreat weekend with Church. For men only. Mom says that one of the things the retreaters are asking of us, those not attending the retreat, is to send letters of love to those who are attending. All of my other siblings have sent letters to Dad, and I need to send mine in, but I haven’t written it yet. I’m afraid my revelations will color the note, and wonder if this is an opportunity to begin a slow process of coming out to Dad. I love him so, and I hate not sharing this part of myself with him. I want to show him my stories, my writing, my poems, my journals. But I’m afraid he won’t understand and reject it all.

transpride:

FTM Trans.Code: Parents Gone Wrong Ayden secretly recorded phone conversation with his parents!

(via transpride)