Difficulties Coming Out

[Sol]

Been a while since I've popped on!

But I'll cut to the chase here: I'm having a lot of trouble coming out, especially to my parents and specifically my mom. 

The people who know are as follows: My best friend, my sister (who still uses "she" because the parents aren't in the loop), my therapist, and my psychiatrist. Honestly, coming out to my therapist and psychiatrist were the easiest, because all I had to say was "I don't feel like I have a gender," and they got it pretty much immediately. It was a nice surprise, and they use the proper terminology for me and it makes me feel good. My sister knows but doesn't use they/them around my parents, which is really the only time she refers to me using a pronoun, while my best friend uses they/them regularly when talking about me to her parents, siblings, and strangers. That feels good too, and it's honestly a balm on my soul after all of the she/hers.

My dad does know, but I've never really explicitly said "I want to be referred to as they/them," but it was a lot easier to tell him. Granted, I quite literally said "I made one decision in my life and it's no. I just don't feel like anything," and that was it. No muss, no fuss.

But my mom is trickier. 

I suffer from bad anxiety and I've been showing some depression symptoms lately, but we're in the process of getting that managed with therapy and medication. And I really don't think she gets how big of deal my gender and sexuality actually are for me, because I like figuring myself out and getting closer to living how I want to live. She asked why I was still on here after I talked about it once, because she believed that getting my anxiety and self-esteem figured out first was the right thing to do before tackling the "sexual revolution," as she called it. But she doesn't know that I've actually figured everything out by myself.

I know that I'm agender, and I'm really comfortable with that identity because I feel like it's the truth. I don't have a gender, and I want to be referred to using neutral pronouns and I want to take steps like low dose T and a breast reduction in the future to look more like how I want to look. So far, I've started with my clothes and hair, and even that was met with some resistance. It was my hair, because it's curly and I wanted it cut shorter and if I did that it would poof up. I didn't particularly care and I still don't, I just want shorter hair so I don't look like a lady with a curly bob cut. And I think I've always known I was agender on some level, even when I was sure I was a transgender dude in a weird attempt at quantifying things to try and make them easier. I wrote characters that were explicitly AFAB with more masculine elements, and it was always so easy to put myself into that headspace and picture myself in that way. It was so much easier than imagining myself as a woman in any capacity, and the same goes for trying to picture myself as a man. 

The same goes for me being aromantic and asexual. People are fascinating and I crave companionship and intimacy, but I don't get attracted to people in either capacity. A QPR fits the bill of what I want, but I don't necessarily go out looking for it. And I don't know how to say this to her, because every time I've tried, it just ended up in both of us getting frustrated. She tries to understand, but the questions she asks are frustrating because she wants to know "Why?" I don't know, it's just how I am and it's always been this way. I don't know how else to explain it. 

I read fanfiction with transmasc characters and I find androgynous styles and I almost cried yesterday while I was looking at haircuts because "That's my hair, that's how I pictured my hair." And I really don't know what to do. I'm moving, and getting off my antidepressants to switch it to a new one and I still need to make appointments with my therapist and there's just a lot of stuff going on and I can't fit this in. But it's gotten to the point where if people call me "ma'am" I think about it for the rest of the day because it's just wrong. I've been misgendered so many times on the phone it's not even funny but I don't stop and correct them because I need to make an appointment or get more information on a medication I'm taking, so I just don't. And it's hard.

[Charlize]

Sol i think coming out to our family is always the hardest thing to do.  I carried that weight for years and can only say that when i got completely honest it was like dropping a huge weight.  It is something we can only do in our own time but definitely something i would speak about with  your therapist.

 

Hugs,

 

Charlize

[Zelaire]

Congrats on telling the folks you have so far, Sol, and I'm so heartened to read that they've been supportive of you. I have to imagine your mom might simply not understand--I'm assuming she's been very comfortably cis gendered during her life, and understanding both a trans identity and one that's outside the gender binary may just take a lot of processing for her. But she's talking with you, even if the conversations get frustrating, which I suppose is better than silence or complete disregard. Of course, I don't really know you or your family, but I like to look for silver linings, and I hope they offer you some positivity. ❤️

[Sol]

Thanks, @Zelaire. And since I've made this post, I've had more gender epiphanies that have made me think I'm not as outside the binary as originally believed. It is heavily masc, but I'm gonna take the time to explore that before making a solid conclusion. I've made a little headway and I plan to make more as time goes on!