Very Positive Experience So Far

[Penny Patton]

Hi everyone! I'm new to the site and just posted my introduction a day ago here. You can click that link if you want to know more about me and my realization that I had to go through with this now.

 

I wanted to share my "coming out" experiences so far. I haven't come out to many people yet, but it's been overwhelmingly positive from those I have.

 

First I came out to a couple of online friends that I knew would be supportive. One of which I'm pretty sure is trans themselves, but have not come to that decision yet in part because of similar reasons to why it took me so long. But they do cross-dress occasionally and I think listening to their experiences have helped me. As I expected, they were very supportive and figured it was just a matter of time before I'd told them. They're my best friend despite being online only (we live on opposite sides of the world). They've been my rock through some recent life troubles and I'm sure that will continue to be the case as I embark on transitioning.

 

The other online friend I'm not nearly as close to but they've been a good friend for the time I've known them and I knew they were trans positive already, so it was easy to talk to them about it. When I tried to tell them I started with saying I had something important I wanted to talk to them about. "Is it that you're trans? I was wondering when you'd tell me that." So they had my nu7mber before I'd even sorted it out for myself.

 

 The first real anxiety inducing step was coming out to my sister. The conversation began like this:

Me, "Hey, um, if I told you something very important, could you keep it a secret for me. Including from family?"

Her, "Sure! I mean, unless you murdered some people."

Me, "Oh, um, never mind then."

After a laugh I took a deep breath and managed to get the words out. I figured she would b e supportive, but I didn't realize just how supportive. She was ecstatic to hear it. She opened up to me about some things about herself that I never knew (I won't share what that was here, not my story to tell) and assured me that our half brother and half sister would be supportive as well. It felt really good to talk to her about it. She's since sent me some trans resources and agreed to let me lean on her for things like learning how to makeup, and shopping for a new wardrobe when the time comes. If anything the whole experience has only brought me closer to my sister and I'm very happy about that.

 

Finally, today. About three hours ago in fact, I came out to my therapist. I also expected her to be supportive but I still had a huge amount of anxiety over it. I've been seeing her for 2-3 hears now for my depression/anxiety and she's been wonderful. Again, she was both supportive and excited for me, thanking me for sharing this with her and assuring me she'd be with me every step of the way. We'll actually be stepping up the frequency of my sessions with her, and she set my mind at ease about how my doctor (Who works at the same place. My therapist, doctor and dentist are all in the same building which is super convenient.) will react to this. Unfortunately, in an hour long session we only got to talk about half the transitioning related things I wanted to talk to her about, but I'll be seeing her again in a week and we're already planning to pick up where we left off then. Oh, and she encouraged me to tell my psychiatrist about it at my next appointment with them, which is also in a week.

 

 And that's my "coming out" experience so far. It's felt really good every step of the way.

 

 Of course there's still a lot further to go.

 

 I want to tell my best local friend soon. Again, I know they'll be supportive. He and his wife (who I'm also friends with, I'm close to their entire family) have a teenage daughter that is trans-curious. He's also spoken to me supportively about trans issues before. It's just that, I'm going through some other hardships right now and been relying on him a lot. I don't want to throw another big issue into the mix until those hardships have settled down.

 

 As for my parents....I'm not planning on opening up to them any time soon. They're both cultishly conservative. Like, scarily so. More-so than any other person I've ever met. I've never been on good terms with my step-father. I don't have enough energy to actively hate someone for extended periods of time, but if I did he'd be on that list. As it is, I just don't interact with him and have no plans to change that. My mom...I love my mom, but I've had to watch her get more and more extreme in her views over the years and it's made it difficult to maintain a relationship with her. She's also openly transphobic. They moved to Florida a couple of years ago so I don't expect to see them in person again any time soon. A lot of my extended family is openly transphobic and I've no idea how the rest of them feel. The only one I'd probably have opened up to about this would be one of my grandmothers, but she sadly passed  shortly before last Thanksgiving.

 

 Anyway, that's all I have to share about coming out right now. Thank you for reading. I've already peeked at other's experiences here in the forum and will continue to do so. I'm so happy to have been directed to this site.