Reply #2: Big giant hugs to you, hon... [View All]

:hug:

Some of it gets easier. Some of it doesn't. You are not alone. You are heard.

Uff, the color guard... I started in guard in high school, because I wanted to be on the rifle team. I ended up wearing a dress and slinging a flag. They made me wear a sparkly rhinestone thing in my hair - I had a mohawk. It was the dumbest thing you'd ever want to see, that sparkly rhinestone thing jammed up against what little hair I had on my head. The dresses had yellow bodices and white cotton skirts. This would've been great if we'd been from Arizona, but we were in Florida, where it rains a lot. Once we competed in some event, and a thunderstorm broke out. We had one part of our routine where we had these giant blue lame flags with white butterfly lining on the back face, and there was only a foot of pole left at the bottom of the flags. In the pouring rain, with these metal poles and giant flags that turned into bags of water in the storm, our little line managed to bring the flags up, execute a toss with a single turn of the flag, not drop one in the wind, and bring them down and back up again without any mistake. The problem was that the flags stuck to the skirts on the way down, and stayed stuck on the way back up again. Our whole line ended up standing in the middle of a field with our skirts up around our waists and our asses hanging out. Not exactly the professional and disciplined experience of DCI.

Yesterday, I talked with my mom. She had sent me a nice scarf for Christmas, a plain brown wool scarf that goes with my favorite brown fedora. I thought perhaps she finally got it - this is the first time she hasn't sent something pink, or fuzzy, or that in some other way is evidence of her concept of how I'm supposed to be that, of course, I'm not. I called her to thank her, and to tell her about how my husband hadn't called since he flew out on Wednesday (although he said he would). She tried to sympathize, telling me "you don't have to put up with that, you're smart, you've always done everything yourself, you're beautiful..."

As if someone who isn't "beautiful" doesn't deserve to be treated like a human being?

Also - I don't want to do things myself any more. Yeah, I made my own way, when all the support went to my sister. Yeah, I made things work out, but you know what? That was necessity. I was "too old" at sixteen to have birthdays any more, when I was sad in a motel room in the middle of a hurricane in Tillman's Corner, Alabama because it was my birthday and that's where we were. And as for the beautiful part... you know, Mom, you just said the day before that my husband's mom had been intimating that I dress in suits because I "want to be a man". You defended me against that horrible accusation. You tried to bolster my ego by assuring me that I am "beautiful".

Well, Mom, I don't particularly want to be "beautiful", and Mom-in-Law has gotten pretty damned close to the truth. Your daughter's no daughter, and pretty soon, you'll see that. My husband, probably soon to be my ex-husband, is content to stay in his closet. I'm not. My life has been a series of damned closet doors, and I'm tired of it.

I am thirty-three years old and I am done playing games and slinging bullshit. I am tired of protecting the delicate feelings of the same parent who only ever wants to hear the good news. Here it is, Ma: you don't have a straight daughter who fooled around with girls. You have a queer son with tits who was very, very confused for a while, but who's finally figured it out. Congratulations.