Coming out thoughts
I have been doing a lot of thinking lately. Since the new year I have been using the mens' room, introducing myself as Pelikan or J.B., male pronouns, and so on and so forth. I just don't really know if that's what I want. I mean I still cringe when someone uses she. But I don't want to play this back and forth game. It's not fair to me or to everyone else. More not fair to everyone else, because they have to readjust. For instance, tonight Grant called me she and stopped himself and said "he" like twenty times in a row to try to correct himself. I just don't know whether I want to be a boy. I shall try to better explain myself.
Hormones- I haven't really decided whether I want to take them or not, I'm just very scared. I don't know that I will be happy going through with it. I will probably end up doing it though.
Surgery- I can barely think about hormones, let alone surgery. I don't know that I will EVER go though with a double mastectomy and reconstruction or bottom surgery. I just don't know if I could do something that irreversable.
Presenting- I am already attempting to present as a boy. I think I will probably always do this. But I am not sure if I wish to appear as a boy or as an androgenous person. I think that androgeny suits me. I am comfortable with it. It is a very attractive quality in my opinion.
I did approach my professors and ask them to call me by my last name or J.B. and to use male or gender neutral pronouns. So far all of them have complied with this very well. And they have all chosen J.B., not my last name, which I'm slightly more comfortable with. Even Mr. Hoover, who has known me for 3 semesters as "Becky". He was reading his list of instrumentation and trying to figure out if all the low reeds were there and he was reading the list to himself and read off: "Michelle, Beck..J.B., Monica, etc..." I still have two classes to go. They are both tommorow.
I just feel so insecure about myself. I feel more scared now than I did when we left for break. Part of that might be the blowout that my parents and I had, that I haven't posted yet. I think it just kind of knocked me down from what I felt about myself. Because I was becoming so sure of myself and what I was doing and then from out of nowhere they came and swiped my tower out from under me.
So I woke up the Tuesday before classes and walked out into the kitchen in my sweatpants and a t-shirt and got a bowl of cereal and sat down on the couch. Before I can reach for the copy of Newsweek next to me to read while I'm eating my mom asks: "What the hell is this independant major you keep talking about going to get you a job in?" I try to explain it to her and then she starts in on how she isn't going to pay for me to get a major in some useless thing. Keep in mind that she is just cosigning a loan, that is saying that I am going to be in debt for the rest of my natural born life, not her. So we argue and bicker about that. And just when I think she is going to let it go and I can go back to my cereal, before I get too upset to eat it, she says "You know you dropped a lot on us lately" and I am thinking that this has to do with my major, I was wrong. I forgot that I had come out to them. She asked "Why do you want to be a boy?" and then it got into the questions of, did we do something wrong? Did we not love you enough?
She told me she doesn't "want to get that phone call" there are so many other things she could get that phone call for. And plus, this is why the transgender suicide rate is so high. Had I told her that I would currently be locked up in a mental institution on a suicide watch. Since I have a history of it and I have two previous psychological evaluations that they recommended that I be put on suicide watch, but I made deals and got out of it, they would probably just do it this time without giving me an out. I got flustered and went to my room and got dressed and she asked me what I was doing and I told her I didn't know what to do so I was going to go for a drive, probably to the library to do some work. She said "No, I'll leave" then we started arguing again and eventually she left for work.
So I attempted to be healthy at first. I called Micah, and I talked to him for a few and then he had to hang up but said he would call me right back. I gave him 15 minutes and he didn't. So I decided that the best course of action was to go "have some fun". So I sat out on the back porch and "had some fun". I decided to play some guitar hero and then my cousin called so I was on the phone with her, and my dad got home from work.
He asked me why my mother was crying when she went to bed the night before and why she was crying when she woke up. I didn't say anything. He then proceeded to ask me "What the fuck are you doing with your life?" so to the best of my ability while I still "had some fun" in my system, to explain what I was doing and how my major worked. Then of course, this conversation at some point crossed the same line it had with my mother. He wanted to know why I wanted to be a boy. After some more bickering I told him I didn't expect him to be standing on a picket line with me, just that I wanted him to accept me. And he said that it was a good thing that I didn't want him on the picket line with him, because he would be there, but on the opposite side of the picket line. He told me that he was never ok with me being gay, and definetly not ok with this. He kept bouncing back and forth between my major and my gender identity. He said he would pay for my college, but not a sex change. And I looked at him and said "Wasn't expecting you to pay for that."
Then the one thing that I can remember clear as day was him asking me:
"Why can't you just be a bulldyke without a dick?"
First of all, could you have picked a more deurogetory name?
Second, why can't you be a man without a dick?(I actually asked him this one and his response was "I don't have to have one")
Third, I'm still your kid, I'm not someone you work with and insult to get sent to sensitivity training.
Fourth, who said I wanted a dick?(asked him that one too and he said that I had said that, and I wasn't in the mood to argue/explain that I didn't say I needed a dick)
Fifth, when I came out, I said "I am not a girl" that doesn't mean I want to be a boy. But I can see where you got that from, because you were taught that gender is binary and that there are two sexes, and only two sexes.
We then bickered for a while more and thank zeus my baby brother got home so we had to cut it short.
So all of that had quite an effect on how I'm feeling now. I just feel like I'm a lot more "out" than I was at the end of the semester. I mean I came out to administration before the break at the development program. And since then I have had people come to me about the program and commend me about it and want to do work with me. So we definitely left an impact. And then like I said, all of my teachers know my situation. But when I'm walking to class and stuff like that I just feel like people "know". I feel like sometimes it's written on my forehead. Ok, that is enough babble. I need to take a shower and go to bed, so maybe I can get to class on time tommorow.