As most anyone could imagine my parents are having trouble accepting that their only daughter is in fact their son and that I am actually pursuing my transition this time. When I first came out to them (again) I feel like I didn’t express my wants and my desires from them clearly. I was on the defensive because they were very vocal about how they felt I was jumping on board with Phoebe (my trans wife) and her transition. These reactions were expected, especially because of my history of changing myself to please others in the past. I have been diagnosed with a lot of different things over the years, but Dependent Personality Disorder rings quite true. But that doesn’t change the fact that this time is different. This is a reawakening of my true self that I had already discovered 15 years ago, Phoebe was just the catalyst that brought the forgotten box of emotions out of the deepest darkest recesses in my brain where I had pushed myself in order to please my parents. So when my Mom especially started in on how this wasn’t me, I became defensive and I said things to her that now I regret. Things like she needed to mourn Barb in order to accept her new son and I was insistent that they needed to bury the memory of Barb. It wasn’t until a couple of months later that I was confronted with what I had said and implied by my brother. By this point Phoebe and I had accepted our lives before as something that we are both proud of, because of how far we both have come. We don’t want to lose those memories and we don’t want anyone else to act like they never existed.

So the day before I actually started my testosterone I reached out to make things right, so I could proceed knowing that I had done everything I could do to assuage their hurt. I am not saying that it was 100 percent successful, but it felt like a turning point and steps in the right direction. I talked to each of my parents separately and I may have already written about these conversations in a previous blog, I can’t remember right now, but it doesn’t matter because obviously I feel there is more to say on the subject. My Mom can be very negative and she pushes buttons quite a bit in hopes to make people argue with her, I only mention this because it’s important to the feelings of success that I have. I told her that I didn’t want her to forget about Barb, to which she replied you can’t take that from me. I remained calm and continued on the course, not letting her bully me into fighting. I told her that I am not expecting that they take down my pictures of me as a girl. I told her that I am not expecting that over night she will begin to call me Alex or that she will see me as a boy in her mind. But what I AM expecting and hoping for is more the right word, is her to call me Alex eventually, for her to use male pronouns eventually. I asked her to think about my transition as from here on out I am Alex, but I am not mad about being Barb, I made two great children as Barb and I have so many pleasant memories as Barb that I don’t want to take those away from me or anyone else. She said that it would take awhile for her to call me anything but Barb. I get that it will take time, that’s okay. But the true feeling of success came with our conversation after about Phoebe’s birthday present. I asked my Mom to get Phoebe very pretty flats and I described them somewhat to her. She said that they sounded really pretty and she ordered them, that was a huge step in the right direction because she was able to show even a little acceptance and that is huge! At the end of the call she also didn’t call me Barb, she didn’t call me Alex, but at least it is a step in the right direction.

Next, I had to talk to my Dad. My Dad and I have always had a very special relationship and I would be devastated to lose him in my life. But unlike 15 years ago, I’m not willing to put my transition aside any longer in order to please him. So I was much more anxious while I was beginning to talk with him. I needed the conversation to go well and I was so worried that somehow I would just hurt him more. But I headed straight into my apology for saying things that I don’t mean and for causing more hurt for him and Mom than was necessary. I told him the same things that I had told my Mom previously that day. Once again, he did get defensive and told me that I couldn’t take his memories of Barb and I couldn’t make him forget and once again I stayed calm-ish, still very anxious but I didn’t get mad, I just kept going. My Dad has done some googling of transgender, which is awesome for him to educate himself. It did lead though to one comment that has really stuck to my heart about how if he started to have these feelings he would be worried about himself and that pretty much saying that I should treat it as a disease and not a celebration of who I am. I stayed calm though and I told him that yes there is gender dysphoria that people say is a mental illness, but it is not something to run from because accepting myself has made my life so much better. I am happier in general and I am more confident and my anxiety is normally much less than it used to be. It’s not gone, but I have clinical anxiety so that will never truly be gone. By the end of the conversation he had restated that he wanted to hear about where I was in my transition and that he was glad that I am happy, but he can’t approve of it but he also said he knows that he doesn’t have to in order to accept us and love us. This was a step in the right direction. But Father’s Day was the biggest step for my Dad. He actually told me to wish Phoebe a happy father’s day. For him to call her Phoebe was huge and I was thrilled.

This journey is never really going to be completed because growing as a person and discovering more about myself is a constant in life. My parents may never get the importance of calling me Alex, but I hope that they come around to it, I would love to have them see me as their son. Maybe one day they will.