Of Change, and Voices Old And New
Oh. My. God.
Today (or maybe a couple of yesterdays ago, by the time you read this) I finally got the blessing from my doctor - or rather, from the specialist that my doctor consulted - to begin taking testosterone.
Up until now, I have very carefully proceeded as if I knew that this permission would come, while secretly being terrified that it would not. (Cardiac troubles can be a deal-breaker, and I’ve got them - congestive heart failure, which in brief simply means that my pump doesn’t work as well as it should, thus causing a host of other problems).
I’ve done it this way because I needed to move boldly forward, to choose to honor my own truth regardless of what outside authorities might declare about how far I would be allowed to pursue it. Because otherwise, it’s an easy step back into that closet - that miserable, dark, tiny, cramped, soul-sucking, safe and comfortable closet. And I have a history of ~almost~ stepping out of dark places... or rather, of stepping out and then back in.
It has been not quite a year since I sat wrestling with that closet door in the wake of my mom’s passing... eight months since I threw it wide open from the church pulpit of my UU community... four since I screwed up my courage to come out to my boss at work. It’s been seven years since my subconscious first started poking and prodding at that door. It’s been a lifetime since the rage, pain, and helplessness of puberty as my body became something alien to me, and in response I cut myself off from my body entirely, neglecting and abusing it.
Still there’s a part of my childhood training, a voice inside that says, Wait! Isn’t that too fast? I mean, really! Don’t you need to think some more about this? You’re talking about taking steps that will change your body - change YOU - irreversibly. Do you really want to do this???
The simple, most truthful answer is: Yes. God, yes. You see, I’ve done my time. I’ve done my reflecting, and my crying, and my reclaiming. I’ve done my research. I’ve arrived at a place of deep truth in my life. And I’ve learned, thank heaven, to recognize that particular resistant inner voice as someone else’s, not mine.
It’s my mother’s, to be precise. And I mean her no disrespect by saying that. Mom meant well, always, and she tried to pass on to me the best she knew, or thought she knew, about the world and how to live in it.
But the best she knew did not serve her well.
She was a strong woman; she would have denied that, but strong she was, raising a child alone in the days when divorce and single parenthood were still largely a stigma, a black mark. She was strong enough to get through, any way she could, and to make sure that I did, too. She struggled with a system that failed her and with my Dad who terrified her and always, always with financial troubles, and never did she give up. I honor her for that.
What she lacked, and this was so sad I almost can’t bear to remember it, was the bravery to make any real changes in her own life, beyond just getting by. Changes that might have made her life more than just survival. She would find excuses not to do the things she wanted to do, and then loudly mourn them while retreating back into her unhappy, safe existence.
When I was about three, she asked me if I wouldn’t like to move into a place of our own, away from her parents. Being three, attached to my grandparents and accustomed to having them around, I predictably said no. And to almost the end of her life, Mom would bemoan her miserable entrapment there for the next thirty-odd years , and blame me for it: “We could have got away once, back when you were little, but you didn’t want to. Why couldn’t you have been willing to just try it? Why are you always so afraid of change?”
I’d take a deep breath and say, “Mom, I was THREE!”
It took me a long, long time to realize that Mom was projecting onto me the parts of herself that she couldn’t own. Fear of change, fear of people, fear of inadequacy. And for a long, long time I believed her, and bore them as my own burden.
I wish Mom and I had been able to communicate better, but there was always that gap of understanding that just couldn’t be crossed. I tried desperately, as a teenager, to explain to her my issues with clothes, how I hated the things she forced me to wear, how badly wrong - truth be told, how humiliating - it all felt. And I’m guessing that she was trying, perhaps also desperately, to figure out why I felt that way. It has only recently occurred to me that perhaps she thought my resistance to “pretty” clothes was a matter of low self-esteem, and that by making me wear them, she was “helping.” Mom, after all, grew up in a different era. (She had actually wanted to have seven children - six boys and a girl, in that order, so that the boys could all take care of the girl. How lucky I was to be an only child!)
There is a part of me that really wishes I could talk to Mom about my transition. And yet I know I would not be in transition if she were still here. It was just not possible for me to so finally and completely reject her vision of me, to hurt her that much. I could only have done that by total estrangement. (Which I tried several times over my adult years, always eventually coming back.)
But what if I had, somehow, managed to find a way? Maybe she could have handled it. She survived finding out that I was gay. (Her main problem was that “I just don’t understand what you people DO...”) Maybe we could have found some kind of understanding, too, over the trans thing. Or maybe it would have killed her. I don’t know. It’s too late to find out.
But I can wonder. Could she have welcomed me as a son?
I’ll never know. And now I have to face the rest of the disclosures, the family members I haven’t yet told. The great-aunts and -uncles I rarely see. The kind and loving elderly relative with whom I reside, who helped to raise me, and whom I also very much do not want to hurt.
But I have sworn: no more closets. I honor my mother’s memory, but I will not be guided by her voice anymore. I have a chance to make right something that has been terribly wrong for all of my life, and I will take that chance.
For all the chances she never dared take, I will take mine.
And maybe as time goes by, her voice in me will change, too. To find out, I have to move forward.
I’m so incredibly grateful for the people in my life - friends, relatives, church members - who are willing to make this walk with me. I hear your voices, too. Your presence in my life is deeply appreciated.
Love to you all, as the journey enters yet another stage of changes.
And I’m not afraid of change.
Today (or maybe a couple of yesterdays ago, by the time you read this) I finally got the blessing from my doctor - or rather, from the specialist that my doctor consulted - to begin taking testosterone.
Up until now, I have very carefully proceeded as if I knew that this permission would come, while secretly being terrified that it would not. (Cardiac troubles can be a deal-breaker, and I’ve got them - congestive heart failure, which in brief simply means that my pump doesn’t work as well as it should, thus causing a host of other problems).
I’ve done it this way because I needed to move boldly forward, to choose to honor my own truth regardless of what outside authorities might declare about how far I would be allowed to pursue it. Because otherwise, it’s an easy step back into that closet - that miserable, dark, tiny, cramped, soul-sucking, safe and comfortable closet. And I have a history of ~almost~ stepping out of dark places... or rather, of stepping out and then back in.
It has been not quite a year since I sat wrestling with that closet door in the wake of my mom’s passing... eight months since I threw it wide open from the church pulpit of my UU community... four since I screwed up my courage to come out to my boss at work. It’s been seven years since my subconscious first started poking and prodding at that door. It’s been a lifetime since the rage, pain, and helplessness of puberty as my body became something alien to me, and in response I cut myself off from my body entirely, neglecting and abusing it.
Still there’s a part of my childhood training, a voice inside that says, Wait! Isn’t that too fast? I mean, really! Don’t you need to think some more about this? You’re talking about taking steps that will change your body - change YOU - irreversibly. Do you really want to do this???
The simple, most truthful answer is: Yes. God, yes. You see, I’ve done my time. I’ve done my reflecting, and my crying, and my reclaiming. I’ve done my research. I’ve arrived at a place of deep truth in my life. And I’ve learned, thank heaven, to recognize that particular resistant inner voice as someone else’s, not mine.
It’s my mother’s, to be precise. And I mean her no disrespect by saying that. Mom meant well, always, and she tried to pass on to me the best she knew, or thought she knew, about the world and how to live in it.
But the best she knew did not serve her well.
She was a strong woman; she would have denied that, but strong she was, raising a child alone in the days when divorce and single parenthood were still largely a stigma, a black mark. She was strong enough to get through, any way she could, and to make sure that I did, too. She struggled with a system that failed her and with my Dad who terrified her and always, always with financial troubles, and never did she give up. I honor her for that.
What she lacked, and this was so sad I almost can’t bear to remember it, was the bravery to make any real changes in her own life, beyond just getting by. Changes that might have made her life more than just survival. She would find excuses not to do the things she wanted to do, and then loudly mourn them while retreating back into her unhappy, safe existence.
When I was about three, she asked me if I wouldn’t like to move into a place of our own, away from her parents. Being three, attached to my grandparents and accustomed to having them around, I predictably said no. And to almost the end of her life, Mom would bemoan her miserable entrapment there for the next thirty-odd years , and blame me for it: “We could have got away once, back when you were little, but you didn’t want to. Why couldn’t you have been willing to just try it? Why are you always so afraid of change?”
I’d take a deep breath and say, “Mom, I was THREE!”
It took me a long, long time to realize that Mom was projecting onto me the parts of herself that she couldn’t own. Fear of change, fear of people, fear of inadequacy. And for a long, long time I believed her, and bore them as my own burden.
I wish Mom and I had been able to communicate better, but there was always that gap of understanding that just couldn’t be crossed. I tried desperately, as a teenager, to explain to her my issues with clothes, how I hated the things she forced me to wear, how badly wrong - truth be told, how humiliating - it all felt. And I’m guessing that she was trying, perhaps also desperately, to figure out why I felt that way. It has only recently occurred to me that perhaps she thought my resistance to “pretty” clothes was a matter of low self-esteem, and that by making me wear them, she was “helping.” Mom, after all, grew up in a different era. (She had actually wanted to have seven children - six boys and a girl, in that order, so that the boys could all take care of the girl. How lucky I was to be an only child!)
There is a part of me that really wishes I could talk to Mom about my transition. And yet I know I would not be in transition if she were still here. It was just not possible for me to so finally and completely reject her vision of me, to hurt her that much. I could only have done that by total estrangement. (Which I tried several times over my adult years, always eventually coming back.)
But what if I had, somehow, managed to find a way? Maybe she could have handled it. She survived finding out that I was gay. (Her main problem was that “I just don’t understand what you people DO...”) Maybe we could have found some kind of understanding, too, over the trans thing. Or maybe it would have killed her. I don’t know. It’s too late to find out.
But I can wonder. Could she have welcomed me as a son?
I’ll never know. And now I have to face the rest of the disclosures, the family members I haven’t yet told. The great-aunts and -uncles I rarely see. The kind and loving elderly relative with whom I reside, who helped to raise me, and whom I also very much do not want to hurt.
But I have sworn: no more closets. I honor my mother’s memory, but I will not be guided by her voice anymore. I have a chance to make right something that has been terribly wrong for all of my life, and I will take that chance.
For all the chances she never dared take, I will take mine.
And maybe as time goes by, her voice in me will change, too. To find out, I have to move forward.
I’m so incredibly grateful for the people in my life - friends, relatives, church members - who are willing to make this walk with me. I hear your voices, too. Your presence in my life is deeply appreciated.
Love to you all, as the journey enters yet another stage of changes.
And I’m not afraid of change.
Comments
Post a Comment