For a little background, I had told them I was going by “Sebastian” in October and it was very difficult for them and us. After some very emotional conversations, I just sort of agreed to not discuss it with them until I was home. (My mom at this point was preparing for reconstructive surgery and I wanted to minimize stress… plus I wasn’t really prepared myself to move forward in conversations with them).

Coming home for Christmas was very hard for me, because I pretended to not be bothered by the use of female names and pronouns, but having lived comfortable as Sebastian and “he” for almost three months at that point, this caused a lot of anxiety and discomfort and dysphoria.

Two days after Christmas, I emailed my parents this letter with the following heading: 

Hi guys, I’ve been holding off on this as long as I could, but it’s constantly on my mind and has been really difficult for me.  I don’t want to be distracted from doing the family things that I love, so we need to address this now.  I’ve sent you a letter.  Please know that through everything I do and everything I wrote there, I was thinking about you and considering your letters. Dad, if you don’t want to go to brooks brothers tomorrow, I understand.

I love you both forever and ever no matter what

Dear Mom & Dad,

You are the most important people in my life and I need to let you fully into this new chapter of mine.  I have not been fully honest about my gender identity and how I came to realize it, and I think that this has been a disservice to both of us and has caused a lot of misunderstanding and pain.

You all think this is rash, and I think this is because I haven’t been open with you throughout my process and journey, so you haven’t witnessed the thought and emotions and development as they have occurred. 

I want to give you some insight into this process.  Let me quickly take you back to childhood.  I remember when I found out I was different from my boy friends in ways that could not change.  It was when Nick peed standing up and I tried and couldn’t.  When I accepted this difference, I started believing and telling people that I was supposed to be a boy but the man inside mom’s belly thought I’d look better with girl hair and switched me to a girl at the last minute.  When I played make-believe and house, I always played a boy.  Not because I could verbally express that I wanted to be one or felt like one or was one.  Just because it’s what seemed natural – Why wouldn’t I be a boy?  There was a disconnect here that I couldn’t express.

A lot of transfolk experience a lot of emotional pain when they go through puberty and their bodies start to match their assigned gender in ways they can’t control.  I don’t remember experience pain surrounding this.  I am so fortunate to come from the family that I do.  You all are so loving and worked so hard to help me build self-confidence and to love myself (for who I was).  You also taught me about gender roles and gender stereotypes and allowed me to wear what I wanted, play with what and whom I wanted, etc.  You taught me that I could be who I was without being a boy.  You also both celebrate womanhood and the female form and experience.  Because of your love and acceptance, I was able to love the woman part of me and did not experience acute discomfort with my female body at that time.

When I came out as gay, I reinterpreted my childhood experiences as indications of homosexuality, to make sense of them.  I played a boy so I could have a girlfriend, etc.  But this wasn’t the case.

Again, the whole family was very accepting and I fully embraced my gay identity.  Oddly enough, I never liked the term lesbian.  I never used it to describe myself and I squirmed when people used it about me (but didn’t mind “gay” or queer).  And I hated “dyke,” which is common within the lesbian community.

When I was in college, my discomfort with my body started to become more apparent.  I started dressing in ways that minimized the feminine shape of my body and chest, though I didn’t really know this is what I was doing.  I just liked the way I looked.  I would spend a lot of time in the mirror, thinking I was very attractive but feeling like something was off and not being able to identify it.  I was in pretty extreme denial.

I also became more aware of my discomfort with my gay female identity.  I remember telling mom that I couldn’t picture myself living as a lesbian in the future, having a lesbian wedding, a lesbian relationship, being a lesbian career woman.  When pressed, I couldn’t really picture myself in the future at all.  The strange thing about my gay identity was that I enjoyed the concept of heterosexual relationships.  I thought heterosexual couples were “cuter,” yet I was not attracted to men.  I didn’t talk much about this – it was sort of a deep secret I told like two people, because I felt I was betraying my community.  Specifically when I thought of a wedding, I didn’t want a lesbian wedding.  I didn’t want to be a lesbian wearing some dykey tuxedo.  It wasn’t me.  But neither was a wedding dress.  I couldn’t make sense of this and started to avoid thinking about it.  Also, mom told me stories about lesbian couples she met and told me she could picture me having a family, etc.  Once again, your acceptance allowed me to move forward, but unfortunately, I was stuck in an identity that didn’t really match who I was.

This summer, when I lived on my own, I was away from everyone and their perceptions of me.  I didn’t have TV or internet and I spent a lot of time just sitting with me.  I read and wrote a lot, had a lot of inner-dialogue.  Still not able to consciously address my gender identity, I sort of on a whim googled binding.  I ordered a binder top without being able to really verbalize why I wanted it.

When it came, I was thrilled.  I put it on and I was so much more comfortable.  I had been wearing sports tops to minimize my breasts for a long time, but hadn’t fully concealed them until this summer.  I really can’t tell you how happy I was.  I took picture after picture.  I felt right.  Since early adolescence, I’ve always been sort of surprised by what I see in the mirror.  Only for a second, of course, because I’m familiar with it.  And I loved myself (still do, by the way) and I knew I wasn’t ugly and I was proud of my body and beauty and my face, hair, etc. but I did a mental double-take every time I saw myself.  I realized that I did this in high school and sort of let myself be more conscious of it and realized that when I thought of myself (in dreams, etc.) I did not picture me the way I looked now (or then in high school I mean), but instead was stuck with an image of me around 4^th grade.  When I looked like a boy.  Before puberty.  I quickly brushed that off as me being stuck in my childhood and didn’t think it was unhealthy or weird and sort of assumed it was like that for everyone.

All these memories started flooding back once I saw myself with the binder on.  Things started to click.  I spent a lot of time online reading transgender and gender queer peoples stories of coming out and their youth.  It was sort of like how I came to realize I was attracted to women.  For a long long time, since I can remember, I had thought about women, thought they were sexier than men, etc., etc., but I assumed everyone thought this and it had nothing to do with the relationships I was to have with men.  Strange I know, but it’s how denial works, I guess.  There’s a scene in But I’m a Cheerleader where they’re trying to get the main character to realized she’s gay and they tell her, and she says “But I thought everyone had those thoughts,” and they shake their head.  It hit me then.  Those thoughts weren’t what everyone else experienced and just stomached while they settled for the norm, those thoughts meant I was attracted to women.

All my life I have had an image of myself as male, but I couldn’t totally see it – I saw it in fragmented thoughts and experiences that I assumed everyone had.  But they don’t.  Those thoughts, this image of myself is because I am transgender.

I came out as genderqueer to a few people over the summer, including Piper.  I told her about my binder and how great I felt.  I told her about how much more comfortable I was.  She was very supportive and allowed me an environment to explore my gender.  We tried using the name Casey in public and sometimes we used male nouns.  I was very happy in this identity, but I didn’t end up liking the name Casey very much.

When I passed as male, I would get so excited.  It brought back memories of childhood when I was happy to be thought of as a boy.  When I got excited when people expressed surprise that I was in the girl’s bathroom.  I also remember discomfort with that as I got older, and I think it was actually discomfort with having to correct them.  It began to highlight my assigned gender.  But back to this summer, I decided to get a more androgynous hair cut to fully embrace my genderqueer potential.  I was nervous.  I loved my hair.  But as soon as it was cut I couldn’t keep the smile off my face.  The me I was seeing in mirror was so much closer to whom I expected to see.  I was becoming who I always felt I was.  I also started packing.  I bought a fake soft penis and wore it in my underwear.  It was not big enough for anyone else to notice it.  It was for me.  I loved it.

When I came back to Smith I didn’t tell anyone about my gender experiences this summer, except for Kate, who had been in a relationship with a transguy over the summer and suggested I talk to him.  Out of pure coincidence, I ended up living with someone who had been seriously dating a transman for 2 years and I started hanging out with him and Kate’s guy a lot.  I realized how much I identified with them and I listened very carefully when they talked about their gender issues and what it was like being trans – I didn’t ask questions, yet, though.

Then my roommate came out as trans.  He asked if we would now call him Reese and use male pronouns.  I talked to him privately later and told him I really supported him and that I had been questioning my gender identity.  We talked about our feelings and experiences and it was becoming more and more evident that my gender identity certainly wasn’t female and it was important for me to come out.  So I came out as genderqueer and after a lot of work, decided on the name Sebastian.  As I grew more comfortable in this identity and was able to look back on my past with a more understanding view, it became clear that I was transmasculine.  I watched video after video documenting other transguys’ transitions and fantasized about the ways I could transform and be who I really am.

I hope you can see that this has been a long time coming.  And I am happier with each step I take.  I also need to explain to you the seriousness of it, which I didn’t before.  I need to tell you about my dysphoria.  There have been times when I couldn’t leave the house because I didn’t want anyone to look at me and assume I was female.  There are times when I look in the mirror at my breasts and my feminine figure and cry.  And there are days when someone reading me as female can really sadden me.  It’s also scary.  I often am afraid to use the bathroom in public and will go to great lengths to find gender-neutral bathrooms.

I do plan on medically transitioning in the future.  I don’t know when will be the right time for me and it is not something I will do without thought, but you should know that there’s a certain degree of urgency for me.  I also would like to sometime have top surgery to achieve a masculine chest.  It costs a lot of money, though there are financing options and help.  I know you don’t want to hear that, but hopefully if you can understand how I feel and what I am experiencing you will understand.  I have the opportunity to make myself complete and happy, and that’s what I’m going to do.  I can hardly wait to feel comfortable in my body.  To wear a swim suit and feel safe in the men’s room.. I am also saving to change my name.  I hope you can understand this.

I told Hilary that I will always in some ways be her sister.  In the same way, I will always in some ways be your daughter.  While I think I have always partly been yr son, you have also known me and raised me as yr daughter for 22 years.  This will always be a part of who I am and never something I am not proud of.  I am still the person you’ve known and the person you’ve raised.  I am not suddenly going to be a new person.  As you can see from your time with me this break, I am still your child, the one you know and love.  And will continue to be that person.

But this is who I am.  I can picture myself with a wife and children.  I will be a good dad.  I will be a grandfather.  I will be your son, I hope.  And Hilary’s brother.  I’m so sorry that you have to deal with the impact of this.  I wish you didn’t.  I wish I didn’t, either.  Please know that if I could not do this or wait, I would.  I care so much about both of you and Hilary and everyone that this affects.

If it hadn’t been for you I think I would have been very unhappy for a long time, and I am so grateful for this.  But my gender identity must be addressed now.

I do not ask that you support me in this immediately.  I know that it takes time.  But I do ask that you try.  And I ask that you accept me.  That you accept this part of me.   It has been very hard for me to be home and to be sister and Sarah and daughter and girls.  I have felt anxiety that hasn’t been with me for months.  I cried last night.  I know that I had not been totally open with you before and I know that your previous reactions came from a loving but just misinformed place.  I hope now that I’ve been open and you really know what is going on, that you will be able to accept me.  But you also have to know that I will move forward with this even without your acceptance, because it is hurting me so much to not be who I am.

But I hope you can be with me on this.  I love you and I’d give up all my Christmas presents if you would call me by my new name.

Love,

Sebastian

PS

I brought a book back from the library called Transforming Families.  It has letters written from family members of trans people.  There’s a section on parents’ stories.  I’ll leave it out on the rec room table if you want it.

Also, www.transfamily.org is a resource for families and there is a PFLAG group (which despite the acronym IS a support group for parents of trans children, too) that meets once a month in charlotte. http://www.pflagcharlotte.org/ has information on that.

Posted 1 year ago with 24 notes
Tags: coming out  letter  parents  designated   // Comments