Читать книгу My Trans Parent - Heather Bryant - Страница 41

What about your own “coming out” about your family? When do you tell your friends? Many children with trans parents consider themselves and their families when it comes to sharing with their community.

Monica C. lived in a separate town from her parent, which gave her a sense of choice. “It was kind of nice that we didn’t live in the same town, so I got to choose who knew and who I shared the information with and to make my own choices.” The question of who to tell came next. “It was this interesting experience deciding which of my friends to tell and who could I trust with this information and who did I want to talk about it with.” Sometimes it can clarify friendships and give perspective on who we trust.

Jennifer R. was initially selective about who knew. “There were some of my friends that I told right away—I was like, ‘Listen—this is what’s going on’ and they were fine with it, but there were also friends that I hid it from.” The friends who matter will stick around, but it’s hard to see this sometimes. “There were just some people that I hung out with and I was like, ‘You’re just not going to get it or not going to accept this.’ Now I’m like, ‘Well, shouldn’t have been friends with them.’ I have a bit more perspective now.” This can be the gift of having a family that’s unique. It’s a built-in way to find out who your real friends are. The real friends won’t judge or criticize. They’ll just want to know more and support you with whatever’s going on.

I didn’t tell any friends outside of our immediate family circle and the few close family friends who knew until I left college. Even my closest friends from school didn’t know. Some of them described their surprise when I finally told them. I’d told them everything else under the sun, and here was this big part of my life that I didn’t share.

The first person I told outside my immediate family was my college boyfriend. A friend was there to help me tell him, but it was still hard to say out loud. My friend told most of the story. He didn’t reject me as I thought he might. Still, after telling him, I kept it mostly to myself. I told myself that I didn’t want to tell anyone, but the truth was I was afraid to tell. Afraid of ridicule, rejection, judgment, other people’s assumptions, and that they would look at me differently.

Justin talked about how hard it was to tell anyone at first. “When I really started to tell people in an open way, it was—it felt like near panic attack every time—heart pounding, and real, real, real fear every time, but it felt like something I really had to force myself to do.”

I related to the fear, the uncertainty of how each person would react.

Positive experiences telling can open the door. Sharon S. started telling friends more in college. She had a group of gay and lesbian friends. She decided to tell, figuring that “this is probably about as safe a space you can ever have.” When she told them, their reaction was positive. “They were just like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so cool… Like, tell me more!’” This gave her the courage to share with more people. “It’s nice to not have to pretend.”

Coming out can really be about letting people in, a friend told me once. People talk a lot about “coming out of the closet,” like you’re jumping out from this dark place into the light, but another way of looking at it is letting people in. We can invite people in as we trust them and want them to see more of who we are.

Before coming out, I talked about “my dad” and avoided pronouns. I found a lot of ways to tell half-truths. Only around close family friends could I fully relax. Once I started to tell my own friends, though, my circle widened. I started to let more and more people in.

My initial fear was that this difference would set me apart. What I’ve found, paradoxically, is that the more I share those differences, the more connected I feel. At times, it has felt lonely to tell someone who reacts in shock or awe. Yet no one has rejected me because of my family. And in all cases, it only made our relationship more open, and in some cases more close.

Jonathan W. shared the sense of loneliness that came with holding a secret or telling those who might not understand. On the one hand, he was connected to a church community where he couldn’t tell right away; and on the other hand, when he told friends, he felt they didn’t always understand the complexity of the experience. He and his dad were both pastors, and coming out could impact his dad’s career and also his own if he chose to be openly supportive.

He said, “It felt a little lonely. To not say anything in that world—this is brutal—I need to say something, but I can’t. In the other world, these people are people I love, but they can’t understand the complexity of keeping a secret in this world or the fact that this is going to upend everything professionally for my dad, so they said, ‘It’s going to be fine—it’s her truth.’ I’m like, ‘It is, but you don’t understand.’ That was hard—that was really hard, it was a hard time.”

It did feel safer sometimes when no one knew. As soon as they did, they brought their own assumptions and ideas into the mix. Many of my friends I knew for years before telling them. Right before I told them, I faced my own fear that came from believing that not telling was what kept me safe. I had to break through the fear, to say it anyway, however messy or sloppy it came out.

Here is a snapshot of one of those times: I sat across from my friend Tara at a café in Berkeley. I’d known her for 12 years but I hadn’t told her about my dad. The words came out slowly. I think I looked down at the table a lot while I told her. She encouraged me, asking me questions and letting me tell the story at my own pace. That conversation was a turning point in our friendship. We became closer. She shared more about her family. I felt less guarded around her. Bit by bit, I opened up. But she did, too. That’s what I didn’t expect about sharing my story; that it would bring others to open up with me, too.

“Everyone’s family has something,” Tara reminded me over the years whenever I went back to the place of feeling like the only one whose family didn’t fit into some cookie cutter picture on the mantle. It took a while for me to see that, and I still sometimes fall back into feeling like my family is forever different, but under the surface, the emotions, the struggles are often very close.

With “coming out” come questions and responses. Years later, when I did start to share the story, little by little, different responses came up.

“But you seem so normal,” one of my friends said. I laughed, and kept on with the conversation, but her words sank in. I thought people would look at me differently if I told them, and in some cases, this was true. I wanted to know what she thought, why she thought this would make me different.

“For a while, there was no right reaction for me,” Justin said. “The first few people I told had this big reaction like, ‘That’s crazy—wow—I’m so sorry. And what did you do?’ And that was so hard. And I was just like, ‘No—please stop.’” But then he told some more people, “and they were like, ‘That’s not really a big deal.’ And I was like, ‘Wait, are you kidding?’ It was revelatory to my idea of sex and gender. It was a really big deal.” He happened upon the right response unexpectedly: “Someone said, ‘Whoa, you’ve had some wild times.’” Sometimes we don’t know the right reaction until we hear it. “It was this confluence of humor and understanding and respectful seeing that I was like, ‘Oh, okay, that’s the right reaction.’”

“People don’t know how to react,” Olivia said. “A lot of responses were like, ‘Oh my gosh—how liberal.’ Or something like that. Their own discomfort with trans people comes to the forefront and then they say something like, ‘I like trans people.’ This isn’t about that really.”

For Olivia, the best responses came from “friends who have had kind of…something happen in their life that they truly didn’t expect that changed the way they looked at the world. Those people had a more empathic reaction.”

Coming out is something that’s not done just once. It’s a continual process. Noelle said, “You have to kind of keep coming out and it’s a way of life for all of us. You always have to, because if you use the right pronoun, that’s a conversation or you have to at least acknowledge it.”

If you decide not to be “out,” know that there are people just like you who have been there, too.

Remember, you don’t have to answer every question, especially intimate questions about body parts and private parts of your parent’s life. You can choose what you want to say to whom and when.