Coming Out in Pieces

Scattered fragments from a marathon of awkward, vulnerable conversations

I wasn’t planning on coming out to my brother tonight, so I have no script prepared. I’m winging it. He called to wish me a happy Father’s Day, I told him I spent it hanging out with my new transgender friends at PrideFest, and he seemed at least somewhat supportive. After a moment of internal debate, I pounced on the opportunity.

“Well, I think that might be part of my depression, actually.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… I think I might be trans.”

There. It’s done. He’s the first member of my family to hear those words. He gives me a non-committal, “Oh, that’s cool,” and I feel a wave of relief. I’m even a little excited about the idea of being accepted for who I am. Then he proceeds to spend the next 5 minutes telling me all the reasons he thinks transgender people aren’t real.

Like that girl on TV.

Yes, Mom. Like Jazz. I can’t decide whether I’m relieved that my mother has this touchstone she can use to relate to me, or annoyed that I’m being compared to someone on a TLC show. It’s probably more the former. There are certainly worse sources for learning about transgender issues.

“It’s kind of a fad, like the new thing to be if you want to get attention.”

I’m getting my brother’s unfiltered opinions. I’ve decided not to interrupt him. I want to hear his true thoughts before he thinks they might offend me.

“It seems like therapists are just pushing people toward being transgender when really they have other issues.”

Your mom says you want to talk about ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.’

I show some friends of ours my informed consent form. It has the effects of hormone therapy listed out with my initials next to each one. The husband reads it quietly while I answer his wife’s questions, then sets it gently on the couch. With a light smile he says, “Well that all sounds horrible.”

“Really?” I ask in disbelief. “Even the parts about softer skin and less body hair? You wouldn’t even want that much?”

He shrugs. He says he likes his chest hair. My world shifts a little bit. Apparently a cisgender man does not read a list of feminizing hormone effects and think, “What’s the catch?”

My parents remember the shoplifting incident from when I was 16. They tell me they always wondered why I tried to steal nail polish.

It was a cry for help, I think bitterly to myself. If either of you had bothered to ask me why at the time, forced me to talk about how I was feeling, maybe I would have come to a better understanding of myself earlier and not repressed it for another 20 years.

Yes, I say, that was related to this issue.

Mom wants me to know that she’s always liked the name Amanda. It would have been my name if I was born a girl. Maybe I should keep that in mind if this ever progresses. I smile and say I will.

Are you just worried that you’re not manly enough?

No. I’m worried that I’m too manly.

“It’s not about that. I don’t feel like I’m failing to live up to some masculine ideal. It’s just a body thing. I want to look in the mirror without cringing.”

Nobody wants to talk about gender dysphoria. They all want to talk about depression. That’s the thing they really want me to be treating. That’s what they understand. Dad tells me he was on Prozac when I was young. I never knew that. Mom says it runs in the family. She has it, my brother has it, and her mother probably had it. My great-grandfather committed suicide. I never knew that either.

He was a funeral director. He killed himself by driving his hearse up to the police station, parking it out front with a note instructing them to take him to the competing funeral home in town, and then drinking formaldehyde.

Now that I’ve opened the floodgates by being vulnerable for once, everyone else wants to do the same. Mom is lonely. Dad isn’t paying much attention to her. He’s drinking more. My brother feels like a failure. He always compares himself unfavorably to me — “the normal son.” One of my brothers-in-law asks for a referral to my therapist. Mom almost starts to cry about all the friends she’s losing.

I have no idea how to handle any of this. My family doesn’t talk about our feelings much. Or at all. I think I’m learning more about them during this process than they’re learning about me.

Are you getting divorced? Do you still love her? Have you ever cheated on her? Have you been lying to her the whole time you’ve been married?

No. Yes. No. It’s complicated.

My mother-in-law is very concerned about her daughter. I understand completely. I’m concerned about her too.

I’m still biting my lip, forcing myself to listen while my brother continues lecturing me about transgender issues, which apparently he thinks he knows more about than I do.

“People who get genital surgery usually regret it.”

“Probably what’s going on is they just have low testosterone.”

Mom subtly suggests that maybe I should see if I need more testosterone. When I mention the possibility of hormone treatment, Dad seems pleased by the idea. He thinks I mean getting more testosterone. My father-in-law wonders if I might have a hormone imbalance caused by lack of testosterone.

I tell them all gently that it doesn’t work that way. Besides, I say, my levels are fine. I know because I had them tested. I use the present tense even though my testosterone hasn’t been in the male range for at least six months.

I’m only coming out as dysphoric, not transitioning. I’m not telling anyone that I’m already on hormones. When they ask if I’m going to be a girl, I say I don’t know. I have no idea what the future will look like. That feels true enough.

It also feels dishonest. They aren’t getting the whole truth. It takes all my courage just to tell them this much. I want to bring them fully up to the present, but I can’t. I’m too scared.

It just doesn’t make any sense to me.

“I know. It doesn’t make sense to me either.”

He’s still cisplaining. By the time he finishes, I have no desire for a debate. I just take a deep breath and say that I’ve had a lot of those thoughts before too, but I’ve been exploring this for a long time and it seems pretty real. He says whatever I do doesn’t really affect him anyways, so whatever makes me happy, he’s cool with. He just wants what’s best for me.

A week later I call him back and spend an hour explaining, in the most gentle and understanding way possible, why everything he believes is wrong.

He ends that call by telling me he’ll be there no matter what because I’m his brother, even if that means someday he’ll have to think of me as his sister. I want to hug him through the phone.

I’m feeling guilty. My mother wishes I lived closer to home. She doesn’t like that both of her boys went off to start their own lives so far away. There’s an old saying, she says.

A daughter is a daughter for life, but a son is a son until he takes a wife.

I want to tell her I could be a daughter. I want to tell her I always will be. But I say nothing.

My brother might freak out if I just show up at his door in a wig and dress one day. I promise I won’t do that. My dad jokes that it would be really weird if I suddenly came to the house calling myself Adriana. I promise him plenty of forewarning if I start making any changes. It’s ok if I want to get dressed up when my brother- and sister-in-law come over, but I should give them a warning first. They don’t want to react badly when they see me. I agree to give them a heads-up so they can brace themselves before walking into my home.

I’m counting all of these as wins.

I don’t know how to react to that.

“It’s OK. You don’t have to say anything. It’s just something I needed to share.”

We‘re glad you’re getting professional help. This isn’t something we can relate to at all, so we really can’t help you with it.

The last call is to the one remaining brother-in-law. My wife makes that call because she is much closer to him than I am. She tells me that he heard the words “gender dysphoria” and immediately knew what that meant. He expressed sympathy for how I must have been struggling with this my entire life, and how much courage it must have taken to reveal this part of myself to the people I love, and how glad he is that I’m finally able to come to terms with my identity. He’s concerned about his sister, of course, but he’s also concerned about me.

The next morning it hits me. He was the last one we told, but the only one who really understood — the only one who was happy for me, not just tolerant. I start to cry, and my sobbing wakes up my wife laying next to me. I can’t even tell her what’s wrong. I’m emotionally exhausted. The tears continue for another hour.

As the day progresses, I think back over the past month and realize why I was so upset. In this time of intense vulnerability, I always had to be the strong one. I had to expose this part of myself while at the same time addressing the insecurities it caused in others. When I most needed support, I was the one giving it. I let them lean on me. It’ll be OK, I was saying to everyone. I’m here if you ever want to talk. We can get through this.

What I really needed, but never received until the very end, was for someone to say those words to me.