Where’s the lie?

When I was 16, I had a pylonidal cyst and my mom’s reaction was to do a bunch of research and print out packets of information on how to treat it and how to tell if I needed surgery. For a while, it was the only topic she could think to bring up with friends and family (very embarrassing). She wanted to know everything and she wanted me to be okay. I ended up having surgery and I spent over a month recovering. During that time, I felt I had lots of attention on me that I didn’t want, but I felt cared about.

It baffles me that when I came out to her that I had a girlfriend when I was 22, she internalized the news and blamed herself. She shared that she was sure my dad would blame her for me being gay. I had already come out to him a few days before, and he said “Of course this would happen to me. Don’t tell anyone.” In the decade after coming out, I married a woman (despite disapproval from the parents) and they had a “fine” relationship with her. Ten years… in all of that time, they did no research on what it means to be LGBTQ. My mom, who did so much work to try to understand how to protect me from a cyst when I was a teen, did not seem to care about my well-being in this society as a queer person. There was nothing to learn for her.

I have not communicated to either of them my plans to transition because I already know they will self-blame and continue to see me as an extension of themselves rather than a whole human being with my own life experience. I have not discussed any of it because it took over ten years for them to learn nothing about my community. I will not talk to them about it because I already told them everything they are afraid to hear when I was a toddler. They’ve denied me enough.

left to right: Sarah, mom, random kid, me

In kindergarten, I’d been telling everyone that I am a boy. It was met with all kinds of reactions, none supportive of the statement. “God made you a girl, you will never be a boy.” One day, my brother told me and my twin sister that our mom left scissors out on the dry sink in the hallway. I remember the orange handle peaking over the edge as I looked from below. I wanted to cut my hair and my brother knew. Mom was our barber and she didn’t want to give me the haircut I wanted. Now was the chance. My twin and I took turns chopping off our blonde curls. Sarah wanted a trim, I wanted to be a him. When mom found us, she yelled, screamed, cried, and she used her hands. It was never a closed fist. It was never okay. I remember running away and pausing at the end of the hall to see her on her knees, sobbing, holding the chopped up blonde curls in her hands. She took me to the mall the next day to get my hair properly cut. She told the barber, “She wants to be a boy” and they both laughed. I think that was one of the first times I felt deeply ashamed. That may have been when I started digging a grave for who I insisted I was.