i cracked my egg a couple years ago and have been on hormones for over a year now, but i still havent been able to come out to my parents. ive had a coming out text saved in my phone for months at this point but i havent been able to send it. every time i think about trying i get this horrible sinking feeling like no matter how well i write it, how clear i am, how gently i tell them, no matter what its going to go badly.
as for why, theres lots of reasons. theyre republicans and religious, while im pretty far left and an anti-religion atheist. they were authoritarian when i was growing up and loved to use shame and punishment (both physical and emotional) to pressure me into doing what they wanted. they never listened to me when i was a kid and treated me like i was their property rather than a person who they were responsible for caring for. it always felt like they just wanted me to be a perfect little emotionless robot who did whatever they wanted. im not doing the pain of being their child justice here at all. its honestly hard to describe how bad it was, just like a constant low level psychological torture. after i moved out i got a girlfriend and brought her to visit for the holidays a couple times, but they wouldnt even let us sleep in the same room even though we were living together... like they couldnt even accept premarital sex from their (presumed) neurotypical cishet son, how tf are they going to accept a trans fem poly lesbian neurodivergent daughter? they acted so disappointed and concerned when i showed up with a couple piercings... wtf are they going to do when i show up with boobs?
im really worried that even if i can bring myself to tell them theyll use the same tactics they did when i was a kid. more than anything i dont want to suffer their attempts to talk me out of it, to suggest theres something wrong with me, to suggest im somehow wrong or brainwashed or something. i worry theyll parrot fox news talking points at me which amount to transphobic propaganda. theyve done that for years on other topics like climate change. i doubt even if i can get past all that theyll ever gender me correctly or call me by my chosen name if i ever decide to change it.
so yeah im thinking about going no contact, just cutting them off entirely. i kept thinking i should at least try to come out to them, give them one final chance to show me they arent the horrible people they showed me they were my whole life, but over the months of trying to work myself up to telling them ive come to the conclusion it might not even be worth the attempt. we barely have a relationship at all right now, just one or two short phone calls a year i kinda just suffer through. its coming up on two years since i visited them, and they live literally thousands of miles away. it would be so easy to just never see or talk to them again and theres literally nothing i want from them at this point.
i guess this is more of a rambling vent post than anything. maybe part of me wants someone to give me permission to finally be done with them, but i know i only need my own permission. something keeps holding me back. i guess the societal conditioning runs deep... ugh anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk.
I'm still boymode in a red state, but your parents sound exactly like my parents. Specifically:
Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. I've told my therapist that it was like living with the Stasi: no privacy, constant control and dehumanization. I spent a long time compromising and putting myself second with them, even after I left home.
I learned to not bring up friends or romantic partners. I told them nothing about my life, so they'd spend the day trying to find me on local webcams or interrogate people that knew me about what I was up to. Every once in a while, mom would find some asshole in a magazine and send me his picture as a sort of "oh it would be great if you looked like this" thing. I'm autistic and I have dysphoria. I do the bare minimum to be presentable and appear groomed. Sending me pictures of some shitheel with a $300 haircut and a tacky suit is not inspiring. I could go on for days because that's the level of control they thought they deserved over me. And god help me if I didn't answer one of their many phone calls or talk about the bible enough once I'd answered.
I eventually went NC a decade ago because they found out I was dating an atheist and I saw what life would be like if I kept capitulating to them. I think it was the hardest, best choice I ever made with them. It was hard because of internalized guilt, but also hard because they tried literally everything short of showing up on my doorstep. Crazy phone calls, letters, packages, finding family members I hadn't blocked to reach out on their behalf.
They were everything from angry to bewildered to hurt to furious to innocent to... you get the idea. They tried every single fucking button they'd installed in me over the eighteen years I lived with them. I got to see a very ugly side of them and I made it my mission to not reward them for any shitty thing they tried.
I'm not telling you this to scare you, but to let you know that it's gonna be hard either way. I started viewing their control over me like a rabid animal, thrashing and biting and trying everything in its power to stay alive. And I, with a lot of inner turmoil and feelings, stomped it out. And life got better.
I resumed contact two years later on my terms, the night I married that atheist lady, from a lobby in Las Vegas. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that they probably needed to know. And while I think they're still mad (they had someone picked out for me that I truly could not stand), they're a lot more reasonable when they talk with me. We talk on holidays and I try to call every few months to see what they're up to.
It's not perfect and they still try the guilt trips, but it's like I turned the volume way down on them and it doesn't matter as much. And I'm more assertive. Mom sent me a Jack Posobiec thing a few months ago and I flat-out told her he was a piece of shit. When she told me she loved him, I told her to start loving better people. I couldn't have done that a decade ago.
So I'm rambling, but I had to go NC with mine. Ultimately the decision is up to you, and they'll do everything in their power to make you regret it, but my life improved dramatically even with the massive guilt trips. And you never have to resume contact if it doesn't work for you in some way.
Take care of yourself.