The visit yesterday had my grandparents asking questions
about why everyone was calling me Jessie, and why my nails were fabulous, and why it kinda felt like I was wearing a bra or an undershirt, anyway, it came up.
They didn’t quite fully understand and had apparently been asking my Mom about it in the car on the ride home. I had no idea about this until I got a message from my grandpa this afternoon with a link to a blurb about Albert Cashier and saying they never heard of them, and wondering if I had, and that he prays I find peace and a feeling of worth.
So I end up asking my mom, she says she didn’t tell them, I tell her I’m not mad, that it’s fine (even though it isn’t really, but whatever at this point) and she says she didn’t say anything. Then we talk about my son for a minute and some other things, and then she says she had to explain everything to her parents.
Cool, I get it, but you just said you didn’t, so which is it?
I’m trying to communicate what is up to her, and end up writing it all to my grandpa, I freaked out after I sent the messages, and went to go delete them, cool, except delete isn’t unsend in this case, and now I can’t get to the message to unsend it so I guess I officially came out to them now, in the worst most uncontrolled fucking way possible. She starts telling me she was anxious, and was being a little coy still not getting to what she said (which at this point doesn’t matter), and I tell her at least they got to see first hand that I’m happier and healthier than I’ve ever been before they found out. She again hints at her telling them by saying they were supportive and calm about the whole thing and asks me if I feel relieved. See, the thing is, you can never really express to a cis-heteronormative person exactly how laboring coming out is. The only thing I could think to say was
“Coming out is exhausting. It’s like emotional breakthroughs you’ve had with yourself you just have to keep having again and again and again. I’m relieved, and many other things.”
She concedes that I had really ran and struggled with myself, and my gender identity and my place in the world for a long time, and that they are sorry for things they said and did that made me feel like I couldn’t be myself and be a part of their lives, and that it’s been very painful for everyone involved (you know what, progress is progress, I’ll allow some cishet victimhood, to a point anyway). Then she remarks at how instrumental the lady I take care of has been in my life through different parts of it, and she wonders if she has any idea.
You have to know some things about her, her name is Lucretia, she’s an Air Force vet, she is the mother of my partner and there were always rumors that she was a closeted lesbian (it turns out she was so closeted she’s still in the closet to herself to this day). She helped me get out of the bad school situation I was in, she helped me get a greyhound ticket away when I was homeless, she’s a good lady.
“I wonder if she has any idea.” it rings through again
The sad reality strikes me that she doesn’t and she never will. She has no idea where she is anymore, she thought she was in a basement, and they don’t have those around here, she’s vacant a lot and doesn’t have much energy to get up anymore without assistance. She’s sunsetting fast, and even if I told her, she’d forget, and she wouldn’t ever really know. It was tragic, and I began to cry. I tell her about how positive everything has been for me, and how I only wish I had started HRT earlier, because I only ended up running from feelings I could never escape from and how I’m glad this hasn’t been the disaster I’ve been imagining for 20 years.
She almost immediately calls me, I’m still crying
We have a brief talk about not looking back and this and that, and she talks about how close we were, kinda goes over how she realizes now that I had a lot of things I was dealing with related to this that she didn’t understand at the time why I was having problems. She tells me there is a picture I need to have, that she is led to give me, She says there’s four generations in it, My great Grandma, my Grandma, my mom, and myself. She’s almost kind of crying. Her voice gets weak as she asks “There could’ve been your sister or your cousin there, but I wanted you in that generational picture…” her voice is cracking “Why did I want you in that picture? I don’t think it’s a coincidence…” she starts to kinda cry a bit, and i’m crying, I tell her, sometimes our brains know things deep down because of pattern recognition that we can’t really draw to the conscious of our minds, but they influence our decisions. She kinda cries, she can’t say it, but she’s trying to tell me in her own words, ** this picture I want you to have is a generational picture of the women in our family **. She tells me explicitly that I’m her child, and that she accepts me becoming the person I need to be as her child, that she sees I’ve had so many problems related to this so long, so much self loathing, cutting myself, being bullied and antagonized as a sissy, and that she’s glad I’ve found myself, and that she just wants me to keep being happy and healthy, and that she doesn’t believe in coincidences.
I’m dumbstruck
See, dreams have been a large part of who I am, my journey. They help me make sense of things, they give me guidance, sometimes they give me escape, other times a better look into myself, and on rare occasions they are a bit more occult in nature. From a young age I had premonitions and a heavy sense of Deja Vu from dreams. Not like a fortune teller, always more mundane, but it opened me up to the idea that dreams can be spiritual to some extent. When I was young my paternal grandfather visited me in a dream, told me he was sick, really sick, and he didn’t feel good, but that now he feels much better, and that he’ll be okay, and that he’s sorry. I didn’t know why he died at the time, I was told later he thought he had killed a motorcyclist and didn’t want to go back to prison so he went home and handled that anxiety for himself. The experience helped shape my compassionate view for the people who wind up in that dark alley, but also kind of set precedent that I may see spirits in my dreams.
It’s different when you have a spirit with you in a dream. Most of the time you have an acute sense that these people that populate dreams are NPCs so to speak, but there’s actual presence with spirits.
My maternal great grandma came to visit me a few years ago, and told me it was alright. I came out to her, and she told me she knows, and that it’s okay, that she loves me. I never shared that dream, and here my mom is saying she is led to give me the picture with her, so I had to share that with her and she reiterates that she doesn’t believe in coincidence.
We have to get off the phone quickly after that, but it was a good phonecall.
After I got my son home he asked to play some videogames, so I broke out the SNES classic and we played some two player games, then he started playing games himself when he settled on A link to the past.
He’s so much like me it’s unreal, and he isn’t biologically mine, I don’t think that’s a coincidence either.
Sorry for the novella, but I wanted to share with someone in the hopes they don’t have to wait 20 years too.
I’m sorry it happened to you. At least you don’t have to hide anymore.
Very true! At least from them, or that whole side of the family. Still have to tell my dad, but he hasn’t seen me in 15 years or something like that. We’ve made plans but he could never follow through.
Be careful though.