My mum said, in a voice I hadn’t heard her use before in my life, “we shouldn’t be doing this over the phone”. Then she started crying. I can’t remember the last time I heard my mother crying like this. I’m not sure I ever had heard her cry before like this, in fact.
Three days before this phone call I had sent her a long email explaining my decision to come out as transgender, and my recent visit to a Gender Identity Clinic. Due to Covid-19, this appointment had to be over Zoom, and my conversation with my mum over the phone. These were two of the most pivotal conversations of my entire life and due to recent events, they weren’t even in person. I’ll admit though, in a way I was relieved.
This wasn’t the first time my mum had been made aware of my struggles with my gender identity. In fact, she had been the first person I ever told. When I was about 13, I broke down and blubbered to my mum that I wasn’t happy being a girl and that I wanted to grow up to be a man. I tried explaining that female puberty wasn’t the right thing for me and that me body felt like it was moving in an entirely wrong direction. Of course, she had no idea what I was talking about, and why would she? This was over ten years ago, when trans issues were still only being discussing in niche parts of YouTube or on Tumblr. She tried to help me and get me into counselling, but ultimately I wasn’t ready to tell anyone else.
Skip to life now. It’s been a long journey for me to come to accept that Gender Dysphoria is a part of myself. What that means for me is ultimately my decision. The decision for me to transition now is one I have come to after years of deep thinking, weighing up the pros and cons, and carefully studying the way in which society is slowly coming to be more tolerant of trans lives.
It was a year ago that I decided to tell my parents that I had been referred to a Gender Identity Clinic on the NHS. My dad listened carefully, seeming surprised but also happy I had told them, and keen to follow the steps laid out on the NHS website. He took me aside later and we spent the better half of a year discussing my feelings in depth. He listened and asked many questions, some stupid, some not but all of them vital. I couldn’t have asked for a better response.
My mother was a different story, and I knew she would be from the get-go. After that first conversation with my parents a year ago we didn’t speak again about my gender identity or the fact I was going to a clinic. She is an emotional person, like myself, and I have always found it hard to talk about my feelings with her without breaking down. She has also been the one who has been visibly more uncomfortable with my queerness, although over the years she has come around on this.
Still though, sexuality is one thing, gender identity is something else entirely. After talking with my dad, I decided to send my mother an email. An email seemed easier – I could get out everything I needed to say without being interrupted or bursting into tears. Over about 500-600 words I shared with her my struggles being born female, not understanding what my body was or why my brain didn’t fit into it. I explained that I had been waiting two and a half years for an appointment with the NHS, only to be told I may have to wait another year and so had decided to save up to go private. I explained that after this appointment I felt more secure than ever in my decision to change my name and seek medical treatment. I explained that I had been terrified for years to have this conversation with her and the only way I knew how was over email, and I explained how sorry I was for that.
It took a few days for her to reply to me, and when she did, in the form of “Can we talk?” over text, my stomach lurched and my palms started sweating. I couldn’t help thinking it was the exact same thing someone texts you when they’re about to break up with you.
Much of the call my mother was crying and so was I. It was hard to imagine her face at that time, the way she sounded was so visceral it made me feel scared. She asked me why I wanted to do this. Why I wanted to ruin my body. Why I would want to damage myself so permanently. She asked me why I thought this would make me feel better about myself. Why going through a medical change was necessary. She told me it was dangerous, and something she would never support. She told me things would never be the same, that we would never have the same relationship now. That my life would be so much harder.
In between the sobs she kept telling me that she loved me, and that we shouldn’t’ be doing this over the phone. At one point she asked me why I hadn’t waited until after lockdown ended, that it was selfish for me to do this at a time when we are not allowed to see each other. The truth is there is no perfect time to come out. All I knew was that I finally felt ready to move on with my life and that I no longer wanted to keep her in the dark. I had no idea the country would be on lockdown when I booked my appointment with the GenderCare, and there’s no way I could have waited until it was over to start telling people. I’ve waited long enough at this point.
Covid-19 has affected people in the most horrific ways possible. Many of those in the LGBTQ community are hit the hardest. Many have lost their source of income, forcing them to move back in with often unsupportive families. I’m lucky enough not to face this problem, but I am faced with a strange feeling of lonely uncertainty. I am going through something monumental in my life and the people I need to discuss it with, my family, my friends, my work and my counsellor, and all right now at an arm’s length.
Everyone feels right now as if life is on hold. I feel absolutely that mine is, just at a time when I need to be strong enough to keep it moving.
Queer as Yolk 