Hiding

(Yes, I've been slacking on posts. Apologies... Trying to get into the swing of it again, but failing rather miserably. Trying!)

One of the hardest parts of being transgender - androgynous, bi-gender, whatever - is that sometimes you have to hide who you are. Whether it be from (blood) family, from (church) family, from... whoever it is that you have to worry about, it frakin' SUCKS.

I point out the two specific examples above for a reason...
I have a fairly large blood family. My mom had eight brothers and sisters, and most of them have kids, and their kids have had kids. My sister and I are the fourth and third youngest of all of our first cousins - and you have to figure, I'm twenty. Out of my entire blood family, beyond my immediate family, there are... what, two, maybe three people who know that I am what I am? And that's on my Mom's side. On my Dad's side, nobody knows.
As for church family.... Nobody there knows. If they knew, there's no way I'd even be allowed inside the doors. No matter if our Pastor thinks that everybody deserves ministry, no matter if there are members of the downtown campus that are oriented that way... Out there, where I go, there are too many older members who would cause an uproar. At least... That's what I'm afraid of, anyway. Whether it's the truth or not...

Friday night, our immediate family was going to dinner in a larger town about an hour and a half away to give my sister the drive time. Up until this point, I haven't really worn any.... female clothing in front of my dad. I decided to that night. As we were getting ready to walk out of the house, both my parents saw my shoes - a pair of mary janes - and mom told me to change into boots, while dad said that my shoes "disturbed" him. Now... This frustrated me, extremely. My dad claims to be this heavily liberal guy who taught my sister and me acceptance of everybody -- yet he can't accept the fact that one of his children is transgender and wants to express who they are? Really, really frustrating. Yesterday - Saturday, I asked Mom why they had done that, telling her how much it had hurt and frustrated me. Her response: They aren't comfortable with it.

My Mom was raised in the Catholic church. Between my Dad's atheism and the brutal shit of this world and its reality, she broke away from it, to become a Humanist (slash agnostic). Yet... Yet, she still can't accept me for who I am. As we were sitting in the parking lot of one of my (non-blood) sister's apartment complexes, I looked at her and basically said that I was still me, in the head, but my body just... wasn't so much a reflection of who I am anymore. She still insists that it's not normal.

I don't want to hide it from my parents, but they make it hard to be open about it.

And then... Then, there are my best friends' parents. Heavily Christian. Very... homophobic. She is bisexual, and there have been a couple times where she and I have talked, and she's told me about what they've said. Needless to say, she hides from them. Now this girl... is my ex. And I'm hopefully going to get back with her. (No, not my most recent ex.) I say this though, because she and I both have to hide from them who we are. If they knew she was bisexual, they'd go nova. If they knew I was transgender, they'd go nova on me, and I wouldn't ever be allowed to see her again. So... I have to hide. It is a necessity. But... it drives me nuts.

I've been realizing lately that my gender is swinging farther and farther... I'm not so sure I'm actually Bi+Gender anymore. In my own head, I've been feeling more and more like a girl in a guy's body, and it's been causing a trapped feeling. I desperately need to go see a gender psychologist or something. Problem is, right now, that's not possible... Don't have health insurance, and I'm not even sure that having health insurance would cover a visit like that. That, and I want to go see our regular doctor and see if he can do a test that would determine testosterone and estrogen levels...  'Course, don't know if the health insurance would cover that either... Hopefully.

I'll rant about the health care system another day. Won't that be a scary one...

I guess I wish I knew when I could just quit hiding who I really am. When will our society come to terms with the fact that some of us just aren't... normal? I've been reading a blog elsewhere online that deals with LGBT bullying, and it's rather ugly. I have lost track of the number of times he has posted about teen suicides thanks to bullying. It hurts to read each of those posts, and it makes me wonder why we can't just all get along? I mean, honestly. We're human. All of us. Strip us down to our cores, our atoms. Where are we different? We really aren't. We're all the same basic core. Each of us just has a different personality that makes us unique. There is nothing wrong with that!

I'll say it again - there is nothing wrong with being unique. NOTHING. I don't know how else to express that.

So, when can we stop hiding who we are? What will it take?

Until next time.

Peace.