In My Head - 2. Dear Mum

Dear Mum,

I’m a boy.

You’ve been through so much. For yourself, and for me. It was just the two of us a lot of the time, and I know that we didn’t eat canned tuna and mashed potato a couple of times per week because it was so tasty.

Dad was abusive towards you and when you left him he didn’t even want to pay child support. You bravely stood up to the man who used to hit you, made him do his part, or at least some part at all. I know that you struggled, and I know that I wasn’t an easy child to raise. I had a lot of quirks, I had a temper. So did you. We butted heads a lot, but you were always there for me when I needed you. You took care of me. You still do. You help me when I need it, financially or otherwise. I love you more than I can possibly express and I am so grateful to have you for a mother.

But you won’t trust me with this. When I talk about it, you grow silent and distant. And if you respond it’s with scepticism and coldness. I know that you love me and want me to be happy, but please, just listen. Please just try to understand. Please don’t argue with me when I tell you that I am a boy.

I’ve tried to do it a little at a time. Aired the possibility. I’m genderqueer, I said, years ago, and you didn’t get it but you seemed eventually to accept it. In increments, I revealed myself to you and to the world. I tried to wait, until you were ready and until I was ready. Until the world was ready. Well, I’m ready now, and I can’t wait on you and the world anymore.

You’re not a bigot. You’ve had queer friends all your life. You identify as bisexual. When your friend’s son came out as trans you were so very supportive. I know it’s not the same when it’s your own child, but I wish it had translated a bit more from him to me.

I need you to understand. I need you to accept. I’m scared to talk to you because I know you won’t listen, and every time I mention it I feel that much smaller. Every time you question it, I trust you a little bit less. And I want to trust you.

I want to be able to talk to you about anything, the way we did before. The way we did in my teens when I had my first boyfriend and you sat me down and said you knew we were having sex. And that even though I wasn’t yet sixteen and he was nineteen, you trusted me to make good choices as long as I was honest with you and talked to you. As long as you could get to know him. You said, ‘I’m not an idiot. I’m not going to report your boyfriend, who you love, to the police when you’re a couple of months away from the age of consent. I was young once too, you know.’ That time you walked in on us was awkward, but we all laughed about it afterwards. I could always talk to you.

Now, I can’t talk to you. Every step I take on my own true path, every time I speak in my true voice, I feel like I’m walking away from you. Why can’t you walk this path with me? Why can’t you trust that I know myself?

‘You’ve always been impulsive,’ you said. And it’s true. I’m impulsive when I’m hypomanic, but I’m not hypomanic now. I’m not doing this without thought. I think about it every day. I’ve thought about it for a long time. ‘You always liked being different, you always wanted to be special,’ you said. But that’s not true. I tried for years to be like everybody else, until I realised that I just wasn’t and I embraced that. I stood out like a sore thumb anyway, so I let that shine through in the way I dressed and the friends I made. The world had set me apart, so I set myself apart. But that’s not what I’m doing now.

This was always there, below the surface. I don’t have massive gender dysphoria and body dysmorphia, and I don’t think I was born in the wrong body, but this was always here all the same. I made online profiles where I pretended to be a boy. I wrote stories, romances between teenaged boys, because I wanted to be a teenaged boy. I wanted that life. I felt like I belonged in it, but I had no words for it. I barely knew what transgender was, and what I’d heard was that trans people are born in the wrong body and feel that very strongly.

I now know that that’s not necessarily true. I know that gender can be fluid. I know that I can like my body and still want to change it. I know that I can like being a girl sometimes while at the same time being a boy most of the time. And I know the world isn’t ready for that. The world isn’t even ready for binary trans people, let alone non-binary ones.

But I had hoped maybe you could be ready. I hoped that when I told you about it, really told you, you would just say, ‘Okay. How can I help?’ I hoped that you wouldn’t question it or me. But you did. You do. I know it’s hard. I understand it. But it hurts. It’s been months. I’ve tried so hard to help you understand, and you refuse to.

And now I’m writing words that I’m afraid to show you. I don’t know that I ever will. I know you wouldn’t want to read them. But I wish you would. I wish you would read these words and understand them. I wish you would just believe me.

With love,

Your son.