Coming Out Day fell, coincidentally, at a time when I found myself considering my own coming out in ways I hadn’t previously. The spark was not the holiday but rather a communication from the court about my divorce – should be over in a few months – that was followed by a nasty lapse into the place I was shortly before coming out. I won’t get into that incident here. Suffice to say I scared a lot of people, including myself.
Before I came out, I was clinging to life by my fingernails. I didn’t know that at the time. It took escaping and more than a year of processing to realise how close to the edge I was, even with the understanding that I was actively planning my own death shortly before. I just didn’t really grasp the sheer depth I sank to and how far I had to go to pull myself out of it.
I had been planning on breaking out of the relationship for a some months. I kept saying to myself one more year. One more year and I’ll finish my teacher training and get a good enough job to go. One more year and I’ll finish my master’s degree. A big part of my prison was the impression that I would never have the money to live outside. That it was too expensive to think about and I needed to either get a job that paid a lot more or get lucky with council housing. It ended up being false, but I believed it at the time.
I’ve said before that I knew my ex and her family would not accept a transgender person. I also knew that I identified with transgender people I saw on TV or heard about, but it wasn’t until not too long before my coming out that I discovered that I was transgender and that I wanted to transition. As I’ve said before, I knew that when I came out the relationship would be over.
What I haven’t said, because I didn’t realise it myself until just the other day, is that I came out to my ex specifically to end the relationship. In the moment, I didn’t quite know that. But I didn’t have to come out to her that next morning after coming out to my family. I could have kept it to myself. I could have waited until I was better off – I had said one more year all ready, surely I could keep to it. But I didn’t.
My reason for saying something as I did that morning is complicated, but at its core was a desire to create a situation that was uncomfortable enough for my ex and her family to send me away. I was dependent on them; their comfortable prison. I had only very few friends, I knew nothing about surviving on my own. I hadn’t ever lived by myself before. As miserable as I was, as close to death as I was, I needed them to push me.
People often come out as a matter of survival and my story is no exception. I knew if I stayed in that place I would kill myself. I knew that if I had to continue to tend my ex’s mental illness, I would break and run dry. I knew that I didn’t have what I needed to escape on my own.
The one part of me that was not entwined in their web was my gender. It was the one part of me that didn’t bend under their pressure to conform. I never fit in with ‘the guys.’ When ‘the men’ went of to do things, I didn’t go with them. I didn’t like being with them so I either hung out with the women or I would keep to myself. I often did this under protest from my ex. Sometimes I would go along with ‘the men’ but I generally broke away from their group, came home early, or found my own thing to do. My gender was mine. I didn’t quite know I was female in that time, but I knew I wasn’t one of the men.
So I came out. I came out to my family because I wanted them to help me. I came out to my ex and her family because I wanted them to get rid of me. When their initial reaction was as expected, I almost eagerly told my ex then I’d go. I remember her surprise at my reaction. She expected me to try to talk about it. She expected me to try and stay, to compromise. I didn’t.
I also don’t hold any real anger about being thrown out – something my mum expressed surprise about to me. At the time, I couldn’t explain it either. I just didn’t. It all felt very natural and sensible – and what I know now is it felt that way because that was what I wanted.
Another thing I’ve told people is that I can see a scenario where I never transitioned and I can. Once I let that out, that scenario faded into a what if. At the time, I told people that I wanted to go as far as I needed to. I wasn’t easing people into an idea; I meant it. I didn’t know that I needed to go all the way to the other side at the time. I just knew I was transgender and I needed to do some things to feel better in myself. I wanted to try things and see. Get rid of the face hair and move from there.
Using my gender as a wedge, a weapon, had its cost in that it unlocked a whole range of feelings far more quickly than I originally meant. As much as anyone can mean these things. Being thrown out catapulted me forward. It put me in a position where I had absolutely nothing to lose. My gender feelings sustained me through my grief and insecurity. They gave me something to hold on to, a thing I never would have held on to had I not come out as I did. Had I compromised, I wouldn’t have had that lifeline. I wouldn’t have had that insecurity, either.
That lifeline, borne of that set of circumstances, made for an exceptionally quick early transition despite the tangle of feelings that I’m still learning about. My process of discovery is months behind my process of self actualisation; I have regular realisations well after the fact. This scare shook a few things loose and I’m glad I’m still here to find what fell.
I didn’t just come out to live authentically. It was about survival, but the prison was my old life in that big comfortable house surrounded by people who valued me as a shield from the outside world. Coming out, for me, meant freedom to express not just my gender but my thoughts and feelings without worry that I somehow created a problem for a loved one – and I did love her. I loved the whole family even as they shrank my world to fit into that house.
In the end, my gender saved me.
Transience 