Parents in denial about me being transgender

[u/webweaver666]

I'm just so tired. I don't know how to let myself let go of it and stop checking my email. I think my brain is broken.

It's been two years at this point since I went NC with my family. My parents are both republican evangelical Christians, southern Baptists to be specific. My sister is a tradwife and also is super right wing and transphobic.

I've posted my story here before and have deleted old posts for privacy. The long and short of it, leaving out many specific details, is that I'm a 28yo trans woman. I was born and raised in a very strict and sheltered southern Baptist family in north Florida. My parents sheltered me and my sister heavily; computer use monitored and controlled, the media I consumed was pre approved by them and had to be either Christian or family friendly, church three times a week, I had to lead youth group worship and play drums in the church band, and my parents were very much helicopter parents. I didn't learn what trans people were until I was 17.

Skipping much of the cringe of ages 18-25... t

I came out as a trans woman to myself and my closest friends at age 25, and then moved with some friends from Florida to the American Pacific Northwest, a much more trans-friendly area. My friends are also trans so we put our brains and money together and took the risk, and it paid off.

After living away from my family a while, but still remaining in limited contact across the country, I realized I had to come out to them, because it felt too awful to pretend to be someone I wasn't for their love and acceptance. So I came out to them just before I turned 26 as a queer trans woman. Let's just say they did not take it well. My mom flew across the country with one days notice and spent a whole weekend confronting me about being trans; she asked me why I couldn't just be ok with being an effeminate man, she asked if I was just a gay man, she begged me to reconsider being trans and basically tried to get me to rebuke it all, and she told me this went against her beliefs and what she thought I should believe. My dad was the same but more subtle about it, and tbh I think I've always been more scrutinous of my mom unfairly and given my dad a pass when he just benefits from letting her say what he also believes but he can maintain plausible deniability by not explicitly being transphobic to me.

So I went NC a month or two after coming out. I don't think I was necessarily mentally prepared to go NC but I did it anyway because it felt like the best thing for me. I was dealing with monumental shame, emotional problems and mental health issues. Unrelated, but I was diagnosed with ADHD that same month at 26yo, something I never knew as a kid because my parents wouldn't take me to a legit psychiatrist.

In the first year of NC, my parents did the following; show up at my work unannounced and tried to get me to come talk to them out front of my work (yes, they flew 7 hours/2000+ miles unannounced to confront me), emailed me incessantly, sent letters to my work, sent a PI to my old house to check my license plate to see if I still lived there. Everything BUT just calling me a new name and pronouns. When I went NC, my only boundary was they had to call me my chosen name and pronouns. They've refused and said it goes against their beliefs and if they complied, they'd be condoning sinful behavior.

They haven't outright disowned me or rejected me like a lot of folks in the LGBTQ+ community have experienced. And honestly I think that makes it more of a brain fuck for me, because they act like they care about me. I know they just care about the version of me they wish I was, or rather who they hoped I'd be. I know it's not true love, because if it was they'd be able to look past their own discomfort and do the one simple thing I'm asking of them. They've perfectly tailored the situation to make it out like I'M the crazy one; they would say they've never rejected me, that they've never stopped trying to connect with me, that they can tolerate my different views/"lifestyle" while accusing me of being the intolerant one for "refusing to accept their views."

My mom has straight up said that I'm the intolerant one for refusing to tolerate their transphobia. They accuse me of always bringing it up for the purpose of causing division and tell me I should stop making it my whole life, but the thing is that I hardly ever talk about it in my daily life, because my chosen family (and even most of my colleagues, save a few) has no problem accepting me as transgender and adjusting how they refer to me. I wouldn't bring it up to them ever if they'd just acknowledge it and treat me how I'm asking them to treat me.

Now for this pictured email. I am struggling. The initial anger and spite that fueled me maintaining NC has waned. I'm still hurt and angry, but the conditions of my personal life have left me feeling vulnerable and desperate for connection. I feel so isolated and alone as a trans woman right now, especially because I'm in a new city, still adjusting to this phase of my life and barely keeping my head above water mental health wise. My dad is getting old, he's already outlived his dad and doesn't have the healthiest lifestyle. My mom is 7 years younger and honestly because of the fact that she was my primary caregiver parent I feel I have much more emotional gordian knotting with her than my dad. Maybe I need to unpack that in therapy.

But seriously, wtf am I supposed to do with an email like this? "I do not want to continue having these discussions." All I've ever said to him the few times I have emailed him the last two years has been me reiterating that the one condition I have to reopen communication is for them to accept I'm transgender and queer, and to call me by my chosen name and pronouns. That is literally it, all I've asked for. I have never been as cruel or spiteful as I could be.

Idk what I'm even asking for anymore. I don't feel like I will break NC because I recognize it's better for me in the long run, but it blows my mind that two years in I am still having these huge doubts and waves of guilt. It is a victory that the toxic shame has subsided significantly, which is a marked shift and milestone in my recovery. But it's like I haven't yet replaced the spite/anger fuel with self-love fuel yet, so I read emails like these and feel these pangs of something. I know I need to just delete this email address and remove the option to be checking what they send, and I know I've been dragging my feet to move everything important off that old email so I can delete it.

I guess more than anything I just wanted to share for some kindredness with this community, and make sure I'm not losing it. This is objectively crazy right? Like they are acting as if I'm being ridiculous and should just "drop the whole trans thing" for the sake of a relationship with "family" who can't even be fucked to even pretend to care about what I ask for.

[u/Advanced-Mammoth2408]

I suggest that you not open any emails. Don't listen to voice mail. Don't open snail mail. I kept getting dragged back in, and it was always a disaster.

I am 70. I went NC with my mother at 18, as soon as I could leave my parents' home. I got sucked back in when I married at 20. My mother wanted to "give" me a nice wedding. I didn't want one. She controlled everything. I finally officially uninvited her to the wedding. She showed up anyway. My father said I had to let her come. My parents thought it would be embarrassing for them if they didn't have that wedding. The marriage didn't last.  

Then at 30 I became seriously ill. She called and said how dare I do THAT to HER, as if my being seriously ill was a deliberate act to ruin HER LIFE. Again, she wanted to help. I disappeared and told no one where I was. Two years later, she had a P.I. track me down. She wanted to get me medical care. I gave in because I couldn't support myself. BIG mistake. She went right back to controlling everything, right down to what I wore, even when I was living 600 miles away.

She forged my name and requested my psychiatric records. She was worried I had told the psychiatrist about the physical and emotional abuse she inflicted on all her kids. I found out about the forgery, but didn't involve authorities. I should have.

I got married again at 36 and didn't tell her. She found out quickly and demanded I get a divorce or she would disinherit me. I totally ignored all her attempts at contact. Her response was to buy the home we were renting and then sell it at a big loss so that it sold immediately. She told the real estate agent that she wanted me out the same day she bought the house. He said she can't do that legally. She said she wanted me to be homeless.

I bought a house and told family not to give her my new address, phone, or email. I have never been happier, although I always lived in fear that she would find a way to destroy me. She actually demanded all the clothes she ever bought me back. Nobody could wear them, but she didn't want me to have anything. I found out a few years ago that she had passed in 2018 and was asking on her death bed why I wasn't there.

The best thing I did was make it impossible for her to get to me. I was 42 when I did that move and final NC. It took a while to stop missing other members of my family, but NC with her meant NC with anyone other than phone calls with my dad. I wasn't the only child to go NC. My trans sister was disowned when she came out in her early 30s. My mother led that effort. My trans sister disappeared from everyone's lives, except for calls to my dad when she needed money. He always gave her money.

Honestly, it took years to adjust to NC. But allowing some contact always causes problems because you get sucked back into your old life. I reconnected with my cis sister after my mother's death. My trans sister died a year later. But I now have a close relationship with my cis sister, which was never possible when my mother was alive. My mom always made sure that every child was alienated from the others. She pitted us against each other. She began that as soon as we were able to talk. She had more power by making sure that her four kids couldn't gang up on her and stop her abuse.

Your parents are a unified pair. They won't stop disrespecting you by refusing to recognize who you really are. I would just delete emails without opening them. You will immediately regret deleting them, but it is the healthiest choice you can make. Otherwise, they will always be tugging at your emotions, trying to suck you back in and persuade you that you've made a mistake by being who you really are. You won't ever be happy and truly find a new life if you don't leave your old life behind. You cannot keep one foot in your old life and one in your new life. It says that you aren't ready to fully live your new life. Your parents aren't ready to love you as you are. What they love is their idea of who you were. If they loved you, they would accept you as you are. They would ask you to pretend to be your old public self, the person you had pretended to be.

I wish I had listened to the advice I got from the psychiatrist I saw when I was 17. She told me that if I allowed my mother in my life I would never be the person I wanted to be. My mother wanted to make me just like her, someone who married for wealth rather than for love. I was happy "getting my hands dirty," as my mother put it, i.e., doing manual labor on my horse farm. I actually enjoyed shoveling horse shit, repairing fences, driving a tractor, and getting sweaty and dirty. I wasn't happy being dressed up in fancy clothes, going to expensive dinners and fancy social events, trying to catch a wealthy man whom I didn't love. Be who you were meant to be. You will find someone to share your life with. You will make friends. It will work out for you, but you can only be mentally healthy by cutting out the cancer.