Content warning: this post mentions suicide and family rejection
I love change. It brings opportunity and rekindled novelty. But…
I struggle enormously with anticipation. Once I know a change is coming, it can’t come soon enough.
Which is perhaps why each time I have come out, I have done so with tremendous speed. For example, I told my mother the same day I realized I was attracted to women, and my father within the first couple weeks.
A few more weeks passed and we were heading to rural Wisconsin to see my mother’s parents and siblings. During this trip I met with all of them one on one to share with them, what would surely be disappointing news: At the age of 19, I had realized I was a lesbian.
My uncle wanted assurance that that didn’t mean I felt entitled to rape people. I told him that inappropriate behavior was inappropriate regardless of sexual orientation. My grandfather wanted to make sure I was only being gay with consenting adults. I was so uncomfortable I laughed this off with an, “of course.” To some people this might sound like acceptance. But I was deeply disturbed that these were behaviors they associated with this news.
On the way home, I was sullen. I don’t recall the subject matter of the disagreement with my father during that drive, only my growing despair and the fact that my mother had surprisingly sided with him, which was very rare and terribly untimely. I do remember a sentiment that I should be grateful for the “acceptance” I had just received.
If this was acceptance I definitely couldn’t tolerate rejection.
The next details we’ll gloss over. What is important was that I felt desperately unseen. I couldn’t handle being a part of a world where being attracted to women meant that I would be seen as morally depraved. I had gone from tremendous relief in discovering my identity to extreme isolation. At this same time in my life I had developed tendinitis and couldn’t play my guitar, which was my only interest in life, besides my newly discovered , and assumingly corrupt interest in women.
When the moment came I couldn’t think clearly enough to execute my plan. There was a miscalculation. It felt like failure. I sat down on the steps, the extension cord swinging above like a pendulum between “try again” meaning one thing and it meaning something else entirely. I picked up the phone. “I don’t know what to do.” “I’ll be right over.”
It took me several days to get around to cleaning up the mess I had made in my frantic attempt to exit stage right. “Measure twice cut once,” I thought bitterly. It took years to own that it had ever happened.
There were no magic words that turned things around. I didn’t do something incredible that made things better. I pretty much just stuck around long enough for things to shift on their own.
I have a very small family. My arrival was somewhere in the murky middle between the first grandchild (my brother) and the last, whose name I don’t recall. In my defense, I never met the last one.
Growing up, I looked forward to seeing my cousins. I loved extended stays at my maternal grandparent’s house – swim lessons, running around in the woods of their property, and turning the giant sandbox into a bakery. My grandparents always had those cheap “brownies” with the walnut chunks I would pick off and eat separately, paired, of course with fruit punch. My grandfather made me peanut butter toast with bananas each morning using a knife whose sole purpose was to prepare this meal. He would place each banana slice on its own square of perfectly peanut buttered toast. It tasted like love and affection.
Conversely, I have precisely zero warm memories of my father’s family. My Oma is a severe German immigrant who lived through the war caring for her plethora of younger siblings living in a rat infested barn with cats singularly concerned with chasing said rats. In their pursuit they would often jump off my grandmother in her sleep, frightening her. But I didn’t know that when I saw her kick my precious cat down the stairs as a young child. If she could do that to an innocent animal it seemed she wasn’t a safe person to love. So I didn’t.
I had no concept of the trauma she had lived through. I knew that she was often angry, she spoke really harshly of other people and made horrible smelling purple cabbage that looked delicious but was, for me at least, vomit inducing. Apparently it is rude to vomit at the dinner table. I did try to love her once. My brother and I lovingly used our new blue polar bear stamps to redecorate the hallway of her apartment for her. Apparently that was rude as well.
The one thing I did appreciate about her visits was that she made amazing spaghetti. When I found out the secret recipe was actually just from a jar, it seemed it would be a lot easier to buy the jar and skip the drama that ensued with her visits. She hated my mother and her visits often ended early with her storming off without saying goodbye.
I haven’t seen her since my father’s funeral, which she also left early, demanding my brother drive her back home to Omaha (Yes, it was confusing that my Oma lived in Omaha, but that the town wasn’t named for her. Suspicious.). When they arrived, my brother was met by my uncle who apologized for not coming to the funeral but, you know, they were “never very close.”
When the time came to come out to extended family again…I simply didn’t. It wasn’t a particularly calculated decision as much as a welcome oversight. A choice to buy the jar of spaghetti sauce if you will. I am no longer connected with any of my cousins on social media and genuinely don’t recall if I was the one to disconnect or if it was them. My maternal grandparents are no longer alive and I can’t conjure an event that would result in seeing my aunts and uncles ever again. We simply have no reason to ever come together again.
I also avoided coming out to my spouse’s extended family. Some of them know from social media. Maybe she spoke to some of them directly about it. Many have been passively accepting, some of them have stated their acceptance more overtly. And not the “as long as you don’t rape people” variety of acceptance.
Still, I suddenly found it much more compelling to stay home during family events than face what it meant to show up.
People often perceive me as strong and with seemingly endless confidence but I am in fact soft to a fault with very little defense and a special brand of insecurity that doesn’t center on uncertainty of who I am, but rather a belief that I have accepted as indisputable that who I am is deeply flawed, especially in comparison to every other human. Except maybe my Oma. At least I have the decency to be kind to animals and would never try to feed people that cabbage dish.
On top of this extreme emotional sensitivity, my resiliency cycle is lengthy taking days to bounce back from things that others emotionally process in minutes.
It is exhausting but also largely a secret. I learned early on that the quickest way to end a relationship was to be emotionally authentic because my feelings have always been bigger than other people’s. It would have been helpful to know that that is the consequence of autism rather than the only other narrative I could conceive of, which was an inherent flaw in myself.
I understand that the world expects me to be productive and happy about it, so that is the life I usually perform. Luckily I am rather talented in that regard.
I recently attended a Celebration of Life for my mother’s husband, Steve. Steve was perhaps the most validating and encouraging person I have ever met. Every time I saw him, “Jesse, I love your latest artwork. Your style is really developing. I love the direction you are going.” He was a retired middle school principal, the kind that finds children to be precious and bursting with potential. He loved my mother fiercely and his easy going personality provided a lovely counter point to her highly driven and productive way of moving through the world.
I hadn’t planned on attending the event. Timing wise, it was near my oldest son’s high school graduation, in a part of Wisconsin that was not particularly convenient to get to and the cost of the entire family attending was prohibitive. But as the time approached I realized I needed to make it work. That this was not a buy the jar of spaghetti sauce situation.
It was only a few weeks before the event when I made my arrangements. Those weeks were filled with back to back events as we geared up for high school graduation. I didn’t really think about what the event itself would be like.
I knew Steve’s children and siblings would be present. But it hadn’t occurred to me that I hadn’t seen these folks in the last, very significant, 3.5 years. As this reality dawned on me, I worried that this was about to be a day I hadn’t really braced myself for. I don’t have a great track record of fairing well for days I’ve not prepared for. My brain requires rehearsals in order to human in the way I am expected to human. I had no desire to expend any energy on my own well being but expected it to be critical to do so.
In a moment of overwhelm at the prospect of watching several people absorb and process the physical changes I had lived through in the last few years, I decided to go explore the trails at the state park where the event was being held. I soon found the bench Steve’s family had donated in his honor in the most beautiful clearing.
I paused at the bench and reflected on how fitting this location was. Vibrant and calm. It made so much sense that this would be his favorite place. I wandered further down the path. On my way back I had a lovely chat with a woman I didn’t know, but who recognized me from my mother’s Facebook posts. She was friendly and kind. We meandered our way back to the event.
I talked to A LOT of people that day. Talking to people is not a particular favorite of mine. And yet… there was no sign of people doing the weird thing I had experienced so many times where I watch them process my identity. I expected them to look at me to try to see if they can still find the old me, to try to find the signs that I was AFAB, to try to determine if they really believe I am a man. But they just…saw me for who I am today. It was an incredible gift.
It made me wonder, what if we all continually accepted one another for who we are right now? How much could we grow and evolve if we weren’t tethered to who we’ve always been? What would have happened if I hadn’t assumed such a thing was never possible from my own family?
That's Mr. Gender to You 