Your Stranger

https://twitter.com/#!/renaishiki/statuses/201464675559407616

She started off with questioning my motives of Friday. You know, the whole “dress-up party” deal. She had already had a few sips of her Long Island Iced Tea, and I was halfway done with mine. Made the conversation easier for me to improv and looser for her to intake as I spouted poker-faced lie after lie. I had already prepared for this and I was resolute in maintaining my secret until she gave a sign that she would be willing to hear me out rather than instantly deny or shun me.

Finally, she said enough of what I wanted to hear and I didn’t feel like lying anymore.

I told her I never cared about “being a man.” That I’ve been afraid of most men and never felt that I belonged with them. That I’ve always wanted to be “one of the girls” and spent my entire school life around them by choice. Of course, despite never fully being acknowledged as one, I wanted to learn and be trusted and accepted. Romance was secondary to that. Crushes on a few guys in college happened also. So my sexuality is also fairly bi-/pan- from what I’ve accepted of myself. Reassured her that it had nothing to do with the divorce, as signs were pre-existant. The list goes on…

Our talk over dinner bounced around a lot. In other words, she didn’t make my confession the only topic. We talked about church, my past relationships, her dresses, our sizes, makeup application, our jobs, and money matters. Like always, we ran the wide gambit. And I cleared up what was truth and what were lies.

After I told her, I didn’t expect to feel any different. And, at the time, I didn’t. I just felt that I had done my part of having her be the first family member to know – she appreciated that – and that everything else in terms of me hiding my identity around the house would gradually dissipate now that the only person whose stance mattered to me now knew. I even flat out told her I know my brother and her boyfriend “don’t give a shit about me.” In the sense of what I do and how I move through life, they don’t.

The thing that really messed me up for the rest of last evening was when she said, “…I was thinking to myself that I would just have to drop 2 more sizes to be the same as him.”

This revealed to me a number of things.

1) Being called “him” right after admitting to likely being a “her” made me extremely unnerved and upset.
2) She is in denial of what I’ve told her.
3) She has not or does not wish to process the many details I revealed.

Don’t know exactly what to do with this new reality. And it’s scary. Mainly because it’s still up in the air rather than a certainty that is to be acknowledged daily. I told her I would be willing to go through some form of therapy. That was hardly to assuage her, but rather for myself. To eat the words of my own recommendation and find out from someone who isn’t as intimate with my soul as I am if this is what I believe it is.

And I want to find out as soon as possible before anyone else is told.

I’m more afraid of being accused of wasting the time and energy of anyone who knows me and claims to care about me than being officially diagnosed that I really have been suppressing the gender identity I have seen signs of for so very long. The latter would be more bearable (for a very short time, mind you) than having to turn around and attest all of this to being pure overblown weeaboo nonsense. That would crush me.

Having entered yet another door, confused and troubled as I am, there is now nothing keeping me from sorting this out once and for all.