ash&iron

Wow, OK.

I had mentioned a few days ago that I’d been feeling pretty shitty and wanting to be more assertive about my gender identity. Today, I met with my family for lunch and brought it up to my mom, who I haven’t really talked to at all about it after coming out to her in January. I really don’t know how to interpret what she said.

I can tell it makes her uncomfortable. She asked outright that I not involve her side of the family with it (being her dad and brother and his family, which honestly is fine because I’m not at all close to them and don’t find it poignant to tell them fuck all) but the fact that she would ask something like that bothered me. She kept switching back and forth between whatever makes me happy is fine with her and that it doesn’t change how she feels about me, etc etc, but I feel like that’s something she wants to believe, but it does really bother her. For example, I told her I wanted to change my name and was thinking about starting the process of coming out and transitioning at work and asked that she please at least start thinking about calling me Max and using male pronouns and she said she just didn’t think that she could do it, that it “didn’t have anything to do with respect, it was just too strange for her”. She also said she thought that I hadn’t always felt that way, and I just didn’t know how to respond to that. She’s always treated me like she thinks I’m extremely fickle and like I make decisions based on experimentation and curiosity and rebellion and not because those things are what I want and what make me happy.

Don’t get me wrong, she isn’t blatantly shitty about it. I can tell she *wants* to be really accepting and supportive, she just has no idea how because she doesn’t at all understand it. She’s still confused that I’m not just totally a lesbian and that I’m pansexual, trans* issues is a big step for her. Really, though, what bothers me most about the way she treats it is the assumption that *she* understands how *I* think and that *she* knows better than *I* do about how *I* feel. This coming from the woman who, though I love her dearly and it isn’t like we’re estranged, barely talks to me. I haven’t seen my family in a month and just found out today that my siblings are dating (MY FUCKING SISTER DIDN’T TELL ME SHE HAD A BOYFRIEND) and that made me really upset, too. I’ve always felt that being the black sheep has made me very excluded. I understand that I’m not living at the house anymore, but the fact that I’m sort of this family afterthought is horrible. I’ve been so down lately, I need constant affirmation and acknowledgement, and I feel incredibly alone and like I can’t really talk to anyone right now. I’ve been feeling too much like a burden on Micah and Frank lately to be able to try and dump my problems on them, besides which, it’s so fucking hard for me to talk about things that upset me, even when I want to.

My mom said she’s going to try to at least switch to calling me B instead of Britney (my legal name) and I tried to explain that being called Britney to me is even worse than being called MacKenzie. I haven’t identified to Britney in over ten years, if I ever did. Britney to me is all of my childhood bullshit. Britney is who was me (not who I was) in my darkest, most neglected and abused years, Britney was an impressionable little girl that went crazy and died to me. I’m done with her, but I’ve been carrying around her name all my life, and I want to finally sever myself from it. I really want to change my name. Like, now. But doing so would mean coming out at work. But I just have to fucking do it. I’ve been covering myself up in my own fucking despair and self loathing for too long because it was comfortable and because it’s frightening to assert myself and I feel like I’m stepping on people’s toes to try and establish myself to them, but I’m sick of it. I have to pursue my own happiness, because no one is going to give it to me. It still upsets me a lot that it feels like not a lot of people are very invested in me, I don’t feel like I have a lot of support and belief in me from other people, the things that are important to me often get a nod and then brushed aside, and I have so little faith in myself to begin with, but I know that I’m the one that has to drive this fucking thing.

I don’t know where I was going with this, I just had to get it out because I’m alone at the house tonight and I don’t have anyone to talk to and I was crying when I left lunch.

I want to be a writer. I want to treat myself better. I want to be able to not lay down to save face and just be myself rather than let myself be miserable for the comfort of others, and I just hope that the complications to that point aren’t too severe. I just want to be not happy, but at least not miserable. I can deal with just not being miserable. I’ve been through enough pain and hatred and bullshit, I don’t want a field of daisies, I just want a clear sky.