I haven't posted here for about two and a half years, so I figure I might as well give you all an update on how I have been going since mid-2013. This post is quite long, so I split it into years for your convenience.
2013
I accomplished absolutely fuck all for a long time after making that post. This was a result of a combination of unfortunate circumstances. Not only was I completely ignored by my school when I explicitly stated multiple times in writing that I was having severe issues with my identity, there were just literally no opportunities available for me to do anything. Both parents were struggling with their own issues for a while after August 2013, which deterred me from adding to these issues with my own (admittedly large-scale) problems. Pretty much all I did was quietly change my Facebook gender to female.
2014
2014 was a year that was similarly poor in terms of progress. While I did tell a few people I trusted, albeit in a very awkward manner involving 3:00AM Facebook messages, it was also a year where suicidal thoughts began to become somewhat more prevalent in my mental space than they had ever been. I thought that removing myself from existence by jumping in front of a train just after school was a brilliant idea that would have resulted in a quick death with little pain. However, further reading revealed that, a lot of the time, jumping in front of a train does little more than amputate limbs and/or result in catastrophic brain damage. On top of this, every time I got very close to committing suicide, something in me urged me not to do so, reassuring me that 'everything would get better eventually'. This happened several times throughout the year, which, while disheartening, reminded me that there was really only so much I could take and that I was reaching the end of my tether.
I decided to try coming out in a subtle manner through my school, so I wrote a story heavily based off my life for the Journeys module in English. It involved someone who, after a journey of self-introspection, decides to come out to their parents and commence the real journey of self-fulfillment. While it got decent marks, nothing more was said after the paper got handed back to me. It kind of sucked, but I wasn't deterred. I could always try again the next time I had the chance. Things remained dormant until November, where I came out to my mum (again) in a tear-stricken meltdown. She promised that we would book some sort of therapy, and I thought that things would finally change for the better. It was, after all, seemingly the most fruitful of all my attempts to come out, since the reception was nowhere near as hostile or dismissive as before.
I was wrong. Nothing came of it, and I was left reeling at what I took as wilful ignorance of my identity due to a reluctance to confront the fact that I was not all I seemed. Like 2013, 2014 thus came and went with very little to show for what had been an unpleasant year; I had struggled immensely socially this year as well, being passed over by several people I considered friends when they were organising things that everyone else in my social group got to attend.
2015 (nothing)
At the beginning of 2015, my cousin came to live with us for the year while she started studying Psychology (later changed to Primary Education), and I just knew that this would complicate things for me. It just meant there was another individual to overcome when I (hopefully!) got to come out. As it turned out, nothing happened (once again) for the majority of the year. My cousin ended up becoming my best friend (although I never told her anything) and my social life improved drastically for a short period of time in the middle of the year, but I soon ended up getting rejected from everything again all of a sudden for God knows what reason, which did not help matters. On Smogon, which had been (and still is) my safe haven all of that time, Bloo revealed that she was, in fact, a girl who had been concealing her gender from the vast majority of the community for ages due to both a (legitimate) fear of being stigmatised and the need to continue a masculine facade. This greatly resonated with me and made me really determined to make 2015 the year I could reflect on as having done something useful for myself.
In June 2015, I came out to my mum (again!) in similar circumstances to my November 2015 attempt. This time, my mum said that she would definitely seek out a referral to a therapist of some sort for me. She told my dad that I was probably going to seek therapy for my issues with socialising with people without mentioning my gender identity, and he didn't care - just as long as I didn't seek out the services of any school counsellors in the meantime. Fair enough, I thought. Surely this time I would get a referral, leaving no need for visits to the school counsellor!
lol
A crucial moment in my social life that would almost certainly have resulted in a referral being sought ended up having drastic repercussions for everybody in my family. I had been invited to a party, and I had an absolutely awful time thanks to me being forced to repress myself in front of everybody, as always. On the way home, I told my dad that I had an awful time. Aside from being told that I 'was probably more autistic than [we] thought', my dad, seeing I was tear-stricken, told me not to tell my mum that I had a terrible time. I don't know what he was thinking, but I can only assume he did not want my mum to get upset late that night. Unfortunately, this moment of social failure would have been the catalyst to getting a referral, as I learned later on in the year, and the fact that I never told my mum that I was still struggling socially meant that she thought that there was no need for me to seek therapy. After all, everything seemed fine on the surface.
Time wore on, and I continued to struggle. I was becoming quite depressed and withdrawn from people at school, and it was ever so slightly showing in my academic results. Suicide became a constant thought for me, and although my ever-strong willpower stopped me from doing anything, it was becoming abundantly clear that, once again, something had to give. In a spur of creative 'genius' in September 2015, I found my chance to do something in - surprise, surprise - another creative writing story for Belonging, where, using a perfect stimulus, I wrote a story about someone who does not belong due to hiding their gender identity from everybody. Again, I drew heavily from my own experience. I submitted it with the expectation that nothing would come of it.
2015 (something, nothing, then something again)
The next day, I was summoned to the school boardroom, where my English teacher and another teacher sat me down and pulled out my story. As it turned out, they were concerned as I 'had written something very similar' before. I allayed their concerns by saying that I simply had an interest in the subject of transgender people, but it was clear from my shaking and quavering voice that I was lying. This played on me for the rest of the day and all of the next day, so I decided to email them telling the truth: I identified as female and wrote from the heart. I got very supportive responses and they said they would talk to me the next day. Unfortunately, the next day was when I had an English yearly exam, and I was nervous as fuck about literally everything. This cost me valedictorian, as I ended up coming second to the eventual valedictorian by a lousy mark. Such is life. I did have a very productive talk with the teachers, though, who was were very good and suggested I see the school counsellor. Knowing how fucked I would be if my parents caught wind of this, I declined. However, days of little sleep and terrible appetite meant that I eventually gave in and opted to see the counsellor.
I didn't expect her to be as accepting and helpful as she was, but she was (and is), and was a constant source of support over the tumultuous final weeks of that term alongside the two teachers (three more ended up being told by necessity). She suggested that we organise an in-school meeting with my parents regarding my being transgender, as all my other shots had failed. I gave this an OK, and waited out the school holidays (which sucked) until school resumed.
The school, with my permission, rang my mum out of the blue and told her that I wanted a meeting of sorts at the beginning of October, when school restarted. Clearly shaken, my mum confronted me later that day, and suggested I tell her and my dad what was going on before any 'meeting' happened. I did, and the reaction I got was far better than I expected. I thought this would all work out, and the meeting, which happened on that Friday, seemingly did work out, with someone from The Gender Centre coming down to my school to help explain to my parents what the fuck was going on.
I couldn't have been more wrong. On that Sunday, my mum called me over to the house next door (we own both, long story) for a private talk. As it turned out, the meeting was organised very poorly, with my parents being exposed to the wider school community upon arrival, which put them off. Furthermore, the person who came from The Gender Centre was, according to my mum, far too forthright. She was right in some respects, but most of her 'forthrightness' was just her being hypothetical about what COULD happen should I ever officially be diagnosed as suffering from gender dysphoria. The biggest gripe was that I hadn't told my parents I was organising any of this and that I had told the counsellor literally everything about what had happened with me over the preceding six years, which, to my parents, was a betrayal. Of course, I had not meant this. I did not want them to be hit with such a hard blow, yet the way I had gone about this just made the blow harder for them - I had made 'family issues' known to a much larger base of people. I also learned that day that my diagnosis of Asperger's as a young child, which had constantly been hammered into me for years, had been challenged and essentially mooted five years ago by another psychologist. My dad reacted in an even more emotional manner, expressing his extreme anger at me for having 'betrayed' him and my mum and chastising the Gender Centre person for her (hypothetical) 'overstepping the mark'. I was still promised external therapy, but this cut really deep. It hurt me so much, and still does today when I think about it.
Things went alright for the rest of the term, surprisingly. I finally got to see an external therapist, who I really hope to work with over the next year (I've only managed to see them once due to how little time I've had). I also wrote yet another creative writing piece about being transgender, which got full marks and was described as 'the best story [the teacher's] ever seen a kid do'. Unfortunately, at the term's end, one of the really supportive teachers at my school left to go on a year's maternity leave, which was kind of upsetting. However, what really pissed me off was the fact that a member of staff told me that I should leave 'exploring myself until you leave school' and just 'focus on your studies for the time being' when there are high school kids fucking everywhere who are going through the exact same thing as I am. I know he was told to say it by a member of the executive staff, which is even more fucking incensing. Now I have no idea what I am going to do or if anything will even happen this year, after I made so much progress.
This post is really fucking long, and I apologise for that, but I am actually quite frustrated at the moment and just felt the need to vent a little (or a lot, as it turns out). Hopefully, I can work around the sudden reluctance of my school to help me through coming out and actually, FINALLY, start living life the way I have NEEDED to live it for the last six years plus. Thanks for reading.
