Things I Wish I Could Say: Part 1

For months I have needed to say things to my 16-year-old child. However, just because I need to say things doesn't mean my child is ready or able to receive the message. So I'm putting it here.

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My dear favorite child in the world,

I love you so. I want to share my heart with you. I hope you will read with curiosity and for understanding and take time to percolate on all I say. 

A few months ago, you asked if I think of you as my son. I evaded the question. I also happened to overhear a comment you made on a call with friends, talking about your transition, and you said something like, "And my parents! Well, it's like they're grieving. But I'm still me!" So I will answer honestly.

In fall of 2021 at the start of 8th grade, I picked you up from school and you declared to me, "I'm nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them." You said it in a firm voice verging on angry; the energy felt foreboding and defensive.

Six months prior you had attempted suicide. So the moment you announced this, I pivoted. I didn't want to lose connection with you. I didn't give myself any time to think about this, to examine my own paradigm, to feel my feelings. Instead, when you said you wanted binders, I took you to a place to buy binders. You changed your name, and I used your new name. I trained myself to use they/them. I supported you changing how you dress and style your hair. I contacted the school for them to change the roster to your new name. I affirmed you. Now, two and a half years later, you state that you are a trans man. You asked us to use he/him, but still accept they/them. You very much want to proceed with medicalizing, which to your irritation your father and I do not support doing at this time. Our reticence does not come from a transphobic orientation or a desire to thwart and oppress you. 

It comes from our lived experience. Our perspective is broader. I look at this transition from a fuller context.

Factor 1: life got very hard and complicated in 4th grade, and very bad that summer between 4th and 5th. We transferred you to a new school which we hoped would provide social/emotional support. Which it did to a degree (but not enough).

Things improved in 5th grade for many reasons -- identifying the root cause of your challenges and the coexisting mental health issues being primary. At the same time, there were social conflicts. In 6th grade bullying began intensely. I remember so well how distressed and angry you were, how overwhelmed, and how I could not improve the situation despite much communication with teachers and the principal. In January 2020 you called many days asking to be picked up from school early. I worried you might be on the verge of school refusal.

Factor 2: the summer between 5th and 6th grade your period started. Your body changed; secondary sex characteristics emerged. This is a huge change and challenging for every person who reaches adolescence. At first you were kind of positive about this change, this sign of moving toward adulthood. But I think at some point this shifted. I get why. It's messy and painful. Having breasts makes a person more noticeable to people (usually male) who have a sexual interest, which is often unwanted. Breasts are pointless to me, extraneous, except when I unsuccessfully tried to breastfeed you. Unlike many women, I would prefer to have a smaller bust. You inherited mammary abundance from me. As I've said before, it's hard to be in a body. All humans at some point have some dissatisfaction or struggle with the physical being.

Factor 3: the pandemic happened. It was traumatic. School shut down. We went nowhere for months and months. We did not see people socially in person, except a few times outdoors, distancing and wearing masks. The day of the shut down, March 16, was also the day my mother suddenly died. I am certain that my grief pervaded the house, adding to the distress.

A couple months later, three close friends moved away to distant places. A moved to Colorado, O moved to Fresno, and P moved to Texas. These girls were core in your life. About a year into the pandemic, another friend from school moved to Monterey and faded out of our lives. 

School went online in 7th grade. Social life went online. We opened up Discord, Toyhouse, access to social media. It was your primary source of social connection.

Factor 4: you became a teenager the fall of 2020. A time of identity exploration and development, uncertainty, intense need for social connection with age peers, a need for acceptance. This process was hobbled by pandemic isolation. Your option was to go online. This constrained you. The development into a functioning adult requires in-person encounters and relationships.

Factor 5: social media, cell phones, and tablets -- we gave you access, despite knowing (through our own experience) how addictive these are. AND... we live in a misogynistic world. Hatred of women is real. Women have to cope with this. I understand that the prospect of living female is not very appealing. 

Factor 6: 8th grade was in-person, and it was an awful year. You experienced exclusion and alienation in a small class; friends abandoned you. Your first romantic love abruptly ended your relationship and wouldn't give you a reason. This person was part of the school milieu.You were hurt to your core. These were days of rage. My goal was to survive your rage and maintain connection with you.

So, when I look at you now, I see a person whose maturation and growth was shaped by all these factors. When we have spoken about how you became aware of being nonbinary and later transmasculine, you said you had felt this way when you were younger. You just didn't have words for it. 

I get it. I felt similarly as a child. I was ambivalent about becoming a woman. I did not have interest in "typical" female things. I didn't grok the social dynamics of "typical girls." I was drawn to androgyny -- to people who looked that way, and to presenting myself as such, through my early 20s. Looking back, I understand that I was grappling with my sexual orientation (back in the 1980s when it truly was risky to be out), which in the end is bisexual.

In your young years, there was no evidence ever of you expressing yourself in a masculine way. You were quite typically feminine but not a super girly girl. You never announced to us that you felt like a boy, or asked when you would get a penis. Absolutely nothing like that ever. 

From where I sit, given all the factors, your self-identification as transmasculine does not feel utterly true and authentic. I think you believe yourself to be "a male in a female body," because that is what you've learned from the Internet and all your peers who are also on the Internet. I think the gender stuff for you arises from the intersection of factors: your anxiety disorder and depression, your autism, your body maturing, having been bullied, loss of friends, loss of social connection in person, the fear brought by the pandemic. And let's not forget the misogyny that pervades all cultures.

When I experience you talking about gender, I notice it comes from a place of anger and defiance. As if you expect to be dismissed and oppressed. Like you're ready for a fight.

My experience of your gender identity/expression is that it doesn't arise from a place of discovery, of "this is who I am" as much as it focuses on how others perceive you. That they misgender you. How you feel disrespected and are angry about that. It seems you are entirely concerned with the world's perception of you, more than you are living from a place of knowing and relating to yourself.

So, no. I do not think of you as my son, and I am grieving.

I've told you and others this story before, of how you came to us. In my early 40s, I had two miscarriages. We went to a fertility clinic that told us at my advanced maternal age, the possibility of success with my own eggs was less than 5%. So I went home to think about that; I decided that I wanted to carry a pregnancy, and I could live with it being another woman's egg. Not long after deciding, but before we began the treatment, I ended up pregnant, with you. I jokingly say I had one good egg left. Natural conception at 43 is fairly rare (1 or 2 percent). You are meant to be here. I grew you in my body. The amniocentesis DNA testing showed you to have XX sex genes. Your body developed perfectly, beautifully, in the womb and out of it. You were born as my daughter, and I delighted in my daughter.

My grieving comes from sadness about how all these factors in the world have shaped you to hate your essential embodiment. I am sad the world feels so daunting -- for you and for me.

You are still you, and yet you are changing into a person I don't recognize. This masculine you is brash, defensive, looking for a fight, performative, and misogynistic. You swear like a sailor. I have heard you say hateful things about females. Remember, I am among the group whom your hatred targets.This is not how we raised you.

I would rather you become my son from a place of authentic emergence, not from stuff you've learned on the Internet, a reactionary response to a scary world. I would rather have a son who is sensitive, thoughtful, and kind. The boy/man you present to the world is combative and invested in how unfair and mean the world is.

For 14 years I knew you as my daughter. Right now you cannot see a way to continue living as a woman, yet I can see it. And... I recognize I have no power over what you choose to do eventually. I simply wanted to share how I experience you and the world.

You know about brain development. About how the adolescent brain basically goes haywire and isn't finished until the mid-20s. So I have given space for your exploration. My refusal to consent to your taking testosterone and getting a double mastectomy comes from knowing that this is a time of change. What feels true to you now might change. If it IS genuine, it will be true in the future. Life is a process of becoming. There is no need to rush.

I will write another letter about my practical concerns regarding medical transition. There are many serious side effects and potential health issues that come with this. So if when you turn 18 you are determined to do it, I want you deciding with informed consent. I want you to understand what you are taking on. But this letter is long enough as is.

I love you. I know you know this. I'm grateful that you read this.

Release From Perpetual Childhood

All I want for my 60th birthday is for you to give this your time and attention, and to let me know you’ve read it. I don't need a discussion. One of the burdens of being gifted with psychological insight is that I understand context. I understand how life shapes people, and that “hurt people hurt people.” I have spent decades of my life doing this regarding my parents, particularly Dad. I have used this compassion for him against myself; it has been a tool I use to disregard the actual damage he inflicted on me. I’ve told myself: he came from poverty, abuse, Catholicism, death of his father at 14, is probably autistic, has anxiety disorder. He provided a roof, food, clothing, financial support. He did not physically beat me regularly; he did not sexually abuse me. He “did the best he could.”

But in reality, I grew up without a sense of self, feeling worthless, scared, defensive, withdrawn, needing external validation to justify my existence. And while Mom contributed (especially by using me as her therapist to cope with the marriage), the bulk of responsibility falls on Dad’s shoulders. He did not see or treat me as a person for the first three decades of my life. He once made a comment at a family gathering (in 2006?) that we were probably terrified of him as kids. That oblique reference stuck with me, and I realized it was the closest he would ever come of admitting the damage he had done to us. And yes, once I got my master’s degree and met A, then married and had a kid, his regard shifted toward more respect and some admiration for my creative talents (writing and art) and intelligence. By then it was too late for me to care. The damage he wrought outweighed it. These are some of my most potent memories of him in relationship with me.

Physical

• One time while camping, we were packing up very early to leave, around 7 a.m. I was probably in middle school. I happened to shut the car door too hard, and he reacted by grabbing me and snarling not to do that.

• When I was really little, I remember him holding me while we were on a big boat, like a ferry, and him pretending that he was going to let me fall; it terrified me. 

• I remember him whipping my legs with a belt when I was around 9 or 10. It was summertime. I’d been mean to Tony and pushed him. Then I had to go to swim lessons with my obviously whipped legs. 

• At 26, home on spring break from college, a conversation about school and money escalated, and I tried to pause it. I suggested we talk when we were calmer and tried to leave the room. He became enraged and came at me to prevent me from walking away from him. T actually had to intervene to keep him from my physically.

• There was zero physical affection from him; no security or safety.

Emotional

• As an under-10 child, I felt that his default toward me was disapproval and dislike; as a teen I thought he was angry at me and that he hated me.

• His method of punishment in adolescence was to ground me indefinitely (no seeing friends, no phone use, no going anywhere other than school and church); not knowing when this would end was torment.

• When he was angry at me, he would scream, “You are not my daughter!” 

• In high school when angry with me, he would threaten to send me away to a boarding school. 

• He was angry and punitive regarding math struggles in elementary school; I felt stupid.

• I had a boy penpal from another country in high school. Once, I got a letter and wrote back and asked Dad for a stamp. He raged at me for asking, because he thought I hadn’t waited long enough after receiving the letter. I was showing I was “too eager.”

• Numerous times in high school and my 20s, in anger he said I was a loser and I would never finish anything.

• His general demeanor and emotional transmission was terrifying; just existing in the house felt dangerous.

• In high school, he’d rage at Mom late at night. I could hear it from my bed. I remember once standing at the top of the stairs, screaming “Stop it! Stop iiiitt!” He came to the bottom of the stairs and told me to mind my business. 

• When I moved back in at 25 to pay off debt, he sat me down and told me I was a “guest” and not to interfere with T’s last year of high school. Any infractions would result in me getting kicked out.

• As a child/teen, any time I mentioned a career I might like, he negated it mostly using reasons having to do with my personality (except teaching, which he said there was a glut of teachers); I couldn’t be a journalist because I wasn’t “competitive enough.” I couldn’t be a counselor because I was “too sensitive.”

• His psychological power over me continued into my mid-20s. I remember when I wrote a letter to him explaining that I decided I was going to study psychology, despite it not having financial potential, for the sake of my interest in it. I had been living independently and paying my own way for years, yet I still felt I had to make a case to him. 

• At 19, I was working full-time for a dentist who went on eight weeks vacation in the winter without paying me. Without income I wasn’t going to be able to pay rent. I was so scared and depressed with my life. Having hardly any money, I shoplifted Nytol, because I was going to commit suicide. I happened to get arrested. I was too scared to tell Dad because I was certain he would kick me out of the house. He ended up not doing so, but the point is that his abuse of me had led me to assume this. 

• No care was expressed toward my emotional state that led me to feeling suicidal.

• He forbade me going to therapy as long as I lived under his roof, which I ignored. But I had to keep it secret.

• He ordered me to go to church as long as I lived under his roof, which I finally rebelled against at 20 and told him I’d just lie and say I did. 

Neglect

• I felt invisible to him; he expressed no interest in what I thought, wanted, or needed, and elicited no conversations. He was utterly incurious about me.

• After T was born, I held even less importance, because the SON, especially a genius son, had been given to him. (I do not fault T in any way for this; he didn’t choose it.) 

• He refused to give me rides for extracurricular activities. I remember he got so angry once when an introductory Junior Achievement session let out later than expected. He raged as if it was my fault. So, I just stopped joining anything after 9th grade.

• He basically ignored me as an adolescent; there were days and weeks he did not speak to me.

• In elementary school I desperately wanted to join school band and play flute; he would not let me join. It was out of the question to even discuss.

• I taught myself to ride a bike on my best friend’s bike at age 5. I desperately wanted a bike, but he said “No bike until 5th grade.” I felt so babyish and stupid using the tricycle. Mom snuck behind him and got me a used bike in 4th grade, which somehow I was allowed to keep. 

• I was nothing to him. I was his burden, something to provide for and get married off and out of the house. That message came through clearly in the atmosphere of the household. 

• I was nearly 30 when I finally realized I am really, really intelligent; his utter disregard for me all those years kept me from really seeing this.

Financial

• In my junior year of high school I worked at the state fair demonstration kitchen with my friend S. I earned $200 for two weeks. S got to use her earnings as she wanted. Dad made me put all but $20 in the bank.

• He would not allow me to buy my own stereo or boombox while I lived at home, even at age 18, 19, 20, when I was paying rent to live there.

• I paid rent and bought my own groceries after age 18 while living at the house.

• I dearly wanted a 10-speed bike for all of high school. I researched them and saved money. I tried to present this to him, and he exploded. The subject was closed; he would not even hear me out.

• He refused to fill out the FAFSA form which is required for applying for student loans.

• After a year at OCC trying to study a major he deemed acceptable, I decided to take a break and look for work. I told him I didn’t want to waste his money. But only two weeks after I told him, I had not gotten a job yet. He screamed me that I was “screwing” him. 

• He used my sisters’ mistakes against me: L left college after one year, so he decreed that I would not be allowed to go away to college. E borrowed his money to buy her car, and apparently stopped paying on the loan at some point. In response he forbade me to even get a driver’s license while I live under his roof. I was 20 when I moved out, and 21 when I got a license. 

• When I wanted to go full-time to college in my later 20s, I couldn’t get enough financial aid. He offered to loan me $8000, with the following conditions: I was to pay it in full within five years of the loan issue; I could not get a car, take a vacation, get married, or have a child during that period; I would work all of my breaks at a temp job. It was demeaning, and I felt horrible about accepting the terms. I talked with Mom, and she replied that if I really wanted to get the degree, I would have to. So I did, with misgiving.

• When I later proposed to take summer classes so I could graduate sooner and start repayment (I was so worried about how I would repay it), he became enraged that I was trying to change the contract. (That’s when he came at me and T intervened.) That’s the moment I woke up and said “no more,” and decided my self-respect was worth more than the degree, and left.

• The day after the incident, I met Mom for coffee. She handed a memo to me from him, which told me I “bit the hand” that fed me, because he had intended to forgive the loan upon completion. And that I was to return the house key, not initiate any contact with him, to wait until he decided to engage with me. Oh, and the money he’d “loaned” me at that point ($3000) would be forgiven provided I showed him passing grades for the year.

• After being arrested, he told me he would not be engaging a lawyer for guidance. (I did not end up needing one, but I was extremely scared of what would happen.)

After re-reading all this, I’m astounded that I kept any contact with him at all over the years. Any non-family member reading this would be as well. His sperm provided half my DNA and gave me the opportunity to be embodied. He provided the basics and the occasional kind gesture, such as building me a bookcase or typing table. He did the bare minimum a parent is supposed to do for a child. But in all aspects of being a FATHER, I give him a FAILING grade. He treated me as his possession. He wielded power over me not recklessly, but with cruelty. He used his energy in an effort to kill my spirit. And he nearly succeeded.

And so on this father’s day in 2023, I lay him to rest. He is dead to me. I am done.