Trans Love by Freiya Benson

Author:Freiya Benson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784508043
Publisher: Jessica Kingsley Publishers
Published: 2019-06-19T16:00:00+00:00

PART 4

FAMILY AND FRIENDSHIP

It’s fairly safe to say that being trans impacts a lot of my life. Sometimes it’s in a positive way, and sometimes it’s less so, but nearly always these impacts are in relation to other people.

Part of the problem is that I’m never sure exactly what reaction I’ll get when people find out I’m trans. I’ve written about this in relation to dating earlier, but it also affects other types of relationships as well.

When I came out to my parents, for instance, I genuinely had no idea how they’d react. For a lot of us the first people who show love towards us are parents, and it’s often seen as an unconditional love, but there was a part of me that was worried that being trans would be the exception to this rule.

What if the love they felt for me was actually for the person they thought I was before I came out? What if they saw this ‘new’ (to them anyhow) person as some sort of imposter, stealing their child from them? What if their love for me was conditional?

And once you ask that question then the floodgates open.

When I tell them I’m trans, do I tell them everything? Do I tell them about the pain I’ve felt for the majority of my life, the steps I’ve taken to change this, the hormones, the name change, the fact that other people already know and that I didn’t come to the first?

How do I know where the limit is? What amount of information is too much information? What is the breaking point for love?

And, of course, it’s not just my parents. How many of us have something that we don’t express, or don’t do as much, or even just don’t mention at all, in order to hold on to love?

At what point does doing this become better than no love at all?

It’s brutal as well, I know. We’re faced with the possibility of living our truth, but losing something that feels fundamental to our existence, or living a half-truth and constantly holding ourselves back to keep something that often isn’t even what we really want.

For me, a lot of these fears proved unfounded, but I know that many other trans people are not so lucky. I know people who were kicked out of family homes when they came out, who were cut off in every way from the people that were meant to love them the most, because they dared to live a more authentic life in the gender that was right for them.

That loss is huge and vicious and I don’t understand why someone would do this to a child of theirs. As much as I worry about the breaking point for love, it still takes me by surprise when I hear about someone that found out exactly what it is.

However, after a while this theme becomes a part of life. After a while you start to expect that being trans makes love conditional, and that becomes your narrative.

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