Telling Mom

I was not that nervous when, following my oldest child, I entered the therapist’s office for the session I was specifically asked to attend to discuss some of what Van was experiencing. Van. I was still getting used to that, getting used to trying to use that when calling to her from another room. Van, short for Nirvana, a spiritual bodiless state of perfection. Her chosen name, she told me, since Isabelle never felt comfortable to her. Isabelle stumbled – wait, I mean Van stumbled through her pronouncement while I sat there in a consciously open and receptive pose, with a warm loving smile. I took the news on auto-pilot. “Okay, sure. I’m fine with that. I’m not sure what it all means yet, but I can’t see that it would be a problem in any way. … You’re my child and I love you no matter what you are. That’s all that really matters.” Nervous smiles from Van, approving ones from her therapist. I was handed pamphlets and a book on understanding my teen and business cards for therapists in New Haven specializing in this situation. I kept trying to process the information. I knew I wouldn’t ultimately have any negative thoughts or feelings, but I could feel a sense of loss that would require grieving. There was just nothing to attach it to as of yet. Nothing had changed except the knowledge of what was to come. And what was to cease. On the positive side, Van was greatly relieved and more open and talkative than she had been in months.

The last of my chemo treatments, the frantic assignment push at the end of her freshman year, the new prescription for Concerta, an ADD medicine Van requested to be allowed to try, the 4^th grad and 6^th grade stepping up ceremonies and the pre-op appointments for my next surgery all conspired to keep me from reading the 65 page mini-book on understanding my teen until almost three weeks later. A time during which the news had made not one iota of difference in the day to day happenings. When there was finally time to brush up on this new horizon before us, I felt already qualified to navigate the social and emotional issues, to advocate on her behalf in the school system. I was already composing letters to family and friends explaining the change gently but firmly. It wasn’t until I got to the chapter on the process that I felt the hitch, specifically the FTM sequence. My heart froze up at the simple term “Top Surgery”. It put a crack in my acceptance and very quickly shattered my grief all around me.

Page 63 of Understanding Your Transgendered Teen, the section on FTM, female to male transitioning. This chapter put into a clearer context the chest binder we special ordered from Malaysia and the goatee she often sketched on her mouth and jaw with eyebrow pencil in the privacy of our home. These things I could accept as explorations of her identity. It was more than a year and a half since her tortured admission that she was gay, so these behaviors seemed, well… seemed in line with a “butch” identity. Not that Isabelle – I mean Van, had ever allowed herself to get within a mile of a personal romantic relationship. Though I accepted her stated preference, it was all still theoretical.

Over the course of the next year she modified her self-identity from gay to gender queer. “Google it” she suggested, if I wanted to understand her better. Gender queer is explained by Google as someone who prefers at times to be female in appearance and at other times to be male in appearance. It seemed the latest fad in teen rejection of the binary choices often laid out before them, like the rush to embrace term bisexual as opposed to heterosexual or homosexual when a new sexual revolution was underway, the AIDS goes public years in the 90’s. I myself helped her shop for a suitable tux ensemble rather than a prom dress for the homecoming dance, her first at high school. I had accepted it all without judgment or criticism or even just the reluctance to let go of the daughter I thought I might have that her father so often burdened her with.

But top surgery, surgical removal of breast tissue that causes  gender dysphoria, an emotionally painful schism between what my child felt she was and how she was seen by the rest of the world. Well, hadn’t I just been through that?

 It all began around then, I think to myself, around the time she first started menstruating. She was nearing thirteen. The start of December. The end of the second quarter in 7^th grade, just 

As they approach their teens, you know that their hormones will lead them around by the nose, or drag them, kicking and screaming, forward. So yes, you expect  the pulling away, the with-holding of intimate personal information, the crankiness. But not the unbridled anger alternating with self-isolation from me and the rest of the family that Isabelle fell into.

At ten she was outgoing, and had lots of friends. When she was with them she was crazy with laughter and inane antics. But on her 10^th birthday, she asked me an odd thing. She asked if she could be ten twice, since in most of the chapter books she was reading, bad things happened in your 11^th year. She insisted on being 10, 10 again and then 12. When she did turn 11, it was as if she spent the year holding her breath. She joined in on the laughter only after she was sure it was safe, and stopped laughing before the others, nervously looking around. I chalked it up to self-consciousness creeping in.

School was becoming increasingly difficult for her. She was as disorganized as she had ever been, but she was also unfocused, increasingly only physically present in the classroom, emotionally and mentally not listening to her teachers, not with the rest of her peers. Where was she? Where did her thoughts lead her, I wondered. Wherever it was, it seemed not a happy place.

The pressure of all that she was not, in the face of all the things she was expected to be – when she could verbalize her despair, eventually, two years later - it was that. She was not a 'she' at all. Imagine how stressful that would be. Everyday of your life since you realized the error that was made for you at birth.

For all of that, Van, my compassion for you flows.
Thank-you for believing in me enough to share it. For trusting in me enough to ask for help.
And my apology for all the time it took us to be ready for you.

- Mom