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coffeedrgn87 · 1 year

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On Rejection And Happiness

Note: In the below article I talk about coming out, rejection, Sex Ed, gender (euphoria, finding one’s gender, surgery), and living life. I also talk about acceptance, non-acceptance, but most of all, I talk about being hopeful and being kind to myself.

I recently found myself remembering a biology lesson from long, long ago. It was about the reproductive process in humans. It solely focused on a cishet man and a cishet woman conceiving a child through intercourse. At no point during this Sex Ed class (this was in the early 2000s in Germany) did my biology teacher talk about other ways to conceive a child (IVF, IUI, donor sperm/eggs to name but a few). There was no mention of surrogacy or adoption and there most definitely was no mention of other relationships between humans. Sexual intercourse between a cishet man and a cishet woman was all my Sex Ed curriculum covered.

Now, we can all agree that there is a lot wrong with that, but I’m not actually here to talk about that. I am here to talk about my mother; more specifically my mother insisting that I needed to prepare for an exam during which my knowledge of sexual intercourse between a cishet man and a cishet woman would be covered, where I’d be required to know certain formal vocabulary to describe genitalia, etc. You may be able to imagine that as a young teenager I found this whole study session incredibly embracing and the more my mother pushed to get me to recite the process based on imagery in my textbook, the more I shut down. I pushed her so far that she started yelling, which got my dad’s attention and he stepped in and sent me to my room to study by myself. I was eternally grateful for the respite. My mother, on the other hand, disagreed completely and I could hear her give out to my dad for always taking my side and going easy on me.

Not much to say about that. It was a common occurrence. My mother always pushed too hard and when—inevitably—my stubbornness kicked in, she got frustrated and lost it. My dad, however, having already raised two children (not perfectly what parents seldom are), realised that pushing wasn’t the way to handle me. During this particular incident he (and he was in his early seventies at that point) quickly realised that an adult woman trying to get a teenage child to teach her subpar early-2000s Sex Ed wasn’t ever going to be a fruitful endeavour. To this day, I am eternally grateful to my dad for all the times he stepped in. Having said that, I’m not here to shame my mother for wanting to help me study or for her desire to make sure I was prepared. However, I am going to call her out for her complete disregard of the queer community, for not mentioning that gay and/or lesbian couples could have children too. Sure, it wouldn’t have helped me prepare for the exam because it only tested what was in my textbook but the extra knowledge would have been much appreciated.

On that note, dad never explicitly mentioned anything, but he did often mention gay friends, lesbian clients, a queer someone he knew. He didn’t offer much detail, but he spoke about these couples and people as though their sexual orientation was perfectly normal, which it is. I never felt like he pointed out that someone he knew was gay or lesbian was him trying to make it about their sexual orientation but rather a way for me to learn that there were different types of people in the world. I do believe he mentioned trans people as well, though he may have used an outdated term back then. I won’t fault him for that either, at the time that was all the information he had and he tried, he really did.

This post isn’t about praising my dad for his unique way of putting diversity in humans onto my radar and it isn’t about shaming my mother. It also isn’t about the woefully inadequate Sex Ed I received. It is, however, about being queer, being non-binary and not being accepted for who I am and ignoring it, thinking I had a parent on my side.

Sadly my dad passed away before I could come out as non-binary to him and while I knew before he passed, he was too sick for me to have that conversation with him. However, I have no doubt that he would have accepted me. He never cared much about gender. His reason for putting me in a dress when I was a wild child was that all the trees and walls I insisted on climbing had easier access to my knees (they were forever scraped), but he had nothing to say once I started wearing trousers and feeling more comfortable in them. Growing up, I spent a lot of time hanging out at his workplace, asking millions of questions and just generally making a mess. He never brushed any of my questions off or used my gender as a reason not to explain how something worked. In fact, he always answered all of my questions. Sometimes with humour and sarcasm (knowing it would drive me absolutely mental) but always with patience.

Let me go back a little, though. Back to my high school days and a complete lack of diverse and inclusive Sex Ed. It was so utterly unuseful that I had a girlfriend and didn’t even realise we were more than friends until my group of ‘friends’ were fed up with me spending all my time with her and none with them. This inevitably led to me spending less time with her and us eventually breaking up. Us walking across campus holding hands (which we also did in class), kissing each other on the lips, and hugging for way longer than I hugged all my other friends didn’t feel weird or strange to me. It felt completely normal, it felt right.

These days, I affectionately refer to the girlfriend-I-didn’t-know-I-had-until-it-was-too-late as my ‘baby gay coming out’. Most of the time though, I use it to explain what a queer disaster I actually am.

I absolutely blame the complete lack of Sex Ed for my inability to realise that I was queer until I, aged 18, left Germany and moved to Ireland to start a life of my own. Being on my own was terrifying. Suddenly, everyone considered me an adult. Sure, I still ran to my dad with thousands of questions, but opening that bank account, drafting that first CV, going to job interviews, and signing the lease for my first flat, well, that was all my responsibility. With all that came freedom, the freedom to learn and observe and it didn’t take long before I proudly declared that I was gay, a full-on lesbian. I came out online first. It was easier to turn my Twitter profile into a colourful celebration of queer joy. Telling the few friends I had, and, of course, family, well, that took time. Looking back, I find it mildly horrifying that coming out to strangers on the internet seemed easier than being upfront about it with folx who’d known me all or most of my life. I can understand it, of course, but had there been more emphasis on diversity during those Sex Ed classes, I may not have found it next to impossible to sit down with the people in my life and come out to them.

I eventually did. Dad shrugged, lit another cigar and asked me whether I wanted coffee. He didn’t care either way. I was his child, his flesh and blood, and that was more important to him than who I wanted to be in a relationship with. I didn’t tell my mother until long after I had a sexual identity crisis due to falling in love with a man. I just about knew what being bisexual meant…didn’t learn the term ‘pansexual’ until 2018. So, when I did come out to my mother I had a steady girlfriend and thought it was pretty serious between us (it wasn’t, but that’s a different story). In hindsight, while I did use the term bisexual when coming out to my mother, the way I explained it aligns more with the definition of being pansexual. She didn’t say much, only that she didn’t see the point in limiting myself to only one gender, which I considered hilarious. For years, friends would chuckle when I told them the story and I’d smile because here was my mother, a forward-thinking, inclusive woman. I was so proud. Out of all the coming out memories that I have, it was my favourite. It said so much about her.

A few years ago, after many years or struggling with my gender identity but not having any words to describe myself (only that ‘woman’, ‘girl’ and ‘she/her’ felt beyond wrong) and crashing down the rabbit hole of gender confusion, I finally learnt the word ‘non-binary’ and it was like I’d finally found the light switch. The light came on and the world felt so right, so true. Coming out as non-binary wasn’t the easiest thing. It still isn’t. It requires a lot of energy, and the will to fight to be seen, to have my pronouns respected. But since finding a way to express my gender, something that didn’t feel icky and wrong, my happiness has increased drastically. I’ve found my name, I fought all the hard fights to have my gender recognised and my legal name changed. I even underwent gender-affirming surgery. The procedure, I first started to want it a decade ago, long before I knew why I wanted it. All I knew was that there was a part of me I desperately wanted gone, but because I didn’t have words to explain myself beyond ‘I want this, I need this’, medical professionals and friends continuously talked me out of pursuing what I wanted. I do not have enough fingers and toes to count how many times people have told me that I’ll want children one day. As it happens, I don’t. I love children, I taught children, but I don’t want them. I do not want to be a parent to a human. A cat, yes, absolutely.

A few days after my surgery, I finally realised just how detrimental the last decade has been, mostly for my mental health. Now, I can’t change the past and resenting it won’t do me any good either, but what I can do is be joyful about the present and enjoy the feeling of finally being whole. It’s an ecstatic feeling, a joy I’ll never let go.

Sadly, I’ve come to the realisation that my mother doesn’t appear to be as supportive as I thought she might be. Getting all my paperwork in order, having this surgery, it’s given me what I needed the most. Unfortunately, telling my mother about it all has resulted in her complete refusal to communicate with me. I can’t and won’t force her to be supportive of me and accept me for who I am, but her complete lack of understanding tainted that joyful coming out story and quite possibly ruined a rocky relationship beyond repair. Am I sad about it? Yes, absolutely. Do I regret ruthlessly pursuing my own happiness? No, most definitely not.

But I am struggling to understand how someone who once accepted me and indicated that gender was of no importance to her, all of a sudden decided to turn her back on me, her child. As her silence tells me that she’s no longer interested in a relationship, I won’t pursue it, but it stings. I’ve brought it up in therapy and I’m convinced that my therapist believes that I’m downplaying the situation, but give me one good reason to run after someone who has given me the silent treatment, who didn’t even ask about my recovery after the surgery, but was more interested in the information currently available on my passport, a question that completely knocked me off-kilter. Incidentally, it was also the last time I heard from her.

I could condemn her, paint my mother as the unaccepting demon, but I won’t. Instead, I’ve redirected my negative feelings and channelled them into my recovery, my writing, my scrapbooking adventure, and pursuing friendships with those who accept me as I am. I won’t deny that this silent rejection, the quiet disappearance act stings, but it leaves room for me to grow and accept someone new. Answers would be nice, but those can’t be forced. So, rather than overthinking the whole thing, it’s time to live my best life. I am queer. I am non-binary. I am demi. And I am a lesbian…mostly but not entirely. All these labels work for me. They don’t describe the whole me, but they say enough about me to give folx an idea of what they’re getting themselves into. Hopefully. If not, I have more words: troublemaker, butterfly, coffeedragon, quirky, honest, not always the most outgoing individual, human (in dragon form).

#rejection #happiness #queer joy #being non-binary #coming out #gender stuff #gender affirming surgery #lgbtqia #finding community #personal notes #about me #personal #i’m still standing #gender euphoria #a peek into the past

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