I'm sorry to do this again, but I'm so angry, frustrated and bottled up that if I don't get this out, I'm going to break something or lash out at someone.
So my parents have offered to pay for anything to do with and support me transitioning. Thing is, they're not. At all. It's all talk, talk, talk and nothing gets done. Which I wouldn't mind so much if they were actually honest and said "yeah actually we don't support you transitioning, will never see you as female and don't give a shit about you as long as our feelings of parental duty are fulfilled." Since I was 16, literally anything I wanted was "wait until *next life milestone* and we'll be able to help you do it then", but those promises never came around.
First it was "wait until you're 16", then "wait until you've finished college (in UK, college =/= university)", "wait until you're 18", "wait until you're 21", "wait until you've finished university", etc... and every time things have been put off again where financial issues/my "safety"/convenience were problems. The latest one was "wait until we've moved house" which I called bullshit on, and guess what...house moving is finished and my parents are still finding excuses any way they can, despite me calling them out on it.
The worst part is that they don't even see it, so I come across as an ungrateful, self-entitled prick when I complain about it. My mother says "we've been helping you pay off your student fees, your car insurance and now your electrolysis, you should be grateful; most parents wouldn't do that for their children". (Yes, she still calls my 21 year old brother and my 24 year old self "children". She literally won't let me go long distance traveling without "an adult".)
Let me point out that the only reason I'm having electrolysis is because she says she doesn't want me to become unable to afford HRT and then have my body hair grow back. Bearing in mind that I could've started this years ago, and she only started paying for it because I was so obviously miserable. She wants me to "do it properly if you're going to do it at all", without understanding that I could still have been having electrolysis while seeing therapists and starting to transition. Also bear in mind that if I had started when I wanted to, I would have fully transitioned by now.
The point is that she's holding this over me now as "being supportive" and "making progress", despite it going to take until I'm at least 25 just to finish my face and chest. "But you're still young, you have plenty of time yet!" siiiiiiiiiiiiiggggghhhhh.... She also believes that not throwing me out, not charging me for living (occasionally) at home, buying me (second hand) clothes (that she knows I don't like the style of), ranting about "the gay agenda" and LGBT people, and being casually offensive and transphobic all the time (and refusing to acknowledge that she is) is all "being supportive". I don't even have the bravery to tell her that, at best, she is being barely tolerant, not supportive. This is the same person that got angry and yelled at 20 year old me when I timidly requested that my family refer to me as female and by my chosen name, despite her knowing at the time about my condition. The only way she could be less supportive is if she threw me out and disowned me. Yet she also asks what she can do to make me more happy and comfortable?!?!?!?
I'll also point out that she will literally sit at her computer for days at a time (in between food and sleep) researching absolutely everything about a specific subject that she has a mild interest in, but literally everything she knows about transsexuality has come from mainstream TV, talk shows and what I've told her. As a result, she thinks that trans fetishists are the nicest people, that we like being called "ladyboys", that a successful transition means the trope of "chopping your parts off and getting a fake vagina" (seriously, she doesn't even care to find out how it's actually done, but says she'll pay for a trip to Thailand and the surgery to let me have it done?!?!?!), that detransitioning is commonplace, can't pronounce any of the terminology correctly every damn time she talks about the subject, doesn't care to learn and calls me oversensitive when I point out her offensiveness and erroneous terms, etc...
Her attitude is a double-edged sword that I really don't understand. She will completely ignore and trash anything I want to do that makes me happy. Absolutely all of it. Yet she says her main motivation for suffocating me so much is because she doesn't want me to get hurt or upset? I told her that I wanted her and my father to stop spending money on me because it was making me feel guilty. She replied with "But you're worth it, we like having you around and making you happy". Yeah, okay...so why then were you saying stuff like "all you fucking kids do is cost us money" and "the amount we spend on you ungrateful bastards..."?
Hell, my parents have just made a profit of £80K ($120K) from moving house, and they wouldn't even let me have £350 ($500) to spend on myself for the first time in years. Hell, my car has minor things that need fixing, and they won't even let me take it to a mechanic to fix it because "it'll be too expensive", yet my father is insistent that I wait at least 2 weeks to maybe get the right parts to "fix" what he thinks might be wrong with it. (I can't take it myself, because the only money is what I get off them to live on.) Their promises of buying me a new (used) car also went out the window at the same time they got their money, aaand they're still refusing to let me start transitioning because they're worried about me and don't think that I could handle it myself, along with saying that I'm feminine enough to pass full time, daily, in public, without even transitioning... (PPPFFFFFFHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA).
My dad is also pissing me off because he told me that if I want a new car, I should get a job. I tell him that I can't because I suffer massively from the mental strain of realising the futility and unfairness of the modern job market and exhaustion from depression, which he replies with "everyone starts like that, you just have to get used to it". I explained to him how much work I'd have to do on minimum wage in order to simply exist and sustain myself, let alone have the time and money to actually enjoy life (another thing that depresses me at the thought of work). "Well tough, that's the way things are. Besides, you almost have a degree, you wouldn't be working for minimum wage". ....................REALLY DAD? REALLY? I'M ON TRACK FOR A THIRD OR FOURTH AT BEST, AND THERE ARE HONOUR AND FIRST STUDENTS STRUGGLING TO FIND JOBS BETTER THAN MINIMUM WAGE. And I have to find somewhere LGBT friendly that is also trans friendly, and somewhere that is within driving distance, and that isn't so repetitive, boring or difficult that it makes me want to kill myself. Let me see how many of those are around.....yeah, like NONE.
(I would love to work in adult retail or some kind of sex work, but BOOOOY that would not go down well...)
I'm also venting this here because I can't talk to my parents directly about it because A. they take every single ounce of criticism as a personal attack (one of my mothers' frequent sayings is "there's no such thing as positive criticism") and B. they're hardcore conspiracy theorists. One of their beliefs is that children are being brainwashed to turn against their parents in order to split up families and make the country more controllable, yadda yadda yawn; So if I mention anything that goes against them, they think I've been programmed to reject and be aggressive towards them. They already say they think the same has happened to my siblings, so no doubt they'd think the same about me. They also believe that I am trans and my brother is bi because of chemicals in the water and food supplies in order to....fuck, I don't even know at this point. They idolise crazy and manipulative people in alternative media, so they literally believe anything.
I don't think my parents understand that they're basically emotionally manipulating me and that I can't get out of it. They take everything that criticises anything they do as a personal attack, and I'm so dependent on them right now because I'm weak, depressed and pathetic and I don't have anyone else in my life. Not that I'd want them to take the strain anyway. What pisses me off most is that they don't even realise how toxic they're being. They actually think they're being good parents and don't deserve any of this stuff that I think about them and won't acknowledge things from my perspective.
Not that I'd tell them, I'm too scared to. I know they won't kick me out or stop paying to keep me alive and debt free or anything like that, but in some ways the silent treatment and ignoring, apathetic attitudes are worse because it justifies their "good parenting". "We have no problem making you feel like shit, exacerbating your depression and self loathing, and submissive to our paranoia and overbearing boundry-laying, but we won't let you starve or run out of fuel for traveling. What do you think we are, bad parents?"
I'm not sure if I've conveyed my perspective well enough that people get where exactly I'm coming from, but I just don't know what to do. It's been exactly the same over the past 6 years and I have no idea how to escape without simultaneously crippling my confidence and self esteem further, and without pissing my parents off so much that they'll disown me. (Easier said than done with them.)
I'm sorry, I know I'm a negative person, but after bottling up over the past couple of months, stuff like this has really been eating away inside me.
Last edited: Dec 22, 2015