Queer as me - Part 6: The furious storm

• Posted on 16 June 2016
• By Rachael
• Posted in Personal Stories, Queer as me, Trans
• 0

This post is PART 6 in a guest blogger series following author Rachael's transition from an A.M.A.B (Assigned Male at Birth) individual to that of a self-identified trans woman.

If you are just discovering Queer as me, start the story from the beginning here.

People say that you never really know someone until you see them in a crisis. I now know that’s very accurate. The chaotic and furious reactions started from my very naive idea. I had thought that everyone that knew me would be happy for me finally after forty years, I knew who I was. It was quite foolish indeed for me to think such a thing, as I was about to find out. Facebook was my choice to tell all my friends and family that I was transgender. This is now one of my many regrets in life. This action caused more pain and heartache then can be written in a thousand books.

For a day or two I started to get curious questions on Facebook. What was being transgender mean? Why did I say that I was a woman now? Who told me such silly things? Also, why would I not only listen to this garbage, but believe it as well? After a while the questions stopped, then the calls started, for hours I would be arguing with friends and family about what I was thinking of doing. People shared my post and it was like being under a microscope. All of a sudden, people that I had barely interacted with before started to call me and just show up at my doorstep. Then I received a visit from a priest…The witch hunt had begun.

I understand, I do, I know that most people can’t grasp that gender and sexuality can and are very fluid. But what I couldn’t *at the time* understand why people who knew me and said that they loved me, thought I had gone crazy, or had been possessed by a demon. Of course, now we have more people talking about what it means to be transgender, and much more visibility in general. But when I came out, most people especially those from the right-wing conservative bent, had no knowledge of transgender anything. Or believed what FOX NEWS told them to believe, and that was that.

At the time of my coming out I was part of the Catholic Church and also part of an extremely traditional group. So of course, it shouldn’t come to a surprise that my family and friends that were also part of this group rallied around to save me from myself. Or so they thought.

Rachael

Editor’s Note: To read Queer as me - Part 7: Breaking of the mind, click here. Or click here to read the previous blog post Queer as me - Part 5: Calm before the storm. For the latest LSOP blog posts and so much more, make sure to add us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.