I’m presenting as Dylan tomorrow for my grandfather’s 90th birthday. They’re the only people I’ve not come out to, mainly because my father thinks me coming out to them would kill them:
“You do what you have to do. But I have a responsibility because they’re my parents.”
I wish I could adequately convey what he does to me. The petrifying, melting, violence that just being with him is. It’s actually convenient he’s written me off after I’ve transitioned; I don’t have to worry about seeing him much. He looks at me with this profound sadness, as if he knows that now, truly, I will never amount to anything, never do enough to make his own life worthwhile by proxy.
I hate presenting as Dylan. I hate it, in part, because it’s so easy. I wear baggier pants, no bra, the same oversized t-shirts I wore then. Voila. That it is so easy is crushing. As if all that separates me from being male is a type of shirt. As if I really am fooling myself. As if I’ll never be who I need to be.
And looking at myself, I can easily see that I won’t. Dylan stares back at me at will, and the entire past few months just seem like one giant charade. Do I pass? Do people just give me the benefit of a doubt?
I realize this, too, shall pass. That someday I can have a career I will enjoy, I can have a self I like, I can have the love and life I want. Or at least I can keep trying with very good chances. But goddamn if I don’t look at myself in the mirror, seeing what I’ll see all day tomorrow, and think that nothing’s worth the wait.
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