When I was a child the winter holidays held so much magic for me. I remember being tiny and comparing the height of my stack of Christmas gifts with the stack my Grandmother recieved. I loved the gifts. I loved getting together with my family. I loved the food and the decorations. I always looked forward to it and was sad when the days were over.
But, things changed as I got older. I spent most of family get togethers sitting on the stairs watching my family interact. I was an outsider looking in. It wasn't that I felt unloved, or unwanted. I just didn't feel like I 'fit' with them any more. I wanted to and I didn't want to. Its impossible to explain and just as difficult for me to really understand. The magic was vanishing.
After college, when I was married, I spent my first Christmas away from my family. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I don't think that I have ever been as homesick as I was that day. However, after surviving the first one away it got easier and easier. I've since found that the holidays are easier when you have someone else to share them with. Two years ago when I was partnered for the first time in a few years I felt the magic come back. And then it faded again. Not because of the ending of the relationship, but more because I changed. Last year I was just over 8 months into my transition and still not fully knowing where things were going for me. I didn't know if I was going to stay Ellen or completely morph into Aaron, so it was easier to b with the people who I fear will never recognize my transition. This year it isn't so easy.
Tonight I sat around a table playing cards with my parents, my brother and his wife, a cousin, an uncle and two aunts. In so many ways it felt safe and comfortable and nostalgic. And then someone would call me Ellen, and I would feel my stomach flip and my heart break just a little. It broke because Ellen isn't here any more, and it broke because I knew that I am hurting the people I love more than all others by doing this, and it broke because I am too weak to stand up for who I am and say my name to them and claim my existance. "I am Aaron" I should have said, but I didn't. I just let my heart break and continued on.
A week or so ago I met with one of my professors to discuss how behind I am with my class work, all the really cool things that are happening in my life that are making it difficult to get my class work completed, and the fact that I'm just exhausted all of the time. After listening to me talk for a bit and mentioning that my Mom still calls me Ellen and how my coworkers and friends deal with my mother about that, she looked at me and said "no wonder you are tired." You are living two lives, trying to manage how everyone else thinks and feels about you, trying to buffer the world for your mother, and manage a situation that shouldn't be so difficult. Basically, I'm working overtime every day just to keep the balls in the air so my mother doesn't have to have my transition shoved in her face and in so doing, I'm denying who I truly am and continuing to shove everything that I'm becoming back into the skin of Ellen, which was never a good fit. And this is only Thanksgiving! Christmas is going to be so much worse.
In less than a week I'm going to give a presentation on what it is like to be Trans to a large group of mental health professionals. For them I have no problem standing up and proclaiming who I am, what I go through every day, what I have gone through during the course of my life, etc. Its not a problem. I'm Aaron, I'm confident (and somewhat self-absorbed) and I can hold my own just being totally real. And just thinking about it I feel like such a huge fraud! I can't be myself in front of my family how can I even begin to think that I know what it is like to be a self-actualized Trans person living in the world and enduring what the world throws at me. Once again I feel that I need to suddenly grow a spine!
And with that, I'm going to call it a night and hope that in the craziness that ensues with a huge family meal tomorrow that I can fly under the radar, hang out with my brother and his wife and escape unscathed with some amount of dignity in tact. Wish me luck.
