Hi, Guys and Girls!
My son threw me a real curve ball Monday night. He moved to Dublin a couple of months ago to take up a new job, while I live about 100 miles away. Monday night we were texting each other via Skype, and he said that since he had Wednesday off, he’d like to come up for the day—go for a walk in the country, watch a film or two, listen to some music, have a nice dinner, share a bottle of wine.
I wasn’t going to say no to that, but immediately all the little gears and wheels in my head madly started whirring round and round. My flat is filled with girly stuff, of course. If the cops ever get a search warrant to this place, they’re going to assume that it’s shared by a guy and girl, which in a sense, I suppose, it is. But I immediately started thinking about what I needed to do to safeguard my little secret since I’m not out to my son.
As for my clothes and cosmetics, I thought I could just pack them all away in a big box and stick that at the back of a closet. But that was going to be an awful nuisance, and I really didn’t want to bother. So I decided the solution would be to get it all out of sight in the drawers or closet and then simply lock the bedroom door. If my son asked why I’d done that, it would be because what with the window being open, the door was banging and rattling all the time. That seemed like a satisfactory cover story.
Then, the bedroom that he was going to sleep in downstairs was pretty filthy and needed to be hoovered—and the hoover (vacuum cleaner, in Yankee English) is always kept in my bedroom. So I needed to hoover his room before he arrived, and that way he wouldn’t come up looking for it. That problem solved.
Then of course I’ve got all kinds of girly stuff on my computer, and he might well want to get on my computer while he was here—to check his e-mails, Facebook account, etc. If he wanted to Google something, all he had to type was “c” and he’d come up with this forum. Well, I could delete my browsing history and trust him not to go dipping into my document files. He does respect my privacy. So that was taken care of.
There were a couple of other little things I thought might raise questions, so I dealt with them. And just when I was thinking I had all the bases covered and could relax, I discovered a hair on my sitting-room floor—a hair a good 12 inches longer at least than my own. You know how it is, you leave hairs all over the place and you never know where and when one of them will pop up. Well, the story I could give him about them was obvious, but now I had to decide exactly what sort of woman my “girlfriend” was. I supposed I could just describe myself: beautiful, charming, witty, fun to be around, modest, truthful, etc., etc., but then of course he’d want to meet her. American sitcom time!
At this point it occurred to me that it was all getting ridiculous. When you’re reduced to worrying about hairs on the couch or in the bathroom, really, you need to start taking a long look at the situation. And the obvious, once-and-for-all solution to the whole problem would be to just tell the truth. It would make life a lot simpler.
But there are problems there, as we all know. There’s been at least one thread on this forum concerned with the difficulties connected with coming out to children. Also, the last while I’ve been seriously blundering about in the Pink Fog, and this is definitely the sort of decision you don’t want to make in the middle of a pea-souper.
Yet I felt that I needed to come out to him. I’m seriously exploring my TGism these days and I’m not going to stop any time soon. I don’t know where I’m going with it, but in a little country like Ireland where everybody knows everybody else’s business, the chances were good he was going to hear about it sooner or later anyway. Better he should hear it from me. And I didn’t feel like this decision to tell him was coming from the Pink Fog. It felt like it was coming from plain, old common sense. I had more than 24 hours to think about it, and in fact I’d been mulling it over for a long time already, but as the moment of truth approached, I felt in my heart it was the right thing to do.
So when he got to my flat, while we were cooking the dinner, I simply told him everything. I had spoken no more than a few sentences when I knew everything was going to be alright. No shock on his face, he was calmly listening and taking it all in.
I asked him how much he knew about TGism, and he said, “Not a thing.” So I said to myself, “Excellent!” It’s great to have an unbiased audience. That way you get to bias them yourself. I gave him a crash course in basic TGism; I told him about my experience in life and how I’d always tried to repress my true nature and how tired I was of keeping a secret; I told him what it means to me to dress and what it does for me; I mentioned this forum and how much I’d benefitted from it. In perhaps almost an hour I gave him a pretty good overview of what life is like for the TG person.
He asked a few questions—though he didn’t ask if I was gay. He knows better than that. Neither did he ask anything specific about my clothes, cosmetics, etc. I suspect he’s a wee bit uncomfortable with that, so I didn’t go into any details there. But when we were done, everything was cool. Big hugs, we’re still parent and son.
My son and I have always been very close. His mother walked out when he was two, and I was glad to see the back of her. So it was just the two of us for the next sixteen years: we’d shared a lot, been through a lot together. I was hoping I could bank on that in my real hour of need, and he didn’t let me down. He came through it all brilliantly. Last thing he did as he was leaving this morning was to give me another hug and tell me, “Let me know how it’s going.”
The benefits of coming out with it were immediately felt. For one thing I can now get on this forum, or anything else online having to do with TG matters, without having to hide it from him. I no longer have to watch every little thing I say out of fear that one little remark might lead him to ask a question I’d have trouble answering. I won’t leave my girly stuff openly lying about my place, but neither do I have to worry about him finding it.
Most importantly this: lately I’ve been wondering about the possibility of coming out in the little town I live in, and I’ve sought advice on this forum. People have tried hard to help me, but of course they’re hindered by the fact that they don’t know my circumstances, this town, my landlord, etc. My son knows all these things, so I can talk to him about coming out. Yesterday, he mentioned a couple of very useful things I hadn’t considered myself, and he shed a bit of light on another issue. So now I have a friend and advisor with real knowledge of the circumstances. That is obviously extremely valuable.
So the lesson learned: THE TRUTH SHALL SET YOU FREE! Of course the proviso here is that you’re giving it to the right people. And that’s the catch, isn’t it? How do you know who the right people are? But as you can imagine, my heart is much lighter this morning.
Best wishes, Annabelle
Originally Posted by suzy1
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