J went to a lock-in at our church last night. Our awesome, accepting oasis of (for the most part) liberal-minded, loving people in the heart of the bible belt. He hung out with the same guys he always does, he spoke in "dude"s and "like"s, the way he always does. He ran around generally being a 14-year-old boy, by binary standards. But, as I watched him, I kept thinking, "But he's a girl." The disconnect was a struggle for me last night. The fact that he feels like a girl but wants to continue dressing as he does currently and is still attracted to girls got in my head. He is a lesbian. A sort-of-butch lesbian. Would it be easier for me if he was straight up MtF and attracted to males? Would it be easier if he were "just" gay? Maybe. Maybe not. But this is not about me. This is about my child blossoming in to his true self. And that is wonderful. I love my child for whoever he is, I just want to know more of him. Of who he really is and has felt the need to hide from the world for so long. It's got to be done on his own time, I recognize and respect that. He's slowly opening up: I've learned he does want to grow his hair out; he's thinking about hormone blockers; he's been working on his friends at school to open their minds to accepting LGBTQ people not as sinners but as humans; he's considering joining a group for LGBTQ kids. But I want to have time to sit down with him and really get to know what's going on in his head. Until he tells his dad, it's going to continue to be so hard to carve out that time. But again, that's got to be done on his own time. Just before I left the church for the night, the kids had been messing around with an app that changed your appearance. You could look old or young or be a girl or a guy. While texting photos of something else to a friend, a photo of J with long flowing blonde hair got sent accidentally. J was asking the friend to delete that photo, and the friend - the last kid in the world to be intentionally cruel - was jokingly ignoring him. Then J looked at me with pleading, panicked eyes, and I realized he was so scared that someone would guess. That he would out himself before he was ready. That he'd been playing with that app as a cover to try out new looks. The boy deleted the picture and the night went on. But that little glimpse at the real pain of this reality broke my heart.
J will be entering a new school in the fall as he goes to high school. Not many people there will be from his previous school but one good friend (who, incidentally, I think will be very accepting when J comes out to him) will make the move with him. Will he choose to use this as an opportunity to start again in his true identity? Will he continue to hide who he is because it's just too much for him in this part of the country? Will he live as a female at home and a male in public? I just don't know where this will take us. Wherever the road goes, I am beside him every step of the way, even on the days I have a tricky time wrapping my head around it.