Yesterday was the 60th birthday (my elder by nine years) of my sister who used to be my brother. He had transgender surgery in 1974 when I was in high school. My parents dealt with it by drinking and not dealing with it. I have so many emotions still wrapped up in the whole situation that I have trouble even talking about it; matter of fact I rarely talk about it at all. But I need to, so here goes.
(Please understand, it's not the surgery itself, or any type of gender issue, it is the way the whole thing was handled by my parents.)
I may sound angry, bitter, resentful...I don't know. I don't mean to. I feel like there is poison inside me that needs to come out. It seems that God is dealing with me in layers, and I had to deal with all of the dysfunction in my adult life first, before we got down to this stuff.
I am looking back to the little girl that I was-fifth grade-to tell this story...
It was 1969 when my big brother, the apple of everybody's eye, the straight-A Beta club president, the 'most likely to succeed', left for Nashville on a full scholarship to a private school. When he left, he was brunette, slightly overweight, very conservative. When he came home for the holidays, he was much thinner, tan, blonde...A few months later I heard my father in the next room ask if he was 'homosexual', and I had no earthly idea what in the world that meant. But it turned my whole world upside down.
The story could get very long, but the condensed version is that he quit school, bounced all over the country, and ran up a huge amount of credit card debt, and then wrote a bunch of bad checks which my dad paid off by selling our home and moving us into a trailer. My mother plunged into deep depression. My father was mad as hell at the world.
The next time he came home, he was dressed as a woman. He spent a few years like that. I remember visiting him in Atlanta one summer and walking into what I guess I would describe now as some sort of drug house-probably herion since it was the 70's-although I didn't understand at the time; I think I was in maybe 8th grade at this point. Strange people lounging around, dirty, smelly...and one of my friends from school had come on 'vacation' with us, so she saw it too. THAT helped a lot...
A few years later, he went to Denver and had the surgery. My mother's mother and sister paid for it. My dad just kind of checked out and didn't try to stop it. He drank a lot. So did my mother. We had long since quit going to any family gatherings, like the huge family Christmas celebration at my paternal grandmother's or the big picnics at my uncles cabin on the lake. Our house was a very dark, sad place to live.
My parents sort of went into hiding, and if anyone asked about my brother, they lied. And they told me to lie, too. So I did. It hit me the hardest when I went to high school. I was terrified that someone would find out and I was so filled with shame about it; things were very different back then in the small Tennessee town that we lived in. All the teachers I had were the same ones he had, and he had been an excellent student, very active in clubs and such. They all wanted to know all about him. It was horrible.
So I started hiding, too. I went into high school as one of the 'good' kids, a cheerleader, a good student...but I decided that the druggie kids were safer because they wouldn't ask about my brother...which began a series of very bad choices on my part that only reinforced the shame, and eventually led to a very long marriage to a very sick, abusive man. But which also led to some very real healing from God. And I know this is more of that, but it sucks to do the work, you know?
My dad died a few years ago, during the time when my exhusband was so strung out on drugs. After I got away from exah, all the old childhood stuff suddenly appeared. I had stuffed it inside since I was eleven.
Now my mom lives with my sister. She (sister) married a 76 year old man a few years back that had ALS and only had a few months to live. He was rich and she got all his money. It's the only reason she married him, and she doesn't care to tell you so. Up until that point she had lived in public housing on disablity. She never made anything of her life. It makes me sick.
She and mom go out to eat, shop, go get their hair fixed, watch tv, sleep in their chairs. They wallow in each other's misery and take a lot of ativan. And they still call me every night, although I have gotten very good at not answering.
It is still never talked about. It's like my childhood never even happened. I tried a couple of times to talk to my sister about it, but she went totally ballistic and my mom sat and cried. It's not worth it.
The thing that cut me the deepest was that I was so young, and so scared, and so alone. And no one even bothered to ask me how I was. Instead, they cried on my young shoulders and taught me to lie and live in complete denial of the truth of our lives. And then, when I fell through the cracks in high school, they didn't raise a finger to get me any type of help. Nor did they offer help the first few times my exh slapped me around...All they cared about was that no one found out. And now I am feeling the anger of that and I don't know what to do with it.
So there it is, SR family. Thanks for letting me get it.