Monday, April 23, 2012

Came out to my boss today. And other crap


I made the decision yesterday to come out to my immediate supervisor who basically functions as my boss, although there are even more people over her who I also have to answer to. Yay government bureaucracy! She is the nicest, sweetest lady I've ever met, and she has known that I've been having a lot of problems over the past year. She's tried to get me to talk about them, but I've always told her that I wanted to, but I couldn’t just yet.

When I had my most recent depressive episode she went out of her way to cover for me and to make sure I was ok. Whenever something goes wrong she's always been there for me. Seriously, the best boss ever. After this latest incident I decided that she deserved to know the truth.

So today we sat down and I filled her in on why I went to the hospital and the fact that my wife and I are getting separated so we can have some space. She was very concerned about my self mutilation and she expressed how worried she was about me.

Anyway, I eventually steered the topic in the direction that I needed it to head in and asked her, “Are you open mined?” She said yes of course, and then I told her I was transgender, and that's the reason that things have been so crazy for me. She was very supportive and made it a point to tell me that it's not a big deal in this day and age. Uh, she also recommended that I go to a church support group, but I figured I wouldn't tell her that I'm also an Atheist as dropping the trans bomb-shell was enough for one day.

When I came out to my wife about being bigender I bombarded her with information as I was desperate for her to accept me. That just made her more confused. So coming out to my boss I only told her that I was transgender, and that was it. If the person want's to know more information they will ask you. (Although you should let them know they can ask you questions, duh.)

She DID ask me the “how far are you going to go with this?” questions which of course means, “are you going to have THE surgery”, and I responded that I'm going to keep going until I can blend in as a female in public, which is the truth. I also assured her that I'm not just going to suddenly show up in a dress one day, which got a laugh. This is going to be a long process especially given my financial situation. Hell, she'll most likely have moved on long before I go full time.

I would have liked to have come out as bigender but again I thought it was best just to tell people what they need to know. When I come out to my family I'm going to do so as bigender and I'll send that spiffy Scientific America article to them. (I'm Science! After all.)

Speaking of which, I have decided that now is NOT a good time to come out to my family considering my rather fragile psychological state. My therapist agreed and reminded me that it hasn’t even been a week since I was in the hospital. I tend to move very fast on things. I haden't given that much thought before, but after my session with my therapist tonight I'm a little worried.

She was asking me about my mood and how it was changing. I didn’t know what she was talking about, but she said that in the 20 minuets that we'd been talking I'd gone though six profound mood swings. I'm not sure what the problem is, if I'm thinking happy thoughts I'm happy and if I think sad thoughts I'm sad, but she made a big deal out of it and it's creeping me the fuck out because she's a smart lady and I don't know what this means. It's spooky! OooooOOOOoooOOO. Just like that.

The only other item of interest that happened today was that when I came home my wife and I got along very well and we were affectionate to each other, which made me supper happy as I still love her to death. Last night when I tucked her into bed she told me, “every time I look at you I get depressed”, which set me off and I cried the rest of the night, up until the point until I got into bed. Then she put her arm around me and I went right to sleep.

Anyway, today I walked into the bedroom to find that she had taken all her decorations down. She had an entire wall plastered with old drawings and art projects from when she was a little kid up until now. I saw that blank, empty wall and again, I couldn't hold back the tears. We are not giving up on this marriage, but holy shit this is painful. Yet here I am, still kicking and screaming.

Paige

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