So Christmas was pretty awful. My expectations were way too high going in.
When I came out of the closet 18 months ago to my folks, they said they wanted to handle letting my extended family know. I said fine… and then promptly forgot about it. Turns out they never did. 😦
There’s a lot of things going on right now with my Dad (brain cancer, etc), so I can’t get too upset, but I didn’t find out about this until 48 hours before I was suppose to take off to go there.
My folks feel a need to “protect” me from the more right-wing parts of my extended family. These are the people that openly called my sister a devil worshiper when she got her tongue pierced years ago.
As such, when there was a chance I’d be near anyone, I was more-or-less told I needed to wear a “costume,” which was basically a men’s shirt, no jewelry, no bra, no purse, etc. 
That wasn’t the worse part of it… the worst part was constantly getting called a name I have been trying very hard for the last year to bury, and being mis-gendered for hours, while being powerless to stop it. It was very, very hard. It was all I could do to not break down in front of them.
I did break down in front of my Mom later once we got to her house. I cried so much I got her to cry, too. 😦
I need to keep this from happening again. I don’t want to be protected against those people. Let them write me off – I don’t care. They haven’t been a part of my life in 20 years, why should I care about them now? Being written off is WAY better than not being genuine, you know? I can’t pretend like nothing changed.
I am very proud of the person I’ve become. I’m a bounce-y and happy person almost all the time, and I like that! I have zero reason to hide and be ashamed of who I am. I have done nothing wrong, in the least. If they can’t accept that… it’s their loss, not mine.
I’ve taken steps to fix this. I saw how much my Mom and Sister use Facebook while I was down there, so when I got home I made a Facebook account under my legal name, and friended my Mom and Sister. I’m just gonna … be me on it. My goal is to let that evil friends-of-friends thing do its job and let the “Who’s Bunny??” rumors leak out.
I did have one nice win! On Christmas Eve my Mom and I went out for dinner while I was still in disguise. The waitress took one look at us and said “is there anything I can get you ladies?” without any hesitation. That made me feel good.
The trip was not all bad. My flight home was just amazing. I had something magical happen that totally made my trip worthwhile. 🙂
BunnyNet 