Alexis' Coming Out Story
"my coming out was a gift of immeasurable value"Knowing something isn’t right, isn’t the same as knowing what to do to make it better. I remember very clearly the moment I knew I was born with a body that wasn’t quite what it should be. I was incredibly young, and I wondered to myself, what had gone wrong? Sadly, I was born in a time before the internet, and to parents that were incredibly conservative. This meant that though I knew I wasn’t, despite all appearances, a boy; I had no explanation for what I was feeling.
“I would live my life pretending to be the man everyone thought that I was”
It wasn’t until I was in college that I had even heard the term “Transgender”, by that time I had convinced myself that it was just a feeling that I would have to come to terms with. I would live my life pretending to be the man everyone thought that I was. For years I had been called names, insulting me for my walk, my slight frame, and my overly feminine mannerisms.
I was paranoid anytime I was in a group of boys. They were merciless in their attempts to maintain the masculine status quo. As a result, from a young age, I had, almost exclusively, female friends. I found comfort in the sisterhood of my friends, and for a time that was enough to quell the unceasing knowledge that I was living a lie.
Years passed, I fell in love, got married, had children, and I continued to have the niggling sensation that I would never be happy. As a result, my marriage fell apart and I became desperately depressed. After my divorce, I floundered for understanding. I sought help in therapy, but they focused heavily on the abuse I suffered as a child, and I never managed to build the courage to discuss what was now becoming so apparent to me.
I met a woman, whom I began to date and quickly decided to live with. She was confident and free-spirited. She knew herself and knew what she wanted. One day, during a snowstorm that had trapped us indoors for over a week, she announced she was going to give me a makeover. My little heart skipped and leapt with joy, and I managed to eke out “Ok, if you really want to.”
Little did I know that she had been wondering about my gender identity for a while, and she had decided to see what would happen. Sometime earlier, she had purchased makeup to match my skin tone and had been waiting for the opportunity to try her theory out.
“I didn’t want to go back to pretending I was something I wasn’t”
As she was applying the foundation, the eyeliner, eyeshadow, mascara, contouring, highlight; I sat loving every single moment. When it came to for the reveal, I completely ruined the mascara as the tears pouring in rivers down my freshly made-up face. I couldn’t help myself, I sobbed incoherently that I didn’t want to go back to pretending I was something I wasn’t. She put her arms around me and told me I didn’t have to.
Though we didn’t last, her gift of myself is something for which I can never be grateful enough. I came out that day to her, and more importantly to myself. While my coming out ended my relationship with my mother, and someone I assumed was a friend outed me to the faculty at my school, the reality is that my coming out was a gift of immeasurable value, and I was blessed to find if even for a short time, someone who could see past the surface details to the woman who lay beneath.
Coming out stories
Alexis Lorraine
Edited by Aislinn O'Keeffe
LGBTQ+ Activist
