After the week was up, Alex just… didn’t ask anyone to change pronouns again. It was shockingly easy. And it just felt… good. Of course, she still hadn’t asked people outside of one friend group to change to she/her.

I should probably talk to my mom, and people at work. But also, I don’t wanna. Like, probably nothing bad will happen, but just thinking about it is making my stomach hurt. Fuck, now I feel like I can’t relax.

She decided the best solution was to procrastinate and try to distract herself. Realistically that probably wasn’t the best solution, but it would work for now.

She headed downstairs to where her mom was on the couch watching Jeopardy.

“It’s obviously JFK! How do you not know this?!”

...And was getting really into it.

She sat down next to her mom and waited until the episode was over.

“Wow, really didn’t expect that guy to bet everything in Final Jeopardy. I guess it paid off, though!”

“...Hey mom, can I talk to you?”

“Yes, what is it, honey?”

Alex stared at her mom’s expectant face. She was so proud of her son, the software engineer. He knew that even though she rarely pressured Alex about it, she loved kids and was hoping against hope for grandkids--even though Alex had rarely even been in a relationship.

“Never mind.”

“Okay, just let me know if you ever want to talk, okay?”

I want to, I just can’t, Alex thought. The words just stick in my throat. It feels like trying to slog through quicksand.

Alex rushed upstairs and curled up in a ball on her bed, pulling her weighted blanket over her.

Is it always gonna be this hard for me to talk to people about… gender... stuff? I don’t know if I can do this. I know intellectually that most of the people around me would probably be supportive, but what if someone responds badly? They think I’m disgusting, or funny, or unnatural? I already get so anxious about what other people think, can I really live with someone thinking I’m less than human?

Talking to her Pathfinder group was easy. Everyone there was young, most of them were gay, and Allie was there to fight anyone who was shitty about things. But her mom? Her mom was just so… normal. She’d probably try to be supportive, but she wouldn’t really get it, right? Same with people at her work. They might give lip service to diversity and unconditional support, but someone would secretly think it was weird. They’d wonder, “Why would you do this to yourself? Your life was perfectly fine as it was. Why would you upend everything, risk being discriminated against and ugly and forever single, just to pursue some weird, abstract desire to be a girl? What do you even think being a girl is, anyway? Just do your job and eventually marry, have kids, retire and die. Like everyone is supposed to.”

Alex wiped at her cheek and realized she had been silently crying. Her face was scrunched up, trickles of tears making their way down her face and dripping onto her pillow.

She knew--she felt--that that was the kind of life everyone expected for her. No one said it, not explicitly, but a million innocent questions from older relatives and “happy endings” in movies and stories and literally every facet of the culture around her said that that was what you did. Anything less was a failure. A failure to do what you’re supposed to, a failure at finding a happy ending, a failure at making your family proud.

And yet, imagining that life stretching out before her, it all felt so empty. She couldn’t imagine herself at 30, with a house in the suburbs and a white picket fence, let alone at 50 or 100. It felt unreal, abstract, wrong, like she was trying to force a square peg into a hole that didn’t exist. Like she was trying to put on a suit and play a character for the rest of her life. What was the point of life, anyway? To exist and make money so that your children could exist and make money, so their children could do the same? What a meaningless existence. An endless run of the same race, never really moving forward. She didn’t want that. She couldn’t want that, as much as she wanted to want it.

Instead, she thought of herself as a woman. As a lesbian. Growing old with Allie, or someone like Allie. It felt so easy to envision. So real. The two of them as old women, gray-haired, laughing together and walking through a park, joking and hugging and holding hands. She found herself crying even harder, but a different kind of tears. Happy ones, or at least bittersweet.

Her thoughts were interrupted by hearing her phone ding. Just as she was rolling over to grab it from her bedside table, she heard a quiet knock at her door.

Her mom gently said, “Alex, can I come in?” Hearing no response except sniffles, she pushed the door open and gingerly peered around. She was holding a tray with a mug of peppermint tea--Alex’s favorite in the evenings--and some of the leftover snickerdoodles she had baked last weekend.

“Oh no, honey, are you okay?”

Alex said, “Yeah, I’m fine,” made incredibly unconvincing by her upset tone and the thickness of mucus in her throat. She swallowed heavily. “I’m fine.”

Alex’s mom pushed the phone and charger and medication bottles to the edge of the bedside table and placed the tray down, before sitting down on the edge of the bed and turning towards Alex.

“Sweetheart, I could hear you crying from downstairs. Are you sure you don’t want to talk about it? You know I love you and I’m proud of you no matter what, right? Whatever it is can’t be so bad.”

Alex sniffled and grabbed a napkin off the tray to wipe her eyes. “You wouldn’t understand. You can’t.”

She reached forward and patted Alex’s shoulder. “There’s no way to know that unless you tell me.”

After a long pause, Alex sighed and started talking. “So… uh... you know how some people don’t necessarily identify with the gender that they were assigned at birth, and--and they start to, uh, take steps--do things--to, um, come more into line with the gender that, that they, identify with more?”

Her mom nodded. “So you’re transgender?”

“Oh! Um, yeah… I think so. I, uh… Allie and some friends have helped me think about this and I… I think I would be--I am-- happier as a girl. As a woman.”

“Okay, so is there anything specific you’d like me to do? Or know?”

“Yes, uh, if you could refer to me as your daughter and use female pronouns? Like she/her? I would really appreciate that. Sorry, I know it’s weird and you’ve thought of me as male my whole life and it’s probably going to be hard to change your habits and I hope this isn’t too much to ask.”

“I promise I will try my best. I can’t promise I’ll always remember, but just remind me whenever I get it wrong, okay?”

Alex nodded.

Her mom leaned forward and hugged her. “We can get through this together, no matter what. You know I just want whatever’s best for you, whatever makes you happy and healthy. If this is what it takes, I’ll support you all the way.”

***

‘hey i ended up coming out to my mom today’

‘:o how did it go?’

‘i was really stressed but it was ok, she said she supported me and would try to use pronouns’

‘oh great! I thought ur mom seemed nice. Glad it went well <3”

‘I’m still kinda residually stressed tbh, could use a distraction’

‘here have some memes from allie’s meme dump, aka the photos saved on my phone’

Allie sent an inordinate amount of memes. Alex looked through them and started to feel a little better.

***

Over the next several weeks at work, Alex was becoming more and more bothered by the occasional reference to her using male pronouns. She was realizing that although people didn’t talk about her in the third person in front of her all that often, whenever she was misgendered it felt awful. It was weird, considering that she had gone pretty much her whole life with those pronouns. Why was it only now that it bothered her like this?

‘hey allie can i vent to u a little’

‘ye ofc’

‘so at work i haven’t really like come out to anyone or asked them to change pronouns, like i just don’t want to make a big deal out of things or put a burden on people, but it’s starting to really bother me’

‘...i mean i feel like there’s an obvious solution’

‘?’

‘like, ask people to use female pronouns. From what you’ve said it seems like it’ll prob be fine’

‘i guess… i know most people have been fine with me wearing skirts but that didn’t require them to do anything. I just don’t want to make people annoyed or feel like i’m asking for special treatment’

‘Idk i don’t really think ur asking for special treatment, it’s just that all the cis get the pronouns they want without asking. Like, i think it’s a completely reasonable thing to ask for, like me asking friends to call me Allie instead of Allison bc that feels weirdly formal to me’

‘Yeah ok ur right, i’m just stressed about it. Im sorry i feel like i just always vent to you and get u to calm me down, i feel like im too negative and messed up im sorry’

‘Alex no it’s fine i want to support you okay, you really haven’t done anything wrong except for being too hard on yourself. You’re not a burden to me or anyone else, okay? I’m really glad to have u in my life and it would def be worse without u’

“Okay thank u Allie, i will try to calm down a little and be nicer to myself. love u’

‘Love u too <3’

***

After another week and a half of lurking stress pushed down by procrastination and distraction, Alex decided that during her biweekly one-on-one with her manager, she should really bring up her gender stuff.

To make sure she didn’t wimp out on mentioning it, the evening before their meeting she added “gender/pronouns” to the shared agenda doc.

The next morning, Alex stressed out a weird amount wondering what she should wear for her talk with her manager. If I wear guy clothes, will he think I’m not being serious? If I wear a skirt is it going to weird him out? She finally settled on women’s jeans and a light blue v-neck, with a camisole underneath.

On the bus to the office, she was semi-successful distracting herself by listening to a podcast. These boys, what goofs will they get up to next? 

When the bus neared her stop, she started getting nervous again. She tried to breathe slowly, in and out, in and out. It’ll be fine. There’s really not even anything bad that could happen. Jim is generally cool, and it’ll just be the two of us. She ended up basically skipping breakfast, choking down a granola bar, before waiting outside their booked room five minutes earlier than necessary.

After sitting there and vibrating her leg for what felt like forever--but was actually a few minutes--she glanced up to see Jim, her manager, pushing open the door to the meeting room. She quickly grabbed her laptop and followed him in.

“So, it doesn’t look like we have too much on the agenda today, besides checking in on OKRs, and this last point you added. Which thing would you rather talk about first?”

Alex’s mouth suddenly felt dry. “Uh, I guess either order is fine?”

“Okay, in that case do you just want to get through OKRs first?”

“I think I’d rather get this out first, if that’s okay.”

Jim nodded.

“So… I have realized recently that I, uh… identify more with women. I think--I’m trans. So if you could start using, like, female pronouns? I’d really appreciate that. And if you could let the rest of the team know.”

“Sure, no problem! Thanks for letting me know. I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, but our company’s insurance has really good coverage for trans care and offers a lot of services. I can try to forward you some links if you’d be interested.”

“Yeah, I’d appreciate that. Thanks, Jim.” Alex felt lightheaded with relief. She really was lucky.

“Alright, so if it’s okay, moving on to OKRs? So, any progress to report on the QoS dashboard?”

***