“Something we all deserve.” (part 1)
If I could reflect on the most memorable parts of our wedding planning period, it first had to be when I came back to Lào Cai and decided to tell my parents about Alex, and secondly has to be when we both lit incense and stood before the altar at my grandma’s place.
About the first memory, at that time we had been in love for a while and both our parents knew about it. Alex met my parents, and I met Alex’s. However, my parents were the only ones who didn’t know that Alex was trans. At that moment, I thought that if we hadn’t told my parents, everything would be alright and the wedding would still take place as usual. But I had my hesitation because my parents were the most important people in my life; I want them to know everything before they decide to support the wedding. I want them to know about my feelings, about my partner and our desire to live together. Most of all, I wanted to know how far their acceptance and respect for us could go. So I went back to Lào Cai with the intention of telling my parents.
When I came to visit, my mom asked me all sorts of things about my relationship, just nothing I was planning to talk about. After a while, I told her that Alex is trans, then I started crying. I kept crying and I couldn’t stop. She asked me what “trans” was but I couldn’t get a word out through all the tears. I have stood in front of so many people and organized hundreds of training sessions on SOGIE for people of all ages, but when my mom asked, all I could do was cry. My head was spinning; I didn’t know how to explain to my mom in a way that was accurate and did not make her see Alex differently.
After some time crying, I slowly calmed down and told my mom what trans was, that Alex was still the person they had met and not someone different; the only difference was that they then knew something private about him. Then my mom asked some questions that I’m sure other parents would ask, like if we wanted kids, how sex works, whether have we thought about our lives in the future, and so on. These things are my specialty so I calmly continued the conversation. I didn’t know if I should give my mom some words of encouragement because I knew she was shocked and confused… (to be continued)
*********
Rồi Sẽ Ổn Thôi (“Gonna Be Alright”) is a project that collects coming out stories from the LGBTIQ+ community and their loved ones in Việt Nam. To find out more details or to read more stories from the project, please visit our official social media site on Instagram at ComingOutVN.
