How do you love a son who continues to refer to himself as your daughter?
My childhood best friend, Laura, had one of the most horrific diseases that one can have: Tay Sachs. **Tay Sachs is a genetic disorder that makes it so the body cannot digest fats. And it’s not just like it causes an upset stomach or something, the body literally does not know what to do with fats so it starts getting deposited in random places where it doesn’t belong, like in the brain. The most common version is juvenile Tay Sachs and most children who have it don’t live to their first birthday. Laura had what’s referred to as *‘adult onset Tay Sachs’ which means the symptoms started around the time she was 4. At the time she showed significant neurological symptoms that something was really wrong. Her parents took her to get a CAT scan and it showed a large mass in her brain. Initially they thought it was a tumor but later on through more investigation they discovered that it was a big mass of fat. It was then that everyone realized she did not have cancer, but something just as horrible.
Laura lived to be 27 and by the time she passed away she couldn’t move, see, hear, or speak. It’s a truly horrific thing to have to witness but I still am incredibly thankful for the time I had with her because she was a wonderful person. I will miss her forever. As for her family, this was a beyond horrific experience and they would do anything if it meant they could have her back and just healthy. They would have loved it if she was trans instead of having this awful disorder.
You have a child who is still alive, who hopefully will be around for a long time, and seems to want to have a relationship with you, but here you are whining about how they aren’t exactly how you expected them to be. How do you love a daughter regardless of what kind of body she is in? Unconditionally as others have said. If you did love her unconditionally you wouldn’t even have to ask this ridiculous question. It shouldn’t matter what gender your kid is, you should love them the same regardless but here you are acting like she is a child abuser or something.
All of this says nothing about your child and everything about you.
*ETA: some professionals also call it ‘late onset’ Tay Sachs.
**I wanted to look at this quote again and so instead of going back multiple pages in my comment history I just googled “fstdt Tay Sachs Laura” and I glanced at the AI summary (which I almost never do, but I did this time) found out that the AI thinks I was calling Tay Sachs a digestive disorder akin to something like acid reflux or GERD, which I know it most certainly isn’t. Basically, I couldn’t think of the word ‘metabolize’ and used digestive instead, even though it knew it wasn’t exactly the word I wanted. However, what I should have said that Tay Sachs is a metabolic disorder that makes it so the body can’t digest a certain type of lipid, and instead allows it to build up in the brain to the point that it is toxic. I should have said that instead of:
Tay Sachs is a genetic disorder that makes it so the body cannot digest fats
Basically I wanted to update my comment because the stupid AI said I was lying but then basically said what I was trying to say in the next passage.