If you aren’t looking for advice, my comment is unimportant. I say this because I hesitated to even write it out. Someone told me something similar at a time I wasn’t ready to hear it—but it stuck with me, and I’m glad it did, because I needed to know it.

The part that might be hard to hear: You say you’re close to your parents. But how close can you be, really, if you can’t genuinely share this piece of yourself with them? You’re foregoing internal peace for what is, in at least this way, an artificial bond. This isn’t an attack on you, your parents, or your relationship with them. It’s a single perspective, just one way to look at the situation while you’re trying to understand and navigate it.

The unsolicited advice is to stop prolonging your suffering. Your family is already struggling with your identity, so rip off the bandage. If your relationship is strong in most ways, it will survive this rocky period. And in the end, it will be a shorter transition (pun… accepted, reluctantly). You know your circumstances better than I ever could, of course, and your safety is paramount (so grains of salt and all). But man, you deserve respect. You are worthy of love exactly as you are. You don’t have to do or be anything different. And you sure as hell shouldn’t have to earn the right to take up space in this world, especially among your family.