As I sit in my dimly lit living room, surrounded by memories of a past that seem like a distant dream, I can't help but feel the weight of disappointment and betrayal pressing down on me. The silence is suffocating, broken only by the soft ticking of the clock on the wall—a cruel reminder of the passage of time, of the irreversible changes that have torn my family apart.

My mind drifts back to the day when my child, once my pride and joy, revealed their "true identity" as transgender. The shock and disbelief that washed over me were quickly replaced by anger and resentment. How could he abandon the person he was born to be, the person I raised him to be? The thought of my child rejecting his given name, his heritage, fills me with a sense of profound loss, as if a part of me has been ripped away.

But it's not just the loss of the child I thought I knew that weighs heavily on my heart—it's the knowledge that my child has chosen a path that I cannot condone, a path that goes against everything I believe in.