Hello, and happy Father’s Day.
It’s my first Father’s Day since my dad passed last fall.
I took a day trip to visit some of his old haunts, and I’m writing this from Stones Throw Brewing, which was his favorite brewery in the last town he called home.
I actually was the one to introduce him to this place before he moved out here. Before my own extreme life upheaval, which I didn’t know was coming.
The last decade or so of my dad’s life was quite vulnerable for him, and he didn’t shy away from owning that. He didn’t power trip or act all macho. He had the humility to seek the things that would help him heal right up until the end.
I’m not going to say the way he handled everything was ideal, but on this side of his passing that’s something I respect a lot about the unfolding of his precious and unique existence. (Not to mention it’s certainly a rarity among men of his generation.)
At the same time there’s a certain kind of pain that comes with showing up for a parent who didn’t know how to show up for you.
Neither of my parents were equipped to support or protect a gender nonconforming kid. Them’s the cards I was dealt, and due to life being unfair and all that, the consequences of that are my responsibility to deal with.
That’s a thing to reckon no matter what, and it’s a different thing to reckon after a parent dies.
There are no more chances for them to figure it out and step up. It’s over, and things happened the way they happened.
There are also no more chances for them to seriously harm you through their bad programming they haven’t unlearned.
A strange mixture of pain and relief.
It might sound ridiculous, but I believe that every person deep down is amazing. Even the most hateful bigot.
The trick is, how do we engage with people according to the reality of who they actually are? Not according to who we think they should be? Not according to the role that has defined them in our lives?
How do we let go of whatever it is we think they should’ve done … whatever it is that we think they shouldn’t have done?
How do we let go of all of that and just receive the real love that is actually there?
I’ve experienced enough horror and phoniness in my life to have developed quite the appreciation for simple unpretentious wholesomeness.
And yet, there have been so many times in my life when people had real kindness, real unpretentious wholesomeness to share with me, in which all I could receive was the pain of feeling detached, overridden, ignored, insulted, used, and unseen.
It’s been a lot of work to come to understand that a lot of the pain of my existence, while not my fault, is just simply my responsibility. I was born into an environment where the “normal” belief was that people like me were an illness that needed to be eradicated. That eradication mentality was so entrenched that I couldn’t even fathom that it was possible to be myself.
Whose job is it to make space for me? Whose job is it to protect my dignity? Whose job is it to make it possible for me to live?
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I could be mad at the unfairness, or I could accept that I have simply been given a responsibility.
And until I fully accept that responsibility, get up, put on my armor, and take it on, people are going to let me down. That’s just how “normal” society is built. I can’t expect people to go against their programming. And why would they believe me when I tell them they need to? What’s in it for them?
Is that a problem with other people, or is that a problem with me?
Or is it just … a thing?
Life is weird.
I will give it that.
It’s impossible to control, and impossible to predict.
And if we need something that certain people don’t have the capacity to give us, we are barking up the wrong tree when we try to get it from them.
A question I am asking myself a lot lately in regards to all my relationships is, what is actually there?
Everyone’s precious and unique heart is sacred. And that doesn’t always fit into the structures of expectations, usefulness, and need that our cruel, narrow, fearful, and corrupted society is built on.
Anyway, these are all just ruminations on a much bigger thought process that I don’t yet fully know how to describe.
But a thing I do know is that there is no real objective standard. We are all imperfect human beings, and some of us bear greater burdens than others when it comes to righting the ways we have been wronged.
And sometimes (a lot of times!) there is no one person we can point our finger at and say, “they are at fault.” The damage we have taken is simply damage we have taken. There is no path to restoration other than the one we blaze for ourselves.
Such is the work of being human.
Maybe my dad didn’t ever know how to be an ally to me in a cisgender-centered world, but he did blaze his own path to healing.
And I know he did love me, in his perfectly imperfect way.
There isn’t a way to process all of this that doesn’t profoundly hurt. The difference when it comes to taking responsibility is simply deciding that the hurt is something you are up for. Rolling up your sleeves, and taking it on.
If I want to honor the precious gift of the perfectly imperfect love the people in my life have had for me, I need to release them from any standard they were never able to meet.
It’s never been up to me to define anyone else.
It’s up to me to pay attention, and work with what is actually there.
And whether I like it or not, it’s up to me to take on the responsibility that nobody else was able to take on, to make sure that I am treated with the dignity I deserve. Because life didn’t force them to … but unlike them, I am not afforded an out if I want to live.
Sure, it’s not fair.
Good thing life isn’t a competition.
—Adrien