Father's Day is usually a sweet day for me. I have a wonderful partner who is an excellent parent to our (now grown) children. If there's anything I've done right in my life, it's picking the right guy.
My memories of my own father are overwhelmingly positive. I miss him terribly but he was ill enough for long enough before he died that I kind of got my act straight. Death happens and it's not a personalized persecution when we experience this kind of loss.
Unfortunately, as it turns out I lost most the rest of my family vis-a-vis my gender identity. I was already kind of a fringe case in that group, because I bucked familial norms quite a bit growing up. As an adult, the divide grew. I unschooled, I got sober, I got vegan, I came out. All these things just drove a bigger and bigger wedge. It hurts to know now - because I was powerless to stop any of it. I'm not that angry most days - instead I feel embarrassed, like I should have been smart enough or sophisticated enough to know what was going to happen.
You know I get triggered (for real triggered) when someone tells me some version of, "Why do you have to be so different?" I hate it, I hate that refrain. For years I would pro-actively engage by saying something like, "I'm not different, ha ha I'm super boring!"
Because in many essential ways: no, I'm not different. I have a beating heart, I am a relatable human being, I am passionate but I can co-exist with those who don't share my values. For years I would repeat refrains of, "I'm not different!" because I knew my values and my identity were hard for others. I didn't want to threaten people. When you intimidate people they kick you out, or punish you, or ghost you - rather than submit to their own personal growth.
But I do threaten people. By who I am. Because I'm different. People are threatened by my values and my identity and my ability to speak aloud, and yes even speak aloud my feelings. It makes me furious actually (a tiny little fury, promise) that instead of looking deeper they act out. I don't want to lose my faith in humanity, I am clinging to it as-is.
Because the thing is:
I am different.. These things about me - a lifelong unschooler, sober, vegan, nonbinary - those make me different. More different than I appreciated back in the days I flew into these public disclosures and began living aloud my joys!
Now I ask you this:
Are these things listed above, are all those things about me just "personal choice" - or is this who I am?
Each identity, each praxis is as much of a part of me as any objective "me" that really exists.
***
My dad accepted my differences - but the engineer in me, the scientist in me, will never retcon his love into a part of my life he never knew.
What I mean is - my father never got to see me get sober, he didn't watch my activisms blossom, he didn't witness my renunciations, he died knowing my old name. He knew I was bisexual (I think) but not that I was nonbinary - he never knew or if he knew he never said. To his credit, he respected our practice of raising our children outside of compulsory schooling (this makes one VERY different, here in America). He teased me about my (then) vegetarian-ness but I know he respected me and one thing, I know he'd have respected my commitment to veganism. He knew the injustice of animal killing and the exploitation of vulnerable beings.
The nonbinary part, it gets tricky. Probably because my own mother won't see me as nonbinary, won't respect my pronouns. That throws a big funhouse mirror into the rest of your foundational experiences, I'll tell you what! I turn my eyes to my father now gone - a mystery to me forever - and comb through my childhood. I can't find any evidence of homophobia, transphobia. What would he have said? What would it have been like to hear him honor me with my pronouns, my name? What would it have been like to know I was known by this man?
Surviving so much rejection in my life since coming out, I hate that I think, "Maybe he would have disrespected me like so many others."
I hate that this doubt creeps in, I couldn't have thought he'd be an asshole about this - but I couldn't have thought this of the others who ended up being assholes.
***
I lost a lot when I lost my father. I couldn't or didn't prioritize myself during that time. I was so busy parenting my young children, attending to my marriage, and taking care of my mother. I didn't shoulder in enough time, space, or resources to ponder my loss. It was just too much.
And now my relationship with my father is threatened yet again vis-a-vis my rejection by so many others.
The disappearing act others have forced upon me:
the nonaffirmation, the scorn, the legislation, the medical and academic lacuna, the social exclusion and disappearing, the lack of cultural context -
all this has slowly but sure rotted part of my brain and this rot has crept into my most sacred places, the place where I ask myself Am I Worthy As A Human Being.
I fought this rot as hard as I could, but it still happened. I arrived here about two years ago, and I wrote about it then.
I feel like I've moved only an inch. A quarter of an inch.
I hate that people can make me feel this way.
***
So my father, my dear father wherever you are. I want to believe you'd stand by me, you'd stick up for me. I would have loved to hear you speak my name, my real name. I would have really loved for you to see how well I did by your grandchildren. You'd be proud of me as a parent, I know this.
We don't get what we want, right dad? You wrote in your journal right before you died: "disappointed".
I see you, old man!
But you also taught me to not tolerate disrespect. You taught me to do what was right not because it was popular and especially because doing right when things are hard, is so unpopular.
It isn't just your values alive in me, it isn't that I would care what you think of me. It is that practice of yours, that bravery and strength - well you helped construct that same scaffolding within my body.
I hope before you died you came to believe in the power I carry forward. I think you would have been less "disappointed" if you'd been able to see how strong I am, not because I'm all that special but because it's terribly important to believe in human strength, in "the last of the human freedoms - to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way." I think you wanted to know that, your heart hurt for someone to prove that.
I miss you very much. I'm so sad you were taken sooner than we would have liked.
Life is hard. Who gives a shit?
Who promised it would be easy?
Nobody, that's who.