Background

When I look back at my childhood there are several clues that I was meant to be a boy; it's like putting together a puzzle without a picture sometimes. I can intuit where some of the pieces go rather easily: begging for a short haircut, playing Luke in backyard Star Wars re-enactments, wanting to play with the boys in the schoolyard, all the daydreams and night-dreams where my chest was flat and voice deep, wearing tuxedos or suits and ties. Other times the pieces don't seem to go anywhere, usually when the memories deal with loss, fear, and regret. By some standards I had a very comfortable and lucky childhood - my parents loved me and I always had a roof over my head, sturdy clothes on my body, and ample food in the pantry. As I've matured into adulthood I have found that by other standards I was extremely unlucky - my mother was a semi-suicidal chronic depressive who turned into an alcoholic by the time I was a teenager, and my father was a drug addict who 'didn't want to work for the man' and left me in a diner on the rim of a seedy park when I was ten so he could go score (one symbolic example of similar weekly events). Although their diseases levied far more damage on themselves than those around them, the collateral effects of growing up safe/unsafe, secure/insecure, and fed/hungry have shaped a lot of who I am.

As I am on the verge of becoming a father myself I am re-living that childhood in ways that I did not foresee when my wife and I decided to start a family. Current complications in regards to my relationship with my father in terms of both my transition and my impending fatherhood have certainly contributed to this introspection. We are now in our sixth month of pregnancy, and all of the challenges of living and raising a child in an expensive city are looming large on the horizon. No better time, then, to start a blog, I suppose.


I am not out at work, and do not intend to come out in this blog - I wish to remain anonymous. It is not safe and I have a family to support. The creation of this blog was first, about self-expression, second, about putting a voice out there that maybe other people could relate to and find community within its pages.  Now, I'm not so sure what it will be about - but I suppose it will take the shape it is supposed to...