Chapter One

"I pick things up

I am a collector

And things, well things

They tend to accumulate

I have this net

It drags behind me

It picks up feelings

For me to feed upon

There are times, plenty of times

I wish I could let it go

But they start to breathe

And they start to grow inside me

There are times, plenty of times

I wish I could let it go

But they start to make me think

Things I don't wanna know"

["The Collector", Nine Inch Nails]

A long time ago you had a blog called "naked and unbound", named so after a quote from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran.  Between there and here, you've gotten pretty good at the naked thing, writing quite vulnerably about how you feel and who you are.  But perhaps you're not as unbound as you should be.  You did your Torn Curtains project, and you've confessed aplenty, but many things were, in ways, just decoys.  They were the obvious things that others would have known anyway.  You've kept fastened a great many invisible chains for yourself.  And it's time to start unfastening them.  It's time to start leaving them behind.

Someone once told you that you were the most self-aware person she'd ever met, and she was right.  You are incredibly self-aware.  And that's a good thing - or at least it would be if you could just stop weaponizing it against yourself.  It's the reason you are able to learn, and change, and grow, and become better.  And you have consistently done that.  You are not the same person now you were ten, twenty, thirty, forty years ago.  You know that.  You love that.  You enjoy that.  And well you should.

You once told someone that the journey of self-discovery is both a blessing and a curse.  But it wasn't for the reasons you gave, what you thought at that time.  It's because you've never been able to put the genie back in the lamp.  You can't not peer into the abyss.  You keep looking and looking, trying to obsessively tear out every last weed while missing out on the beautiful garden you've grown.  You question every act, every motive.  You wrote a blog post called "Cowardice" about your inability to apologize for a few hurtful things you said in your early 20s that are likely long forgotten by the people you said them to, and you've been too afraid to publish it, and no one's ever read it, such that all you've really done is given yourself yet another chain to add to your burden.  Every time you come to write, it's sitting there waiting to punish you, because you won't delete it either.  Because that would be "dishonest" somehow, and - one of your favorite quotes of late - you're 'the most principled person I know, sometimes to the point of stupidity'.  Why do you feel this need to punish yourself?  You're not even punishing yourself for things others are aware of.  That's why I say the chains are largely invisible.  You kept yourself in a constant state of self-judgment for things others don't, can't, won't ever know.

Why?  

Is it because you still feel guilty about having selfish feelings as a child?  You pressed down any inkling of selfish thought in light of your situation until it turned to secret shame, and when your mother died it exploded in self-hatred.  But wanting things, or wanting things to be better, or wishing things had been different - and as a teenage boy no less - was not a crime.  It was not wrong.  It was human.  It was normal.  And you came to terms with it long ago, or talk like you've come to terms with it, unpacked it, understood it, and yet.... invisible chain, isn't it?  I'd say it was "forgivable" but there's nothing here to forgive.

Let it go.

Let.  It.  Go.

You need to start cutting yourself some slack and forgive yourself for all these invisible burdens you carry on your shoulders that you can never seem to put down, burdens that not only are most others around you completely unaware of, but things so they'd easily forgive, and you should too.  Let's get into that!

If any teenager you know made the mistakes you did, in the context of the time you did, you'd forgive them without a second thought.  Even by today's standards, removed from context, you'd find most of those things so easily forgivable.  And yet you set aside the context and instead condemn yourself to forever try to "make up for" mistakes you made as a child nearly forty years ago.

Stop pouring over every mistake you think you've made along the way.  Accept yourself as imperfect and stop holding yourself to a higher standard than you hold everyone around you.  You are so reasonable.  You tell people - and it's mostly true - that you have incredible patience for people (and little for software or machines).  But you leave yourself out of that equation.  You have no patience for yourself.  You aren't being fair to yourself the way you are so adamant about being fair to others.  You are a person too, and deserving of that same patience.

And the other childhood thing...  You wrote back in 2017:  Salvation from the yokes of expectation we wear is not found in satisfactory answers to the questions; it can only come from not asking the question.

You haven't stopped asking, and it's about time you did.  But here's the answer simple and plain in case it helps:

You are not, were not, could never be a disappointment to your parents or family in any way.  They wanted you to be happy and successful - whatever that means - and you're both of those things.  You're more than just those things: you're a good person.  Perfect?  No, of course not.  Stumble sometimes?  Sure.  That's called being human.  But not being a doctor or lawyer is simply because in the context of the times, what you did become is not something they could have imagined anyway.  Look at the family you've made.  Look at the home you've made.  Look at the friends you keep.  Look at the life you have.  Dare to think you've failed?  No.  No you haven't failed.  Not in the least.

You beat yourself up about never finishing a university degree while failing to note you instead forged yourself a career in a field that all but didn't exist instead, and then gained the experience and reputation required to become an expert in that field.  And before the imposter syndrome begins - bullshit - you hold a certification less than 200 people in Canada have.  You'd bloody well never have used multivariable calculus again in your life, and your life is no less rich for not having done that course or any of those other courses.  You walked a strange path, but you made it work, and look at where you are now.  Look.  If you posted on LinkedIn you were open to work you'd have a dozen offers inside a week.  That much you know.  That much you believe.  But still with the wondering 'who knows I never finished?'  You think your coworkers would think less of you?  Try them.  Try one tomorrow.  Try one of the one's whose mind you really respect.  You don't need to, because you know from the respectful way they talk to you that you've already won them over.  Remember that weird compliment from "Bobby Fischer"?  Yeah you do.  You remember it because it stuck with you.  It was victory.  It was validation.  And from someone whose bar was set higher than anyone else you ever worked with.  But just because others don't say it doesn't mean they don't feel it.  His... manner.. was the very thing that enabled him to be so bold, even if it was a bit clumsy.

You fret over being fair while espousing fairness isn't the right tack to begin with, and yet you're incredibly, painfully fair.  When has anyone ever accused you of being unfair?

You're incredibly honest, but somehow feel it necessary to point out that you do so from a sense of practicality rather than altruism, as though that somehow diminishes the fact that you're painfully honest.

That same thing, in the larger scope: you constantly assess your own motives and question whether a good act for any reason less than pure is somehow no longer a good act.  Good acts are good acts.  Why do you feel this need to ask yourself 'why?' you do ever single thing you do, to justify and weigh and measure it?

Let it go.

And then there's those last few things, those things for which you don't believe you could ever forgive yourself, those things you won't even allude to here.  They're going to be harder, but let's not rule them out just yet.

Let's work on this much first.  After all, it's only Chapter One.

You'll reread this in a week and find a typo and frown over it.  I dare you to not fix it.  Let yourself be just as imperfect and you let others be.

And maybe next time, with a little more forgiveness, with a little more self-compassion, you won't write yourself a letter that reads like a chastisement.  You'll need to forgive yourself for this too.

Always with the meta, Patrick.  Climb back out of the spiraling abyss.

Start by watching Revolver again.

Hey, look, a less than perfect, easily-digestible sendoff! :P 

Was that an emoji?  Oh, you're a wild man now.  Pretty sure there's a few sentence fragments above too.  Clutch your pearls, old man.

Like Tears in Rain

"All those moments will be lost in time, 

like tears in rain."

['Tears in Rain monologue', Blade Runner]

Best adlib line ever.

I woke up today not knowing if I'd write or not.  I'd been thinking about it for days.  I had a few ideas in mind, but nothing much solid.  I have been pondering a little bit lately about the nature of relationships and legacy, about how people are remembered differently according to how each person knew them, knew of them, what the nature of that relationship was.  An old friend passed and... I couldn't help but think I knew different parts of him and in different ways than most others.

I suppose others who knew my mother must therefore also have very different views of her, based on those experiences.  Different people who've met me or been acquainted with me must see me very different ways accordingly.  People who knew me when I was younger, like those who worked with me in my 20s, probably believe in a version of me that no longer exists, my having evolved considerably over the years.  But for me, whatever my vision of my mother is, it is a moment frozen in time.  She's not in her 80s, but in her 50s.  Which is really weird when I stop and consider I'm in my 50s.

Liza-Ann asked me about my memories of mom this morning when we woke, and I realized how much my memory has been ravaged by time.  Is it age?  Is it simply distance in time?  Is it the effects of Covid or the stress of living through a global pandemic?  Does it matter?  No.

The reality is that nowadays when I think about my distant past, there are moments in time where I remember how I felt more so than the details of precisely what happened.  I remember how I felt about my mother, even though I remember so little of my youth.  I remember how I felt about a lot of firsts and the charged energy that comes with them.  I remember a lot of tears and the feeling of emptiness that comes with the worst kinds of sorrow or disappointment.  But the details... are tears in rain.

There is one memory that's been nagging at me lately, and I can feel the details slipping away, I have few left, so I decided today I'd better write it down, because I don't think I ever have, and I need it recorded somewhere.  I should be glad to be rid of it, really, given its unpleasantness.  But it's important, so I... require it, I guess.

This is not a morality tale, or at least not exactly, and this is not something someone else will read and come away from with a 'splinter of the mind' with the potential to shift their perspective a little.  It's just a shitty little story about a shitty little thing that happened to me one day as a child.  That's it.  That's all.

But if you've ever struggled to understand anything about me, about what motivates me, about how I evolved into who I am, this is the biggest clue I could ever possibly provide.  Some unknown, unnamed, unremembered 14 year old was the butterfly; I am the effect.

November 2nd, 1980

It was my birthday.  I was turning nine.  I'd successfully hidden this fact from my classmates through the morning and made it through the lunch hour, so I was feeling less anxious.  All boys Catholic school meant varying forms and degrees of hazing, depending on who found out and how well liked you were, but even the best possible outcomes were far from pleasant.  Ah, the joys of toxic masculinity: we'll show you how much we love you with some good ole physical abuse.  Those who really love you will go easy.  The bullies will use it as a hall pass to go however hard they like.

Like every lunch hour, when it ended, K-4 lined up in their classes in the basement of Holland Hall to be enumerated and then for their teachers to come retrieve them and lead them upstairs to their classrooms.  This process was not overseen by the administration, but by a handful of grade nines.  Fourteen-year-olds wrangling five- to nine-year-olds.  It was a day like any other, save my secret.

I don't remember exactly how they figured it out.  I think my birthday was within a few days of a classmate and someone realized and did a bit of quick arithmetic.  However it came about, in a few terrifying seconds I was grabbed by four 'friends' for 'the bumps'.  I don't rightly recall which four.  I could name two.  But I was stretched as if to be drawn and quartered, one on each limb, swung increasingly higher and lower and faster, bouncing off the floor hard enough it might bruise, but break.  It's meant to be terrifying, not truly damaging.  I was lucky, really.  These were people who mostly liked me.

Before they could finish, the 'monitor' arrived.  They dropped me on the floor, and chins down, sullen,  marched across the room to line up by the wall where the 'bad boys' were lined up so that teachers could soon be told of their crimes and decide a suitable punishment.  I got up and dusted myself off and tried to resume my position in my class line.  But the monitor pointed and instructed me to join the others.  I tried to resist, to explain that I was the victim here, but he was having none of it.  I was made to line up with the others.

That's it.  Right there.  That's the wingbeat: an innocuous decision by a child just a few years older than me.  I don't remember his face.  I didn't know his name.  But things were set in motion now.  This train has no brake.

A teacher came, and again I tried to protest, but it was all deaf ears.  You were against that wall.  That means you were caught doing something wrong.  You wouldn't be there if you hadn't been caught breaking rules.  Now shut up and do as you're told.  March.  Upstairs.  Stand outside your classroom.  And no one was talking now.  No talking.  No listening.  Just five terrified children, heads down, awaiting punishment.

Next it was an angry "Christian" Brother shouting.  It was white noise.  It was one of those scenes in the movie where there's no sound, just the blurry image of a frenetic character emoting and flailing their arms angrily.  It was put to us as a decision.  We'd been 'behaving like kindergarteners', we were told, so we had two choices: go downstairs and spend the afternoon in kindergarten, or promise never to do it again and go sit quietly in our desks for the rest of the afternoon in our own classroom.  One by one, the others chose the obvious answer: admit wrongdoing, make assurances, and go sit in their usual seats.

I chose door number three.

Eyes full of tears, I explained that 'I'm going to the principal's office to explain what happened because you won't listen.'  This may have been the first time in my life I attempted to 'speak truth to power' but it certainly wasn't my last.  It's been an important aspect of my career, in fact.  And I credit this with being where it all began: trying to stand up for myself against what I felt was an injustice.

I learned a lot that day, about the nature of fate and accidents, about authority, about justice and injustice, about cause and effect.  That's not to say I'm the same now as I was at nine.  I used to be a lot angrier when I was younger; I'm not now.  I used to hold grudges; I seldom do now and work hard not to.  I used to have a harder time forgiving people; I find it much easier now.

But there is one thing I've never forgiven, and I don't suspect I ever will.

Brother Critch looked in the tear-filled eyes of a nine-year-old boy on that child's birthday, heard him struggling to explain how he'd been treated unfairly, and then grabbed him by the two biceps, lifted him from the ground, carried him through a doorway, and stuffed the child in its assigned desk, where it would sit, stifling tears, for the rest of the afternoon.

Ten

"Can you recall

How you took me to school

We couldn't talk much at all

It's been so many years

And now these tears

Guess I'm still a child"

["Father, Son", Peter Gabriel]

I've been thinking about my father more than usual of late, probably because I knew today was coming.  But even before that, I've also found these last few years I've been thinking of him a little more often, more so than my mother.  That might seem natural, based solely on the fact that he died much more recently, but I don't credit that with being the reason.

Rather, I find in recent years I feel like I can relate to him more.  I am about now the age he was when I was nearing the end of my childhood.  And increasingly, my brother and a few other men in my life seem to remind me of him.  That's probably a good thing, both ways: it's nice to be reminded of him, and it makes me perhaps a little more fond of those men who do.  I think it's their sense of humor.  Dad has a certain simple, silly, foolish sense of humor.  He could laugh at the smallest of things.

I miss hearing him laugh.  

I miss making him laugh.

I remember how I used to memorize jokes before going to visit.  They had to be just right:  something he'd find funny, perfect for his sense of humor, and I'd rehearse them in my mind to get the timing just right.  In the modern era of memes, I feel like jokes with punchlines and even the joke-telling tradition seems to be going the way of the dodo.

From the moment the pandemic began, my ability to reconstruct timelines in my head fell to shit.  Nowadays remembering when something happened is like putting together a frustrating jigsaw.  My brother suggests this is merely a function of age, and that the stress or fatigue of the pandemic has nothing to do with it.  He may be right.  If I ever don't feel exhausted again, I'll try to figure it out.  But whenever this happens, I'm reminded of my father, and the challenges he faced that way, and it makes me think about the fact that we're all strangers, in a way.  We think we know how others live or feel but we don't, especially when we just assume everyone feels or lives as we do and assume "well if I was in their position, I'd..." but you wouldn't, because that position comes with a whole different lifetime of events that led to it.  My father's life and mine are so very, very different.  

And yet...  we're not so very, very different.  The older I get the more I feel like I understand him, but in ways I can't put into words.  I planned today off, hoping to write, and even started this page a few days ago and researched yesterday for an appropriate song (beautiful and appropriate story behind the choice above, if you dig, thank you Mr Gabriel). 

But just now, as I came upstairs to write, I felt like it might just be a pointless exercise.  I felt like I had nothing to share.  For some of the things in my head, this isn't the place or the time, except to say that 'Odd a couple as they may have seemed, he was the right man at the right time for my mother.  They were great together.  He was perfect.  She couldn't have found a better match.'

But the other things, the things about why I feel closer to him, or how I feel I understand him better now... for those things I simply... lack the words, which is either fitting or ironic or both, considering what I wrote about him when he died.

So I'm afraid I don't have much to share today.  Typing through tears and nothing much to say.

After he died, in his honour I had a simple but vitally import precept of Taoism tattooed on my chest above my heart:  'Manifest plainness.  Embrace simplicity.'

So in that spirit of simplicity, let me sign off with just this:

Ten years, Pop.  I love you.  I still miss you.  You were a good man.

Transparency

"You lose your grip, and then you slip

Into the masterpiece"

["A Thousand Kisses Deep", Leonard Cohen]

For Dan, to your seventh "Daniversary"

And to Julie and TJ, lighthouses in the storm

---

A few years ago I was asked to be part of a 4-person panel on how, as parents, we can support LGBTQ+ youth.  We spoke twice, once at a public library in Mount Pearl, and then a few weeks later in St John's.  We may do so again in the future.  I hope so.

In preparing for each night, knowing we'd each get to speak for about 10-15 minutes at the start before the interactive portion, I prepared a list of talking points.  I didn't write up a proper speech.  I have a two-pronged approach to preparing for any future conversation that - this may surprise you - goes back to a biblical passage I read in my youth.  Speeches, lectures, or important conversations about 'logical' things I prepare carefully.  Anything more 'emotional' I intentionally don't prepare, but instead have only a few ideas of what I'd like to talk about, and then just "wing it" so that it's a more sincere experience, guided by both myself and the audience.  You can't force emotional connections, you can only facilitate them.

The speeches at the two presentations therefore varied, but I covered all the same main points even if I spoke about them in different ways.  It was not recorded, but I remember much of what I said, and given the audiences were fairly small, I thought it might be worth writing it down and sharing it here for others.  I've been meaning to do it for years.  Apparently I don't have a 'round tuit'.

So what follows is roughly what I said.  It's likely a little more, as I have the space and time here to expound further on what I was saying.

Without further ado...

---

I remember fondly the first time I attended a Pride event.  I didn't march in the parade but rather set up in the park with friends and family - my sisters were there with me and some of their kids came along as well, waiting to receive the parade at its destination.  It was a beautiful, bright, sunny day.  As I stood there and watched the parade arrive, people pouring into the park, this incredibly diverse collection from all across the spectra of sex, gender, race, religion... just pouring and pouring into the park dancing and singing and smiling and laughing... I felt an emotion I've seldom experienced in my life, so seldom that at first I didn't even recognize it.  

I felt awe.  

I felt genuine awe.  I'm a natural skeptic; awe is a rare experience for me.  And as I stood there, slack-jawed, I could not help but think:  

If only the naysayers could see and experience this - this moment right here, right now - how could anyone, anywhere, ever want to settle for anything less?

My name is Patrick and I'm a parent to a trans youth.

My step-son came out to his mother seven years ago.  It was a sort of series of revelations scrawled on napkins from the glove compartment in the car.  He knew he didn't feel right.   He knew he didn't fit in the role society had thrust upon him.  First it was 'I think I'm a lesbian.'  My partner told me about it.  We were both just fine with that.  It was a non-issue.  In some ways, as a dad, I actually felt a little relieved.  I was a young man once so I know what young men are like.  I wasn't looking forward to our little girl reaching the dating years.  

Next it was 'I think I'm pansexual.'  

That required Google and a little reading.

But again we were just fine with this.  Again, we felt as though this was a non-issue.  I realize either of those may have been of concern to some parents.  For us, it didn't shock or worry us.  We knew either of these options would make things a little different, but not in a way that caused us alarm.  

Finally, it was 'I'm transgender.'

While transgenderism is nowadays a part of common conversation, back at the time it was nearly unheard of.  This one threw us into shock.  It was like a sudden loss of gravity.  We were, as many parents are, completely ignorant on the matter.  All we knew was this:  whatever it means, the child comes first.  We knew that much, and little else.  

Do we accept this?  Do we push back?    Doctors, hormones, surgeries?  Our heads were swimming.  My partner did some research and we were fortunate to quickly find a parent support group where we could come and ask questions and get answers and support, both emotionally and in terms of logistics.  

And I cannot overstate how important that was.  

Granted, things have changed a lot in the last number of years.  To put it in context, it was before Trump took office and started reversing human rights policies of the Obama administration.  This was a time when everyone was largely ignorant and only just before the tide of "bathroom bills" began.  Transgenderism was not part of day to day language, and openly trans politicians were pretty much unheard of.  

But the issues trans people face, and that we would face as the parents of a trans child, remain numerous.  I'm not here to speak to all of them.  I remember telling friends back then "if you've got 100 questions, I only have the answers to half of them, and trust me, I have 100 more than that".  There are way too many things to cover in ten minutes, even if I fancied myself an expert, which I do not.  But I'd like to speak to a few of the first ones to arise for us as parents, and a few of our important early discoveries.

Be Supportive

First things first, being supportive of your child's gender identity and journey is the right decision.  I consider it a no-brainer, and it was a decision we came to almost immediately.  Every bit of valid research you'll find will tell you the same.  The outcomes are so much better.  Trans children in homes without a supportive parent have four times the rate of teenage suicide.  With support, it drops back to more normal rates.  Think about that for a second.

If you're reading this, my hope is that it's because you're trying to learn, possibly because you're a parent of a trans child, possibly even having only recently discovered so.  If so, your reading this is likely an indication you've already made the decision to support your child on their journey, in which case stop and take a breath:  the single most important decision you need to make... has already been made.  Congratulations!  You got it right.

It's a Journey

You child has embarked on a journey.  

The reason our child's coming out happened 'in steps' is because it's a journey for them.  They're fumbling along, figuring out who they are, and this is one large and important piece.  Gender, gender expression, sexuality.  These are all different pieces, though we often mix and confuse and conflate them.

When a young child comes out as trans, people react by saying "how can they possibly know at such a young age?"  When an older child comes out, people react by saying "wouldn't they have known before now?"  It's denial either way.  If a child is insistent, persistent, consistent, then chances are it's very real and not a "phase they're going through".  And even if it was "just a phase", why fight it so hard?  Why not let them explore their identity and their world?  Why not support them on their journey and let them figure things out for themselves?

Scientists now know that children have a sense of gender by the time they're as young as two to four.  But they lack the language to express it well at that age, and they don't understand the implications enough to think it important.  So often a trans child "coming out", if and when they do, may be much later, when they've reached an age where they better appreciate the (unfortunate) importance their society places on it.  And they're still going to have the experience of learning their own sexuality - separate from gender and gender expression - as they go as well.  They're navigating the world trying to figure out who they are, and trying to find ways to express that.  Be patient.  Give them the room to grow and support them as they do.

For Both of You

You have a journey ahead of you too, and it's important to understand and recognize that.  There's no simple checklist or map of "do this and this and this and you're sorted".  It's going to be a lot longer and more complicated than that, I'm sorry.  It's going to be day by day, and just when you think you've got a lid on things, you'll be side-swiped by something you didn't see coming.  But you know what?  That was always going to happen with a cis child anyway.  If you thought differently you were probably deluding yourself.  The difference is that with a cis child, you can easily convince yourself you know what all the issues will be before they arrive, and how you plan to deal with each as they arrive.  Instead, you're now forced to admit you don't know what comes next.  But well... that's parenting.  

Let's admit it: there's no manual.  We're all winging it, forever gripped by Imposter Syndrome because in at least some of our heads, our own parents had it all figured out.  No, they didn't.  They winged it.  Just like you.  Yes, the challenges will be different ones.  Yes, some will be difficult.  But the rewards will be different and interesting too.  The future will be different, but just because it is now more unknown to you doesn't mean it need be dark.  You still get a hand in ensuring it's bright.  And as someone a little farther along this journey, let me assure you:  it can be quite bright.

Don't be in a hurry to simply move from one set of checkboxes to another.  Cis.  Trans.  Straight.  Gay.  Pan.  The checkboxes are the problem.  Our need to put everything into tidy little categories is a coping mechanism that creates more problems than it solves.  People are people.  Let them be.  Let them be themselves and let them shine.

Give Yourself Room for your Own Feelings

When parents first find out their child is trans, many experience a set of intense, confusing, difficult feelings, a sense of loss, that they will be tempted to term grief, as though they feel like they've lost a child.

First, while these strange feelings are very legitimate, please don't use the word grief.  It is problematic and carries too much baggage.  It is not grief, obviously, as your child is still very much alive, and to use the word grief is actually pretty unfair to those who have lost a child, as well as to trans people - especially children - as if to suggest they are somehow responsible for this chaotic set of emotions you're facing.  This is a part of your journey, not theirs.  They have enough to deal with, and you cannot burden them with the responsibility of helping you sort through your feelings about all this on top of their own struggle.  You're the parent.  You're the adult.

But these peculiar, chaotic feelings many experience can feel akin to a sense of loss, and are challenging to process.  I've referred to it as "the chaos" or "the void".  It's a sort of massive disorientation.  It's something most people around you can't relate to and probably couldn't understand or appreciate even if you explained it.  And you are likely experiencing this at a time when people around you don't even know your child is trans yet, so you can't even try to discuss it with friends or family to work through it.  So you find yourself confronting this emotional challenge and feeling as though you're going it alone.

What you'll come to realize in time is that you're not missing anything, at least nothing real.  The child hasn't gone anywhere.  Your history together hasn't gone anywhere.  You've lost nothing.  Rather, the elaborate fantasy you've spent years constructing in your mind of the bright, wonderful future that you want for your child is the only thing that has gone away, or "the script" as a trans friend put it to me.  You lost the script to the play.  But the child, this wonderful person you've been raising, they're still here, and in fact, they're beginning to blossom into who they truly are, their authentic self.  You wrote the script long ago, in the back of your mind, because you love your child and were concerned for their future, just as all good parents are.  But you wrote that script to quiet your own fear.  And what you feel now is not loss; it is fear and confusion.  It is all that fear returning, all at once and suddenly.  It's fear of the unknown.  

But you don't need to be afraid, and you don't need to be alone.

This is one of those things that parent support groups and therapists are for.  They can help you understand the truth.  They help you learn.  They help you process these changes and more forward.  They help you best support your child.  And they remind you that this is not a solitary experience, but one many people face.  And the more you learn, the more you educate yourself, the more you "steer into the skid" and accept your role and your journey, the faster that fear fades.

You equip yourself with the tools necessary for this new future.

You equip yourself with the tools necessary for this different, surprising future.

You equip yourself with the tools necessary for this bright future.

---

What I didn't know back then that I know now is just how much of a wonderful journey it would be for me.  

I was starting to see it, sure, but nowadays I happily say, unequivocally, that Dan's coming out as trans was one of the best things that's ever happened to me.  My own personal growth as I came to really examine constructs like gender, to scrutinize how people are socialized differently to act and react differently in similar situations, to listen and explore how the world is experienced uniquely by different people from varying background experiences... it has opened my mind to entire avenues of thought I can't begin to describe.  Even the music I choose to listen to and how I listen to it, trying to gain insight into the infinite ways in which people experience the universe... it's all different.  There's no going back and I wouldn't want to.

Do I still sometimes get afraid for Dan, as a parent thinking about his future and the challenges he may face?  Sure, just as any parent does.  Are those concerns maybe a little different?  Sure, maybe, sometimes.  Are there a few extras?  Sure, maybe.  Whatever.

But the shining brilliance of his unique existence is more than enough to dispel whatever darkness the world possesses.  At the end of the day...  a quote from one of my favourite films springs to mind:

"The mystery of life isn't a problem to solve, 

but a reality to experience."

 

Unsa(i)d

[Ed note:  I actually wrote this some time back, but I didn't click Publish at the time for... reasons.]

"Bound with all the weight of all the words he tried to say,

Chained to all the places that he never wished to stay"

["Cast No Shadow", Oasis]

It's been over 200 days since Krista died and I've yet to feel like I've mourned her passing.  So I'm here.  To try this.  Because maybe writing shit down and admitting certain things to myself and the world at large will make me see it in an undeniable way that puts enough cracks in the dam.

She died in March and while I have teared up a little once or twice since, I've consistently felt like I've been living in denial for over six months now.  It's easy to see how I got here:  with the pandemic I'd not laid eyes on her for over 3 years, and outside my visits to Ottawa we had little personal contact.  So that sense of "missing" is not there.  It just seems like a much longer break than usual, and that "some day soon" I'll see her again.  

But I won't.

Ever.

I knew if I'd ever had to set foot in their house in Ottawa that it would hit me; she wouldn't be there to meet me at the door, or at the airport before that, with a big hug and that fantastic big smile.  I even imagined it: stepping through the doorway and having it strike me and sobbing uncontrollably.  But Geoff sold the house and moved to Mount Carmel, so that will never happen.  I'll never set foot in that house in Ottawa again.  I can certainly understand why he needed to get out of there.  I imagine her absence was unbearable for him.

Those were wonderful, welcoming, warm hugs.  Hers was an incredible smile.  God, what a smile.  No one smiled quite like her.

Then I thought it would finally hit me when I visited Mount Carmel for the first time.  I knew seeing Geoff when he returned would just feel like "another visit from Geoff" and he frequently came without her, so I knew that wouldn't do it, but I thought the house might.  Him in a house without her.  Geoff and the dogs but no Krista.  But it didn't.  It's "Geoff's new house".  It was never "their house" in my mind, so she's not "missing".  It didn't feel like she was "supposed to be there but wasn't", even when I was helping unpack things I knew had been hers.

So I keep waiting for it to hit me, but it doesn't.  I don't feel like she's gone for good.  I feel like I'm waiting for her to return.

But she's not coming back.

I can imagine seeing her again.  In my mind I can hear the precise tone of her voice when she greets me.  It wasn't always that tone, but in more recent years.  It was a tone that said that I was welcome there.  That she was genuinely happy to see me.

And I've thought "well, maybe we just weren't that close" but that's not true exactly.  If it were true, I wouldn't feel like there's this dark shadow following me around.  She wouldn't keep crossing my mind.  I wouldn't feel like I was "waiting for it to hit me", waiting for it to crash over me like a wave.

She meant something to me, very much so.  I'm not entirely sure how to describe our relationship.  More than acquaintanceship, perhaps less than a '"close friend" and yet anything prefaced with "just" or "only" feels unfair and incorrect.  I think, perhaps, we had a peculiar friendship and that it was burgeoning.  It was burgeoning.  Perhaps it's hard to mourn because the loss doesn't feel so much a past as a very interesting future.

And I realize different people grieve in different ways, and I'm usually one to insist on that, and that no one has a right to judge anyone else for how they process theirs.  It's different for all of us.  But I feel like after all these years and all these goodbyes I know how it works for me, and this time it's... not working.  It's stalled.  It's lurking.  It's a shadow that's following me and haunting me.   A splinter of the mind.  I'm held hostage by my own heart.

True crime podcasts.  That was our last conversation, I think.  Over morning tea.  We were having some one on one time over morning tea while the others slept.  I'd come to really enjoy that time.  I looked forward to it, though I never told her that.

Our friendship...  ok, I guess I've settled on a word...  Our friendship started out slowly.  Despite each of us being an important fixture in Geoff's life, I didn't feel like we clicked right away.  I'm not putting that on her; I'm sure there are aspects of that which sit entirely with me.  But it took some time before I came to understand (or at least, guess) that...  I think she had a tendency to put up a certain barrier of intellectual snobbery designed to keep people at bay and protect herself, borne not of overconfidence but of a fear of rejection.  Like many others - myself included - she may have projected more confidence than she had, and that kept people at bay that way.  But beneath that prickly exterior beat a tremendous heart, and once we could sit and talk and laugh together... 

I will never forget that laugh.  The smile, the chuckle, and the laugh.  Her laugh was loud, and raucous, and wonderful.

But I'd only just barely climbed inside and started to look around.  Like I was lucky to have made it that far, to be permitted in that inner sanctum after all this time, to have arrived, hard fought, and then... everything was cut short.

I will miss that laugh the most.

And I think I lived in denial right up until it was final.  I asked Geoff to pass her a message from me, a strange compliment.  I knew I should have told her myself but I didn't have the strength.  And I knew that was cowardice and a decision I would likely later regret but I stuck with it anyway, lost in the denial that this somehow wasn't the end, and that there would be time to fix things later.

It was simply one of many conversations I wanted to have with her that I now never will.  I wanted to some day explain to her that she reminded me of Patty and why and the myriad of feelings that meant for me.  I wanted to ask her thoughts on a million things.  I wanted to have a hundred more conversations.

But I won't.  

Because I can't.

These are just... things left unsaid.  

"Everyone leaves unfinished business.
That's what dying is."
[Amos Burton, The Expanse]