"Winter"

Today's blog is all about my past.... my early past. I feel that maybe typing my history I can come to understand my inner workings better and know how I ended up here.

Born then Separate

      I was a terrible baby, my mother said to me one fine evening during one of our oh so "lovely" conversations. She said that I would cry when the sun hit me wrong, at any slight provocation, and it was hell on her, which I can understand, it seemed like I resented being born and it was obvious that I had problems from the start. My father did not want me, he only wanted one child, my older brother, he did not agree to my birth, and since he and my mother were on the outs they ended up all but officially separating. I remember up until I think I was 5 him spending every hour every day at his job, a screen printing business that he owned, him living in a little apartment in the back of the large, almost warehouse like building and nowadays when I think about it I would not be surprised if he had a fling with one of the female employees at that time. I remember there were some places in that building I was afraid to go, not surprising since I was afraid of so many things. I loved the smell of the place somehow but I can no longer seem to describe it, maybe sandalwood, a sort of varnish old type of smell, maybe something you would expect to smell in an industrial building of it's type, I would say that variations of the smell attracts me to certain men nowadays. My brother Nathan says he was emotionally distraught over the separation, I however seemed to barely notice(my brain had not made the neural connections yet) besides the fact that I felt that my father paid less attention to me than with my brother.

This is going to be a story that will take many days to tell so let me give some information so I will not have to go into long tangents in the future...

A Little bit of Southern Family History

     I had a high amount of respect for both sets of my grandparents, what they achieved in life was remarkable and all of them, even my mother, father, and brother had/has an interesting pioneer, do-it-yourself spirit which has caused every single family member to have their own business or businesses where just 3(a little less actually) generations ago both sides, especially the southern side were very poor. My mother would reminisce about living in a shack close to the NC Appalachian mountains where they had an outhouse and got by on raising livestock and vegetables for their own consumption. My grandfather had it worse living in a one room shack with five brothers, he grew up tough, and he was someone others gravitated towards. Later, hanging sheet rock for his brothers, he happened to work longer and faster than them, which gave him the ability and respect to gain connections with other contractors to the point where he started his own housing business, with some contractors being favorable to my grandfather, his brothers saw this as a betrayal. By the end of his life he had made many connections and was well thought of. I remember asking him, "Granpa, you have enough money, why don't you get the internet or buy a TV that is not 30 years old?" he responded "I have everything I need, a house, my wife, a daughter, two grandchildren and my Cadillac.". My grandmother was a house wife and happy to be so and loved my grandfather so much that she did not not last more than a year after he died but she was very unhappy with where she was forced to live the last 20 or so years of her life which I do not think helped her disposition, one thing is for certain she treated me very well.

Ole Southern Racism, and Death

While I have generally good memories of of my southern set of grandparents, they treated my mother pretty terribly. They were extreme authoritarians while she was growing up, and when my mother was an adult my she was helping him with his housing business "JB Investments" making the floor plans but no matter how well she did my grandfather never complimented her and in-fact was always negative, and more often than not he would yell at her and humiliate in-front of everyone, one time, only one time did a contractor have the guts to stand up for my mother against my grandfather and he was not my daddy, it got so bad at one point that she tried to avoid him on the job.

My grandparents were also racist in that they would never allow a black person in their house, no matter how good they got along with said person, and they thought interracial couples were an abomination, and to them that was the worst thing, My mother said that she was threatened on if she every brought a black guy home, my mother seems unaffected by their racism, and I never heard any of it until I was a teen. I remember one morning I accompanied them during their weekly breakfast outing to McDonalds, an interracial couple couple who looked very in love walked by the window. I thought they looked lovely, but my grandparents commented to each other how disgusting the two were and kept saying what a poor choice the girl made, I asked them why and they were unable to give me a real answer just bullshit things like "it's not right" or "it's unnatural", just as telling, when I was a teen, I was leaving my grandparents house and my grandfather said "I'd rather you be gay than date a black woman." I was tempted to say to say back to him "Guess what, i'm dating a black guy." but that would have served no purpose other than create a rift between us. When he was dying of lung cancer they sent him a black preacher, who he tried to reject, but the preacher was determined, and not bothered by the racist slurs my grandfather threw at him, the man persisted and my grandfather respected that and relented, after many talks with the man he regretted his racism and apologized, until he died that was the only preacher he would give audience to. He also apologized to my mother for how he treated her throughout her entire life, he died peacefully with my father there holding his hand.

Short History of the Northern Family

       in Dillsburg PA my great-grandfather was a taxidermist for the natural history museum, pretty cool right? My grandfather started out selling bottled milk door to door as his first business. Unlike my southern grandfather he does not come across as tough despite his height but he is a leader. He and my grandmother were involved in numerous public works and charities, they owned a string of business, about 5, when they got bored they would sell the company and start another that piqued their interest including a shoe shop and a photography business, the last and longest running one before retirement was a very successful real estate business which he sold in the early 90s. At some point he joined the Freemasons, and became a very respected community leader, I always liked teasing him "Granpa, I watched a 2 hour special on the Freemasons yesterday." with alot of concern he responded "What! What did they say?!" and i'd loudly laugh and say "No worries, they did not reveal your secrets." and he calmly responds "Oh, ok.". He was always a busy person but he had time for me if I wanted it. My grandmother was very active volunteering for church based charities, and she was a terrific musician and singer, she was the piano player for a touring gospel choir, and taught piano in schools before I was born. I believe a tiny bit of sourness from me, towards her, came when she constantly tried to turn my southern accent into a northern one as a child, she hated the word "ya'll" They are both very religious obviously, but my grandfather is a good bit more open-minded, but they both thrill at intelligence. After having two sons my grandfather was hoping that my parents would produce girls, He bought girls clothes for my brother way before it was determined he would be a boy, not wanting to waste, my brother had to wear alot of pink and shirts that said things like "i'm a good girl" for the first year of his life. I am pretty sure he did not expect to have a female grandchild in this way meaning moi, I bet he is thrilled over my niece.

Intolerance 

I have never cared for my northern extended family, I always felt that they did not like us, this was especially felt at a family get-together when my grandparents redid their vows, you could feel the sneers towards me and my brother, who was already covered head to toe in tattoos. At a holiday get-together I got the distinct impression that if I said that I was not Christian or anything but a normal boy then i'd be completely ostracized and after hearing the story of what that family did to a distant relative because the boy loved pink and played with dolls, the family shamed him so much that he tried to become macho, got married and promptly killed himself. What would be odd to most, my southern family were OK with me "Does not affect me at all so why should I care?" is what I would hear most often or they were OK with it after seeing that I could pass and look like a normal girl(funny how family members can be OK with it due to how well one passes, usually your safety is what chiefly worries them) I never told my northern extended family anything about me and I don't really give a shit if I never talk to em or see them again

                                           Beaten Down
Now that we are pretty much done with family explanations, let's talk about a possible disorder, you see I was terrible at reading and writing as well as my speech, you could attribute this to a number of disorders but I attribute this to constant ear infections, where it felt like I was underwater at least 12 hours daily, the pediatrician kept telling my mother that I was autistic but my mother did not believe that since she could come up behind me, snap her fingers loudly right next to my ear and I would not notice.

 I was a bully in the first half of pre-school, the girls would not let me play and I was pretty much ignored which made me very angry, that anger was mostly about me, I hated myself so I directed it towards others, which really affects the psyche for a good long time. By the end of pre-school I had faded to the back of insignificance, I was falling very behind and was starting to get picked on constantly because of it so I kept falling back into myself and creating my own worlds in my head that I escaped to very often, My mother was extremely worried about me because I could sit in a rocking chair and rock back and forth for hours just staring. Elementary was horrible at first I was excited but it quickly became apparent that I would be ignored and be made fun of constantly, according to my mother, I was called stupid by the teacher who isolated me from the rest of the kids and encouraged them to make fun of me, her heart bled when I agreed with the teacher but then she got very angry, she rampaged at the school resulting in a class transfer.

Things were not that great with other people I knew. My father had gotten back with my Mother when I entered elementary I believe, but while I know he was really nice to me and tried to do his best to teach me sports(which I was terrible at and made fun of by the teachers as well) I do not remember a large presence from him. I don't know why but I always tried playing with the neighbor girl who was my age but because I was a boy she treated me like shit, she was basically made to play with me because our parents were friends even though her father disliked any boy around his daughter. She would be extremely reluctant to let me play with her toys ending with me going home on the verge of crying, she told me how sorry she was for being mean for the sake of being mean in high school. At home I tried my best to emulate my older brother but failed miserably at everything, he was my opposite, everyone liked him, he was very popular and good at the things he tried, so maybe, I thought, if I was like him things would change but I ended up being teased by my brother as well as his friends which again sent me away crying, in adulthood he apologized to me for this. At the house of my southern grandparents, my grandfather most certainly wanted little to do with me, I wanted to stay inside all the time hanging out with my grandmother and watch movies, I was always a big movie person, After a few times crying to my mother about not getting any attention from my grandpa it turned out he did not think I was a healthy boy, that I was not interested in what boys my age should be interested in, my mother tried to convince him at least take a few hours and do something with me that I like to do like watch movies with other people, he scoffed at that but eventually he came around and, once night started to fall, he would come inside and watch a movie with me. I had one friend named but his parents did not treat me very well either. Then there was my southern great-grandmother who called me a sissy every time that I did not do what the other boys were supposed to do.

All of that along with that intense ear infection helped nothing, one very happy memory was going to the Sylvan Learning Center where they gave me personal one on one instruction on reading and by the time I came out of there my reading, and understanding what I read was in line with a collage senior and I was still in the 3rd grade(My speech was not at an acceptable level until the 5th grade), other than accomplishing that I rarely felt happy and by the time I was eight the pediatrician kept insisting that I was autistic, but my mother finally had enough, told the pediatrician to basically go fuck himself, and we went to a different doctor where on my first visit he diagnosed me with a severe ear infection and I was scheduled immediately for surgery to have tubes put in my ears, I remember it very clearly, counting down from 10 then a neon like hammer hit me with the type of light you tend to see when your eyes are closed, with an after effect of stars, when I woke up I was groggy, it took me a minute to figure out what happened but I felt great otherwise. I never had a problem with my ears after that, my IQ quickly shot up past 100, in-fact I am a case example of how IQ can change but, as it turns out, i'll always be behind in other areas of life, still...I am lucky that the infection did not permanently damage my ears, any longer and it would have certainly done so, I have since met others who had the same problem and they were not so lucky. This is the point where all my anger and confusion over myself started to subside albeit slowly for as I come to find out, describing exactly what I feel is a gargantuan task.

Tomorrow i'll keep going on and talk more about my gender problems, transition, and such things, especially how I felt about it during different periods....