A Self-Made Man: No Thanks to Me

Normal, funny word really because normal is an imaginary construct of people that only wish to construct a barrier between them and something they do not wish to support. Is it normal to go to bed at ten, eleven; is it normal to watch the Black List on NBC or How to get Away with Murder on ABC? Do you have any idea why Fifty Shades of Grey was a bestselling novel?

No one knows what the girl next door is doing at 2AM let alone the geek living in his mother’s basement.

I feel responsible for my children, as I should. I lived a lie, told countless lies to cover it up, and slept with so many women that I am embarrassed to even guess at the number, played football, joined the Air Force to prove to everyone I was a man and I knew with every fiber in my being that was a lie.

I hated people, I was a loner, and in a lot of ways anti-social all because I hated the life I was leading and I really believed that in some way’s my lack of wanting friends rubbed off on my kids.

Everyone is different, for instance, as a teenager and a young man in my twenties I tried so hard to prove my manhood that I was often seen with several different girls every week. It wasn’t like finding them was easy, nope, on the contrary it was the crazy amount of girls I approached and the fact I had no problems with rejection.

I would often hear “NO.” 15 times before I got one “Sure we can hang Saturday.”

But I am like a lot of people and find myself believing that anyone can do it; all they need is a little confidence. As with the case with my often and now single son. I tease him about being shy but I know that’s not the case.

He believes in love (a concept that I was unfamiliar to at his age) He is loving and sweet and like his sister would go to the mat for anyone he cares about. So he never played the field, instead he would be faithful and caring until the bitter end.

Sometimes I don’t know what to say to him because we were so different in a lot of ways. I was never attracted to women, he is 100 percent straight. I was out for pure numbers while he is out to find true love. Sadly I think that the bottom line is, because I was an introvert and non-sociable, this made it a bit more difficult on my kids finding the right “one.” And now I only have advice that they cannot use.

I remember, early in my transition, the family was at Freddie’s Beach Bar in Virginia (a place where transgender girls often frequent) Brendan, being supportive but looking very out of place said, “I am okay, but I don’t think I could ever go out with you alone. I don’t want people to have the wrong idea.”

People sometimes worry too much about “doing the right thing” when “doing the right thing” means lying about who they are or how they feel. I personally think that it does more harm than good. Being transgender would have never rubbed off on my kids just like my parent’s “so-called” normal would have never rubbed off on me.

Instead of being honest I became an introvert and that DOES rub off; so instead of my son heading off to a local hot spot looking to meet someone for the night, he crosses his fingers and hopes to run into the love of his life at the grocery store…And that IS my fault. No, I don’t mean his faith in love but his less than enthusiastic view of being around a lot of people is my fault.

Still 14 months later, now that I am comfortable going to more, well, straight places he took me out for dinner. My boy is grown up and even without fatherly advice from me I can see he became a man all by himself.

He will make it, even if I don’t totally understand his total devotion to the concept of love, I know he will find someone, he is an amazing man. He works so hard and really never asks for anything.

I just wish I could have been honest enough to myself to be honest with my kids; the moral of the story…Be yourself or risk the consequences.

#Family #Brendan #transition #love #Relationships #Identification