My parents:

First my father...My parents separated about ten months after I was born. I don't remember my father from childhood. Not until I met him when I was 14. I hated him as a child for not being there. I swore to myself I'd hunt him down some day and kill him. I actually remember that clearly. For not being there, for leaving us to our fate, I was going to be his judge, jury, and executioner. I got older, I matured, I figured things out. I learned things from other family members (on my father's side). I learned that he had to leave Ohio due to not being able to pay the child support required by law. I found out (from talking to him) that this caused him major depression, suicidal depression. And, when we were older he 'snuck' into Ohio, to our cousin's house to reunite with us all. And to meet me (really) for the first time. I think I was still too angry with him. I couldn't forgive him. I still haven't. Not really. And some days it eats at me. He's not to blame for the pain of my child hood. If he's not then who is?

Next, my mother... Whew, maybe I'd better wait till tomorrow for THAT one. <smile>

8/23/99

What's left to discuss? My mother and addiction. That's good really. They're very closely related.

My mother suffered a fever (106 degrees) for several days as an infant, giving her brain damage in the motor control area of her brain. She is now left with a severe limp, a mostly non-functioning right hand, and seizures similar to epilepsy, but not from a genetic origin. I'm sure the psychological torment she underwent growing up puts mine to shame. She has also been on depressants (to control the seizures) for as long as I can remember. These things I've accepted.

However, she is also an alcoholic, and that one fact pretty much ruined my childhood. Her medication mixed with the alcohol made her groggy or asleep most of the time. It wasn't until I got much older that I understood that somewhere, in her mind, she's waiting to die. She's been waiting since I can remember. She is trapped not being able to face the pain of her life, and just waits for release. That would be fine with me, except she was responsible for fulfilling duties as a parent, which I feel she failed at miserably. I understand that she had alot of self loathing (I REALLY understand very well). I understand that she thought we (her children) were embarrassed by her. I wasn't. I loved her, I still do, but she couldn't get over her pain. As a child, I performed in alot of plays, and concert choirs. She never attended one event. Like I said, she thought I'd be embarrassed. No, mom, embarrassed is never having your mom come to anything you ever do. No matter what award I was given (Writing, Art, singing), she was never there. I watched her drink her life away, and sleep.

From the beginning of school until I was in the fifth grade, I was a straight A student. I was bright, but physically small and emotionally sensative. I got beat up several times (I guess I was an easy target). Some of those times I probably deserved it for spouting off at the mouth to the wrong person.

At the beginning of the sixth grade, I stopped trying to get good grades. I started doing whatever made my life easier. My grades plummeted. I didn't care. I got caught shoplifting that year. I think in retrospect, that it was another attempt to get my mother's attention, to no avail. All she said was she was dissappointed.

She had a boyfriend at the time. He insisted I join the football team. I hated it and failed miserably at sports. He was not pleased. And when, the same year, I recieved poetry awards, that too, displeased him.

The same year,I hit puberty, and my previously mild affinity for wearing female clothing became a full fledged 'thing'. My first orgasm happened while I was wearing a yellow dress I'd taken from my sister's closet. I don't remember imagining myself as female then. I can't accurately recall WHAT I was thinking. It doesn't matter. I felt sick, and wrong, and unable to please anyone.

I turned inward, to realms of fantasy. Comic books, science fiction, and role playing. A friend of mine introduced me to new kinds of music, the Beatles, Grateful Dead. I remember thinking Uriah Heep was incredibly cool, hearing it in his attic before my first game of D&D.

This non existant parental supervision gave free reign for me to do whatever the hell I felt like. I always wore my hair long. I liked it that way. From my freshman year in highschool, I wore it back in a ponytail. At least while I was around other people. Sometimes my sister and I would brush each other's hair out. I really liked that. Sometimes I would tease my hair, to give it that puffy mid-eighties look. I looked girlish when I did, and not wanting to get beat up any more, I never did that around anyone else. My sophomore year of High school, I started smoking pot. I'd already been drinking beer for several years. That really seemed to help kill the pain. My home condition was nearly unbearable. We were poor. My siblings had moved away, and I was just trying to make it through to adulthood, just graduate, then I could get on with my life. Somewhere along the way, I was told the kind of lie that I desparately grasped onto as the truth. I wanted it to be the truth so badly. 'Through your teenage years, you'll have strange thoughts, strange desires, but you'll grow out of them'. So I waited to become normal, and I built this fierce persona to protect Lynn. But the lie never happened. The feelings persisted.

My senior year, I moved in with my sister. A couple months before I graduated, I started working full time (second shift), and started saving for college. I knew for quite some time that I wanted to be an illustrator, preferably a comic book artist or animator. I was accepted by the Art Institute of Pittsburgh. After the summer, I went to college there. I worked my ass off, but somewhere I screwed up my paperwork or it was lost in the shuffle, and my grants for my second quarter never came through. I had to leave. I had a 3.8 GPA, and I had no-one willing to give me a scolarship.I was crushed. I'd worked so hard, and now I felt I was being pulled back into the inescapable trap of my little rural Ohio town. It was equivilant to hell for me.

I spent eight months sleeping on my mom's couch. three of those months I was employed at a cidar factory. The rest of the time, I had nothing to do, and nothing to look forward to. I had made an agreement with a friend, that after X amount of time, if we weren't employed, we'd enlist. During that time, I also tried to talk a friend of mine (hi D.) out of marrying the wrong man. I fell in love with her completely in the process.  It cracked my wall of unfeeling I'd had since I was about 14. I felt love! I felt SO alive! I couldn't sleep. It was the most wonderful feeling in my life. First love.  She would continually send me strange mixed signals, and I'd come back for more pain. She told me once she slept with someone she barely knew. She felt really bad about it. So why tell ME? 'Hey, not only will I not sleep with you, I slept with someone I really don't like, and you get to be the one whose shoulder I cry on'. It was a total mind-fuck for me. D., I know you didn't mean to hurt me, and I'm not mad at you. We were ALL messed up, confused, and blindly injuring people we loved.

Well, the day came, when I told myself I'd enlist, and I did.

Two weeks before I went in, a friend of mine set me up with a girl he knew, presumably a situation even I couldn't screw up. He was hard pressed to get me laid I think. It worked. I was 20, and I finally had sex. I remember telling a friend (Hi T.B.) of mine that at least now I didn't have to worry if I was gay or not. Uhhhh, right. Well, in case any of you are wondering, having sex with someone does not necessarily confirm your sexuality.

I ended up joining the Air Force. I enlisted into the linguist field, which required a 6-year active enlistment. During the last week of basic training, I had my job reservation pulled because I failed the required background investigation for security clearance. It seems I'd defaulted on a student loan (duh! I was unemployed! Which is why I enlisted). Now, days before basic training ended, I had 5 jobs laid out before me to select from: Bus Driver, Load Master, Security Police, Meat Cutter, and Computer Programmer. Hmmm, that's a tough choice.... <SMILE>

Basic training is never a time you think of sex. It didn't occur to me AT ALL. However, technical school was a different story. About four weeks into the course, I went off base, and bought some lingerie (supposedly for the young lady I met before I started basic training). I put it on in my dorm room, and was thrilled, exhilerated and awash with fear of being caught. I had a girlfriend, Why did I still want to wear women's clothing? Maybe old habits just die hard (Hahahaha, yeah, right).

I finished tech school and was given two weeks leave to come home to Ohio. Everyone was so proud of me. I looked very military. very sharp. I felt like I had done something to show my worth to my community. I was worth something. I had a girlfriend, I had a job. I felt normal. Briefly.

It turns out, my girlfriend demanded more of my time. Here I was back from basic and tech school, and I wanted to get fucked up with my friends. One evening I staggered back to my girlfriend's place, vomitted in her kitchen sink, cleaned it, staggered upstairs, vomitted in her bathtub, cleaned THAT. When I went in the bedroom, she said 'you don't think you're crawling in bed with me do you?' Actually, that's EXACTLY what I thought I'd do. I didn't, I vomitted in the bathroom sink and the toilet, cleaned them (THANK YOU! That was EVERY water recepticle in her appartment. Applause please!) Curled up on her couch and passed out. The next morning she got up to go to work, and bitched me out before she left. I packed my stuff, and as I was leaving, her mom came up. I told her that it just wasn't working out, and left. I haven't heard from her since. A.I., if you ever read this, I'm sorry things didn't work out, and I hope you've found a nice guy for yourself. I wish you happiness.

On returning to Active duty, I was stationed on Scott Air Force Base (just East of St. Louis) as a programmer. There I would spend the rest of my enlistment. I actually had a small stash of female clothing I hid in my dorm room. It was never found during inspection luckily. My roommate and I had met the last day of basic training, had been in class together and were only several rooms apart in Tech school. We'd decided to share a dorm room, and after 8 months were offered the opportunity to move off base. We jumped at it. We got an appartment together near base. He had caught me once in the dorm room shaving my legs, I told him it was something I'd read in a cycling magazine (which we were both into at the time). Removing the hair from your legs decreases likelihood of infection in the event of a cut, because the hairs hold onto dirt. He bought it, I guess. I tend to think he may have known something. I can't believe I successfully fooled him for three years. To be continued...

08/25/99

As a mostly unrelated side-note to the TG stuff, during this time I had the opportunity to pursue comic publishing with a friend. I still owe him big-time. It was a great time for me. My friend, however, took the monatary risk, and lost. Like I said, I don't consider my debt to him paid yet.

Well, I had collected an assortment of female clothing now that I was in an appartment, and (gee, the other 'ladies' out there will be shocked to hear THIS one) ended up purging. I threw it all away. I was giving this girly crap up! Uh-huh, I bought more over time. I met a lady in an evening computer class that I dated briefly. She was still emotionally inaccessable from a previous marriage gone bad. We went our separate ways after a couple months. I never brought myself to tell her my 'secret'.

Well, she called me one evening and wanted to introduce me to a friend. A blind date. Hmmmm. She finally convinced me to go meet this friend of hers. We picked her up at her house and went to this crappy country/rock bar. God, I hated that place. I don't dance. I'm so self conscious that I can't move with any grace. I talked her into going to a bar down the street with me. We had a very pleasant evening of conversation. On returning to the bar where my ex-girlfriend had been, she had met some guy and wanted to take off with him, asking if I'd mind seeing her friend (my 'date') home. I took her home. We ended up sleeping together but not having sex. She was very nice. I liked her.

On our second date, I told her my 'secret'. That quickly I had decided I'd either blow it right there, or maybe we'd have something together. At the time, I firmly classified myself as transvestite. Now, I don't know. That's what the therapist is for. Anyway, she and I have been together since. We're only days from our second wedding anniversary. I love her alot, and wish I didn't have to put her through this crap.

Anyway, I'd been drinking steadily more over the past year, frustrated and angry, and not having a real reason I could point at. Then about six months ago, I started smoking pot again. It killed the anger to a suitable degree, but I couldn't afford the penalty if I was caught. Also, because of my childhood, I am acutely aware of addiction, and I was showing signs. Both to the alcohol and the marijuana. Pot's not physically addictive (so I've read) but I'd get horrible headaches the second day after I stopped smoking, that would linger until I smoked again.  My stress was building, and I was getting this sharp pain under my right collarbone. I would fly into rages. I felt insane, and then I started thinking about suicide. That pretty much brings us to now.

Here I am, you now know all the major details of my existence. This description takes me back to my first diary entries.