Who am I without my story?
this has become a pervading question in my mind recently. If I choose to rewrite my past, not to change the facts, but to use those facts as events of empowerment, how would I rewrite my story?
This is an agonizing question for me. Occasionally I see glimmers of truth and power in the events of my past, yet mostly they are hard to see and even harder to focus on.
My past has many interesting footnotes, most of which I have been afraid or ashamed of for a very long time. Ashamed that I could not be the perfect child in a legalistic system. Ashamed that I had been born a girl. Afraid of the wrath of my parents. Afraid that I really was displeasing to God. Afraid that no one would approve of me...and ashamed that that even mattered. Fear ruled my childhood, shame ruled my young adulthood. I felt that I was never going to be allowed to discover my true self, and was afraid of what I would find if I did.
I have come to a point in my life that I cannot ignore my past any longer, it is time to embrace the things that shaped me, the things that made me the man that I am today. I no longer fear my history, but rather look back on it to inform my present and create my future.
I have come to the point where it is ok for me to admit that I am a man with a woman's body, who was raised as a girl by parents who had no clue what was going on inside my head. I can't fault them, for I never told them. Never once did I tell my mother that I felt something was wrong, so great was my shame.
Why?
Because God doesn't make mistakes, not even in my case...It never occurred to me that it might not be a mistake, but part of a plan...at least not then. Nope, I was simply stating to myself that God fucked up...and in my family, that brought shame, and fear. I was just as afraid to tell my mother what I was going through. The reprisals for "rebellion" were horrific. I knew that if they were not able to change my mind, that it would be bad.
So, out of fear and shame, I asked God to take away my unbearable desire to be a boy...when puberty hit with no answer from God, I felt that I was doubly fucked...because when puberty struck it was with all the desires of a boy... a gay boy...and by that time I "knew enough" to know that this was WRONG.
Of course I didn't know anything about homosexuality except that it was wrong. God said it was wrong. Mom and Dad said it was wrong. But I knew what attracted me and how I felt about myself...and so I prayed that God would take away those urges and desires as well...
fast forward ten years or so...
still no answer.
This has been the story of my life...fear...shame...begging to be changed...NO ANSWER.
Now, several years into the process of making myself whole, I have realized...that although I am much more than the boy in the dress, the boy in the dress has shaped the man in the mirror, and finally the man in the mirror is who the boy saw when he looked into his mind to find himself.
And so I embrace my history, wholeheartedly. I will not try to change my history to fit the person I have become, because if my history had been changed I would not be the person I am today. Nor will I let the boy in the dress, with all his emotional baggage limit my present or destroy my future.
So who am I? I am the same person that I have always been. My name has changed, as many cultures change their names, but i am the same person.
I am Sean Walker....Artist.....Writer.... Friend....Son.
That authentic voice has just spoken... you know, the one that blurts shit out without thinking... the one that sneaks past your internal censors and shocks everyone including you. When I wrote that answer it shocked me, because, although I have always wanted to be a writer I never actually considered myself one.
My story may be a part of me, but I am not my story.
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