Familiar Ground..

As the school years past by and the calendar pages turned, my feelings began to sort themselves out. By the age of ten I knew that I wasn't one of the boys. I started playing hockey around the age of four. Hockey was a good sport for me, it allowed a release of my overflowing energy as a child. It was also one of the first experiences when I positively knew that my thoughts didn't match boys of my age, not even in the slightest. Boys that seemed so focused on being accepted and part of the group. Boys that were strong when many but broke when alone. It was sometimes difficult for me in the change room on the hockey teams. I felt out of place and in many ways out of character. I played hockey in some ways for me, it was fun some of the time, though my main reason for playing it for so long was in fact because it brought so much joy to my dad. You see, when I had played a good game, the happiness and pride that it brought to my father was beyond explanation. Did I enjoy playing hockey? For the most part I did, but it truly was because of the joy it brought my dad. That for me was the driving force to keep playing. To see him smile, to hear the pride in his voice as he spoke to the other parents. It was difficult some times to find motivation, specially on the those August summer days spent out at the cottage and then having to travel home due to the hockey summer camp starting.

 

 Recalling the days at home in my youth bring many smiles. For a while, there was a time where I was simply a kid. The struggle to find out who I was stopped. Sure there were some times were I would be hanging out with a female friend and my psyche would wonder. This beautiful creature in front of me, so similar and yet so very different. The age of ten came, and strong self discovery and emotion along with it. The nights of sneaking female clothing into my room once again began to flood my mind and will. There was that feeling again, a feeling of fulfillment and of being whole again. Like I had the chance to become myself at night, to be calm
and free. Free of the shackles that bound me to the mold of what normal was. Thankfully, in my eyes anyways, I was blessed with lacking the usual kick of male puberty. It came later for me than most kids  and with much less of a kick, more of a gentle tap I would say. To this very day in my thirties and not taking any female hormones, I can barely grow a goatee, my body has stayed as close to hairless as could be, and actually having less body hair than past girlfriends, much to their dismay I might add. I began keeping my legs clean shaven around the age of sixteen, though even there not having very much to speak of. By this time it wasn't about knowing I was different, it was trying to figure out the extend of just what those differences were. At the age of sixteen though, I was still deeply grieving the passing of my father. It was truly a difficult time on two fronts, having these ever growing feeling of who I was and this other reality of feeling forced to be "the man" in the family. Taking care of the power equipment around the house was now all up to me, watching out for my family and keeping them safe was now on my shoulders. There could be no way that I bring the monster of difference to them, not now, and maybe not forever, or so I thought. This monster of a reality that would affect me till my thirties, bending my character to the point of breaking. In my teens I was fortunate however, to live in an apartment in the basement of my mothers house. A haven of self discovery and freedom had finally come to my life and most probably saved my life...


More to come....