I'm Done Hiding My Reality

I am very good at being vulnerable. At least that's what most people think. They see this blog, or one of the other many blogs I have had over the years, where I share deep, powerful, intimate moments from my life and they say "ah, yes, look at him being brave! He's so vulnerable!" Except I'm not. Not really.

Most of the time, the words I write publicly are not the deep, internal things I'm feeling, even when they seem to be to most. Most of the time, my words mask my inner thoughts. I share what I feel like I can handle people seeing to distract from what I'm actually feeling because I don't believe people can handle what I really am experiencing.

Tonight, I'm not doing that. Tonight, I'm going to be very, very real. I don't blame anyone who cannot read further because there might be a million reasons you don't have the head-space to read heavy shit. But everything that follows is my reality right now. This is what I have to offer.

Last week, E came to me and said that he was struggling because he could tell that his Pops (my husband, Tommy) and I were struggling. He was afraid that we'd attempt to take our own lives. I reassured him that wouldn't happen. I gave him very good, very concrete reasons it wouldn't happen, including the fact that Tommy and I were watching each other to make sure we were okay. I didn't lie, not exactly, but I did omit one stark reality.

The reason I will never attempt suicide isn't because my head isn't going there or because I'm so strong or anything like that. The reason I will never attempt suicide is because I cannot do that to my kids and Tommy.

When I was 11 years old, my uncle shot himself. He was my second uncle to do so. The first did it when I was about 2. I grew up hearing about how horrible my uncle was for doing it and here I was, 9 years later, with a second uncle doing the exact same thing. These were both of my mom's brothers. The second, Charlie, had a bunch of kids. Two of those kids ended up living in my home for a brief moment. It was an unmitigated disaster, mostly because my family is a toxic mess. But I saw, first hand, what the kids left behind experienced and there is no way, absolutely none, that I will ever do that to my kids. I would rather suffer every single day, wanting to die, than do that to them. Period.

So I want to be clear here: I am safe. I am not self harming. I am not a threat to myself in any way. I have no plan, no drive, no motivation to follow through with anything. I do not need a welfare check and there is a 0% chance that I need a hospitalization right now. I drove myself to the hospital when I didn't have kids in order to keep myself alive. If I ever get anywhere close to that line, I will do it again because I will not under any circumstance do to those kids what I saw happen to my cousins. And right now, I am far from that line.

But the last few days, the voice in my head regularly says "I wish I could die."

What we are dealing with is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life. I am a dad with 3 high needs kids and we just fucking fled our home country in order to keep my son alive and to mitigate long term damage on my daughter. All of the kids, all of them, are really struggling right now. They have no sense of stability, no sense of safety, no routines or normalcy. So Tommy and I are trying to hold everyone together, trying to keep ourselves and the kids emotionally fed enough that we can stay out of hospitals because we cannot afford a hospitalization right now. It would bankrupt us. We have a small monetary cushion that we absolutely need to pay rent and for food. We don't know how we will pay for medications or doctors appointments or anything else. Worse, we have no idea when the next money will be coming in. We're scared.

What do you do when you are refugees in practice but not in name? No country currently is accepting US citizens as refugees. It's not that they don't agree that we should qualify as refugees. Many have said something close enough that it's clear that they believe we are deserving of the title. It's that no one wants to make the US mad by saying what is actually happening. So we are not refugees. But we cannot go home.

This leaves us in an incredible space of limbo. Every public, Canadian program designed to help people like us cannot help us. We have very limited health insurance that doesn't cover much and that most places won't accept. We cannot access the food bank to make our money stretch a little further because we have to have some evidence that we exist as residents, and we have nothing. We cannot even create a Canadian bank account. Do you know what is really hard to do without a Canadian bank account? Get a god-damn local phone number. We're still paying for a US plan that has Canadian roaming because the plans that are affordable in Canada can't be paid for with a US credit card. We also cannot enroll the children in school or transfer our drivers licenses or get jobs.

I am technically a Canadian citizen but have no proof - we're waiting for that. All the documents have been submitted with a request for urgency, but I am at the mercy of the IRCC. Until my citizenship is validated, I cannot sponsor Tommy and the kids. So we sit here, on visitor visas, hoping that we can find a way for money to grow on trees enough that we can pay our bills. I have a gofundme created. I have ways for people to donate with paypal and venmo. So far, we've gotten $150USD.

God, I hate asking for money. Trust me, I'd rather be working. I'd rather be digging fucking ditches than this. This, this is what is wearing on my psyche. This is what is making me wish I were dead. It's this state of not knowing, of having to rely on other people, to leap into the unknown with no idea if there will be anything at the bottom. Am I jumping into deep water that will cushion my fall or are there rocks at the bottom? Did I simply move my family out of the frying pan and into the fire? What if we end up homeless in Canada? Is that really better? I don't know. I fucking don't know.

Every day, every single day, one of the kids asks a question about being homeless. Every single day, my daughter, B (8 years old), brings up some sort of violence or fear of the US government with either me or her Pops. I hear her play with her brother as she creates narratives to help her understand what is happening, why we are in Canada, why her brother was attacked in the hospital, why the police have done nothing. Several times a week, I have a sobbing child (they rotate who), saying they just wish they could have a "normal life".

Each time, we answer with as much kindness and grace as we can muster. We say we're going to be okay. We remind them that even though they do not have a normal life, we still have a lot of things going for us. We talk about the process and where we are with it. I don't know if I'm lying to my kids or telling them the truth. I don't know if we will be okay. The line from the song "just praying to a god I don't believe in" runs through my head almost daily as I find myself begging the Universe to open some doors, to give us something to hold onto.

It's a dance, one I wish I had never had to learn. Be honest and real enough with the kids that they don't feel lied to if it doesn't turn out as well as we hope while simultaneously keeping the worst of the situation from them. I'm used to doing this with my own reality for others, but I haven't ever had to do it to protect children before. It feels like too much. And if I feel like this is too much, as a 37 year old man, how much more must they be struggling! No wonder we're dealing with a regression of behavior with all of them. No wonder it's so damn hard to parent them right now.

So here I am, at the end of the day, at nearly 1:30 am, writing out my deep fears, my thoughts, my hopes, and my internal desire for death, because I cannot sleep unless these thoughts can get out of my head in some way. There are no easy answers for any of this. It's one of the reasons I hesitate to share it.

Earlier, Tommy said I needed to reach out to my friends about my actual emotional state and I kinda shrugged him off. What can they do? I have good friends, really good friends, but none of them have money growing out their ears. None of them can drop the kind of money we need to feel secure enough to not be in this state of panic. None of them can convince the IRCC to start processing my citizenship faster or provide me with the ability to get the kids in school or ease the burden of worrying if we will have enough money for rent in a few months. What good is it, then, to share these deep thoughts and fears with them? What good is it then to tell them that my brain keeps wishing I would die so I didn't have to face another day of being so damn afraid?

Except the one thing that I know is true is that I don't need answers in order to feel like these relationships are of value to me. I need people to see me. I need people to see my actual lived reality and still want me in their lives. That's all I need from my friends.

Sharing here is actually more of the same. Yes, I could use financial support. Absolutely. But what I need most, for me and for my kids, is that people see what the hell is going on. I need people to understand what it means to be a trans US citizen right now. I need people to understand that, whether other countries count us as refugees or not, we had to flee the country of our birth in order to keep our children alive.

And then, we need your help fighting this wave of gender-critical transphobic bullshit that is tied so deeply to the right-wing conservative fascism trying to take over the world. It isn't just our rights on the chopping block. This is absolutely the poem "First They Came" by Martin Niemöller. First they came for the immigrants and the trans folk. Will you speak out? Because if you don't, if you don't join us in fighting fascism now, you, like Martin Niemöller, may find yourself in a camp wondering how you ended up there.

One of the best things about me is I always, always stand for what I believe in. What I believe in has changed over the years in that I no longer am Christian or Mormon or conservative. But the reason I am no longer those things is actually because I believe, and always have believed, that love is the answer.

But love means that you show up for those who you care about. It means that when someone hurts the person you love, you fight back. Love means that you don't tolerate bullies in your midst and that you are willing to say the things that need to be said. It means that you are willing to be the contentious one in the group if it protects someone less able to protect themselves.

That's what I'm doing for my kids. That's why I'm being honest about where I actually am and how scared I actually am. I could never be this real about where I find myself for myself. But I will do anything for them.

And then, I think about the many trans kids still in the US, many of whom don't have parents willing to fight for them, and I know that I have to keep using my voice, even when we're okay. Even when the day comes that I have enough money in my bank to meet my own needs, I will keep being loud and real and keep fighting because I need those kids to know that I may have left the US, but I have not forgotten where I came from. I have not abandoned them. I will fight for them too.

So I write. I will never be a billionare. I will never have money flowing out my ears or a garage full of luxury cars. But what I do have, I will share. I will make sure that anyone I can help, I will. Because that's who I am. That's what I do.

My greatest weapon right now are my words and I will use them to combat fascism and transphobia. I will use my words to express my deepest fears and my greatest hopes and the world as I see it all around me. Because love is the answer and I love big.

Regardless of what happens to me in the long run, I want my legacy to be "he loved big and was kind." That's it. I don't need a monument. I don't need to be famous. I honestly would be happiest if the only people who know my name are my friends and family, but my story, my kids' story, needs a voice and no one knows what needs to be said more than me. So I write. I'm real. I'm honest. And I keep getting out of bed every single morning to keep showing up for my kids. I'll stay alive and keep fighting, keep using my voice, keep writing. Because that's who I am. That's what I do.

And for the first time in my life, I'm going to be actually vulnerable. No more sugar-coated narratives that hide what I really believe or how I really feel. This is who I am and what I'm experiencing. This is my lived reality. It's scary as hell, and often dark, but it's still beautiful. My life is so goddamn beautiful. And I'm done hiding any of it to make anyone else happy.

If you don't want to follow along, that's fine. You don't have to, but this is me and, as B often says "take it or leave it." I'm done hiding my reality.

If you can help us financially, donate to our GoFundMe or through my old business' PayPal or go to my Instagram to DM me for other ways to help.

If you cannot help us financially, consider sharing a link to this post or the post I wrote about us fleeing the US to try and garner support in the fight against the rise of transphobia in the United States and the world.

Also, I will be doing a "Ask A Trans Man" post in the next week, so consider asking your questions here.

Thank you for reading. ~PSX