THE OLD ME

"The Way I Was"

I really should have started my second post with a look at where I began, but as thoughts go I wanted to write what I was thinking at that moment. As it is, my selfish nature really played a large part in shaping my history and dealing with it yesterday really helped in developing the real me. So now I can focus on where I was and where I am now. Honestly I feel a bit odd writing this since the succeeding posts are really going to be filled with painful feelings, events and thoughts. Yet all of it has helped in making me stronger and better, and thus I write.

So how do I start? Well a lot of my defining characteristics developed in my early childhood and it is this part of my life I want to focus on in this post. I was the first grandchild and was a favorite with everyone. I know I was a very happy child and had more energy than any car you could name, so much so that people would ask my parents what they were feeding me. I know I stayed up at all hours wearing out and frustrating my parents. I was a very adventurous boy and from the age of 3 I would be out in the yard looking for snakes, climbing and hanging out of windows and destroying everything in my path. My mother did not have patience with me and I usually ended up being beaten. Then my brother came along and I would employ all sorts of mischief on him from throwing him out of his crib to putting my mother's makeup all over him. Up to the age of 8 years I was so energetic that I was always dreaming up my next adventure. I loved animals and they just took to me, I held snakes in my hand and had lizards sitting on my shoulder. Dogs and cats were my best friends and I would spend my time living in the yard playing.

But there were many things that I can remember that were very painful and distressing, my mother always told me that I was spoilt by everyone else, so she had to offset that by favouring my brother and ignoring or chastising me, saying that it was my brother's turn to be treated well. It felt so unfair because the imbalance, especially in the extended family, was not my fault, yet all the trouble my brother and I got into together always led to me being the only one punished.

To add to this, I was not very interested in school -to me it was boring and not very inspiring. I spent all my time dreaming of having wings and flying, saving people and playing with animals. It was felt by teachers and grownups alike that I had a problem and I was even sent to a child psychologist. I really did not like having friends and actually I never felt like I fit in, though this mind you was ok to me until I felt that something was inherently wrong with me for feeling fine with it. I became very frustrated as my mother and teachers tried to force me to learn and since everyone was saying I had a problem, I started to believe them and this lead to me becoming very passive and only wanting to stay in my room. I would read books and dive into the world of fantasy so I could get away from my parents' constant complaining and the pressure of school.

My family was not one to show love or affection, in fact my mother often said that we only showed love by the price of gifts which we received at celebrated times. As part of a Catholic family we stuck religiously to ceremony and rules, church every week and prayers every night. I became very interested in understanding God and wanting to know him, but then my mother would ask why I was becoming so religious and this turned me off since I wanted to please my mom. My dad did not really play a large role in our lives and all socialization and discipline was done by my mother, so much so that she became both matriarch and patriarch. I told my dad once that he really made a big mistake by not taking charge of his household.

By the time I was 10 years old my brother and I were two very different people, strangers one could say, and definitely clearly and oppositely labelled. I was the "boring" dreamer and intellectual and he the hands on, curious, take apart, action guy. We were worlds apart and our differences and separation were strongly encouraged and reinforced, almost mandated, by my mother to the point that we never really had a brotherly relationship because of her influence.

My family considered themselves part of that "French Creole' class who prided themselves on being descendants of French and English settlers. For the most part I never felt like I fit in when it came to socializing with family. Their conversations always revolved around the latest scandal, the last shopping trip and when next they were going to the beach. I liked having constructive and intellectual conversations, which isolated me from the rest of my family, so much so that I was seen as strange and hard to communicate with. For me it felt as though I was an outsider and I forced myself to blend in and accept the status quo.

By the time I was 12 years old I felt very confused about who I was and where I was heading. My parents had sent me to so many schools because in each I was seen as "unable to learn" and this contributed to my demotivation. At this stage I dove in to church and wanting God in my life, I took an interest in First Communion, praying, reading the Bible and going to church. Again my mom felt something was wrong with this. I also enjoyed visiting my great-grandmother who would tell me old stories of her life as a child. This inspired me to take an interest in history, especially when she related stories of times when there were no cars and people had no television. So, by the time I was 14 years old this new pattern in my life had emerged.

There was however a very new feeling taking over me as I reached my teens and it was, of course, because of puberty. Like for most teenagers, puberty was for me a time of changes biologically and emotionally and my interest in girls grew very strong. From what I had learned from my parents and the few friends I had made, this was very natural and normal. I remember my first kiss in primary school, a girl I liked and I went behind the school and kissed - the only thing was we got caught by classmates and they had a good laugh. However, at the same time I was experiencing feelings for girls I was also having physical feelings for guys. This was very confusing for me, since the thought of a guy naked and me touching them aroused me. I became very confused and did not know what to do, I could not talk to my parents since my dad had said if he ever found out that any of his sons were gay he would kill them and my mother saw it as a mortal sin. In Trinidad society the more "macho" a man you are in appearance the more prestige and popularity you gain; the mere mention or rumor that you might be gay could lead to disgrace. It is also against the law to be a homosexual and one can also lose one's job. All of these things made me so fearful that I resolved to surpress these feelings and never to act on them. Added to which, church teachings said that it was such a sin that two cities in the bible were destroyed for it. The result of these pieces of knowledge was to place more pressure on me to supress my feelings and I was always depressed, something I have learned is a normal feeling of others in similar positions.

I could and did have natural relationships with girls and it was during these periods I felt very whole and normal. I always felt that the alternative feelings I had were foreign and needed to be purged. I always felt it was not right and I cried out to God asking him why this was happering to me and praying for him to take it away. I was so paranoid about being found out that to avoid any sign of being feminine I over-compensated by attacking gays and trying to appear macho. I remember once my mom said I was holding my arm up too much like a girl's and it look queer, I got so upset about it and made a conscious effort to stop it. Then again, my dad and brother were always asking my mom whether I was gay or not and again I became scared. There were times the feelings for guys would be so strong that I just kept to myself in my room, I never had guys as friends and only one or two girls I talked to. No one knew my secret except God and I made a vow to Him never to act upon those feelings.

By the time I was 17 years old things started to feel normal again, I had found my niche in school, taking a serious interest in subjects like history, geography and biology and I got involved in my first serious relationship with a girl. I even went to confession and confessed my feelings to the priest. He told me that these feelings were normal, that "...every boy feels that. It fades away once you don't act on it". I began to think that life could be bearable and the feelings under my control; boy, was I wrong!