My quarterly post

So its been, what -- three months since I posted? Not bad, really. Some people go their whole lives without writing.

It may be that I'll only have enough inspiration or gumption to write a single post every month, or even every quarter. Whatever. Blogging isn't a race, and I'm in no hurry anyway.

I'd like to take a few moments to talk about some of the events that shaped my life, for good or ill. I was inspired by this thread over at AskMefi. These are the things that have made me who I am today.

When I was about 13, I discovered porn on the internet. I discovered all sorts of weird, interesting and often disturbing things that people can do with their bodies. I also liked some of what I saw, and determined that deep down, I was perverted. I became very ashamed about it, and would carry these feelings of shame and anger with me for a long time.

Age 14: My mom began babysitting a troubled young boy from the neighborhood. My parents really needed the money from the boy's parents, so they agreed to watch him every day after school. I could tell the boy was troubled because he constantly acted-out sexually (he was only 7 or 8) and would often try to molest our household pets. I constantly warned my mother that the young boy was extremely dangerous and shouldn't be "let loose" in our household. My mom got really angry at me saying that it was "none of my business", and constantly repeated that she "needed the money anyways".

Eventually he tried to rape my 4 year old sister, but was caught before he could do any lasting harm. My mother never apologized for knowingly putting my sister in harms way to make more money.

Lesson learned: Grownups can be wrong. Grownups can't always be trusted to do whats right. Of course, as an adult, we are already supposed to know this, but for a child, this realization is a punch in the gut. It hurt to realize the truth about my mom, and it still hurts.

Age 21: I determine, though the wonders of statistical analysis, that there are so many porn websites on the internet that not only am *I* a somewhat kinky perv, but so is everyone else.

Lesson learned: There is a great comfort in knowing that nobody is as "moral" as I had imagined. It also helped me to set some new, more realistic goalposts for morality.


Age 22: I loose my virginity to a person who turns out to be a 1st class jerk. The sex was good, though.

Lesson learned: Love and lust are two very different things, and not always intertwined. The difference is that someone who loves you won't pretend that they never met you the next day.


Age 22: I tell my mom that I'm sexually active and have had sex with men. She promptly vows to disown me and throw me out of the house but is only convinced otherwise at the very last moment.

Lesson learned: A parent's "unconditional love" is often very conditional. Parents who really love you don't kick you to the curb because you're different than the child they "really" wanted.


Age 22: I discover that my upstanding, aloof and untouchable father is dying from heart failure, partly brought on by years of cocaine/heroin and painkiller abuse.

Lesson learned: There is almost always more than meets the eye.


Age 23: My mother announces to me that she is divorcing my father and divorcing me -- my father because he's a bad husband, me because I'm a "bad son" who "doesn't take care of his mother like a good son should". Eventually, she decides not to go through with the dual-divorce, but still maintains (to this day) that I should do more to take care of her "like a good son would".

Lesson learned: Sometimes "grownups" aren't. Sometimes kids are more mature than the "grownups". Some "grownups" never grew up, and probably never will.


Age 23-24: I've made some friends! A former attorney/Green Beret, a monk and a Poz mentor from Montreal.

Lesson learned: Believe it or not, there really are people out there who aren't crazy, aren't on drugs, aren't passive-aggressive and aren't rolling hurricanes of dysfunction. These people, who exist "out there" somewhere, have actually shown me more compassion than I could have expected from my own flesh and blood. That may be the most powerful lesson I've ever learned.

Overall, my life to this point has taught me to distrust authority and "parent figures". This goes a long way towards explaining why I'm not a Republican anymore. In fact, I try not to believe anything without evidence anymore. But I've also learned not to be so jaded that I couldn't recognize actual love and caring when it comes along. Love does exist in the world, despite my experience to the contrary.

Those are my lessons learned.