The funny thing about all that is if you go back a few years before that, I thought I had all those answers and they were all completely different. In fact, every few years going backwards I had a totally different set of answers I was sure about.
Going fart far back, I remember meeting a girl named Tiffany who I thought was my destiny. I was going to be a marine biologist and I was gonna live in Hawaii. Basically I was gonna be Adam Sandler from 50 first Dates, and this was when I was in 1st and 2nd grade (about the 1988-89 range) so I wasn't just copying from the 2004 romantic comedy.Then a few years later, I learned that I love Halloween makeup and horror movies and I was 100% sure that I was going to be the next great FX artist/makeup artist for Wes Craven. I did Halloween makeup for people a lot as a kid and started getting good enough at bruises to think I could have been famous...remember this was the mind of a 9 or 10 year old. Freddy Krueger never terrorized my nightmares but he sure made me want to create things that came from my crazy mind.
Skip ahead a few years from then and I "knew" the girl I was gonna marry, "knew" my best friend Kevin and I would never stop hanging out, "knew" that I was gonna work for some kind of charity and make a great living at it and was going to live in Collingswood for the rest of my life. I had no doubt that I was right about my plan but it didn't even take a year for some of that to change. I became friends with a kid around the corner and we were inseparable for a while. Justin's family even
kinda accepted me as one of their own for a little while. There was no way he and I were not going to be best friends for life (this was before acronyms...so yeah)
Around 16, I wanted to run away and create a completely new life far from anyone I knew. I also wanted to have a sex change and live as a lesbian. At that time, it was mostly a fantasy because I thought I was as wrong as I could be to want the things I wanted. I hated myself and kept treating myself worse and worse. That may have been when I started mentally beating myself up, before that I was so focused on ignoring that part of myself that it didn't occur to me to hate myself. So I treated that like it was nothing more than a sexual desire and I "knew" that I couldn't ever tell anyone I secretly wanted to be known as feminine and pretty instead of manly and handsome. I "knew" that my life was going to be a lie and that I'd never be able to truly share my real self with anyone. More 100% truth that I would have fought with all my might if anyone questioned me.
Jump a bunch of years later and I was going to be a preacher and a photographer on the side. I "knew" I was going to marry a preacher's daughter and we had serious plans that couldn't possibly be broken. It was our destiny that we get married. We were half right, and that's the only thing that links us as a 'we'. She's married...to some guy somewhere.
You see where this s going so I'll skip ahead to my current life.
* On one hand, I believe that destiny is imaginary, I believe that all my plans fall through and I am finally being honest with people in my life about me.
* On the other hand, I have trouble believing God cares about me. I used to think I was Ted Mosby...I was very wrong, I'm much more Toby Flenderson than I am Ted Mosby. I used to think I was going to find a career but now I struggle to keep a job, and not even in a 'I have some ailment that keeps me from doing the required work' kinda way,I'm talking about an "I can do it, I have the physical ability to do the work but my passion for doing anything is at an all time low' kinda thing. And I am currently a few weeks away from starting my transition, which is one of the only things I'm happy about in my life.
So to sum all the many words up, I believe in a lot less than I did before. But I'm still here, I'm still trying to try. And I still have a teeny tiny itty bitty hope that things can somehow end well for me.
That
is
all
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