It has been a tough couple of weeks at work again, with multiple changes to my schedule and my responsibilities. It has also been a time of deep reflection on the events of my past and the flashbacks that I have been dealing with. It has been a time of outer and inner confinement, and within that I have found different perspectives on how I perceive myself. It began in the darkness of the inside self and has slowly moved into the light of the outside world.
For the past 25 years I have seen my life as one grand failure after another. For 25 years I spent my time believing that who I was could be summed up in the disasters I had created and the wreckage I left behind. I was unable to feel that the positives that had occurred had actual meaning, that they were more than just accidents of fate. I could not believe that I was in any way the originator of the good itself. I believed that I was merely a guilty bystander who by fluke had a good thing happen to him and others around me simply by proximity. I was a big, fat nothing in my mind and each bad thing that happened in my life was a reinforcing reminder of my inherent unworthiness.
In part, this sense of self, this sense of failure came from the six years that my parents were tangled in that ugly affair, all the while refusing to make good choices, and telling me that they were staying together for me. Yes, they reminded me daily that their immense dysfunction was for my own wellbeing. And for the past 20 years or so, I believed that I was therefore to blame for the six years of torture and the failure of the relationship itself when I went off to college. I carried the weight and the burden of a failed existence that wasn't even mine. I was responsible for their choices, or so I thought, and each bad thing that followed was directly related to my actions.
And I stayed a prisoner to the past for a very long time. I allowed the darkness to overwhelm the light, and to overwhelm me. Consequently, I couldn't become the man I knew I was. I was stuck living as someone who had been imprisoned by her/his own body. I was also stuck with profound and profoundly untreated mental illness. Add in the unbearable dysfunction of my family of origin, and I had a recipe for substance abuse, self mutilation, violence, impulsivity, mental breakdowns, and sheer hopelessness. Sadly, I fell down all of these rabbit holes at one time or another, and I am always aware of the fact that it could happen again if I don't take care of myself.
It is not surprising when people tell me it was a miracle I survived all of my mental and physical illness. And it is true, I did survive. I did not lose the battles with my parents' Beasts or with my own Beast. I lived to become the man I am today, including being a loving husband, father, and teacher. And those accomplishments are far more than mere survival. I surpassed the hells of my existence, I grew out from them, using the unsteady foundations to build new platforms for my success.
More importantly, is that the things I did and did not do over the past twenty five years are more than just the result of divine intervention and dumb luck. Rather, who I am is the product of all the successes I created out of the abyss that I crawled up from, with the help of G-d. It is what I have done with the wretched times in my life that has given me a way to use my G-d given gifts, shaping and honing them to be of the best uses possible. I didn't merely survive, I thrived.
I have had many successes in music and art. I have earned 2 undergraduate degrees, as well as a Master of Arts in Theology and Ethics, all while living with learning disabilities, mental illness, mega-doses of medications, and gender identity issues that led to a full transition from living as a female to living as a male. I successfully transitioned from female to male, keeping my marriage and family intact.
I understand what it is like to live with emotional, physical, sexual, and spiritual abuse. I have the experience of fighting with Bipolar 1 Disorder and how it can wreck a person's entire life when left untreated. I have the ability to share my stories with individuals and large groups in order to broaden others' understanding of gender identity, transgender, and intersex conditions. I choose to share those stories as an example of success in the transgender community and a way to teach others that it is the journey of being human that is universal even when our paths seem so remarkably different.
But what about the pain and the scars that I still deal with when I think about the past, about the horrific ways my parents acted, the crimes against human dignity that went on for so long, the bizarre reality that was my life?
Well, I used to view those battle wounds as the result of people who refused to do their jobs of being good parents. I balked at the notion that, as many people would tell me, "they did the best they could." I hated those words and the lack of personal responsibility they implied. It was as if those 6 words excused everything, because my parents had put forth the best effort they could. In my mind and aloud, I would scream that this was untrue, that they had NOT done the best they could. They had chosen their own narcissistic needs over my basic human needs. They had failed me miserably and I was unwilling to believe otherwise.
But as I continued to reprocess the initial flashback, a door was opened up for me to let a new narrative be heard. I sat in my therapist's office, still hashing out my feelings and that nagging phrase "they did the best they could." And as I sat there saying that I couldn't accept that my parents had done the best they could, I suddenly sensed that my worldview was about to change. My therapist asked me questions I had never had the courage to ask myself. With a compassionate but blunt truth she asked, "What if they did?" "What if it was the best that they could do?" "What if in their own dysfunction, disease, and emptiness, their choice to stay together for you was the best they could do?"
And sitting there in the early morning, I realized that the answer to all of those questions was one that I didn't want admit, much less say aloud. So I breathed out a heavy sigh and said "Yes, maybe that was the best that they could do, even if it wasn't what I needed." And that was the answer. My parents had somehow believed that they were doing the best they could for their child, albeit a deluded, misguided, traumatizing, and dangerous best. Yes, my parents did the best they could for me. And in the end, that is all they could have done.
So, here I am, knowing that I have survived and grown from the "best" my parents could do. And that is a miracle, it is a mitzvah, and it is a living faith. It is a miracle that even the worst that someone can endure can still be transformed into a blessing. I am living proof that G-d's love is greater than any brokenness that a human can have. I am living a life of my own design, choosing to be a better man, choosing to show that I am a blessing and that I am blessed. And I continue choosing to accept the "best" that each of us can do for one another, hoping and helping with the broken parts of each of us. Thank you for being a part of the blessing that is my life.
Be well, love your neighbor as you love yourself, and remember to actually love yourself.
- Ari
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