Misfit

In the beginning

So I have finally begun the task of doing the final edit on my memoir before I publish it in the early fall. This week I decided to share the revised version of the opening chapter for those new to my page and story.

Mock Cover - This will be changed, but I like the idea of the lone seagull looking at the city:)

Have you ever been in a room full of people, looking around, casually observing, interacting where you can, and yet… feeling indescribably alone and indeed invisible?

It feels like you are in a bubble; present and yet separated. In a crowd and yet completely alone. I know you have been there once or twice, perhaps even a handful of times, but this dear reader has been my life. It is an extraordinary life in many ways; however despite the feelings of isolation we have all suffered at one time or another, my experience is unlikely to be the same as at least seventy percent of those who read this.

You see, I was born gender dysphoric, but more of that later. The vital part to grasp for now is that feeling of never genuinely belonging and, despite all the odds, carving out a path in life that makes you feel worthy and in its own way makes you unique. A path that, with each tentative step, provides some reassurance that, everything will work out in the end.

My earliest memory of feeling displaced was perhaps when I was four years old. I must have absorbed a news item featured on the evening broadcast and the next day confronted my Aunt Jean (who lived two doors down from my family) and asked her, "Where do you go to get a sex change operation?”

Remember this was 1967, a time when even being gay was frowned on. The Sexual Offences Act had only just legalized homosexual acts in England and Wales (I was living in Scotland). The provision was that 'the act' was consensual, in private and both men had to be 21 or older. So, gay had only just been given a reluctant pass; transgender and gender dysphoric were words that were never heard or spoken let alone understood. I still wonder today what thoughts ran through my aunt’s mind and I cannot remember her reaction or response. Suffice it to say, my question was dismissed and I was simply labeled a tomboy for the rest of my childhood.

I will always remember words exchanged between my mother and one of her friends "Give her a doll and she won't know what to do with it. Give her a toy gun and she will be happy for hours" I’m not sure that sends the right message but we don't always think before we open our mouths.

So I trekked through my childhood with cars, action men, batman suits, and yes, toy guns. Playing football with the boys up the street but never really belonging to their group as, after all, I was female. I remember telling them to call me Steve so their mother would not find it odd for a girl to be playing football with them. Of course, given the tight-knit little village we lived in, she was fully aware of who I was! Welcome to life as a misfit.

One thing that was very important to me and was a great comfort to me in my childhood was my father’s aviary. My father bred budgerigars (parakeets) and at one point he had 52 of them. As I grew older, I took on some more responsibilities like feeding them and cleaning their cages. I would talk to them and sing to them. At Christmas time I would get them all Christmas cards and decorate the aviary with tinsel. They were my friends for many years of my life and as they passed, I would give them burials. My mother would always have a bigger bird in the house, from a mynah bird to a cockatiel and a parrot. I always seemed to be competing for my mom’s attention with the housebird of the moment, so ours was not such a joyous relationship. However, even today in times when I am struggling, I turn to birds to make me smile. Birds are very important to me and always will be.

School was not enjoyable for me; I had friends who were fickle and befriended me temporarily if their real friends were unavailable or if they had a falling out. One friend in particular who lived close to me had the habit of not showing up when I invited her over. I would plan for her visit, prepare refreshments, get out all our favorite albums, and watch secretly at my parents' bedroom window for her to arrive – I was able to see the lane outside the house from the window to see when she was coming. She would not show up, and I would go to my mother devastated but pretending it didn't matter. Perhaps that is when I developed the annoying habit, I have to this day of laughing when I am hurt or when I feel rejected.

Pause for thought: Should we stifle feelings of hurt and rejection, laughing them off as if they do not matter? Or should we express them?

Anyway, getting back to the story… my story. I kind of drifted through childhood as a loner. I never really had friends and often attracted bullies as my last name was something of a novelty to them. I was often called Penguin, after a chocolate biscuit of all things. The TV ad “Pick up a Penguin” was often recited to me endlessly, becoming a thing of torture that had me cursing the person who invented the biscuit – or wishing I had a different last name. On one occasion the teasing was taking place in the vicinity of our house and my mother came to the door and announced, “Her name is Penman, not Penguin” Needless to say that declaration did not have the favorable outcome my mother was hoping to achieve.

Truth be told I never felt comfortable with my first name either, Karen. The funny thing is at my baptism the minister initially christened me Kieran (the male version of Karen) thinking I was a boy. That minister knew something I would only come to realize later. Indeed people used to often tell my mother what a beautiful son she had. Things that make you go hmmm.

So there I was a loner in the extreme, flanked by two very emotionally unavailable parents. My mother and I were more like sisters and my father was always out doing odd jobs for the neighbors. I often say I raised myself and to an extent, I feel that is true to this day. My mother was never one to offer sympathy or empathy and my father was always the disciplinarian – he had a violent temper when given cause to exercise it.
My mother and father had a weird relationship. Love was never expressed in our family, either by them towards each other or from them to me. Both are dead now but I never heard the words “I love you” from either of them nor was I hugged throughout their entire lives. I did not receive any recognition or reward for doing well but was always made aware when I failed. I do not say this to elicit sympathy as I am well aware that countless other children have endured far worse forms of abuse than indifference. I just think as a child I feared my father and often found myself walking on eggshells when in his company for fear of doing something wrong.

On the other hand, I adored my mother and for a time we did have a special bond. I would buy her gifts with whatever money I had and always made her Christmases as special as I could once my dad had left. I remember one year I got her a faux fur coat and a new stereo radio/cassette player (she loved to listen to music with her headphones on). I tried my best with her but I felt I was always struggling with the way I reminded her of my father – we looked so alike. Towards the end of her life, her mother had successfully turned her against me so she had her daughter back, and I lost my mother in the process.

No one said that growing up was easy, especially in such a household and one moment I will always remember from my childhood was a tense dinner where my mother was crying and threatening to take pills. My father was encouraging her to do it and I was screaming for it all to stop. I am very sure this was not an isolated incident I just cannot remember the others in such vivid detail. When I stop to think about it with the distance of many decades, theirs was a very strange partnership – at least in my eyes. As a child, I didn’t give it much thought but just as they didn’t show any love for me, I cannot remember a single moment when I witnessed any love between them. Looking back on it now they were more like siblings. Of course, this cannot be true as I would not be here in that case. It’s just that any love they had for one another was certainly hidden from me and it wasn’t till my father committed adultery with her best friend that I saw what must have been love. My mother was so absolutely devastated by this that those feelings could only come from really loving someone. Perhaps having these two people as role models is why I find it so difficult to express my feelings for anyone to this day. There is a remoteness about me that try as I might I cannot free myself from.

On a lighter note, my love of music always got me through the toughest of times. I spent a lot of my early years in my bedroom listening to music or grabbing a hairbrush and singing to one of the latest chart songs in front of my mirror. On that note, I will always remember my grandmother walking in on me bouncing up and down on my bed, hairbrush in hand, belting out Yellow River by Christie – you may need to listen to that one to get the full effect.
I recall as a child the jukebox in the local café was like a magnet to me. Its statuesque presence filled with all the greatest music of the day captivated me and I simply had to visit every time my mother and I went there for ice cream. Selecting songs like Everlasting Love by The Love Affair Everyone's Gone To The Moon by Jonathan King and The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore by The Walker Brothers. Hearing those songs still brings a tear to my eye as I think of that lost and lonely little kid trying to make sense of herself and the world. Trying to look happy when inside, I was devastatingly lonely. That pretense of everything being wonderful has been a lifelong thing for me. However, things are infinitely better for me now than they were in my formative years.

Although my parents were rather remote, I was always closest to my mother. Until she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis when I was around eight. We used to do a lot together. The usual mom/kid things like shopping, going to the local café, and occasionally having a burger at a chain called ‘Wimpy’ – an enticing name for a burger chain, I am sure you will agree. However, as the disease progressed, she became more and more housebound, her relationship with my father, more fractured, and the arguments more frequent.

So there you have it, a summary of my early childhood. It was lonely but it was manageable. I spent more time in adult company than in the company of children. I felt like I was an adult and should be included in adult conversations. However, my father was always quick to remind me of my age at times when I engaged with adults by saying, “Children should be seen and not heard”. As you can imagine. with my eagerness to continually chime in during conversations that was a well-worn phrase throughout my early years. I think, as a child and even to some extent as an adult, I always tried to get my father’s acceptance but I was often told by my mother that his wish was to have a son, so at that point in my life I was already a disappointment.

My mother, on the other hand, used to like passing on advice such as “never trust anyone, never get married, and never have kids”. Three rules she used to repeat over and over to me. She once confessed that when I was a baby and I would not stop crying one night she put a pillow over my head. This dear reader is the perfect way to create a human being who grows up with lasting fears of abandonment and rejection and who never truly believes they are wanted.

However, I muddled through my childhood under the veil of androgyny. As children if we choose, we can defy gender until we are hit by the full force of puberty and, for me, puberty was a nightmare where I had to try and figure out how to deal with a female body I simply did not want!