I was going through my YouTube history, for some unknown reason… curiosity, most likely. What is it they say about curiosity? “Curiosity killed the cat. But satisfaction brought it back.” Something like that…

I turned off the history in the past several years over privacy concerns, but there is stuff all the way back to 2014. And OH BOY was I fucking oblivious back then! To things that seem so obvious now.

April 1, 2014 was the first time I watched this particular video. Its not exclusively about being a queer person, but it still hits me the same now as it did more than 11 years ago. The only difference is that now… I’m being honest about it.

Honest with myself.

Honest with anyone who is reading this.

I keep asking myself how it was that I identified so much with this person and their message and their story, but somehow couldn’t see the truth.

This second video was discovered at the end of summer in 2011. And that sentiment was so beautiful the first time I saw it, and I mourned that I didn’t feel that deep of a connection with the man I brought a child into this world with. And I already had the thought wander through my head several times that, if something were to happen to Joe or if we separated, I would never love another man. Again, oblivious…

In 2014 my child was 10 going on 11, I had been married for 10 years (going on 11) but Joe and I had been together for 12 years. At this point we had recently returned to co-habitating with my mother-in law. We were still working opposite shifts, me still on nights and he on days… because it “worked”, or it seemed to.

Looking back, I think the only reason it worked was because it kept me in the dark about how incompatible we really were. He lost his job 2 years later, and we could no longer afford to rent the house we had moved into in 2013… so we moved in with my parents and his mother and aunt moved in with a family friend. Our entire life was either put into storage or crammed into my childhood bedroom. Again, we made it work.

At this point my motto and battle cry when he was feeling defeated by life, was “Individually we are strong. Together, we’re unstoppable!” He had work ethic and I had the brains and creativity to manage our bills and money in ways that allowed us to afford a second car and other things that we stereotypically should have been able to afford “easily” at that stage in our lives.

He found another job, still in the automotive industry and this time he was on second shift. And we drifted apart, held so tightly together by circumstance but being wedged away emotionally and mentally. Loss of common interests, but still that once a week “encounter” because we would both have the day off and that’s what couples do. Right? Looking back it feels forced. Those times we drifted apart and one of us trying to claw it back together for fear of change.

4 years after that COVID hit, and right at the start of it in Michigan I had to go to the ER because I thought my appendix had burst. The most excruciating pain I had ever experienced, including child birth… come to find out it was an ovarian cyst rupturing. These weird, traumatic medical events had this knack for knitting our relationship back together. We learned through the reality of the covid restrictions that we not only needed to make time for each other, but to make time for ourselves. We had one day a week that we would watch a movie, just the 3 of us. Another night that just he and I would watch something, usually an episode of Lucifer. We had projects in my parents’ backyard that kept us physically active and working together, but we also had our own projects. He was dabbling in woodworking and I was hosting live broadcasts and gaming with friends online.

We were eventually able to save enough money that we had a sizeable down payment for a house. And in early 2021 we purchased a home, together. Finally someplace we could call our own, that the 3 of us didn’t have to share with anyone unless we chose to.

Now to say that me questioning myself, my sexuality, my gender expression, etc. started in 2025 would be a lie. I was realizing that I was, what I defined as “situationally gender fluid” in 2022 when I tried to fly to Florida with my sister over Christmas. It was a nightmare because of the snow storm, and we never left the airport except to go back home. But I realized then, that in that situation, because my sister was so terrified of flying and filled with anxiety over everything at the airport, I took on a decidedly male persona. It shocked me when I noticed it. I don’t even know what made me notice it. And even though I was shocked by it, I simultaneously realized that this is something I’ve been doing my entire life. I was trying to shield her from what was causing her so much anxiety, trying to lighten the mood, taking on conversations with airport personnel on behalf of both of us so she wouldn’t have to worry that her voice was going to shake or that she would break down in tears in mid sentence. I made sure we were hydrated, fed, and kept away from crowds until we HAD to immerse ourselves in the sea of humanity being packed into that plane like sardines.

That was the start of my eyes REALLY opening. The hours that led up to us sitting on that plane, that never left the terminal, for the same amount of time that it would have taken to fly all the way to Florida, and the hours afterward that ended with me going to the gate attendant and asking if we could just get a refund. The digesting of what I had observed in myself during that time. Giving myself the tiniest bit of recognition. But that was the first real crack in what I knew as reality, and it has grown into a fissure that can not be ignored.

After my dad passed the next year and the realization that I no longer had his judgement of social acceptability hanging over me, I really started to unpack things that I had suppressed as part of trying to understand why I felt relief more than grief after he was gone. Things started to fall into place, or out of place, depending on your perspective I guess. Joe would probably say it was the beginning of the end, I just see it as a beginning.

Its like there is a immature teenage kid running the show in my brain, I used to joke that I had the sense of humor of a 13-15 year old boy, all crude humor and inappropriate jokes… even when it isn’t supposed to be. Anything that sounds even remotely dirty, my brain latches onto it, which turns into giggles, which then eventually turns into roaring laughter.

This weekend was no different, except there was someone there who never saw this side of me. I was on a trip for work with a co-worker who I’ve been working with for nearly 18 years, and another co-worker who works nights and I’ve never actually worked with. I have a feeling that my sense of humor may have put her off because she would never hang out socially if it was something I was participating in too, unless we were all already out together.

Suffice to say that I think some aspects of my personality “put her off her tea.”

I think the quote of the weekend might have been “A boomer, a Gen-X er, and a geriatric Millennial walk into a bar…” only because that’s what the 3 of us were, and that’s what we did.

When I was a teenager, this was what I had to mask at home. The self that my family wouldn’t accept, or the start of the self that my family wasn’t ready to accept. It feels like the point in my life where the divergence between “self” and “socially acceptable self” happened is where I’m drawn back to now that I’m pulling that suppressed or ignored version of me into the light.

I need to relearn how to put a lid on the inappropriate humor because it seems like its even more socially unacceptable as an adult, at least in most circumstances. But for as the last half of my life, when I’ve been told to get my mind out of the gutter, I’ve responded with the statement that “if it wasn’t for the gutter my mind would be homeless”.

That, or I just need to surround myself with more people who appreciate it.

Last night I got into the container of roasted garlic. It was later explained to me that garlic is a great oral contraceptive, as if I have to worry about that now… but also I wonder if it is actually more of an aphrodisiac for people who really like garlic. I imagine it would be like that for Italians.

The garlic was REALLY good, and suspended in olive oil. I ate several pieces on their own, but soon realized that I should probably find something to eat them with. I had a container of salad from lunch so I sprinkled them liberally on to the salad along with some of the dressing the salad came with and eventually some feta cheese.

Fast forward to the following afternoon. Soooo much gas! Everything smelled like garlic as it worked its way through my system. And THEN it demanded evacuation. It could only be described as smelling like “someone had wrapped a head of garlic in hair, lit it on fire, and thrown it into the bathroom like a Molotov cocktail.”

My child, after I told her about this, described that description as the first time those words have been strung together in that way in human history, or maybe it was just the history of the English language.

But the possibly more hilarious part of all this, is that Joe’s room… is RIGHT next to the bathroom. He left the house shortly after that, I had my headphones on and was rocking out to something loud while working from home, so if he said anything before he left, I didn’t hear it. But I’ll just call it fortuitously naturally occurring payback after walking into the house the previous day and TASTING his cologne in the air before I had even fully stepped into the house. And on top of that, the dryer stinks of it… so now the 2 loads of laundry I had just finished need to be rewashed.

To think I used to love the smell of that cologne. Once upon a time it was a huge turn on for me, same as the patchouli musk that I used to wear was a huge turn on for him. I remember one time in the past couple of years when I started disliking the smell. And now thinking back, its almost like a sign that I was already starting to lose my attraction to him even back then. My sister pointed out that he always bathed in a sickening amount of that cologne I just didn’t notice because I evidently enjoyed it.

I’ve realized that I’ve spent my entire life exercising patience, and mostly it left me with nothing to show for it. Waiting for others to fulfill promises that either weren’t priorities to them or they had no intention of seeing through.

As far back as my childhood and things as mundane as requested art supplies, never followed through on. Even the small “allowance” I was afforded for things I did around the house was not regularly provided. Yes, my basic needs of having a roof over my head and food to fill my belly were provided, but having clean clothes every day was not always a reality and my requests for supplies for hobbies I picked up as a form of enrichment and developing my creativity were often ignored or forgotten. And don’t get me started on batteries… if I got a gift that required batteries I might as well not even bother learning to enjoy it because after the first set of batteries ran out, it would be years before we had replacements. And by then, something else needed them.

I guess in some way this fostered an overdeveloped sense of self reliance, which has inadvertently made it difficult for me to take anyone at their word when they say they are going to do something. I’m really trying to get past that, and give people a chance to show me with their actions that their words have meaning. Because, lets face it, if you don’t mean what you say then your words have no power… here or anywhere else.