New Look and Retrospection: Early Years

Alright, this is getting a little closer to what I want in a blog. I'd like to widen the post box if I could and edit the preset menu a bit, but my novice skills prevent me from doing that. If any more advanced bloggers out there would like to give me a crash course in blog design, I'm totally game.

Anyway, I keep thinking that I really need to get my story down. I need to see it in black and white. And even if no one else in the world reads it, it will be there.

I guess the best place to start is the beginning.
Even from a young age I was different. I didn't really understand it then, and I didn't really think much of it. I don't know that my parents thought much of it either, but me being the first child, they probably didn't know what to expect.

I wasn't rowdy like other boys. I didn't care much for wrestling or conflict. And I never liked toy cars or G.I. Joe or action movies. They were rough and harsh, and I didn't like that. I liked stuffed animals, Barbies, and Disney movies, especially the ones where people fell in love.

At the age of three my favorite movie was the Little Mermaid, and my favorite toys were my Aladdin and Jasmine barbie dolls. My father had fought getting me the Jasmine doll, and for my third birthday I only got the Aladdin half of the set. However, I received some money from a grandparent and I knew exactly what I was getting. My dad might have stopped me, but the fact that it was my money, regardless of how old I was, won out in my mom's eyes and she defended my choice. And so, at three years old there was already something different with me. Different, but not wrong.

As I got older and made friends the vast majority of them were girls. I simply related better to them. They weren't concerned with things that seemed pointless to me, like the boys were. I never much cared for sports, mostly because of the social pressure and primal competition. And so in elementary school while the boys played sports I played make believe on the big toy. And that's how I liked it. I loved the pretend worlds I could create in my mind. I was free there, and no aggressive sport could compete with that.

My inquisitive nature was always there as well. Once I learned to read I much preferred my small two-layer book shelf of books to other things. I always wanted to know how things worked, and why. And I seemed to be much more concerned with people's feelings than other boys were, not to mention more in touch with my own.

I didn't really interact with "normal" boys until I got to junior high. I spent time with a group of guys from my neighborhood, and while I could feel that I was different, I learned how to interact with them, something I'm grateful for. Spending time with boys taught me how to relate to them and that balanced out my personality. And apparently I seemed like a straight guy to everyone else, because coming out has been a surprise for most everyone. Except me, of course.

As I moved from elementary to junior high I began to notice boys more and more. I remember simply being drawn to them in ways that didn't make sense. At one point I even developed what I now know was a crush on a friend of mine. I just loved the way he looked.

But in spite of all this I didn't really get what was happening. I had always been a romantic, and romance stories have a boy and a girl, so that's what I sought. I thought girls were pretty, of course, but appreciation for beauty is far different from attraction. I had a "girlfriend" in sixth and seventh grade, but looking back it was much more of a bff kind of thing. I never really had a desire to kiss her, and never did. I went through the rest of junior high and high school having the occasional "crush" and date, but I now see that it was more attraction to romance than anything else. I was raised in a very conservative home and so the concept of love between two men never even occurred to me. And so as I grew up I was almost blind to the real attraction that was right in front of me.