Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding a Relationship With My Dad

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If you’d told 17-year-old-me that in 2015, I’d be standing in Target, picking out a Father’s Day card or crying while dancing with my Dad at my wedding, I would’ve laughed in your face. Yet that’s precisely where I found myself this afternoon: staring at the remainders of a plundered Hallmark rack, seeking something that wasn’t too saccharine or too silly or dismissive. And just a few weeks ago, on my wedding day, I danced with my father and both of us sobbed ugly tears. I laughed out loud in the store thinking about the absurdity of it all, given my life’s history, earning a side-eye from a nearby shopper.

You could — if you’re into grossly minimizing euphemisms — refer to my childhood and adolescence as “tumultuous.” I still find it difficult to talk about even with my closest friends, let alone publicly. In short: I was pretty severely physically and emotionally abused by my father from literally as early as I can remember until I hit legal adulthood. My mom feared him too, but feared being on her own more, so she scared me into silence with horror stories about what would happen to me if I ended up in foster care. I hid bruises, learned to disassociate when the violence came, and lived in constant anxiety, never knowing what’d set off the next attack. It escalated when I became a teenager, and I spent most of my senior year of high school fearing for my life. That’s not an exaggeration.

Why did I endure what I did? My Dad is hot-headed, aggressive, and very much “a man’s man.” He’s into sports, the outdoors, cars, all things mechanical and all things “guy culture.” I was quiet and emotional, a nerdy bookworm who was absolutely terrible at pretending to be a boy. We only managed real conversations when hockey games were on (the only sport I’ve ever mustered the enthusiasm to care about). My parents were young when they married and had kids, were still almost kids themselves when I was. My autism wasn’t diagnosed ’til I was 27, so back then I was just “difficult.” My parents were entirely unequipped for the little ball of feminine weirdness they’d produced as their first offspring.

I moved out shortly after turning 18 and have been functionally taking care of my own damn self ever since. Over the last decade plus, I’ve drifted further and further away from the bulk of my blood relatives.

Putting 30+ miles between us and only seeing him in small, controlled doses has become a catalyst for a thawing of the bad blood between us. I went through tons of therapy to process and move on from what I’d lived through and finally, at 19, I was in a place to confront my Dad about what he’d put me through.

It happened on a summer afternoon, and without much warning: I simply unloaded on him. I let loose a lifetime of pain, anger and resentment. I let him know what damage he’d done — the panic attacks and dissociative responses I have at raised voices, the intense struggles with any form of self-esteem, and my years of chronic depression — and made it clear that I could easily and happily never speak to him again.

I’d expected him to chase me out of the house and we’d never speak again. But instead, something happened that I’d only witnessed one other time in my life — I saw my Dad cry. Not just well up, but weep with shame and hurt. He hadn’t interrupted me or denied what happened. He just cried. He just apologized. Over and over and over. I was surprised, but it didn’t undo 15 years of relentless abuse. I told him it was on him now. It was his job to demonstrate that he could actually be a parent, and prove to me that he deserved me in his life.

Shockingly, he did try. Not always well, but he made the best efforts he could — fixing my car when it broke down, enlisting his buddies to help me move — anything “manly” that he could offer. It wasn’t a magic salve, but I was impressed he was even making an effort. Over the next few years, we began building a functioning relationship. I did my best to forgive him for the past. Still, we never really “related” to each other, and I’ve certainly never sought out his company alone.

Coming out to my parents as trans was perhaps the most terrifying part of my whole transition. I hadn’t heard many stories from trans friends about that particular conversation going well. I even brought my brother with me in case things got out of hand. How would my Dad handle the news that his oldest son and namesake was really a girl? I had a 4,500 word speech neatly typed and folded in my back pocket. I cleared my throat: “Mom, Dad, I need to talk to you about something.”

I cried while reading the speech, focusing on the page in front of me instead of their faces. When I was done, I set the pages down and looked at him — all six feet two inches and three hundred pounds of father — and saw that he, too, was crying. He had a kleenex in his hand. He wanted to hand it to me.

My Mom had a lot of questions, typical ones, but my Dad was silent. He didn’t have any questions, just a statement: “I’m so sorry that you had to hurt for so long.”

From that moment forward, my Dad never once used the wrong pronouns or my dead name. He never questioned why I was trans, never expressed frustration or resentment about my transition, and never criticized how I looked. He’s never failed to refer to me as a daughter, granddaughter, niece, or sister, and he unflinchingly talks about his daughter to friends who were absolutely aware that until relatively recently, he thought he had two sons. When I had to suddenly and awkwardly come out to my mother’s family when my grandmother passed away this fall, he refused to make apologies for me, and resolutely informed anyone who asked that the only thing he cared about was that I was happy. He’s never given the slightest indication that he’s uncomfortable with how I look, or that he’s at all embarrassed to be seen in public with me. When he sees me, he kisses me on the forehead to say hello, and uses diminutives like “sweetheart.” He calls me once a week to check in on me when he knows my mother and I aren’t speaking (which is frequently).

A few months after I came out, I went to a Red Wings game with him — the first time I’d talked to him without my mom being present since I came out. Mom had — behind my back — tried to blame him for the fact that I’m trans, a notion I’d thoroughly dismissed in my coming-out speech. I mean, it was a long speech for a reason! I had a lot of bases to cover.

As we drove to the game, I reassured him that it wasn’t him that made me trans. He just patted my head and said, “I know.” I raised an eyebrow. He added, “you’re the smartest person I know. If you tell me that this is how it is, I have no reason not to believe you.” And with that, there was never a need to ever discuss the subject again.

Over the next few months, I found myself finding excuses to see Dad without my mother around, as she still was (and still is) uncomfortable with the situation, which tends to trigger my anxiety. I had dinner with him while Mom was out of town, perhaps only the third or fourth time time I’d gone out to eat with just my dad as an adult. It was astonishing to see a completely new side of him. He seemed to feel more comfortable with me than ever before. We were just any other father/daughter pair out for a meal, and if you didn’t know any better, you might have thought I had grown up a Daddy’s Girl. We had actual adult conversations, and I told him about my then still-developing relationship with the woman who is now my wife. He told me he was proud of me. He told that I’m brave.

In the 18 months or so since that dinner, my dad continues to be so much better than I ever thought possible. I went to see him while my mom was out of town a few months back, and we chatted about the work I’m doing as a writer and activist. He told me that he doesn’t read my stuff because he doesn’t really understand how to Internet, but that it “seemed like I was doing important things” and he likes being able to tell people his daughter is “an important writer.” I told him about the social justice work activism I do, and he actually listened and engaged on the issues in way that demonstrated some nuanced understanding of those situations. Meanwhile, that same conversation with my mother over Christmas lead to me walking laps around a freeway rest-stop to keep from screaming. Whether it was having an activist daughter or the “herbal medicine” my brother had started giving him, I don’t know. But, whatever the cause, it’s a damn unprecedented change for a fairly conservative ex-military working class man like my dad.

When my partner and I announced our wedding back on Christmas Day, it was my dad who hugged me first with tears in his eyes. When my partner and I discussed what wedding traditions we actually wanted to keep, one of the few I found myself attached to was dancing with my dad, but I was a bit concerned he might feel weird about it. I got up the nerve to ask him just a week before my wedding day, and he informed me that nothing would make him happier. When it came time for the dance at the reception a few weeks ago, Dad already had tears in his eyes before he made it to the dance floor. (He cried at the ceremony, too.) He hugged me tightly and danced with me. He told me over and over how beautiful I looked, and how happy he was that I found someone to love. He told me how glad he was that he could be there with me on our special day. I just sobbed. It was a moment that was quite literally unimaginable just a few years ago, and it meant more to me than I possibly express.

I’ve spent the last few years reflecting on why exactly my parents reacted in such completely different ways to my coming out and transition, and I’ve come up with a bit of a theory. Both of my parents always wanted a daughter, and never made that much of a secret growing up; my coming out made that wish come true in some ways. But for my mom, she got exactly the wrong kind of daughter: a queer radical feminist who wasn’t interested in having kids and not particularly feminine. My mother and I almost couldn’t have less in common. My dad, on the other hand, got exactly the right kind of daughter for him: a strong, successful woman who still kind of needs him for practical things like house repairs and car-fixing, who can sit down and watch a hockey game with him, and who’s absolutely guaranteed to never bring home a boyfriend. But more than that, I think maybe I just make a lot more sense to him as a girl.

One of the things that trans people are told early on in transition is that we should be prepared to lose everything — our friends, our jobs, and especially our families. When I came out, I didn’t really feel like I had all that much to lose with regards to my family. I still bear the physical and emotional scars from what I endured during childhood and adolescence, and I was fully prepared for old wounds to re-open, and for the tenuous bridges we had built over the years to finally come tumbling down again. I wasn’t prepared to find that the person who had done some of the worst harm to me would turn out to be one my most unflagging supporters, and I still have days where I can scarcely believe how fortunate I am. The rest of the world is often cruel and unwilling to accept me for who I am, but somehow that’s a little bit easier to face when a hug from my dad reminds me that he’s standing behind me.