Freedom is the Greatest tool that Everyone can use

(This is another letter that I wrote to my father)

Dear father,

It has come to my attention that you and I still have some old baggage that we need to square away.  I am not mad at you that much anymore about everything that happened between us before you died.  I know that you grew up in fifties and sixties when society was trying to force uniformity onto every individual and business that existed at the time.  I learned from an Italian substitute teacher back in high school that around this time frame, a person’s work was more important than his or her safety.  I am sure that this extended to self-expression as well.  Uniformity was valued over individualism.  I am aware that my existence threw all of the values that were enforced in your day out the window.  I was born with Cerebral Palsy, which made my body different than the “standard” individual.  I had difficulties in adjusting to how society worked. 

I am sure that my transgender nature also came as a big shock to you.  The type of transformation that I went through was unheard of in your day.  People definitely did not openly express themselves in this manner fifty years ago.  I know that you thought the best thing for me was to do things the traditional way.  Your negative actions towards my self-expression were just your way of trying to make sure that I did not get hurt.  You were scared that I would become an outcast in society and ruin my life forever.  You thought I was just trying to challenge the status quo because I could. 

The information that was missing all of these years was the fact that you never felt as if you could express yourself freely.  This is why you and I would argue about the heat in the winter time.  You would always say “no one is going to tell me what to do in my own house.”  The anger that you showed towards me was because you thought I was taking away your form of self-expression.  This is also the reason that you could never sell the house we lived in together.  The house was your sense of freedom.  You could make your own rules and do things your way.  You felt inhibited in every place outside the home.  Even though you and I argued a lot, we both were fighting for the exact same thing.  We both wanted freedom from our inner turmoil.  You wanted freedom from the constraints that society placed on you long ago, and I wanted the freedom to use my own power the way that I saw fit. 

The thing that we did not realize was that we could have obtained our freedom long ago.  We let the conditioning of society get to us, and that is why we felt like we lived in some type of cage for most of our lives.  You could have opened up a business that revolved around something that you actually cared about.  Maybe you would have felt like you had freedom outside the home.  If I would have stood up for myself earlier in life and actually learned that I could do more things for myself than I was led to believe, then maybe I would not have hated you so bad when you were alive.  I felt like I had no freedom because I always needed help from everyone else.  The thing I learned since your death is that I do not need much help at all.  I pay all the bills on time, and I found out about Uber and Lyft.  I could have talked to you about getting a data plan for the phones in order to download the apps for both services, but I never did that.  I never brought up or forced the issue, so I did not get anything out of it. 

The events we shared together are all in the past now.  I plan to move farther away from the Baltimore area and create the life I want for myself.  The bank owns the house now, so I have to get out of it in the near future.  I no longer hold any grudges against you.  Become a soul that shines brightly in the universe and use the knowledge that you gained in our interactions to help others living or dead.  You taught me how to take my own power back.  I cannot pinpoint what you have learned from me, but I hope you learned that all the different ways an individual can express him or herself is important.  Individuals make up society, so when each person lives authentically, society as a whole becomes a little bit better over time.