My Dad.

Well, I usually wouldn't start out by talking about my dad, but he called me today. I hadn't heard from him in almost a year. Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, my birthday, fathers day, and countless other important dates have passes since I last heard from him. In all actuality, he lives about 10 minutes from me, and I bet he hasn't seen my son in at least 2 years. I don't usually think about my relationship with him a lot. He is very withdrawn from life and depressed, and it's hard to maintain a relationship with him and not fall into the same habits. I start to call, then I feel like an ass cause it's been so long since I last called, so I don't. He and I go back and forth about who should call who. It makes absolutely no sense to me, but we do it all the time.

This is where I decide just how personal I want to get with this blog.....My father is an alcoholic. He is also Transgendered. He believes he should have been born a woman. I'm not really sure how I feel about this because I've never let myself digest it emotionally. I am the only person in our family that does not automatically judge him for it. No one, not even his own mother, can accept it. Most of the family thinks he is some sort of sick pedophile pervert, which is not the case. I can deal with it from a logical standpoint, but I am very detached from it.

My fathers sobriety has always been more important than his gender to me. I have seen him struggle with alcohol all of my life. He was never a violent or angry drunk, but he wasn't exactly fun to be around either. It's one of the things that makes me thankful that my parents divorced when I was two. I think it would have been a lot harder if I had had to deal with an alcoholic parent day in and day out instead of every other weekend.

Unfortunately, at this point in his life, he is living off his retirement and it isn't going well. He's very solitary, never goes out, and I think the only person he ever really talks to is me, and as I said earlier, that isn't much. I don't mean to isolate him from my life, but there are lots of complications. For one, he still drinks. You never really know what kind of mood he will be in till you get there, and I swore I would never let my son see what I had to see as a child. Secondly, there is the gender thing. My dad wants to someday have an operation to become a woman, however, because his alcoholism has kept him from keeping a job, he does not now, and will probably never have the ability to do so. He does his best to live as a woman. He dresses as a woman, and on the rare occasion that he does go out, he does so as a woman. The problem is that, well, there is no nice way to say this, he doesn't pull it off very well. He hasn't been on his hormones because he can't afford them, and that makes the fact that he is actually male painfully obvious.

Now, this doesn't bother me as far as the rest of the world, but it does make it difficult to explain to my son. Last time he saw my dad, he wasn't old enough to even wonder, but he will be 7 in two days. I don't have the first clue how to explain this to him. Dad said today that if I need him to be sober for us to come see him that he would do that because he really wants to see his grandson. I am fine with that, I think it's awesome! Bot how do I have a conversation with him to explain to him that my dad is basically a woman.

I'm going to close with this. I do not need to hear comments about how you think my father is immoral and evil and going to hell. I respect your opinion and respectfully ask you to but the fuck out :) Other than that, any and all comments and suggestions are welcome.

Thank's for reading and sorry if I blew your mind
Bean