Azaphaer

How time flies.. its so strange to imagine only 3 years ago I was posting about our first house, and now we've gone and moved again. Life changes ever so quickly it seems. I blink my eyes and I'm fast-forwarded somewhere else. This is not a negative thing of course, but can be so shocking even as you live through it.


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I left my family and my country 5 years ago. The year 2016 held some of the worst and also most wonderful experiences of my life so far. It had begun with my family kicking me out, my father raging at discovering I was queer. I don't talk about it often, I don't like to linger on these things, but they are moments I will never forget. The awful things that were said repeat in my mind over and over causing sleepless nights and struggles throughout my days. I slept in a barn and the attic of an old cabin for a month. I was threatened by my own father with the safety and well being of my animals. I had to rehome all of them. When tried to gather my things to leave, I was threatened with him trying to stop me. I was threatened he would take my partner's life.  But here we are, still here, and stronger than ever. Everything my partner and I fought for has resulted in success.

 

Never give up. 

 

For so many years I lived a lie. I denied who I was because of the fear and the hatred my family spewed. Between my religious mother who told me that God made everyone perfect, that to be gay was a disease, to be trans was an illness; and my father who was/is a manipulative and aggressive bigot, I was trapped in that cycle of being forced to be who I was not. No matter how much they tried to ingrain those things in me, it did not change who I was though. What I am is not a choice. It caused me many mental health problems that I still must face today, living through that. Those are the repercussions of their actions, that is the love my family left me with. A diagnoses of C-PTSD. 

 

That year though, I had the courage to leave everything behind. I had nothing. Just my partner and the will that we could do it together. I worked as many hours as I could to save up to get out. All hell broke loose a month before our date to leave with bus tickets to Canada.. [details redacted] I can't tell you how grateful I am that my boss from work came and got us out of there. I will never forget the wonderful people I worked with at Mountain Creek who supported us through this, and helped us get a hotel room at the resort. My partners parents came 8 hours from Canada to NJ to pick us up the next day. So much has happened since then...

 

This year, 5 years later, I finally became a permanent resident of Canada. This year our house flooded. New years day,  the toilet broke and destroyed our kitchen and bathroom. We had to move out of the house for repairs with all of our animals. In that time we had to live with my partner's parents for 2 months.  There was nowhere to go and nothing to do because of Covid restrictions. We decided to go house hunting. When I say decided, I mean my partner looked at me and said "I have a proposition" which meant he had some crazy idea. 

Now this month, we've moved into our dream home. I never thought we'd have such a gorgeous house, and definitely not at 26. All the hard work, all the struggles we stuck together through this have paid off. There's still so much ahead in life, but I'm so proud of what we accomplished. 

We are here, we are queer, and we are not going anywhere. 

I'm proud to be who I am. I am proud to be a transgender man. I am proud to be a gay man. No one can take that from me, and no one can take that from any other LGBTQIA+ individual. Stay strong and be true to yourself. No matter what, always keep fighting. 


-Azaphaer