I came from a broken home. And when I say it was broken, I mean the universe took the biggest hammer it could find and slammed it, over and over, into my life. The hammer hasn't really let up either, I just learned to endure it better. I'm sure Thor is getting tired of his hammer going missing.
So for me growing up, I had to make my own heroes. While girls around me drooled over the newest boy band, I was listening to Alice Cooper, Rob Zombie, and David Bowie. I was reading books and comics by Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Stephen King. I was finding people in the entertainment industry to look up to. They would likely never meet me, but that wasn't the point. When you hear a song that sounds like a familiar place in time, it can change your life. One song, could bring a whole world of magic into your life. That's what good music does. And good is what you make of it, not what other people tell you is good.
When someone I looked up to, even in the smallest way dies, it hurts. It hurts really deep. Today they announced Allen Rickman's death. Another one bites the dust thanks to Cancer. I am getting really tired of the sound of that word. Cancer sounds like a worse curse word than Fuck at this point. I've lost so many to cancer myself, and have friends struggling with it. Watching them fight is hard, and it makes me feel so many tumultuous things. It's a terrible illness. Just chews people up and spits them all over the cosmos. The bright ones still shine long after they are gone, reminding us that we choose how to go out when the curtain calls. Bowie worked right up until the end. That was not a man planning death. That was a man squeezing the last drops out of life.
My father left me before I was born, and from then on I had a string of men come and go. My mother's luck with men seemed rather shitty. If they weren't abusive fucks to her, they were to me. One guy even adopted me when I was 6, only to drop me like a hot rock when my sister was born. So I didn't really have a father. I looked out into the world and people like Robin Williams filled the void. Never completely, but enough that I could endure my life and not completely hate men. I grew being beaten, humiliated, degraded and raped by men. So to me, my heroes were the closest feeling to family I have ever known. And I know how sad that sounds.
Some people have what they call "Geek Husbands". People they admire and have a little lusting for. I will admit if a man is attractive to me, but I tend towards being attracted to women. That's just how I work. I think I have more Geek Wives than husbands. But I have a pantheon of Geek fathers/uncles. Men who showed me how to embrace my gender fluidity. People like Bowie who taught me through song to "Embrace the Strange." I needed that guidance. I sure as hell wasn't going to get it from the men that lived in my mothers drug house.
When there was nothing else, I looked to the stars. I didn't need a mortal, flawed father. Not as a child. Something otherworldly was needed. To teach me to embrace my strangeness. Growing up, I cared about my Geek Father's more as people than just ideas. They fleshed out and felt like old friends I had never met. They were good to me when the world was not. I'm sure living as a star isn't easy. Especially when you are dying or mentally ill. So seeing my heroes struggle like I do, actually made me connect all the more to them. Robin Williams for a long time was my biggest hero because of his living with bipolar. But when he died, it devastated me. I am still not over it. When they locked me up last year in the mental hospital, I had pictures of Robin Williams in my sketch book my husband brought for me. I had ripped them from a magazine and tucked them among the pages of my book.
You never know who is going to shape your life. And you never know how long they will be with you. Gods die. We dont want them to and we sure as hell can't believe it when it happens, but they do. They die and turn to stardust, leaving their legacy behind.
If I can leave behind even a fraction of that kind of talent and gift to the people I care about, then I've lived a good life. And I look forward to the day I can hang with my Geek Fathers again.
