Summary
My family wanted me to be ANYTHING but myself. They wanted me to be feminine, respectful, submissive, "stupid", performative, pliable, professional, and mostly silent. They wanted me to DO, BE, and SHOW only what other people - especially them - felt was most comfortable for them. I said no.
#FirstCoffeeThoughts
Growing up my father was all about SPC (shame, pain, control). He believed it was most important as a parent to manipulate or threaten children into behaving the way he felt was best.
Boomers gave birth to Gen X and boomer parenting was pretty shit and lacking in many ways more than recent generations who give their kids over to tech instead of just beating, neglecting, manipulating, and traumatizing them.
(Though I chose tech as soon as we had Atari in 1978 … many neurodivergent people do.)
What I saw my father and most adults doing was something that looked like PERFORMANCE and LIES.
What I learned from my father was that you had to DO, BE, and SHOW.
He was ALL about appearances in an expected way given he was a Black man during a time when you HAD to look your best, behave your best, be acceptable, and please as many (white) (men) people as possible in order to get ahead. And my dad did more than just get ahead … he succeeded in places that a Black man from a public housing project was probably never expected to in the 40s, 50s, and 60s.
He did so by DOING, BEING, and SHOWING.
The thing is … to me – a budding stoic, neurodivergent, non-binary, synesthetic aphant – what I saw my father and most adults doing was something that looked like PERFORMANCE and LIES. It looked EMPTY and TERRIFYING and not at all normal.
It was something that didn’t seem REAL. It seemed extremely fake and I could see right though most people who DID, WERE, and SHOWED … all I saw was masking and fear and insecurity and ego.
All I wanted was to be ME. All I wanted was to be TRUE.
My father wanted me to be ANYTHING but myself. He wanted me to be feminine, respectful, submissive, “stupid”, performative, pliable, professional, and mostly silent.
(That silent part never changed. He hated listening to women speak unless they had somehow earned his respect beforehand.)
He wanted me to be more acceptable and less threatening to (white) (men) people since I would need to spend my life trying to please, ego stroke, and be less than them.
See … I knew I was different than everyone before the Internet existed, before all this understanding of psychology, the mind, divergency, sexuality, gender, of women’s health …
Before the Internet I believed I was alone in the world, that there was no one else like me and that I had only two choices: learn to blend in or hide; to DO, BE, and SHOW the white cis-het, neurotypical, dysregulated, mentally unaware, mentally ill, unreasonable, illogical, angry people what they wanted and needed.
The reason my father and I clashed so much, why he beat me the most, why he was so disappointed and disinterested in me for most of my life … was simple: I couldn’t – didn’t want to – be what he expected, needed, or wanted and I didn’t have a penis.
As I got older I became LESS and LESS interested in other people’s expectations and more interested in my own wants and needs as a human being.
(Though I think having a penis and STILL being a disappointment would have probably been worse.)
As I got older I became LESS and LESS interested in other people’s expectations and more interested in my own wants and needs as a human being.
As I got into the world and the workforce though … I realized that my father was right.
The only way to survive was to PERFORM and to be the way everyone you expected you to be: To be humble. To be quiet. To be submissive. To be stupid.
Being smarter, more educated, more aware, more honest, more confident, more independent, more logical, more reasonable, and more emotionally regulated than everyone else only made me more HATED and more of an OUTSIDER … ESPECIALLY with other Black people.
The idea of my father being right really sent me into a bad spiral … especially after so many years of fighting against his narcissism, misogyny, ego, and need to control me.
Yes … Do. Be. Show was the only way to SURVIVE. But I wanted to do more than that. I wanted to THRIVE.
It wasn’t until I was out of college … and really standing on secure ground with my tribemates and starting my own business that I had a much better understanding that my father wasn’t “right” so much as he was “well controlled” into a way of being by a society that expected that of him … he also had no choice.
I don’t even think he knew that choices existed. I understand that more after having interviewed him about his life …
When I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up … he had no dreams or aspirations. He did what he was told and what was expected of him … and he got into a profession that “made sense” … not one that he actually liked. He didn’t see the world as I do … he couldn’t.
He only knew to DO, BE, SHOW.
That is absolutely sad AF.
Being on the Internet in the early 90s, before it was truly public and became a cesspool of crazy people, I had long realized there were more people like me out in the world.
The more I interacted with people from other countries and other perspectives …. the more I came to understand that everyone else was the problem, not me.
Everyone who believed they had no choices, who believed the lies they were told as children, who never came to know or understand themselves as whole beings.
My father beat, whipped, and berated me up until I stopped giving him what he craved. When I started responding with silence, with calm, with passive resistance.
People like my father and many of the adults who raised my peers; kids I grew up with who were hiding so much pain and trauma and treating each other – and themselves – horribly.
People who never read books, never discovered philosophy, never had the benefit of experiencing the world through mental fluidity, divergency, and synesthetic connections.
People who were controlled by their dysregulated emotions like my entire family.
People who found their truths late in life … if ever.
My father beat, whipped, and berated me up until I stopped giving him what he craved.
When I started responding with silence, with calm, with passive resistance.
When beating me no longer gave him any kind of feelings of dominance that he needed.
When I would just sit there … motionless … “like stone in body, but aware in mind” I wrote in my journal.
I watched him. Understood him. I saw his weakness and fear in every swing of the belt or switch.
He was so empty.
Many people are.
People who contain the least on the inside, tend to be the loudest on the outside.
Seneca explained how those with the most anger and the most uncontrollable rage are the ones who have the most fear and the deepest level of helplessness. They also have the least level of understanding of who they are and where their true place is in society … that was my entire family to a tee.
My family didn’t know what family was. They had no definition that was healthy or based on an ever-shifting reality.
They didn’t know themselves at all, were easily manipulated by the expectations of others, and were controlled by their emotions to their own detriment and the detriment of others.
They had too much ego and not enough compassion.
They had too much self-hatred and not enough self-love.
They had too many delusions and not enough truth.
Yet somehow I was always the bad child. I was the one who disrupted the family reality.
When I was running my businesses, when I was in charge of other people, when I had clients, when I had to impress people, make sales, build confidence, and keep clients happy … I realized that the all of the things that made me an outsider to most people were actually ASSETS to me and my business.
Those things allowed me to work with many different people, especially Japanese companies when I was in the anime business.
I was different. I saw the world differently. I spoke differently. I wasn’t boring.
I was always the bad child. I was the one who disrupted the family reality.
Everything that I thought was a problem, was told to hide or suppress, was beaten for, was hated for … these were my superpowers. These were things that set me apart from everyone else and made me better, more effective, more understanding, more empathetic, more in touch, less gullible, less controllable, less susceptible to manipulation and lies.
The DO, BE, SHOW part of life was true … but only when it is REAL and not a PERFORMANCE for other people’s comfort; only when I was truly ME.
One of my most common phrases is “Do you” and when I say that directly to people what I mean is … I see you and I understand that this is who you are and I accept it (even if I don’t agree).
But to that I now add, especially in 2026, is … Be you. Show you.
Be real. Stop being performative even though I know social media has trained most people to sing and dance like a slave to get likes and engagement to prove some level of social clout and social relevance.
None of that is truly important and offline people and regulated people understand that without having to be told or taught it. People with a healthy sense of self and a positive approach to life also already know this.
Be authentic. Embrace your whole self and all of your undiscovered secrets.
Don’t be AFRAID of your most genuine parts.
Don’t let anyone – parents, friends, bosses, coworkers, psychos on social media, or this wretched administration – try to diminish your truth or your light.
Shine on. Be a guiding light for those that need it and want it.
DO. BE. SHOW … YOU
