Letter #2 — Look At Me, I’m Invisible!

Hi Piglet 👋

If I’ve timed this right, this letter arrived while you’re at a school camp. Instead of fluttering down from the ceiling, you found this letter in a bottle on the nearby shoreline. You didn’t open it straight away (of course!). That would only invite ridicule and mockery. You waited until you could hear the other boys snoring. Only then did you read this letter.

I imagine you’re surprised. It’s been one whole year since my last letter. How are you going? Thirteen can be rough. Puberty can be rough. Nobody ever looked at their odd patches of hair and pimples and said, “this is fun, let’s do it again”. I hope having me in the background as your own personal cheer squad has helped. Go Team Piglet! 

Firstly, congratulations on going off the medication! They’ve been stuffing you full of antidepressants since forever (six whole years). That stuff screwed us up, even if you can’t see it yet. That lack of emotion, that coldness that you feel, only happens because of the medication. But soon, when it wears off, you’ll start to feel real emotions. 

Did Mother ever tell you why they stopped the medication? Did she ever mention why you’re not seeing the psychiatrist anymore? I don’t remember, but I can only imagine our Big Lie was successful. Don’t worry, I know the truth. You didn’t lie because you wanted to. Over the years, we learned what she wanted you to say. You learned what she wanted to hear. And you said whatever you were supposed to say. 

I know how rough life is for you, at this time in your life. There was so little support, so few people who offered the help you needed. The medication didn’t work, but it could never have worked for us. At least the medication was a thin sliver of recognition that something was not right with us. Something was off in our world.  

I swear this to you, Piglet. One day, life is going to be more than just about survival.

I remember those days so well. You do everything you can to be as small as possible. You dress generically, always blending into the background. You don’t have opinions… unless you’re feeding back the opinions of whomever you’re speaking to. You don’t eat until the hunger drives you crazy. Slumped shoulders make you appear smaller. Being invisible keeps you safe. Nobody can hurt you when you’re invisible. 

Today, of all days, was an especially confusing day. Being around the other boys is hard for you. You want to be around them, you’re drawn to them, yet everything you do results in rejection. Standing out gets you noticed. A school camp is a dangerous war zone, with so many ways to get noticed. It’s a war zone with you out in the open, nothing to hide behind. 

Sleeping in a tent gets you noticed. Eating food gets you noticed. Worst of all are the group showers. All the boys, laughing and hollering like teenage boys can do. They’re running around, naked, carefree, not a single inhibition slowing them down. None of them are invisible. They stand out like shining beacons. “Look at me! Look at me!” they shout. These people are the complete opposite to you.

That’s when it happened, isn’t it? That boy, whose name I’ve long since forgotten. He’s taller than the other kids. Puberty hit early for him. He’s standing at the urinals, naked, penis in hand, peeing into the trough while screaming for everyone to watch how high he can piss. You’re drawn and repelled. He’s confident, brazen, and visible. All the things you dream of. You want to be close to him. You want to be him. 

He’s got a cruel streak about him, though. He makes your life hell whenever he’s bored. You’re nothing more than a bug in a jar. He pulls off your wings, then moves onto the next bug. You could never be close to him.

It’s weird how you can feel two opposite emotions at the same time, isn’t it? That bully gives you butterflies in your stomach. It’s an intoxicating feeling, a pleasant feeling that never goes away. The sight of him gives you an erection, and you feel such shame. The bully also makes you afraid. Any scrutiny from him will only result in mockery and violence. And even that fear causes you to have an erection.

Today was the start of the war. Two emotions fight for dominance: lust and fear. It’s a war of perpetual stalemate.

Looking back, I see this day is the day I realised I like boys. That you like boys. That we are gay. But you don’t grasp the full meaning of this realisation for quite a few more years. Being gay is not something to be ashamed of, or to hide. Those unwanted erections are perfectly natural and normal. You are normal.

This is also the day your sexual kinks formed, Piglet. Puberty brings on lots of changes, not all of them physical. You didn’t ask for it. You didn’t invite it in. It’s just something that happened around you, like the weather. The pissing bully is my strongest memory of those years. The shame, the fear, and the lust all intertwined and became part of my sexual identity. Many people have kinks, and these kinks are ours. I’ve never been able to get in the right headspace to pursue my kinks, and that’s okay. They’re still a part of our story, no more shameful than the colour of our eyes.

I know that none of this will make any sense to you right now, but I’m trying to prepare you for what’s to come. You’re going to suffer through years of shame, embarrassment, and humiliation. Most of it because we aren’t growing to fit the mould our Mother cast for us. What I want you to take away from this weird mix of adult language I’m using is that you’re not broken, that you don’t need fixing, and that you are perfectly normal.

You might be interested to hear that today I had wrestling practice. I wore lycra (yes, Lycra!). I squeezed my tired, imperfect, middle-aged body into a wrestling singlet like an overstuffed sausage. I make jokes about it. Sometimes, when it gets too hot at the gym, I wrestle without a shirt. My body isn’t perfect. Yet, I still turn up, week after week, to wrestle with other guys and not be invisible. There’s no shame, no humiliation. Just us, comfortable in our skin.

I have a lot more to tell you, Piglet, but for now, all you need to know is this: The war does end 🤗

All my love,

Big Pig 🐖