Who are your role models?

[Logan_WWIB]

Do you have people in life who are role models as men? As trans and/or queer people? As survivors of various experiences and traumas?

When you were a kid, was there anyone who you could look to who made you excited to grow up? If you didn't, how did that affect you? What kinds of role models do you wish you'd had?

Thank you as always for listening and sharing <3

 

[Isaak]

Well I wish my father had been more driven. Not to anything particular, just something. Instead I got a deceitful petty criminal with a "career" in cover band touring and a defeatist attitude. I can't even afford to let that loser in my life for fear of emotional vampirism.

The closest thing to a role model I ever had didn't come until I was already an adult. Now I'm too old to realy introject so deeply as to call a person my role model as I've "found my own way" so to speak, but I can thankfully say the men in my life positively motivate me to be better and I'm always trying to adapt to new struggles rather than stagnate.

Though I didn't realize it until much later the protagonist of Berserk has been my ideal abuse survivor since I was 14/15. Guts became strong enough to never be hurt that way again, even if he couldn't truly escape the trauma until he opened up to his lover and fellow survivor.