The day has finally arrived and I am a little bit terrified. I have known for decades that someday I would be old and retired, and there would be no more excuses. I always knew that someday I would have to begin to tell the story of my life. It’s not optional: it was locked into the contract. Not only was I bequeathed a rare gift at birth, but when I fucked it up so badly that death was going to be the inevitable consequence, the grace I was shown meant that I would owe something in return. And now that my life has entered its final phase, I feel I cannot evade the responsibility.

“Kirkwise” is the name of the blog, and it’s a double entendre. Yes, my name is Kirk. Some people think I am wise. Also, I would like my readers to get of sense of what it is to look at the world “Kirkwise,” that is, through my eyes. Some have asked, “Kirk, how did you become so wise? How can I too achieve such wisdom?” It’s simple. Fuck up in ways that leave you stuck in complex situations with a set of problems that are astonishingly difficult to solve — some that should inevitably lead to an early death, somehow miraculously disentangle yourself and survive, then spend the next few decades ruminating ad infinitum to extract every ounce of insight possible. Apply what you have learned. Repeat. Simple, really.

I am a very complicated person. Actually, I am too complicated to really be considered one person. Scientists say that our brains are mosaics, that layer upon layer was added starting from the primitive lizard brain, eventually resulting in the sophisticated primate brain we have now. Events transpired in my life that left my personality fractured. I lost the ability to tell you who I really was or to even understand within myself why I felt the way I did and why I did the things I did. It’s called “dissociative identity disorder,” and it occurs usually from severe trauma. So I have the tricky monkey brain by nature, and a squirrely mess of personalities from nurture, if you can call it “nurture.” Not to be too hard on my parents. They succeeded in being far less horrible than their own parents, and I am proud of them for that.

Before you read further, it seems fair to tell you more specific things about me, so you can decide if anything I have to say will be relevant to you. I was assigned male at birth but do not consider myself to be cis-gendered, since that requires one to be accepting of that gender assignment, which I have never felt. When I first encountered the term “gender dysphoria” I went, “Ah, so there is a name for it.” I never wanted to be male. I never wanted to be born, especially not born human. Dolphin would have been a better choice. In 2007 I did a pre-birth regression under hypnosis. I thought my therapist was a bit whack for suggesting it, and I didn’t really believe in it. But we had had two really amazing sessions prior to that, so I decided to give it a try. I can’t give all the details, but the gist of it was that I really didn’t want to come back this time. I thought I should be done. I was angry at the suggestion that I had more to learn from taking human form again, and I was resisting. By my side was a beloved and trusted companion who was urging me to do it. “It will be so good for you, I know you won’t regret it. And it’s important,” she said. I eventually agreed to go forward on one condition: that she accompany me. I don’t know what kind of karmic pull we had, but amazingly enough we were soon sharing a uterus, as fraternal twins. When we were just a few weeks along my mother miscarried. I remember being told the strange story growing up: how my mom miscarried eight or ten weeks into her pregnancy with me. She called the doctor, he confirmed it. A week or two later, she called him back and said, “I swear I am still pregnant.” Back she went. It was true: she was twelve weeks along. She said she always wondered how that could be, the signs had been so clear. (I was her fourth of six children: she knew the drill.) It was only after this hypnosis session that it occurred to me that it could mean that she had lost one of a pair of fraternal twins. I called her and asked her to tell me everything she remembered about it. I am convinced that I really did have a lost twin. I felt it my whole life.

Back to the session, where I am still a fetus: I was enraged. I felt abandoned and betrayed, and now I was stuck in this miserable human form without the one companion who would have made it ok. My earliest memories are of raging against life itself. My mother says I would cry and cry as an infant. She laughingly told me she finally got so frustrated that she started pushing the side of the crib to rock and roll my tiny body. She did it harder and harder until she was forcibly shaking the crib and I was bouncing and rolling all over the place while wailing at the top of my lungs. Then, boom, I was asleep. That became a routine. Possibly related note: when I was older, maybe five to seven, whenever I heard the washer going into a spin cycle I would run and sit with my back to it, letting it bang rhythmically against the back of my head. It was so soothing!

So I was a weird kid. My mom got a call from the elementary school when I was entering first grade. They said that my IQ test was unusual and that she and my dad were going to have to make extra efforts to provide me with stimulation and enrichment. We didn’t have “gifted” programs back then. I don’t know if it would have helped. I had attention problems in school, was often bored and disruptive. What I remember most about being sent out into the hallway for a timeout was the sound of the entire classroom laughing, often including the teacher. I did enjoy making people laugh.

OK, I will write a lot more about my childhood in future posts, but to finish this one I will give some factual background that will help you put me in perspective. I was born in the early 1960s, the fourth of six children. My parents were progressive Democrats of the Kennedy persuasion, including being very Catholic. I grew up in a small farm town in northern California. My parents were both college educated, my mom at Berkeley. My dad was a popular teacher at the local high school. I was a gifted musician. I sang, played the piano, and then every band instrument they would let me borrow, including string bass. I learned to write and arrange music, got decent at jazz improvisation, and really wanted to write movie scores when I grew up. My band director in high school sat me down one day to ask about my plans for the future. His suggestion was to head straight to LA after graduation and start doing studio session work. He said, “I don’t even think you need to go to college. You are already better than a lot of those guys. You know everything you need to know.” Oh how I wish I had taken that advice! But under the influence of my girlfriend’s very old fashioned family I enrolled in the University of California as a chemical engineering major. Much more to be told later.

I have been sober for over 38 years now. I had multiple careers, including computer programming, vocal studio accompaniment on the piano, IT management at a regional bank (reaching the VP level), and finally, fourteen years as a licensed massage therapist. I had dropped out of college due to my alcoholism in 1983. After a 30 year hiatus I returned to college in 2012, finishing a double major in Philosophy and Economics, summa cum laude. I have two biological children who are now in their early thirties, and a step-daughter who just started college. Whatever else I might have accomplished in life, it is my children of whom I am the most proud. They make the world a better place just by being in it.

So, future posts will include many stories about my life. Some are traumatic enough to come with a “content warning,” while others will be funny. All will be incredibly complicated, especially when you consider my tendency to digress. But I think there is a lot to be learned from my experiences, even while being entertained. My goal is to write daily, so we’ll see how it goes!