A Bee's-Eye View from the Clouds

Confessions from the Wreckage: Why I Wrote Daddy Issues Anonymous

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Let’s get something out of the way:
I didn’t want to write this book.
I had to.

Daddy Issues Anonymous didn’t begin as a story. It started as a scream. A gut-deep, eye-rolling, sarcasm-soaked exhale of, “Are you kidding me with this?” It was grief in a drag wig. Humor on top of heartache. The kind of emotional chaos you only understand if your first father figure taught you fear before he ever taught you to drive.

This isn’t a book about hating your father. It’s about surviving him—and then trying to survive the echo.

“I called him Dad because calling him what he really was would’ve made Thanksgiving awkward.”

There’s no secret club for people with father-shaped scars. But if there was, this book would be read out loud in the basement of a community center under fluorescent lighting—between cups of bad coffee and knowing glances.

The Hurt That Doesn’t Bruise

I wrote Daddy Issues Anonymous because I wanted to tell the truth about what it means to grow up warped by men who were supposed to protect you, and then enter adulthood trying to date men who act just like them. I wanted to show how trauma doesn’t just haunt—it trains. And if you’re not careful, it can become your entire personality.

“No one warns you that missing someone is different when they were never safe to miss.”

There’s queerness in this book. There’s religious trauma. There’s the absolute mindfuck of becoming your own parent while still craving someone to say, “I’m proud of you.” But most of all, there’s truth. Brutal, sarcastic, glorious truth.

Laughing at the Fire While You Burn

Humor became the scaffolding. I didn’t want to write another tragic, weepy memoir of paternal absence. I wanted to write a middle finger wrapped in glitter. A character who hurts, but who also roasts his pain. Who weaponizes jokes like armor. Who, even in the middle of a breakdown, can throw a line like:

“I didn’t have abandonment issues—I had abandonment subscriptions. They delivered monthly.”

This book is for anyone who was told to “let it go” before they were ever allowed to name it. It’s for the people who’ve made peace with their past in the same way you make peace with a bear in your campsite—quietly, without sudden movement, and fully aware it could destroy you again.

Writing Through the Ache

Every sentence in Daddy Issues Anonymous was written through clenched teeth or an open wound. But also with love. Love for the boys like me. The queer kids who never got the storybook ending, but still decided to write their own damn chapter. The ones who survived silence and shame and came out the other side hilarious, exhausted, and worth loving.

“I didn’t forgive him. I just got tired of holding my breath every time someone reminded me of him.”

Why This Book Matters (Now)

Because there are too many of us carrying trauma in our back pockets like expired coupons, hoping one day someone will still honor them. Because masculinity is still performing its toxic drag routine on main stages across America. Because therapy is expensive, but fiction can be liberating. And because some of us never got closure—we got punchlines instead.

So I gave those punchlines a home.
You’ll laugh. You’ll ache.
You might even text your therapist mid-chapter.

Read it now: Daddy Issues Anonymous on Amazon
For everyone who survived “being a man” by becoming something better.