I’ll be the first to admit it: most of my life, I felt like an outsider.
It started when I was a young kid, growing up on a dirt road off a dirt road in rural Ontario, Canada. Most people around us were religious and conservative. Life moved to the rhythm of modesty, restrained emotion, and values centred around family and the church. And I, from the age of five, knew I was gay.
I was a little boy in touch with his emotions. I loved singing. I was obsessed with figure skating. I wore my heart on my sleeve. When I was young and still sheltered from the world by my family, life felt idyllic. I was too small to fully understand the comments people made to my parents. “Don’t worry, he’ll grow out of it.” Too happy to care.
I was lucky in those early years. My parents told me to always be myself. They let me dress up, skate, be silly and free. They never faulted me for being emotional, empathetic, or caring. My grandmother might have been truly ahead of her time. She gave me women’s clothing to dress up in, let me curl my hair, whatever tickled my fancy. Inside those walls, I was safe to be exactly who I was.
But then the world started weighing in.
* * *
Growing up, I always got along with the girls. But as kids got older, the girls had sleepovers with other girls, and the boys, for the most part, didn’t want much to do with me. I leaned into who I was anyway. Full of life, free-spirited, endlessly energetic, happiest when I was just doing whatever brought me joy. My parents nicknamed me Marker Sparker for it. But as time went by, the world seemed determined to chip away at that.
The loneliness crept in slowly. I was called names by the boys. Consoled by the girls. Mostly left to my own devices after school, which meant skating and whatever else I could find to fill the time. By high school, I was being made fun of for being kind, for being caring, for not conforming to what masculinity was supposed to look like. I was called every name you’d imagine, told almost daily that I was gay. And even though I knew I was, I didn’t yet know what that meant, or what it made me.
So I turned to drugs.
If I could numb the pain of always being the odd one out, I figured, it wouldn’t hurt as much. And for a while, in the way that terrible ideas sometimes seem to work, it didn’t. But as the years went by, I sank deeper. The depression settled in alongside the substances. By my early twenties it was a daily event. From cannabis to harder drugs, I was numb from the moment I woke up to the moment I fell asleep.
I kept smiling. I kept the secret. I desperately wanted to be accepted, to be loved, to be the centre of attention in the way that might balance out a lifetime of feeling like the wrong shape for every room I walked into.
That need to be seen led me to modelling.
* * *
A woman approached me in the Eaton Centre in Toronto and asked if I’d ever modelled. I laughed. She said I had a great look, handed me a card, told me to come in for a casting. I sat on that card for a few weeks and thought: why not? Maybe this was my way of finally being seen. Of fitting in.
I went in. I was signed. And before long I was shooting in Toronto, LA, New York, Montreal. I had become a professional model.
The hard part: I was still using. And I felt more empty and alone than ever.
That continued for another six years, into my late twenties, until it felt like my whole world had finally fallen apart. I was numb. I was lost. I was working in an industry that wasn’t good or real in any way I could recognise. The drugs had taken everything. My money, my opportunities, my teeth, my weight. I was 5’11 and maybe 145 pounds. A shell of whoever I was supposed to be.
I called my mum. I told her I was getting evicted. That my career was falling apart. That I needed help and I needed to get off the drugs.
She said: come home.
* * *
I didn’t go right away. I spent nights sleeping wherever I could. Friends’ couches, places I’d rather not name. Trying to wrap my head around how I’d ended up here. How I’d gone from that boy so full of life, from Marker Sparker, to this. In those moments I wanted to disappear into the night and never be seen again.
But my mum kept calling. And eventually, my dad came to pick me up.
I remember sitting in the car with him, watching his face. My dad was a kind, loving man, but stoic in the way that men of his generation often were. I hadn’t seen him look truly upset many times in my life. But that day I could see it. You could tell he was most concerned about how my mother would react when she saw me.
We pulled up to the house. The house I grew up in. The house my parents still live in today. I walked inside. My mother came around the corner and the tears started streaming down her face before she even reached me. I could feel her sadness, her fear, her love, all of it at once. She told me she loved me. That we were going to get through this. That she was going to help me start over.
I remember one of our early conversations in those first days. She asked me why I’d turned to drugs. Why I’d lost myself. Why I’d lost my self-worth. And I said: I’ve spent my entire life outside this house feeling like I never fit in anywhere. I was mostly never accepted for the soft, kind, empathetic boy I was. And while I felt the world’s pain, I felt my own too, and I never learned how to deal with any of it.
She was quiet for a moment. Then she said: well, maybe it’s time you start over.
The tears rolled down my face. I said OK.
She told me: life isn’t about fitting in. It’s about being yourself. It’s about knowing who you are and loving that person. The people who accept that will find you and appreciate you.
She told me she’d never had many friends either. That she’d always felt like she didn’t fit in. That along the way she’d decided she needed to love herself, accept herself, and let everything else be what it was.
That conversation has stayed with me every day since.
* * *
I spent eight months with my parents. Relearning who I was. What I wanted. What made me, me. And somewhere in that process, I started a blog called I Am Addicted, and social media accounts under the name @TheMaleAddict to reflect the struggles I’d been through and knew I’d continue to face, knowing I might change the name one day when I was ready.
Over the next fourteen years, ADDICTED became my life’s work. It gave me a platform to write my thoughts, to share my story, to remind myself daily what brought me joy. It connected me with people all over the world, in person and online, who reminded me that there are so many extraordinary humans out there. On social media, I started small and grew slowly, until I had over a hundred million views and nearly a million followers who shared their struggles, their love, their kindness. People who made me feel, for the first time, like I finally fit in somewhere.
I worked with over forty charities. Raised more than $100,000 in funds and donations for people in need. Volunteered my time, my platform, my voice to tell people they were enough. That if I could do it, they could too.
And along the way, the greatest thing happened.
I fell in love with the man I’d become.
* * *
Fifteen years later, it hit me: I had found myself.
While having people around you, finding like-minded souls, being part of a community, all of that is extraordinary and I am grateful for every piece of it. But the key was something simpler. It was learning to love, respect, and believe in the person I actually was. I had become the man that little boy was always supposed to grow up to be, before the world intervened. And maybe better. Because I’d earned it.
The irony isn’t lost on me: the little boy who never fit in became one of the most-watched creators in his country. It still gives me a little chuckle.
This past year, I retired the username @TheMaleAddict and became @MarktheSparker. Because that’s where I am now. Happy. Healthy. Living in Valencia, Spain, with my partner Beau and our dog Manny, learning Spanish badly and loving every humbling minute of it. My spark is back. My confidence is my own. And everything I’ve been through, the loneliness, the drugs, the homelessness, the long rebuild, the losses, the love, all of it has given me the resilience and the clarity to know exactly what I want to do next.
I want to build a table.
A place where people come together. Where being different isn’t just accepted but celebrated. Where going to the beat of your own drum isn’t something you have to apologise for. Where no matter what you’ve been through or who you are today, there is always a seat for you. Where you are not just listened to, but genuinely heard.
That’s what Sparker is. That’s what The Table is. That’s what all of this is.
Welcome.
Feel free to take a seat.