Thanksgiving 2009

I am now at a little over (three days) two years from having started this blog and sharing my journey with those who find this little tome. And once again we are at Thanksgiving.... I wonder if I have much to be thankful for... and I really do...

I still have my kids. They mean the world to me. Though the wife is gone, my life is kept busy... and I am thankful that wife left me AND the kids. They have kept me sane

I have a job... not the best in the world, and frankly at half the salary I had... but it is a job and it does keep me busy and fed, clothed and sheltered.

I still struggle with BF... two years ago I had just met him....now I have two years under my belt with the knowledge that I can love a man and be loved in return.

My circle of gay friends is increasing. Lately, some of the men I've gone out with have not been losers... and neither have they made me forget BF.... but they have developed into friends. More than anything else I need those friends.

I met a friend through this blog (hats off to conflicting clarity) he keeps me more on focus than he realizes. And he understands my struggle with BF....

I am undertaking some dream therapy work with a friend (one whom I dated but has no interest in anything other than friendship with me....probably a good thing) I've written down two dreams... amazingly both had images of me having cataracs.... cloudy vision... not trusting my vision. Perfect description of where I am at... I see what I think I see, but am totally afraid that I am seeing incorrectly. Intuition, actions, behaviors all point to the same thing yet I am afraid to name it and claim it as truth....

My house is full.... my sister in law and brother in law (and six children) moved in with me last August... and are still here. I am grateful I allowed them to stay... even though they are wife's family they have been so supportive of me and have actually helped calmed my kids down from their anger over the divorce.

Once again, my prayers were not answered about BF.... but he did come home and the first person he wanted to see was me.... in fact we have spent the last three nights together, and would have tonight except I really needed to spend time with my kids. His wife has given up. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing.... we will see where this leads.

Pax

Whatever

BF is in Kansas City this week attending a conference at which he is working. I miss him, but at the same time it is nice. Nice to have him away and for me to have some time to think... think hard and long about where I am at and where I am going. For about three months now the tide has been in with him... he calls, we get together, we talk. Abruptly now, the tide is out. I suspect that his wife is pressuring him again... I'm letting things lay... we'll see if he calls or not; he had promised to call when he landed and that has come and gone hours ago...

He pulls into me for months at a time, and then like this goes emotionally awol on me. It is hard to handle. He needs to decide what it is he wants... and if it is going to be wife then he needs to be man enough to decide to be with her and simply be with her all the time; both emotionally and physically.

Me... I get so pulled into him so easy... and it happens the more we spend time together, the more attached I become. This last retreat we were on was so good, and so full of hell at the same time. I didn't want him to go back.... and it is heart wrenching to have it happen.

So... if he doesn't call I wont' hear from him and hopefully I can just think about what I really want. Seriously, I know what I want....a full time partner. Question is have I finally had enough to let go? Or will I hold on even longer hoping against hope?

College times

I was twenty years old and in my second year of college, and the first year for me living away from home and in the dorms. I was scared as hell....I'd never been away from home before and despite my bravado... I was afraid. Afraid of leaving home, afraid of leaving all my cousins...afraid of what was to come.

I met him that first day. In fact, he was my roommate. We hit it off immediately, and spent that first evening at an all night diner just talking and getting to know one another.

Soon, we were hanging together all the time. He was a big practical joker and so was I... together we would pull stunts on other students and professors. Once, we pried open a clock, tied a white thread to the minute had, and everytime the professor looked at the clock I would pull that string. He never figured out what was happening, although all the students knew. We got out of that class thirty minutes early that day.

We lifted weights together, we ran together. We went to movies and hung out with a large group of friends.

All that time, I never once wanted to have sex with him...lol...

But, I was in love. With a man. In a Baptist Bible College

When he figured out I was gay.... it took three years..... he ran for the hills and I haven't seen him since.

In fact he got married that very same year. Funny thing is, that woman he married is now married to someone else. Looking back on it. I wonder if he was gay?

The thing about this "gay thing" is indeed how I fall in love with men.

New and Improved Gaydar!

I'm still unpacking the events of this weekend. I was at a retreat with BF in Capital City....

So, today I'm home.... I have three more days off from work (I was told that I need to take my time off since I haven't and they will not pay for it at the end of the year...)

I met another guy on IM... this one attends the local metropolitan community church.... very good looking (if that picture is actually his...lol) and very spiritual....

so I have this conversation and begin to think...maybe this is the one that will .....

And I get a call from BF actually inviting me to his parents for breakfast on Wednesday... a family tradition of theirs that I have teased him about for a while....

I"m confused

Obviously

Pax

Deep thoughts without Jack Handy

Random thoughts on a very early Monday morning:

I was at a retreat over the weekend with BF. It was with the Franciscan order... those Franciscans...very tolerant and forgiving bunch and very socially active. There were probably fifty people in our retreat, and there were fourteen retreats going on at once. Busy place. All weekend we kept getting looks from people. The type of looks that say they know what your are. At lunch today I caught a table of "older ladies" talking about the "gay couple." They didn't know I heard. I catch these things all the time. Not just here, but in other places as well. To those on the outside it is obvious what we are. We do things that guys typically don't do for each other. We sit too close together. We talk while inside the forbidden three foot zone. He gets me food and drink and I do so him. We share food. Obvious.

We went to a funeral last Tuesday. At the wake a woman asks us (jokingly) if we were dating. Same thing had been happening as listed above. This was a church function, so she was "joking" since being a couple in that manner is still "unthinkable" even if it is deemed "acceptable" (typical for a liberal church.)

Saturday I had the chance to "lay some things on the table." I was not sure I was heard fully until I heard the same thing repeated by BF as he counseled someone else tonight.

I told him that God can and does ask us to go places that we simply do not want to go. He is being asked that. I don't want to be a part of this Jonah experience since he is not listening to what God is telling him to do.

I was lying on the bed this morning. In a room that BF and I shared. One bed. He is in the bathroom and I am simply organizing my thoughts for the day. I ask God why I was there on the retreat (face it, I only went because BF wanted to go) No answer. BF comes in and lays on the bed. We are holding each other and he begins to tell me about this dream he had. We were both in the dream. God says "this is it, the moment you've been waiting for."

Face it. I am still in love.
And as much as I complain I am complicit in this enabling.

But it ain't over. And the fat lady looks nowhere close to being ready to sing.

Committment

My journey is that.... a walk, a journey through this maze of dead ends, illusions, and true paths. We walk down one hall, only to find it deadends... that it was all mirrors and no substance. So we walk back and try another hall.... and try and try again until we finally have manuvered ourselves to a different spot, a different time, a different life.

I realize how this sounds, my fascination with BF. My inability to let go. I sound like the naive mistress convinced that her lover is indeed going to leave his wife for her.

And my explanations have given a good description, but they are still somewhat two dimensional and lacking in that essential characteristic that I see, but cannot be translated into the pages of this blog.

My frustrations are indeed plenty. Plenty enough that I do date around. I am farther on the journey than BF and that makes me impatient. At the same time I know the journey. I know it. I've lived it, breathed it, existed in it.

I was praying and thinking about it this morning (a forty minute drive to work does wonders for one's ability to talk to God about things.) I know what it is to be so concerned about one's word that one will not leave (even when it is obvious that one should.) To be honest I should have left my wife. I knew the moment I got on that plane two years ago to meet BF in Columbus that I was putting my feet upon a path that would have no return. That I would be unable to go back. And I did it anyway.

But I was so obsessed about keeping my committment, keeping my word that I would never, ever have left. I was obsessed with keeping my word to the extent that I did not see the damage and harm I was causing wife. I gave her no option, no way to express her doubts and hurt. There was only keeping my word. It left the love out of it. And in that I hurt her.

BF does the same with his wife. He wants to keep his word, even though she continually tells him (with words and without) that THIS IS NOT WHAT SHE WANTS. She makes movement towards ending it in some fashion. Their sex life is not as robust as he portrayed it. My insticts have told me this, and it too has been confirmed. He gets sex from me. Not from her.

But I see the gay life as well. The inability to keep a committment. The way men up and leave their partners without the trying, the sacrifice that I WOULD WANT.

So, you see, if he was willing to leave his wife I wouldn't want him. I want someone who is so into the committment that they will do whatever it takes to see it through (even to the excess which this is just like mine was.) I don't want someone who is going to leave me. I want someone who will sacrifice to the extent that I will be willing to sacrifice.

And then... add God to the picture..... and it gets even more muddled. I may be making this God thing up (I'll admit to that, I have no proof of God....) And yet I cant help but think that there is some purpose to this relationship, that somehow we are together because it is RIGHT.

There is so much more. I wish I could express all that is here in my heart.....

So I will continue to struggle. And if I am wrong, then I will discover that I am wrong and I will change.

David loved Jonathan

Conflicting Clarity had an interesting thought on his last post; one that I have not explored too deeply, but which I find intriguing.

His statement:

The blogoshpere is full of queers who "refused" to be gay. Like a lot of
them, I did pretended to be straight, thinking that since I was normal in every
other way, if I just act straight, I will become straight, like normal people.
Add on top of that, a belief that being gay is just about having sex with other
men. I did not realize until I met T what it is to be in love with a man. To
feel emotional attachment for another man. A much more powerful pull than mere
sex, and much, MUCH harder to ignore or pretend it's not there.

That so describes my life. And explains the attraction/draw/gravitation that I have and continue to have towards BF.

I wonder of the truth of that statement. It certainly is true in my life, that finding one's self in love with another man. The sex is great, always has been. But it is that attraction, that draw... that "being in love" that holds me and captivates me.

I struggle with this so because it is totally outside my experience. I never felt this way about wife. In fact, early on in my life I had decided that somehow I was "broken" because I never did experience this. I heard of it; saw it in the lives of others. But never once did I understand it.

Until BF. Then I realized that I had fallen in love with a man, and that it was with men that this "thing" would happen. Difficult? No, impossible to ignore. One can hide from the fact, but it never makes it any less true.

Bible story allusion, of course, is David and Jonathan:

1 Samuel 18:1 And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul.

2 Samuel 1:26 I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan: very pleasant hast thou been unto me: thy love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.