Experiencing Something New - Just when you thought you knew it all!

Very soon, and I mean VERY SOON, I'm going to be having my 50th birthday.  It's so hard for me to believe, because I certainly don't feel fifty years old.  Although, I guess I can't really say that I know what fifty feels like.  I'm guessing it's not unlike forty nine, or forty eight for that matter.  I have, in my life thus far, experienced a lot.  A lot of good things, a lot of bad things, and a lot of days that were just......days.  It's funny how when you get a little older, the "just" days start to feel a bit like a waste of time.  Nothing good to make a memory of, nothing bad to mark the significance of another day passing.  Just a day, that didn't amount to much but time slipping away.  Pretty soon, you start to wish you'd taken better advantage of those days.  I mean, I'd rather be able to look back and say I did SOMETHING, right or wrong.  Made a memory, or a mistake, either one.  Having had a day so mediocre that I don't even remember it at all seems like such a waste.

I tend to look back a lot lately, and I think it's because I have so much in my life right now that I want to learn how to keep so many "just" days from cluttering it up.  I'm experiencing something new, something that has changed the way I feel about those days, and the ones ahead of me.  I've said "I love you" thousands of times over the last 49 years.  Sometimes I thought I meant it, thought I knew what it meant.  Other times, I knew I didn't, but felt obligated to say it.  I took the word for granted, because it's meaning was lost to me.

It's a tough thing to admit that you've been emotionally screwed up almost all your life.  But without a doubt, I have been.  I grew up in a community where "gay" wasn't discussed, in a home where "gay" was most assuredly not acceptable, and in a time where there really wasn't any support available for a kid growing up gay in a straight world.  That's how I looked at myself growing up.  I was an outsider, different, somehow  less than everyone else.  My experience at home told me that being gay was dangerous, and would change my relationship with my family forever.  My experience at school told me that being gay would get you bullied, shunned, and tormented.  My experience in the world at that time told me that being gay was some kind of illness that made you immoral and in some way wicked in the eyes of the world.

So I learned early on, to hide my real feelings.  Growing up like that taught me to bury my feelings, and just follow my friends as they began to explore their heterosexual puberty and adolescence.   I married my high school best guy friend.  Learned how to hide my thoughts and my feelings from him as well.  I learned fast too.  I got very, very good at it.  Later in life, when I was exposed to more gay people and began to realize that I wasn't unique, it was too late.  I had already formed a behavior that just became a part of me.  I assumed that every relationship, even the gay ones, needed restraint and careful manipulation of the seriousness that I allowed to develop.  It was safe to stay casual, and to keep things on a sexual basis, then end it abruptly if someone began to demand entry into other parts of my life.  I never let anyone in, ever.  Not my husband.  Not the women that followed.  It became my primary coping mechanism. Never let anyone in.  I honestly didn't even know how.  Panic would set in at the first sign of emotion, and I was gone!

Now I find myself facing something I simply never expected.  Someone who makes me want to bring that wall that my emotions have always hidden behind down.  But, learned behaviors are hard, especially when they were what you used to protect yourself.  I didn't realize that letting this wall down was going let loose all the pain and fears that were attached to all those repressed wants, needs, feelings, and desires.  That sharing the memories that tormented me when I was young, would be so painful even now.  I guess I really did believe that if I didn't acknowledge them, I would never have to deal with them.

How amazing it is to me, that someone is willing to look past the fact that I am so damaged, so afraid to share.  Someone who looks at me with eyes that tell me that it's okay, that who I am now doesn't forever have to be a cold emotionless little girl who doesn't understand the difference between sex and love.  She brings to the surface a feeling in me that I am so unfamiliar with that it takes my breath away sometimes. I find myself nervous, and shaking when she touches me.  Every fiber in my body is telling me that I'm not safe, I'm exposed, vulnerable.  My heart and my soul, they just keep screaming "More!"

I used to think I had it all figured out, that I knew it all.  I believed that skating through life with many casual relationships was the safest I could ever hope to be. That even a long term relationship had to have limits to trust and sharing.   I may have been right, it might be safer, but it's not living and it certainly isn't loving.  This feeling is more than I ever imagined it could be. It makes me think that while I may have thought I knew it all, I really didn't understand anything.  Certainly not myself.  I have found someone who makes me want to look inside and drag everything out into the open, because I know she will look at me the same way even then.  Where do people like her hide all your life?  How is it even possible for someone to look into your soul and see beauty where even you can't?

I'm not a fool, I know a million things can go wrong, and that letting my guard down means that someone can hurt me.  But what I've learned through experiencing this person, this beautiful person, is that sometimes pain is the price you pay for a chance at something incredible.  I'd rather risk it all for a chance at that, something incredible, than live behind these walls and have "just" days from now on.

Never the Whole

There are parts of me that have known love

Pieces that were held with a selfish sort of need by someone who

saw some value in them.  But never the whole.

My willingness to provide, a favorite piece, has known much love.

My desire to see a smile, and to give comfort, often cared for. 

Even my desire for desire itself, has been favored for a time. 

But never once has the whole of me known love.

How sad it is, to look at the pieces left over, and realize that

they are what is left.  The unloved bits.

Fearing Your Own Mind

Fear of your own Mind

I've spent years trying to keep from facing some memories.  From time to time, something will drag them toward the surface, and a few times I've even thought to myself  "Hey, maybe I can do it this time.".  Thus far, that hasn't been the case.

It's amazing how you build walls to protect yourself.  How you engineer a life that allows you to keep yourself behind them. How desperately you will fight to protect them, even when you want nothing more than to bring them down.

I know that there are hundreds of thousands of people out there who are victims of violence or abuse.  I know I'm not the only one, and that my memories are no more traumatic or terror provoking to me than theirs are to them.  I know that I'm not the only person who wakes up feeling the same fear that I felt at that moment in my life when everything changed.  Fear is such an inadequate word.  I "fear" snakes.  I "fear" stinging insects, or bugs that cling to you.  I "fear" so many little things in life.   It seems such a small word, until it grasps you by the heart while you're still unsure if you are awake or asleep, and starts squeezing.  It seems like such a minuscule word until it creeps into your mind with you fully awake and lets itself run free there.  There it is wanting you not just to remember the way you felt at that moment, but to see it, to hear it, and to taste it.  How is that years later, the taste of blood in your mouth can seem so real?  The feeling of suffocating so palpable?  Why is that none of the wonderful memories of my life are so tangible?  What I wouldn't give to experience my child's birth that way again. But those memories fade.  Some do not.

Intimacy is such a trigger.  The incredible desire to let someone in.  Wanting to be able to give yourself to them.  Giving affection, love, intimacy, sexual pleasure is not the problem.  Being in control wasn't the issue.  But opening up, letting someone else have control, letting them love you and experience you is dangerous.  You're not in control.  Your mind is waiting for you to let go of just enough control, and it will throw out the visions at you with a vengeance.  It knows that you're trying to bring someone in, and that they may try to bring down the walls that it spends so much of it's energy maintaining.  Your mind tries so hard, to keep you alone.

I've been working on trying to get past some of this lately, and what I discovered is that my mind really seems to be my biggest enemy.  It's almost as if it knows that I'm trying to kill something inside of it.  Something it holds dear.  The closer I look at it, the more it stares back at me and says "Go ahead, look in here. Are you so sure that it couldn't be real? I can make it real."   What's so terrible, is I know that it's true.  For an instant, my mind can make it real.  How do you survive fearing your own mind?

Walls.  Lots and lots of walls.

One Apology

I don’t feel like I need to apologize to anyone for being gay.  That would be like apologizing for having brown hair, or green eyes.  I wish I would have figured that out a long time ago.  For years, I wanted to believe that my being a lesbian didn't hurt anyone, hadn't hurt anyone, and I guess in a real sense it didn't.  It was never the fact that I was gay, it was my refusing to accept it.   Not being able to accept that I was a lesbian when I was very young, not even really understanding what the was, led me to make some very bad decisions.

It’s kind of ironic, that trying to be straight, is how I hurt someone.  I married my best friend when I was 18 years old.  He was handsome enough, loved to fish and hunt, didn't mind that I was a “tomboy”.  At the time, he was my closest friend, the person I could talk to about anything and everything, except that one very important thing that I couldn't talk to anyone about.

I had a great relationship with my parents growing up.  They were amazing, and to this day I am so grateful for the family I was born into.  It wasn't them that kept me from facing my sexuality, it was my own fear of how it would effect my relationship with them.  I never gave my Father the chance to accept me, he died before I ever found the courage to tell him that his only daughter was a lesbian.  I hate that, because looking back I know that my happiness was the most important thing in the world to my Dad.  He may not have loved the idea of my being gay, but he would have accepted me, because he loved me.  I suspect he did know.  Looking back a few conversations, a few questions he asked, I missed several opportunities to have that conversation with him.  I so wish I hadn't.

But Rickey, my friend and later my husband and the father of my son, that’s one person that without a doubt my failure to step up and be honest with hurt.  I wasted his time, 10 years to be exact.  I wasted his love, because I could never return it the way he deserved.  I damaged his self esteem because inevitably a man wonders if they somehow are responsible for you “becoming gay”.  To this day, I carry a lot of guilt for hurting this man, someone who I know loved me.

I blame myself, to a great extent.  But I also blame the society that I grew up in.  One that didn't expose me to what being gay was.  I had no idea in the beginning what I was, why I felt different from my friends.  I was taught in school that love and sec were between a man and a woman, and that it led to procreation.  Not one adult in my life ever helped me to understand what was going on with me, and you know that some of them had to notice.  Surely they noticed that I was more masculine than my girlfriends, had no desire to even discuss wearing feminine clothing, and was more apt to spend recess playing football with the guys than gathering in a huddle with the girls giggling over some silly guy.  I wish just one of them would have taken the time to tell me that not every person is heterosexual, that there are people who are attracted to the same sex, and that it’s OK.

But can you imagine what would have happened to a teacher, in the 70’s or early 80‘s, who said that to a young girl or a young boy who was just beginning to realize their own sexuality.  My wonderful Dad, as much as I love him, at the time would have had their job or worse.  It was just a different world then.

I wish that I could have really understood myself so much younger than I did.  It would have saved me, and others in my life, so much time and pain.  When you get older, and start looking back, and a wasted decade of life starts to have even more meaning to you.  It certainly does to me.  What I wouldn't give to have those ten years back, or the 5 that followed afterwards as I struggled to come to terms with who I was.

The fact is, that all kids should be exposed to the truth about sexuality.  They need to know that it’s not black and white and that not everyone is going to fit into the cooker cutter outline of heterosexuality.  They need to know that it’s OK to talk about it, and to have a safe place to do that with people who can give them meaningful advice and guidance.  It’s easy to see that it’s getting better.  Every generation seems to be a little less intolerant and afraid.  I hope so.  I hope that soon, not a single child will sit confused in their room alone, trying to understand why they are a little different and afraid to ask anyone for fear of losing a friend, or a family member’s love.  I love that some of the younger gay and lesbian people that I meet now, have never experienced that and say they have felt completely accepted by the people who are close to them throughout their short lives.
I believe that Rickey found love and happiness after we divorced.  He was never angry, or said anything mean or hurtful to me when I told him the truth.  Always my friend, and I hurt him so much.  No apology will ever take that away.  So when the anti-gay movement tells you that you can choose not to be gay, and live a heterosexual life, I want to tell them that they are the ones who are hurting people.  You can pretend for a time, a short time, but the truth comes out eventually.  Either by words, or actions, the fact that you aren't sexually attracted to someone can’t be hidden forever.  Endless arguments about the lack of sex, or the excuses to avoid it, will put an end to the lies, and there you will be, looking at wasted years for both of you and having hurt someone you never intended