My blog posts seem to occur less often. I wonder about why that is so, because when I started this blog it was such a big deal to me at the time. I was searching, searching for answers to questions about me. I remember that at the time it felt like I was the only guy who had been older and married and then suddenly finding himself in a place where he never thought he would be. It most definitely felt like I made my deep journey into the noir.
The important part about events and time is that there is a milestone where we can go back and evaluate where we are now. I had a reminder of the beginning from a conversation I had with a man this week. He was middle-aged, rugged and very fit, a cowboy type guy. He lived in a nice area of town, married for over thirty years, and he had two adult children. By all accounts he appeared to live the good life. What people who looked at him did not know was he liked to have sex with men. Here a good-looking, in shape, rugged, executive-type man had everything that our culture teaches us to want and have, he had everything except the one thing that he really wanted. He wanted a man. In our conversation he told me about what he wanted from an encounter. He told me about having a past friend that he met up with from time to time. His friend moved away, and he seemed understandably upset. In our conversation he told me that he really enjoyed the masculinity of sex with a man. He told me about much more than I really cared to know, but he said he really enjoyed being a “bottom.” A bottom is a man who enjoy anal penetration from another man. It’s a role. Sex is an act. Looking at this guy I thought to myself I would have never believed it, but I guess that is one of the funny things about sex, it’s rarely spoken about amongst people. He would go on to tell me about how he likes to cuddle with a man after sex. He enjoys kissing a lot. He enjoys holding a man in bed. Now, here is where this story takes a turn. I told him about my experience. I told him, “I understand what you are saying.” When I told him about meeting Dr. Ashenden and about coming to the realization I was gay, he suddenly looked at me. He looked at me and said, “I am not gay.” Yeah, really, that is what he said. Here is a man describing having sex with a man in a way I never have had in a conversation with another man, and he doesn’t think he is gay. To him, he likes to think he just has sex with a man, yet, he told me about a past lover, a lover he had for years while being married. I guess I get this guy in some way. He cannot admit to himself he is gay, or he will not allow himself to be gay. To be gay would be a lesser to him. He had everything he thought he was to suppose to have, yet he didn’t have the one thing he really needed. He didn’t have the intimacy of a relationship with a man. When I told him about how I was like him, and after meeting Dr. Ashenden my whole life changed, he was terrified. He looked at me as a lesser. When I told him that your sex outside of marriage could lead to something you never expected, he was dumbfounded. I never heard from him again. I am sure I told him things that he probably hasn’t heard. He heard things that he did not want to hear and accept. May be telling him my story he felt sorry for me, but I actually feel sorry for him, not really sorry, but more empathetic. I know what he is feeling. Bottled up somewhere deep inside him he knows he gay. Who really wants to let go of everything that they built for themselves in middle age? Unfortunately, letting go is the one thing this guy needed the most. I write about this encounter because it takes me back to the beginning of my experience when starting this blog. I let go. I couldn’t conceal it any longer. Depression, heavy drinking, and anxiety were symptoms of my denial that I was, I am gay, that is how this blog started. Admitting I am gay and where my journey went after that fact is all chronicled here in this blog.
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February 26th, 2019: Jeremy Irons Made Me Gay I come back to this old blog with a sense of wonder. I wonder why that the lack of keeping up with it haunts the back of my mind? I believe the main reason that it does is because it begs the question, “Where am I now?” It also makes me explore various issues that might or does make me uncomfortable. Writing about Coming Out Late is challenging to a person who has a very difficult time acknowledging something about himself that he tried to suppress or deny for most of his life. I still find myself surprised by making sense of something that was always there. One of the ways my suppressed homosexuality is visually demonstrated to me is the viewing of film. I love movies, and I really enjoy old films. I can sometimes remember when it was when I first saw a movie or film that I particularly enjoyed. When I watch the same film from which I viewed many years ago, I can see there is a difference. I was more attracted to the male actor than the female actor. This revelation is probably nothing new for a gay man that has lived his whole life gay, but for someone who lived in denial and suppression such as me, it’s extraordinary. My gayness, my sexuality was there, I was experiencing it when I was younger, but I did not even know it, or I knew it, but I did not know what “it” was. I think to myself, “How could you have not known?” after watching all of those films. I think of actors that I like, like Jeremy Irons. I just thought I wanted to be fit like him or fit in clothing as beautifully as he did and still does. May be that what being in denial does, it forbids us to really face up to the truth. A truth that I really never wanted to face. I didn’t just like Jeremy Irons as an actor, I lusted over him for his male sexuality. I am guessing I am far from the first gay man to lust over Jeremy Irons. He is so beautiful, so well spoken, so nicely dressed, and so continental. How has my secret and hidden lust for Jeremy Irons affected my personal life. Dr. Ashden in many ways is like Jeremy Irons. He is skinny and tall, very attractive even for an older person. He loves beautiful clothing, and even wears exotic clothing out in public such as poncho type covers from the Middle East and South America. He speaks three languages, and he has travelled the world and he is filled with many stories of his travels that provide me with a quest for worldly travels. I wonder now. Is it when I first saw and met Dr. Ashden, was Jeremy Irons the cause of my sexual release? What I saw in Dr. Ashden was an example of Jeremy Irons? I think now I am going to Google the question, “Did Jeremy Irons make me gay?” This question is one I write with humor. Side note: After Googling the question it appears that Jeremy Irons isn’t really hip on gay rights, especially marriage. I am guessing he wouldn’t like the idea that if I met him, I would tell him, “You made me gay!”
Happy New Year! Readers of this site may have known that I have been unemployed-ish for almost two years. I am happy to say that I landed a job. It has been a difficult trek. I know that I didn’t know what unemployment ever felt like. I never realized what unemployment can do to a person. I write this not to be bigoted, but to be unemployed and to be a man in United States is even more challenging. I come to understand that there is a large segment of men between the ages of 34 – 65 that are unemployed. I believe the figure I read was out of the 100 million men in the workplace in the United States, 25 million men are unemployed. I was naïve. I honestly, thought that when I was laid off that I would easily be able to get a job. I had a MBA, worked in distribution and sales throughout my working career, I just thought I would land another job, however that wasn’t the case.
My job-hunting experience took a brutal toll on me. I sent applied for 100’s of jobs. I only had 8 interviews. I am not a super high self esteem individual, but on each interview, I attended, I thought I did very well, and the interviews went well. Most of these jobs were much lesser paying jobs than I had in the past. To get the rejection letters after each interview took a little piece of my soul each and every time. I read a few books in the process, and I quickly learned that being 54 years old and looking for a job, will be difficult. Apparently, age discrimination is very difficult to prove. Reflecting on the interviews, it is only now that I can recall that the interviewers were using coded terminology such as “This is a high energy position.” At the time I was naïve to understand what that really meant, “You are old.” In one of my books, it stated the idea that “You may have to accept that at your age, you may have to find two part jobs, and if you are going to do that, then find have some fun, and find a part time job that is in a field that really interest you.” A new IKEA is coming to our town, so, I interviewed for a part-job. Over a four-month process, in the end I learned that I did not get the part-time job I interviewed for, but I did get a full-time job that paid less. IKEA benefits are pretty spectacular, and after only working in training for a few weeks, the management and the people I work with are all pretty incredible. In my brief time there, I have met a few men who are my age they have gone through the same experience as I have. All have at least under graduate degrees, and they are supporting families, something I am not. How does all this relate to Out Late and Gay blog? So as conversation goes when meeting, new co-workers, a method of deduction is used when they quiz me on my background. “You are divorced?”, “You have no children?”, “Who are you sharing Christmas with.” “New Years?”, “You live alone?” My only indication of that I have a significant other is that I say, “I have a friend.” That answer pretty much tells them all they needed to know, and it is not as if IKEA workplace would ever be non-inclusive, it is a great company. I am so thankful that I have a job, and especially with IKEA. However, it is a little difficult to hear all my other co-workers talk about their husbands, children, and families, and to realize I don’t and will not have any of that. Yet another aspect of being gay, old, and alone. Dr. Ashden is very much still in my life, and I love him more than ever, but we will not ever live together. It is a sad fact that always reminds me when I now come home from work, and there is no one here at the house waiting for me. Getting a job is a first step. I am happy. I realize now I just have some more steps to work towards to further my happiness. My future looks bright. After having a dream recently, I thought of an excerpt from Alan Down’s book, The Velvet Rage. I read the book some time ago, and now reflecting upon that period of my life, I see, I wasn’t truly open to accepting some of the main points of the book. I see now that I have changed as a person over the years from when I first started writing this blog. My life has dramatically changed over the years. How could it not, I was married for 24 years, and then suddenly I was divorced and outed in one quick moment. I had no idea what outed and being gay was. It was only through the help of books, serious film, and joining some groups did I ever come to understand more about gay life. Concerning my dream, well, it was about something so small, but it turned out to be something much larger than I understood at that time. The dream started with being in my father’s office, he had a large conference table at the back end of the room. At the conference table there were two Mexican National businessmen. I lived on the Texas/Mexico border for 25 years. My two brothers were sitting at the table. The dream just really consisted of a conversation, a normal conversation that could have occurred at any time while I worked for my father. It was the matter of the conversation that strikes me. The conversation flowed the way a conversation would normally take place in a business meeting. The two Mexican businessmen and my brothers were talking about women, hunting, and drinking, I guess what I am getting at was this conversation was “Guy Talk.” In that dream, there I was at the table, and I clearly did not have any “Guy Talk” to add to the conversation. I was sitting at the table listening to the guys, and I was thinking to myself, I clearly do not belong here. And, here comes the truth of the matter, I did not belong there, I knew I didn’t belong there, but I did not know why I didn’t belong there. I clearly was different than these guys, however I didn’t know what that different was. Believe it or not, I was clueless that I was gay. This dream haunted me for several days. It haunted to me because it was so real. I started thinking about that table, and the feeling I felt at that table was a feeling I knew so well. The feeling of being different, and not knowing what that different was. “Guy Talk” isn’t about art, architecture, books, film, or classical music, subjects that all interest me. So much occurred at that table in my mind, because it was so real. There is the idea that I was watching myself in my mid 30s or early 40s with the mind’s eye of a 54-year-old man. In the dream, the younger version of myself is clueless to being gay, but aware of being different. And, then there is the 54-year-old man looking at younger version of himself, and wondering how could you not know you were gay? The answer is easy enough, I did not know I was gay, because I never wanted to be gay. In Alan Down’s book, The Velvet Rage, he writes a lot about “shame.” My dream reminded me of a small portion of his book, there he wrote: “The truth is that we grew up disabled. Not disabled by our homosexuality – but emotionally disabled by an environment that taught us we were unacceptable, not “real” men, and therefore shameful. As young boys – we too readily internalized those strong feelings of shame into a core belief: I am unacceptably flawed. It crippled our sense of self and prevented us from following the normal, healthy, stages of development. We were consumed with the task of hiding the fundamental truth about ourselves from the world around us and pretending to be something we weren’t. At the time, it seemed the only way to survive.” Reflecting back upon my life and being at that table in my dream, I think I am more open to accepting Down’s idea about “shame.” I always knew there was something different about me. I am thinking that when I was very young, and experiencing my first feelings of sexuality, I quickly buried the idea that I was attracted to men. And yes, I believe now that there was a feeling a shame inside of me. Internalizing that feeling of shame and rejecting the idea that I was gay, would be a lifetime curse. The curse would affect me emotionally, physically and professionally. We are told to be true to ourselves, but what a gay man knows at a very early age is being true to yourself most likely means we will not be accepted by our families and friends, and when I was young all I wanted to be was accepted. Coming Out, Coming Out Late, I have to say, that I learned that I am now not accepted with many people. However, now, I have the strength to not care about those people who do not accept me. The feeling of shame stayed with me for many years after I came out, especially in the manner of how I came out. What I can tell you now is that as the years passed, I have come to feel good about myself. I am growing in ways that I have never imagined. For me being gay is not an easy life, but at least I feel a wholeness as a person that I never have before. Yes, being true to yourself is a wonderful feeling, but getting to my truth took me through a journey of a lifetime of hardships. Today, I feel that I am lucky to be me, there are so many others out there that go a whole lifetime without ever coming to their truth. Coming Out, Coming Out Late, really is a gift. I will end this post with a Joseph Campbell quote. According to Campbell, “It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasure of life. Where we stumble, there lies our treasure.” #ComingOut, #ComingOutLate, #TheVelvetRage Are you different? I know I am. I have been doing some photography work for a French company, and as part of my job I have to go throughout the hotel and take photos. Now this sounds like a simple job, but when your six feet tall and 190lbs, you just can’t hide behind a fake plant by the lobby check-in. Also, these last two hotels were right off the Interstate, and they were about as interesting as cardboard. When you walk around the hotel with a professional camera and lens, people notice. I usually get, “Man, that is a fancy camera!” I am suppose to be incognito.
Remember, I told you that I am different. One of the ways I try to divert attention to myself is to go to the bar and order a drink. I say “Bar”, in most situations the bar consists of a small counter with a curve at the end. It has been there at the bar, that I get to see Americana at work. There is the “Old Guy” drinking a scotch, there is the young couple taking a break away from the kids as they swim, or maybe there are the two guy friends slipping away from the wives to sneak some drinks. As I size these people up, they are sizing me up at the same time. I guess what I am referring to is that they have their gaydar on. I don’t know what you call the experience of when a gay man knows he is being sized up for gay, but you just know some times. It has been my experience that the “Old Guy” is one of the most difficult people to strike up a conversation, and I don’t entirely believe it is because you are gay. Being an old guy myself, I tend to think that the Old Guy is just enjoying a moment. The last Old Guy I was briefly speaking with was from College Station, Texas. He was at the bar awhile, and then his wife came to yank him away for grandparent’s obligations. Now the young couple is usually more curious than the Old Guy. You strike up a conversation, and they ask you pretty quickly if your wife is with you. I tell them that I am divorced, but I was lucky to be married to a wonderful person for 24 years, that immediately sparks up a Red Flag to them. The more you converse with them, the more you realize you are on trial. Eventually, I tell them through their long list of questions that I have a friend/partner, even I don’t know what I actually have right now. After that things get pretty quiet. So, I see. The Old Guy is some one I can totally relate too. I just want to have a glass of wine, relax a minute from life without disruption. “Hey Old Guy, I get it!” So much of life is filled with pointless conversation. When it is 100 degrees outside, the sun is blazing hot, and every move seems to take maximum effort, sitting down, having a cold drink in peace away from your significant other, and enjoying a “moment” doesn’t happen that often. The Old Guy knows life, it is something he experienced through the years. Life rarely goes exactly the way you plan. I stumbled and failed, which I have written about in the blog over the years, but I picked myself up. I cannot say I did it quickly, but I did. The idea that everyone knows I am gay, is not a big deal. It is just another part of life. The trick here is, don’t stay down. Move forward with experience, with empathy, with graciousness, I like that title of a recent book I read, “More Beautiful Than Before.” In My Coming Out Late blog, I have pretty much chronicled my time from getting divorced, outed, and learning to live as a gay man. I have moaned and groaned my way with the best of them these past five years. I don’t know but I thought everything was going to be a little different.
Lately, I been thinking that may be there is too much hoopla about Coming Out. It makes for some great dramatic video, YouTube’s “I Am From Driftwood” is very good. I have seen some video blogs on You Tube also. It’s funny, but a lot of the blogs start off with a big bang, and then suddenly they fizzle out. The blog stops. I can understand, because at the time what seems as if it’s such a big event, fades. It’s not that I have gotten use to living as a gay man. I really don’t think of myself as gay or straight rather just being. My experience is unusual, Coming Out Late is a very different experience than accepting and living a truth earlier on within your life. Dr. Ashden and I have 74 years of heterosexual marriage between us. Our experience is different. You see, Coming Out doesn’t solve all of your problems, you still have to deal with life on life’s terms. Dr. Ashden is getting older. He is forgetting a lot. Due to a recent confrontation with his son, he has been in a deep depression, the type that manifests itself by not really being here or there when he is around. He is tiring much easier now. When he is happy, I don’t take that moment for granted. I play Sinatra on my Sirius radio in the car for him. He doesn’t realize that I have consciously selected the station for him. As the music plays usually his foot will inevitably begin thumping with the beat of the music. He will recall a story from his past. These are the little moments I believe I will always remember. Coming Out or Coming Out Late isn’t my whole life, it’s just a part, a very small part of an entire lifetime. In thinking about the video blogs, I think that the videographer eventually sees this point also. You have your big gay moment, and you think your whole world is going to change, only to find out that you still got to get up, go to work, pay the bills, do housework, clean the car, mow the yard, and hope somewhere in between you can crave out a little time for yourself. As I write these words, I see how much I have changed. The part of Coming Out that I thought would shake the world, really no one seems to care shortly after they learn. Yes, many of my old friends do not speak to me, but it may not be because I came out, but rather we meet friends that come and go in our lives all the time, well, it seems more unusual the older you get, but I try to defy that idea. I enjoy meeting new people, but it’s difficult to maintain new deep meaningful friendships as you get older due to the many demands that life places on us. My relationship with Dr. Ashden has turned into a deep meaningful friendship as oppose to lovers. I am good with that. It’s nice to take the time to just step back from the original chaos. It is a great feeling to start feeling like my old self. Yes, I have changed, but no matter who we are, I believe there is a core center of our existence. It’s a core part of our self that when we are lucky enough to get the time to feel it, then we feel centered and balanced. I guess what I am suggesting is what is known as our soul. When I am at this point I remind myself it’s good to be me, and I give a moment of deep thanks. The First Post of 2018? Really?
I told myself that I am not going to start another blog post stating, “I know it has been a long time since I have posted.” So, now that I got that out of the way, I am ready to try to write a blog post. Well, the beginning of the new year got off to a real rocky start. On New Year’s Eve I came down with the flu. Ok, so, I thought the flu lasted like a week, not two weeks. Man, I was sicker than a dog, and there were a couple of days that I wasn’t sure I was going to make it, I found myself thinking “I don’t even have a will written.” Then came the second week where I coughed my life out of me every day. Who knew the cure would come from a six-ounce bottle of prescribed cough syrup for $240? I was going to let this blog go…I had to pay $100 to Weebly to host it for another year, and I found myself thinking, why? I don’t know, when I started this, I really didn’t have any idea that there would be an ending. I feel as if my life is just that, a life, no different, no better, no less, than anyone else’s life. The Coming Out process seemed like such a big deal, and to be honest, I think that I made it a bigger deal than I should have. I say something like that, but at the same time, there are still little moments where it creeps back into my consciousness. I was attending church last weekend, and the Episcopal priest was giving a sermon, and within that sermon she was talking about the film, The Last Temptation of Christ. She said something to the effect that in the movie Christ was tempted to stay within the life he was living, a normal life, instead of acknowledging that he was the Messiah. She talked about the fact that he left a life, a normal life, he had to give up that life to fulfill his destiny. And, I found myself thinking that there really aren’t that many people who give up everything that they know to go to a place filled with such uncertainty, and to be honest, a place where some people, not all, hate you for your choice, a choice you didn’t really, really, want to go to., but you had to. It is still difficult at times, I maintain a good friendship with my ex-wife. I still do love her, and I suspect I always will. There are times when I tell myself, this is all wrong, but deep down in my soul, I hit a connection where I have to be honest, even if it’s an honesty I don’t want to listen to, and think to myself, that probably this is the right thing. It is not the easy thing, especially, when you come out late. I had 48 years of hard wiring within me, and to think that the life that I led and the person that I was all vanished in an instance is foolish of me. Well, I kept the blog up…as always, I write with the idea that maybe I might just help one person who is or was just like me. I have read extensively a lot of books lately, so much that the stories all seem so too predictable. But, with these books are people who know that it takes courage to change everything about yourself. I don’t think I give myself the credit that I should. I made a declaration that the Coming Out process does have an ending, but the Growing Up Life process seems to never go away. To be honest, we all have our life challenges, and if you hadn’t had one, well, you never know what’s around the corner. I want to end this blog post with an exert from Steve Leder’s book, More Beautiful Than Before: “Yitzhak Perlman was at Carnegie Hall. Just as his bow touched the strings, one of them broke. He continued his performance, he completely changed his fingerings without missing a beat. When it was over the crowd cheered. He answered the crowd about the dilemma by saying: “It is my job to make music with what remains.” “I know that you are suffering – because you are human. We all hurt. We wound and are wounded. We all walk through some kind of hell. Do not come out of hell empty-handed. Do not let your suffering be in vain. Survive, heal, and grow when your heart and body aches. What was beautiful when whole is beautiful when broken too.The soaring bird amazes, but the wounded sparrow evokes an intimate, deeper, more resonant tone within our souls. Make music with what remains of your suffering. Dance and sing to a melody gentler, wiser, and more beautiful than before.” (I am now on Instagram at Outlate_gay) I haven’t been doing my blog for some time. I think about it, and I remember that I originally started this blog for others, for others who may be like me. I been doing this blog for some time, I am not too sure how many years. Funny, when you do a blog, you seem to measure time more with a conscious mind. Unfortunately for me, I see how I drop the ball on what I wanted to do, and what I actually do.
This Christmas time has been more joyful, more serene. I am actually going through it being sober. I am telling myself that I am participating in an experiment. I have had the urge to drink every now and then. However, when I wake up in the morning after attending a party the night before, I feel so good, to feel good. I keep that feeling in my mind. When you wake up full of energy and with the feeling you are going to get things done today, well I remind myself that I am only at this point because I didn’t drink last night. Going back in time, when everything was happening to me, I can honestly say, “I drank to forget. I drank to ease the pain.” A breakup is extraordinarily difficult, especially when you are the cause. Looking back, I think who was that guy? There was a man, who was very troubled. You see the thing about alcohol is that it does take the pain away, but only temporarily. The real problems are still there, and they don’t go away. I read so many books recently, I don’t know where to attribute this idea, but the idea concerns learning to let go and learning to forgive. The extraordinary thing about this is, yes, we need to ask forgiveness from others we have hurt, when we are strong and ready. What I never thought about though, was I needed to forgive myself. You see no matter who you are, learning to forgive is probably one of the greatest achievements on the road to happiness. Once you let go of the past, you let go of the pain, only then do you find yourself in a place to move forward. Sometimes when I am watching old movies, I see that I did have attraction for the male lead. Honestly, I really didn’t know it until I let go of the person I use to be, that person buried things deep within his unconscious mind, and he packed the ground there, so to make sure it would never come to the surface. To be honest, in my case I should say that “I poured and soaked the truth so as to never rise to the top.” I don’t know how to tell you how alcohol and the idea I may be gay were so linked. I guess it was always there. No, I wasn’t the hobo drunk, but I did use alcohol in many ways to change the way I felt, to fit in with others, to take away the pain. I did it so much, that it became a cycle. It worked for a while, until it didn’t work. Physically, I was overweight, the last job I had, I wasn’t mentally there. I wasn’t a good friend to others. I hang on to the idea, that really, everything that has occurred to me, has happened for a reason. I believe M. Scott Peck said, “everything that has happened to us, has occurred to enhance our spiritual growth.” I am not too sure I really truly understood that idea until now. It is a feeling that everything just seems to line up. By giving up, I received an inner peace. If you find yourself in spiritual trouble, maybe you should just think about stopping. Stopping for a minute, a day, a month, a year, to figure out what is really holding you back. I couldn’t be more honest, alcohol held me back. I was in a cycle without knowing I was in a cycle. I feel good. I feel healthy. I feel better. Giving up alcohol wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, because I feel that it played a dirty trick on me. Yes, it took the pain away, but usually I would find I had that pain on top of a hangover the next day. Funny, we are all told, “Just be yourself.” In actuality I have found that being myself has been one of the hardest things I had to do in life. It has taken so much time, but in the end, I am a much stronger and better person. I been away from the blog for a long time now. I have been thinking about that lately, asking myself “Why so long?” Am I lazy? Probably. Am I just in a really different place since I started this blog? Probably, and hopefully. Of course, as I have stated in other post that I started this blog to help others, to help others that are out there that may be just like me. I see now, that I really started this blog to help me. Man, when I look back, I just cannot believe where I was, and where I am.
One of the biggest benchmarks of time are memories. The strange thing about memories is that you just never know when they come to invade your little happy or unhappy existence. I was thinking about that idea as I woke up this morning. Last night I had a dream that I was with my ex-wife in some European casino and I was trying to figure out how much $5000 euros was in American dollars. She and I were just having a normal discussion about conversion rates. Towards the end of the dream, a quick cut occurred to Dr. Ashden standing on this back porch telling someone that he sent me to Europe. I woke up immediately because of the strange dichotomy occurring. I woke up thinking my life is different, much different than it used to be. Lying in bed awake, I thought about the past, and then another memory popped up about my first family function in which I took Dr. Ashden. Why are memories pop up from one point to another, I don’t know? At that family function, my sister-in-law’s sister was there, and my ex-wife was living with her at the time. Later that night, my mother and I were at my house. The telephone rang at 9pm on a Sunday night, which is rather odd for my house, and my ex-wife was on the phone. I remember when we were trying to stay together, thinking it would never work out because when she got mad, she would say some horrible things to me as a way of acting out. Well, she had found out that I took Dr. Ashden to the family function, and it was her time to act out. Some horrible words were spoken. Consequently, after hanging up the phone, I acted out. My mother tried to calm me down, but I didn’t see it her way. I said some rude things to my mother. Why I would write about this horrific experience goes back to how random memories pop up in your mind. Looking back now, I thought I was alright at the time, but I was anything but alright. Yes, it’s painful to write all of this, but especially because my mother is now dead, and I cannot talk to her about it now. I cannot tell her, “Man, I really owe you an apology for that event.” I mean, I did apologize at the time, but what’s an apology good for if it’s from a crazy person? So where is the good of this story? The good is that I know that I am not that person today. I went to church today as I do every Sunday with Dr. Ashton, and I just prayed. Kneeling in this extraordinary church while others were being a part of the service, I just prayed, and prayed to my mother, to my father, and to all others that I had hurt. I asked for forgiveness. I don’t write all of these intimate stories to be sad. I write these stories down because, I have been reading so many books. Books about being gay, the gay lifestyle, living a life of intention, and the coming out process, I just have to express that rarely do I come across real life living. Yes, all of these books have mantras, be the best you can be, be authentic, live in the now, be conscious and live with intent, but my life is filled with memories, and my memories take me back to the past. I find myself extraordinarily lucky. Most of my life is filled with so much joy. Memories of being with my ex-wife are mostly happy. Memories of my family are mostly happy. Memories with Dr. Ashden are mostly happy, and when I encounter the bad, when I can look back and see what a mess I was, I guess the good thing is to know that I am not there now. Yes, I will live with intent and in the Now, but the only way I am here now is because I had to walk so many steps before. Hopefully, we learn from these steps as oppose to stopping. What is it I read recently, “Happiness is not avoiding unhappiness.” How I wish I knew myself, how I wish I had more strength to know myself more in the past. I was following a path that was taught to me from a very young age, it was all I ever knew. No one ever said to me, “You know there is a path you take in life, unfortunately, there are going to be some people out there where this path isn’t going to work.” So what happens then? Well, when that path doesn’t work, all I can tell you is to pick up the pieces. Sometimes you have to just stop. Stop everything. You stand up, you pick up the pieces that do work, and let go of the ones that don’t work. Asking for forgiveness is a good place to start to the people you may have hurt along the way to the journey of learning about you. I learned today, yes, ask for forgiveness from others, but learn to forgive yourself at the same time. Feel that forgiveness within yourself, and make today and tomorrow a better day for others and you. If you can do that, you are going to be OK. |
Christian Cantu
Coming Out Late Archives
December 2019
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