I questioned as to why I write all of this down? I am ready to leave it in the past, but I find by remembering it all to be therapeutic in some odd way. Working on memory I am sure that some of the details have been lost, maybe not the one’s I wanted. My memory comes back to me at the oddest times and places. Maybe it’s just taking a wrong turn and being on a familiar street that my wife and I use to take together. Seeing a house that we considered purchasing or just being in a familiar restaurant. My memory constantly stays with me, on some days it’s a welcoming friend, and on other days it’s a petulant devil.
What is little remembered or little known is my wife and I tried to stay together after the exposure of the affair. I wanted it to workout, she wanted it to workout. We both knew it wasn’t going to be easy, but it was at least worth a try. I did and I do love her. This horrific situation that I created needed a remedy. I would like to tell you everything I remember, but to be honest I just cannot. I can remember thinking that the gay thing would forever drape our marriage. I could and did stay away from Dr. Ashden. He knew that I loved my wife. What I do remember was thinking there was going to be a time and a place where everything is going to wrong, and it did, it just happened much more sooner that I thought. So, what I do remember was a night out of the house with my wife during that three weeks or remaining togetherness. We went to a lecture with an interesting title something concerning "Design" at Trinity University. The campus grounds were beautiful. We found the lecture hall, and we promptly took our seats. What was to follow seems more surreal now as I write these words. A woman professor went to the stage. She warmed up the audience with personal stories, one of which had to do with her Lesbian partner. The next hour to pass she only discussed gay advertising, of course she wasn’t doing nothing wrong, it was just all wrong for my wife and me. I knew that this circumstance was just a beginning, I knew this circumstance was also the end. The ride home was a quiet one. This incident was over three years ago, so gay marriage was not the law of the land. The professor demonstrated the acceptability of gay couples by placing children within her ads, again there was nothing wrong with what she did. However, her words, her advertisements, and her personal stories planted a seed within my wife’s mind. A second seed comprised the one, two, knockout punch concerned my Father-In-Law. He told my wife that she needed to divorce me, and if we still loved each other after we got divorced, then we could get re-married. What? The real irony of this particular aspect of the story was my Father-In-Law even made perpetual cheaters look good. This man probably hadn’t been loyal to his wife one full year, possibly one full month, of their whole marriage, that someone even listen to his advice on marriage seems akin to listening to Tony Montana of Scarface fame talk about just saying “No” to drugs. My wife and I stayed together three weeks from when she first discovered the affair. The end came on Valentine’s Day 2014. Why my memory is vague on many things, I will never forget this day. Valentine’s Day was during the week this particular year. My wife woke up very sad. I tried to go through the motions of making it a normal morning. No matter how hard I tried, this morning was not going to be a normal morning. How could it be? I came into the living room, dressed and ready to go to work. On the sofa, my wife sat crying. I could hardly blame her. I tried to wipe her tears away, I tried to mend a broken heart, but the damage was done. My wife called into work and informed them she would not be there. She then asked me to call my boss, and to stay home. Well, I went to my home office, and made the arrangements to do just that. Afterwards I walked down the long corridor into the living room only to find my wife was no longer there. She was in the Master Bedroom, packing a suitcase. She placed so little number of items in the suitcase, that really by the time I got into the bedroom, she was packed. All I can remember, and will ever remember is that she got up, and said, “I am leaving you.” She walked out the front door, and that was it. A marriage of 24 years was over. A marriage of 24 years was over on what is known as the most romantic day of the year, Valentine’s Day. Now, I don’t blame her for one nanosecond as to her right, her sense of determinism, or resolve to leave me. I have owned up to my failure many of times. I take ownership for what I caused. Please in no way feel that I write about this incident with a sense of pride or a sense that I have been wronged. However, her departure only marked the beginning of what was to become a quick ticket to Crazyville. My wife was going to ask my sister and my sister’s husband if she could move in with them. Here is probably one of the only times I put my foot down, and not even very forcibly. I told her if she was to move into my sister’s home, then I would not want her to do so until I told my mother the whole truth. At 47, and with 24 years of marriage behind me I had to prepare myself to drive 150 miles south to the Texas-Mexican border to tell my mother, “I had an affair, I am getting divorce, and by the way I am gay.” I really haven’t found that line in too many of my readings about Coming Out, and I find it entirely unfortunate that I am the one that had to prepare myself for what could easily have been the most difficult thing I would ever have to do in my life.
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This part of the story is probably one of the most difficult parts to tell. As difficult as it is, it needs to be told. I can vividly remember it so well, there I was sitting on the couch in my comfortable living room. It was a Monday evening, so I was catching up with the latest news. My dogs were by my side, I remember feeling a little tired from enjoying a long weekend, and then I was hit with the first workday of the week. “Ah, to relax on Monday evening.” Well, maybe not so much.
“I saw this letter on your computer, it was written to a man, are you gay?” Yeah, it’s difficult to even write that sentence even today over four years later. I am not really sure what the exact conversation happened after that moment. It’s a moment when you feel three inches tall, confused, upset, deceitful, and challenged. It’s a moment when every deceitful cheater is faced with his crime. It is as if the prosecutor comes into the courtroom with the bloody knife with your finger prints on it. This situation is a moment that I don’t want to glide over in my story. You see, this is the actual moment my comfortable life forever changed. Yes, I am guilty, and yes, I have entirely done something incredibly wrong. And, yes, I was just as confused and irrational as any man could be. Besides knowing the pain and the emotional hurt I caused to someone I really love, I was also being confronted with the truth. The truth of my actions, the truth of my homosexuality. The truth of admitting who I really am. The exact moment of the argument, all of the crying and the fear of the uncertainty to follow are all distorted in my memory, but there is one moment that I will never forget. There in my comfortable living room which had now become a torturous courtroom, I can still remember the pivotal moment of my life, it is as if a big spot light came shining down on me, the sounds of the television seemed no more, and a stillness overcame the room. Here is where my lovely wife with tears in her large green blue eyes asked the question, “Do you love him?” Four simple torturous words, asking for me to be honest, to be honest to her, to be honest with myself, to be honest to everyone. I am thinking there would be many people in a moment like this one, that would scramble to try to put something coherent together to tell the person you married and love, some type of reasonable explanation for everything. I just couldn’t think of one. I just had to quit running, running from the truth. Three nervous breakdowns that led to the hospital, the pills for the deep depression, the alcohol to ease the pain, the dishonesty of cheating, the tiredness of trying to be two people, I don’t know what else to say here, but “I was just tired”, I wanted the depression to end, I wanted the uncertainty of not knowing what was really right or wrong anymore to just stop, I wanted to just stop running.” So here is where I decided to be completely honest with her and with myself. I said, “Yes, I did find myself in love with him.” So, at 47, I said to myself, “Just quit lying.” You see, this dishonesty was deep rooted within me. The truth was I was living a life that others expected of me. What I thought was completely wrong, was actually a lie, men can really fall in love with one another. If homosexual love is a sin, then why did it seem so right? The gay man wasn’t those people, the gay man was me, and it was time that I acknowledge it. Yes, there are times even now that I still fool myself, I see a woman, and I find myself very attracted to her, but by acknowledging that I have loved a man, I am reminded that my pain and my deception have caused serious emotional damage to another person, to another person that I loved, so I detach myself from the unsuspecting woman. What I did was wrong on all accounts, but I knew I didn’t want to keep lying, I knew it was time to start being honest. |
Christian Cantu
Coming Out Late Archives
December 2019
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