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.
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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) |
Christian Cantu
Coming Out Late Archives
December 2019
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