I mentioned, “torturous journey” by all accounts after meeting Dr. Asheden, my life became quite torturous. Even to this day, I look back and I wonder, “What the hell was I thinking?” I was a husband, a son, a son-in-law, and a brother. I have always tried to live a good life, and an honorable life. I placed the needs of others before myself. How could I allow for such a dishonesty, a deceitfulness to come into my life?
Here, I had to acknowledge an idea known as “Cognitive Dissonance.” According to Wikipedia the terms means, “In psychology, cognitive dissonance is the mental stress (discomfort) experienced by a person who simultaneously holds two or more contradictory beliefs, ideas, or values, when performing an action that contradicts those beliefs, ideas, and values; or when confronted with new information that contradicts existing beliefs, ideas, and values.” I knew an affair was wrong on all accounts. However, I couldn’t totally understand what I was feeling. I couldn’t totally understand what I was doing, though an insight into everything began with a kiss. I have never kissed a man. I never wanted to kiss a man, but when I finally did I think I began to finally understand what that “difference” I felt was all about. It was like placing the last piece into a jigsaw puzzle, everything just came into its own place. I held these traditional values deep within me, yet I was confronted with something, no a feeling, that was totally against my deep held beliefs. What seemed so natural, so right, was at the same time for me just wrong, so here was my cognitive dissonance in action. I wanted no part of it, but at the same time I could not stop it. You see, I was in love, and I would soon find out love has so little to do with rationality. My wife and I were living two separate lives in the same house. Hell, if most of us are truthful in our modern lives this paradigm isn’t so hard to understand. My wife and I were best friends. She was my rock within a difficult period of my life. I hated myself for what I was doing to her, and I hated myself for what I was doing to our relationship. How did I balance a wife with a lover, well, I didn’t do a very good job at it. There were many days where I said, “I will end this, I will get back to my life, this is all so very wrong.” My passion would lead me away from rationality every time. Yes, I have become something I detested, and yes, I have become something that I always wanted rather consciously or subconsciously. I couldn’t tell anyone what was going on with me. The one person I counted on throughout my life, I was hurting the most. To be sure what I was doing was a form of self-inflicted torture. Trying to live two lives, trying to be all sealed up from other’s judgments and my own was a sure path to self-destruction. I was living in two worlds, and there were many times that I didn’t know which world I was in. A storm was brewing, a mistake was soon to be made, and it would be here at one particular moment in my life that my life would forever be change
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Christian Cantu
Coming Out Late Archives
December 2019
Categories |