Funny

I have never been in love in adult hood. One once I my life was I completely Gobsmacked by love. It was with I was 18 and 19 years old. The idea of that love is never far out of consciousness to me. Friday night i had a dream with him in it and it was as if no time had past when I woke up so I had to lose him all over again. Through a strange fluke I had to go to Oklahoma  and that meant I drove the route I drove to go to my freshmen year at college.. I have only been back 2 times in 26 years and I was nervous, excited and  flooded with feelings. Let me clarify that, i have been back to that town since recovery has opened my heart again. I stopped at a convenience store to get a coke and to use the restroom.  The smell of the store was the same and when I went into the bathroom, it smelled like wood and paint and it was exactly the same all this time later. I looked in the mirror and closed my eyes. I was in a town that may only lover had lived and I breathed in the smell of that paint and tried desperately as I squinted my eyes and half hoping to open them to 1986.  Rolling through old stomping grounds had my heart open and the size of my chest. As i passed Hastings and Belks, Bealls and the Victorian in I had never felt so empty. We went past the turn off to the big lake we caravaned to get drunk and the place I was forced to announce to our classmates and fellow thespians that John and I were together/couple.  I haven't had that kind of love in 26 years but there were the identical sites and landmarks that we ran amok in love there in Paris.

I also know sketchy details of your life now. I look for your face in every crowd I see. I never have stopped looking for you. If you only get one of these white hot all consuming burning loves in your life I'm not so sure if I wouldn't have skipped loving you because I am not in the place of being of knowing what is gone. What I am missing. Maybe that makes me super insecure and small. Maybe it makes me pathetic. I know we can't go back in time and we can't live in the past. I was hit it emotions so large and intense over 48 hours all I could do was live them out and now I am writing about them hoping they lose some power. I don't want to be a tragic fucking country song. I'm 45 and I haven't been in love since I was 19 years old. What is the fucking deal do really really only get just one.

left

I am in a weird spot. The key people I have gone to for program stuff or even just a good conversation have one by one lost touch. Fucking straight people and their god damn relationship crap.Since I was in grade school and even to now, my best girl friend disappears when they hook up and settle down. It sucks to have to grieve loses of people not because they died but they morphed into someone else and it's called a couple. I"m mad. I am really really mad. The moment there is trouble they run to me for support and then they get back together and what they said about the other person ceases to be an issue. I wish I could fall in love or some close facsimileing. How nice to be so involved that your friends don't matter and when you do make some time you are an empty version of yourself, like when you have a conversation on the phone with someone who is so not interested in your talk because they are doing something else. This sucks because I was the person that never needed anyone, now here I am, whining because my close friends have moved to another planet where playing house and family is the only language spoken. How do I start all over, there aren't a whole lot of people I find interesting. I've as HP with some guidance on this one because it sucks when the cell phone doesn't ring.

Just stirring the pot a bit regarding the idiocy of religion. What passes for logic is stunning.

safety

After redoing my 9th Step 3 times, I was a little surprised at what what I thought I knew and what I knew.  When I was 4 years old, I was terrorized by nightmares and my older sister trying to frighten me. I walked around in a nervous fear for years to come. I read that chemically when the body produces the chemical it releases by the bucket when you are frightened (Cortisol)  that it actually seals your memories in much like a photo would be burned on to paper years ago.   I think about me in a much more caring manner now, I have a lot of admiration and compassion for the way I learned to survive. I watched a friend who has a new baby pick her up and comfort her child. I didn't have anywhere or anyone I could go to when I was frightened. No lap to crawl up in just to feel peace. My mom like to take the time to laugh hysterically when I was frightened, which I seem to always be. We pulled up in front of the "Modern Study Clubs Haunted House and this monster on break, reach in toward me and I lost my mind. I was trying to put the car in gear and my mom was laughing so hard she couldn't breath. Frustrated with the gear shift I made a dive into the floor board to put the gas peddle with my hand to get out of there. There was another issue with a clown at a rodeo along the same lines. If a kid (4 o 5 year old) and there is no one to run to for safety, what else could I do but try to cover up just  I was affected at all of the emotional neglect..  I don't know why my mother or father were unable to show up for me emotionally. All the other needs like food and home were more than taken care of. I keep thinking of a tale by a women who stood on a dock while talking to a friend. She noticed the little girl two docks down waving and splashing in the water. The lady waved and went back to her conversation. A moment later she glanced down the lake. The little girl had drown, and her silence, her not yelling for help, not letting on anything was wrong, cost her her life. It's only in adulthood that I have found out it is necessary for me to let people know when I am scared, know when I hurt and let folks know when I am NOT RIGHT.

I feel a lot of sorrow for the kid I was but one of the bittersweet truths of recovery is, if I hadn't learned what despair, fear, abandonment felt like, from the inside out, I wouldn't be able to love people in the same situation I grew up in. I can  help someone in fear now. It was my greatest lesson in humanity. Everyone gets frightened or lonely and feel like outcast/misfits. Lucky for me, those were my best subject in my major in HUMANITY

Even with all my big bad knowledge and experience, I would like to go back to that age and just hold that kid.

PS. My mother still brings that story up about the spook has and things is the funniest story in the world. No funny, 40 years later, still un-funny

It makes a lot of sense, how I how have floundered and struggled for 41 years. I didn't have the most basic components for growth and maturity.  I sometimes still feel like I'm looking at the door waiting for my mother to appear and spring me from kindergarten. More likely, I am waiting for my mother do jump out from behind a door to scare the fuck out me. Good times......good times.......

I had no idea there were so many variations on lacing up my damn shoes. Bitch.

I"ve been looking back at this photo ever since I contacted a friend I lost during the period of this photo. It's frightening to think how easily I got into that shape. Not just fat, i've been fat on and off since 7th grade. I don't think I was anywhere near my highest in this photo. Inside I had just given up. To chicken to kill myself and to angry at myself to move forward. I didn't like to go out of the house because if someone I knew ran into me I was convinced I had MONSTER written across my face. Have you ever smelled something bad in the refrigerator and you couldn't find exactly where it was coming from. That was my existence. I knew something was rancid but I didn't have any tools to get rid of it.

I have suffered most all of my life with my tendency to get confused, overwhelmed and then finally I quit. Anyone can look at this photo and clearly see I was a man who had given up. The upsetting thing about this to me is , I'm not sure it won't happen to me again. There is so much I have power over and it could all start going wrong by having something come between me and the path of freedom. By not addressing people who hurt me, even if it is unintentional  I swallow a little pill of soul cancer. I was years away from getting better at this point. It really doesn't matter what you do or say, it's only important what I do or say to my self.

I've trekked back in time with several therapist and I see clearly that line where I gave up on being myself and focus on assimilating with my peers. I don't why I didn't put up more of a fight. I just believe  them, that I was wrong. Boys can't play with dolls and  they for sure don't play Wonder Woman.

I"ve got much freedom in my life today. My closest recovery pals are two men. Usually I have girl friends but  I've found a lot of healing in being friends with two straight men.  It's been a growth thing for me that I let my guard down around straight men and allow them to get close enough without the fear of fag hating prejudice popping up. I was terrible wrong all my life. Being gay wasn't the most noteworthy thing about myself but I believed for so long, it was the ONLY thing about me that made me interesting. I was wrong.

Becoming ourselves is hard. It is often slow and painful, and messy and funny and sad and mean and sucky.

I just can't live another day being a sad version of what you want me to be. I guess I had to experience dying  of hunger before I could experience the phenomenon of being full. Go fucking figure, a food analogy.

I'll lay it down right now, I can't pretend or be anything but the soul I came to the planet being. I  just never would have guessed that I had all I needed inside me. I just need teachers and directors and everyone is an example, one way or the other.