Grateful

Last night I started on a post and blissfully the Ambien drove me from the keyboard to the bed. I could re-read it and start to edit, but I choose to take a mulligan.

In honor of turning fifty a few years back, I actually went for a checkup and a year later got around to the suggested nuclear stress test and colonoscopy: both came back perfect. Today I thought about the struggles that Brett is undergoing and the specifics of the two tests I actually had. And as all of us send our prayers his way, I considered the backsliding and whining that has welled up in this blog in recent weeks. I suppose I could blame it on Spider – if he was reading he surely would have gently prodded me in the right direction. So in his honor, I will do it for him.

I have attained more than a modicum of success in my chosen profession. I am well respected, well remunerated, and enjoy what I do and where I do it.

I have a wonderful family. Four older children are up to speed with my life and continue to love me unconditionally. I have a best friend who is still my wife, albeit in a changed fashion. And if ultimately we end up apart, I have no doubt that our friendship will endure. There will be a day, sooner than later, when my younger children will know and I have no doubts they will continue to love me.

My residence may now be the lower level (sounds so much classier than “the basement”) but it is still under the same roof as my family and in a few minutes I will wander upstairs to tuck in the young ‘uns. And as lower levels go, it really is quite nice – a three room suite complete with bath.

My extended family has been touched on before – an incidence of gayness that would make a sociologist cream: can you spell genetics. Not exactly a hard family to be out in.

So why all the whining? Simple enough I suppose. At age fifty-two I find myself coming to grips with being a gay man. I am learning a new world while maintaining an old one. I am dating because I want to and not to would be just another form of denial, that old friend which has become so familiar of late. The circle of those that I am out to seems to be increasing and will ultimately, like all pebbles dropped into the water, spread far and wide.

I readily admit to terror, to excitement, to joy and to sadness. There will surely be more bad days and weeks: more backsliding and whining. But for now it is time to take a step back, look around, and acknowledge the obvious: I have a very good life, one filled with good health, with family and with love.

Being gay is my greatest challenge, a challenge indeed, but really not all that much to complain about.


The comments on my last post were very much appreciated. I have three more weeks of work "hell", but needed to share my thoughts tonight. And remember - get those taxes done:)