"Aha!"

We have long joked about the Gods of Music – that moment when a song comes up that could never have been planned and the phrase has had spinoffs - those various “Gods” that inhabit our lives. But I have just encountered a new one – the Gods of Word of you would. I am in my office and have plenty to do, but my mind is reeling from the last few days, from the reality that is starting to sink in. So for the first time in months I turn to my writing while at work and open a password protected file, one that I use as a scratch pad for drafting posts. And I am confronted with words, words written many months ago:

The past week or so felt like a war in my being, sadness bordered on depression, I reached a level of fear, almost paralyzing, and I whined like I have not done in a long time.

I feel better now.

I go on to describe a dinner – a date – with a man, a man who was introduced in my last post as Jay. I continue with a discussion of the comfortable place Carrie and I have found and I discuss the minor price for this all:
Respecting each other in ways big and small, respecting each other by being honest, honest in our thoughts and actions, and honest as to who we are.

And then my concluding paragraph:
So it is time for me to stop feeling sorry for myself, it is time for me to stop making believe that I am some person other than myself, it is time to stop protesting to Carrie that meeting someone for dinner and a bar scene on a Saturday night is not a date. It is time to embrace: embrace my love for my family and for Carrie, embrace the fact that I am a gay man and enjoying my new found self.

I am strangely glad I have happened upon these words because they fit so well with the theme of the day, the reason I wanted to write in the first place. The simple fact is that these “Aha!” moments (as Sis calls them) have become old, they have become repetitive, they have become disrespectful of Carrie who has endured so much and has done so with grace. Most importantly they have become so harmful to whoever I am. It is our anniversary and today I grasped how far I have come from where this all started and how impossible it is to live where I am. I have crossed the border and am crawling around some mythical DMZ and then wondering why there are bullets flying from both sides.

So I want to categorically state: I do NOT feel better now. And that is good because every time I announce I feel better it is code, code for getting back on my personal road of denial. Whoever said that mourning and grieving should feel good? It should hurt like hell and only then will it be time to move on.

So I will go on with my weekend, keep my dates, even have fun, but it is with the sadness of realizing that it is time to move on, that being on either side of the border is safer, and saner, then trying to walk a tightrope.

It is also becoming clear to me that this concept that I will live in the basement for the next seven years is not grounded in reality, that I will need to consider other arrangements, not tomorrow, but it is time to start planting seeds.

Earlier today Sis e-mailed me: You’ve spent too much time trying to believe that you could make it all go away with a wave of your hand and an apology. So now you have to play catch-up.

As I was responding my fingers did their own thing and wrote: Part of my desire to both talk of the separation (as painful as it is) and to come out is that I know that will force me further out on the limb and maybe once I crawl out far enough I will realize I am just on the branches of another tree.

Time to trust my fingers, and my friends.