Bittersweet

Back from vacation and a new phenomenon, a form of writer’s block. Last night I carefully crafted a post, tried to get the words right, yet today I do not even open the Word file. I realize that I was so worried about my words, my style, that I was avoiding what should be a simple letter to friends.

It was a good vacation, time away, time with family, time to think. We spent our last week in Little, that aptly named cabin. Our children did not acquiesce to the one parent / one child per room format so Carrie and I shared a bed for six nights and learned just how big a queen sized bed could be. We were respectful, but we will not find ourselves in that situation again. I fear our trips to Canada, to our usual spot are at an end. God seemed to have recognized it with an electrical storm for our last night, an hour and a half of sky sizzling over lake and woods, Biblical in proportions.

Upon our return we broached the last frontier – we told our younger children. Weighing in at just under eleven years of age, they are accepting types. They were dying for the “lecture” to end so they could return to their playing. Hell, what’s one more or less gay person in this family. While the conversation was calm and brief, I have since come to realize the significance was not in the fact that they are different; it is in the fact that Carrie and I are different. It added a sense of reality and finality that maybe we should have found long ago.

A few days after the talk, Carrie’s best friend’s husband succumbed after a four month illness. He had sent an e-mail to Carrie a month or so ago expressing his gratitude that she would be there for his wife, she who had also recently lost a husband. And today as Carrie went to the funeral I know she mourned, both for this kind man and for a marriage that no longer is.

A few nights ago I went to see my friend Phil – it had been a long vacation. I forewarned him that I was overtired and maybe a tad cranky, that he may not want me this evening. He e-mailed back: “Hey, we're not friends for just the good times..... so of course I want you.” So visit him I do and we spend the evening, we spend the night. As we walk back from dinner, arms around each other, comfortably strolling through a quite straight neighborhood, it all coalesces in my mind.

For so long I kept getting back to being just a little gay (about as real as a little pregnant), getting back to maybe if Carrie could live with my little secret, getting back to questions of needs and whims: I had lost sight of some basic realities, ones that are probably quite obvious to even a casual reader of my blog. The simple facts are that I am gay – surely bi in a sense, but that does not seem to mean much when one’s desires are as skewed as mine presently are. More importantly I do want to explore that side of me, it does feel right in so many ways.

You may wonder where is the change in my thinking and while it may be imperceptible to most, to me it is huge. There is a difference between accepting one’s gayness and admitting to wanting to pursue it. A friend told Carrie yesterday that she saw me as an addict, one who cannot stop, one who keeps drinking more. I do not buy that. I could stop, have in the past. But when I am truly honest, the answer is I do not want to stop.

I do not profess to understand my gayness anymore than I understand why some men like blondes over brunettes or why one becomes friends with one person and not another. I suppose some things just are. More importantly, I do not overly feel the need to understand what seems to be a state of being, a state of my being. It is time to just go with the flow, not look for excuses and not try to place blame.

I suspect I have much to write, many stories to tell, but I also hope to spend more of my precious free time living this new life, wherever it leads. I suppose now that the marriage is ended the real journey begins.

A bittersweet end to two of the best decades I could have ever asked for.