This Is The Story Of A Boy

I don't know myself very well.
I know the things that are locked up inside of my head.
I have fantasies and stories of a person who could've lived a life much differently than the one I exist in.
I remember scenarios from when I was a boy.
There are things that I can't remember in vivid detail, but I recall bits and pieces of them.
I don't remember being incredibly happy when I was younger.
I remember being afraid all of the time.
I used to think about things that, at the time, I shouldn't have been thinking about with too much intensity.
I thought about death.
I remember seeing someone die in a movie and thinking to myself "death is final" and thinking how frightened it made me.
I had no one to talk to about these things.
I couldn't figure out why something so essential in life, like explaining death, was never explained to me.
It amplified my fear.
And I grew up in a period when death was the outcome of sex with another man.
I never had a problem with my sexual identity.
I only had a problem with death being the final outcome of it.
I knew I was gay when I was younger.
At 5 some folks would say "how would a 5 year old know that" and my answer is as simple as "because I knew, without it having to do with sex...I just knew".
I didn't like when older people would say things like "who's your little girlfriend" when I played with the neighbor kids.
I hated having "the talk" with my Mom when I was a teenager.
I was so uncomfortable making up "interest" in someone of the opposite sex, in order to avoid being questioned constantly.
I believed that I would be treated badly for being the person I was inside.
I knew that no one would love me the same way if they knew that I was gay.
I hid every part of that truth about myself until someone else gave it away without my knowledge or my consent.
Being outed was hard.
Being disowned was hard.
Losing love and trust and security and safety and every childhood hope was so much harder.
I was always the older kid in the family.
I remember my Mom teaching me how to cook a fried egg in a hole sandwich when I was 8.
I thought about how much fun it would be to cook with my sister's Easy Bake oven.
Secretly though, I wanted to eat the goodies that the Easy Bake oven advertised on the side of the box.
But I learned how to cook and make food for myself.
I learned how to clean up after myself, like most kids do, and I learned how to watch after my two younger sisters.
I felt responsibility hit me at an earlier age than I think it probably should have.
And while I didn't bear the responsibility of parenthood with them, I did suffer the responsibility of not taking care of them the way an older sibling should have.
I know most of this rests of most of my fears.
I didn't know how to be myself, and I didn't know who to be for them.
When puberty hit, it hit us all like a ton of bricks.
I realized that I wasn't able to do many of the things that I wanted to do.
I couldn't exist in a John Hughes reality, because I didn't really have the kind of storybook story that Hollywood movies were written about.
I didn't have enough suffering.
I never had it worse off than someone else.
Death never played a factor in my origin story.
And I went on into adulthood with my rose colored glasses, my wounded heart, and my impressionable soul.
I fell in love with someone when I was 18.
At least I thought what I was feeling at the time was love.
I had had crushes on guys. Fantasies about men, but nothing that was as concrete as the first guy that kissed me.
When he kissed me, I felt a rush of excitement that I had never felt before.
I didn't feel guilt or shame.
I felt something truly wonderful and I felt seen by him.
Then I met another man. And he made me feel even more special than the one before, but our timing was off.
Then 1 and 2 became acquainted and I became single.
Never having a relationship before, I had no idea how to handle it.
I was jealous.
I was vindictive and spiteful.
I was mean and guilty and shameful and kind of pathetic in thinking that this one man was everything that I would ever want for the rest of my life.
And when it was over...I was hurt and sad.
I never really understood my depression then, but I was able to work through it differently.
Then the 2nd man became everything in the world to me.
But he kept me at a distance.
Even to this day I question our 13 years together and wonder why I believed in him so much.
I still question the love we had for one another even 14 years after his death.
But I grew to know him.
He challenged me.
He belittled me.
He confronted me and was aggressive with me.
He was passionate with me.
He was a liar with me.
And when he looked at me...without ever looking away, I felt like I could see the person inside of him, more than any other man that I have ever known.
The way he smiled at me was warmth.
The way we laughed together was kinship.
The way he loved me was home.
Even though he kept me at a distance, he made me believe that we were meant to be.
To this day, our first kiss was the most magical thing that I had ever felt in my life.
But then he died.
He died without me near him.
He was gone.
While I was dealing with the end of a 6 year relationship with another man who took all the hope and security and safety that we had worked for and flushed it down the toilet....he was gone.
He died in his sleep.
Alone without ever knowing how truly wonderful he was to me and how much I would have given my life to save his.
Sometimes I wonder if, in his last thoughts, he saw my face?
I think how hard it would have been to wake up with his cold body laying lifeless next to mine.
Wondering how traumatized that would have made me and how destroyed I would have been.
But I was already destroyed.
I was distraught that my true love and the man I loved were both gone.
Some people get over that.
I don't know that I ever have.
I have learned to bury most of what I feel so that I don't have to feel it anymore.
I think about the love that I could have had and the love that I was given and wonder why the two are so different.
I think about how conditionally we are raised to believe that if we are good enough then someone will love us enough and keep us safe from the sad world.
I wonder how the 3rd man who broke my heart tossed me away so casually like garbage and I think about how much that fucked me up.
Until then, my fear and depression didn't have too much of a form, but it started to grow more and more over the years.
I was addicted to pain.
I was addicted to my sadness and loneliness.
I was addicted to crying into my pillow at night and fighting the air because he was gone and left so casually.
I was convinced that telling our story would be the reminder of what would kill me. So I boxed it up.
Every reminder of him and I lives inside of a box that I have sworn to bury in the desert someday.
I don't look for him.
When I come upon him accidentally, it feels like a punch to the gut and I suffer for days afterwards.
The love that I had and the closure that I never gave myself died so abruptly.
And the grief that I felt built up on me with weight.
I felt my feelings through food and casual sex.
I spent so many years wondering why someone took the best of me and I gave away the rest of me without considering how it would affect me mentally.
I went from butterflies to a void feeling.
Adulthood didn't seem to be the answer to the question that I had when I was growing up.
It always seemed like the destination that I was supposed to arrive at without any questions.
All I wanted was for someone to take me by the hand and pull me close.
At times I just wanted to lay my head down and feel someone stroke my hair lovingly and tell me that everything would be alright.
Call it what you will.
I wanted someone to love me, because I wasn't strong enough to love myself.
Years have gone by and I have lived this way because I am afraid of death and afraid of taking chances and afraid of being someone other than the person I am.
Change has always been hard for me.
Losing security and having to figure out another way has always been difficult for me.
But change has helped me grow.
If at times it has also taught me how to be more deceptive to myself as well.
The deception that I have felt about myself over the years has always been a bit of a mystery.
I know that I can hide away from responsibilities and I understand that someday those responsibilities will ultimately find me.
Knowing these things adds to my fear and anxieties, but I try not to keep my head buried in the sand.
If I didn't know how to cope, growing older has kind of given me some mechanisms in dealing with everyday worries.
But it doesn't help who I am in the long run.
I am always on a journey of self discovery, just as much as I am on a highway to hell.
I met a man who does things for me and I don't know how to react to him.
I care a great deal for him and at times I want to hear his voice and let him know that I am thinking about him.
I want him to know that if he wanted a life and a future with me, he would only have to ask.
But when I look deep into his eyes...I don't know who I see.
And those butterflies are kind of like moths that bounce around on a lit bulb because they're not quite sure how to handle the light.
He's there and I am here and the Thing inside of me that is all of my ugliness and worry and doubt and fear and pain and isolation I am trying to pack up into another little box and hide away so that it doesn't destroy me.
I hate hiding, but it is something that I have always been good at.
And whether or not folks believe me when I say that I am doing the best I can to become a better version of myself is really not something that I am concerned about anymore, because life has a sell by date.
And I am tired and exhausted of living in fear of that sell by date.
Something that I gave into recently involved trying to change how I see myself.
I don't know exactly how it happened, but I know that it involved me choosing to not be the person that I saw reflected back at me in the mirror.
I had a million excuses why it was or would be hard to be a different person and I mulled them over and over again.
I thought about how much it would cost me to be healthier.
I thought about the amount of time and energy it would require for me to be the man I had envisioned in my head.
And though things are still occurring at a speed that seems to be flying by, I think that I am starting to actually find myself.
I mean, sure, that Thing that I box up, hr is still there. And he likes to show his bastard head every now and again.
He makes me afraid of things that I have always been afraid of.
Like being alone and dying without feeling love from another man again.
He spikes my anxieties the same as he always has, but I have learned not to look him in the eyes anymore.
If there were a truer way to cope with him, then I would certainly give it a try.
For now, though, I've simply chosen to look the other way.
And I take care of me now by making sure that I set some realistic goals and get back to being the person I used to be, before I became the person that pain and heartache turned me into.
I find that I place myself in situations that enhance my adulthood and give me memorable life experiences.
Honestly, one of the hardest parts about being an adult is growing up.
I want to be less self indulgent and more mindful of my inner self as well as my outer self.
I want to see the world for the beauty that it could be, instead of the ugliness that civilization has created.
And even though I am not a spiritual man, I want to be able to feel the wonder of something transcendent.
Call it what you will.
If time has taught me anything, it is that waiting isn't good enough.
I have waited for too many things and have been disappointed far too long.
So why not enjoy what I have going forward and understand that nothing is forever.
Even my loneliness isn't forever.
My loneliness can't tell you stories about how I once drove across the Arizona desert at night, while a full moon silhouetted the greatest mountain ranges I have ever seen.
It can't paint the picture in my mind of the man with the most devilish smile that poisoned my heart.
My loneliness could never sing and dance the way I do when I hear certain songs that take me back to a euphoric moment in time where all I felt was this incredible energy pulse through me like divine passion.
And this is why I give up on my fears and allow change to make me into a man.