STICKING TO IT...

Well, here's the long and the short of it. As my wife told me months ago, some part of me has already moved out. Some part of me has since then not only moved out, but already relocated to a larger city, made contacts with the gay community there, and started looking for someone to love. So why is half of me still wringing its hands and beating its breast and otherwise carrying on in sackcloth and ashes? Because it is mourning its own approaching death. So who am I kidding? Me, mostly. The person I've lied to most all along...

All that really remains is to suck in my gut [a task that any middle-aged guy will tell you gets harder all the time] and admit it to my family. And go. Do I expect it to be liberation? In some ways yes, but in others it will be trading one reason for isolation and depression for another; there is no way of knowing that the half of me that is desperate to stay will not spend the next thirty years in mourning, as the half that is ready to roll has spent the last thirty under lock and key. I rather suspect, at this point, that it will.

But I do know that I can't go back to the way we were. And I can't really ask my family to walk this walk WITH me. I can only ask that they not shut me out, and let me return occasionally.

Well, I said long ago that I knew where I was going and what I had to go through to get there. The final panic has got to make way for some degree of willingness to move on, if only for the sake of motion -- stasis is death. Stasis in THIS condition is almost worse than death.

So, I pays my money and I takes my choice. But it is going to hurt a lot of people a lot.

Pray for me, but more to the point, pray for them.
Thanks.