WHAT GOES AROUND...

Chris over at My Journey Out [click here] hits the nail on the head: how, in the midst of what you have found, pain for what you have lost will well up and overwhelm you. I am looking at a week with visits [mostly lunches] with a number of friends from the old days, when I was married with kids and happy to be so. And will have to cycle through the same old explanations and evasions again and again. Friends gay and straight, married and not, but every lunch a little minefield of its own, and no knowing how they feel about me beyond the evasive politeness of a lunch-time get-together.

I don't really know what to say about some things. I am on one level profoundly happy in this strange new thing that seems to think it's my life. I also remain profoundly jealous of people who have managed to stay in some sort of relationship with their wives, let alone those people who are still living at home, or at least visiting on a regular basis. There is part of me that wants that, still, so badly--and that part of me resonated to Chris' post in a long, low, bass wave like whale-singing.

There are always little things--like the Goat's unintentionally grating refrain that in a year or two whatever I am objecting to will make perfect sense--that make my new life less than ideal--that make me wonder if I can in fact make this work. There is the continually returning amazement that this is actually still recognizably me, though so many people claim not to recognize me, with my new "gay" haircut and beard. In theory, it's still me on the inside--but how much earth-shaking change can you live through and still be "you"? Well, you are you because "you" is the sum of your experiences and decisions, but "me" begins to look at one and the same time weirdly similar to and different from the "me" I thought I knew, or was.

Two years later, I still can't quite believe I've left home. A year and a half of longing for the Goat and waiting around for his schedule to clear up so I fit in, and I still can't quite believe I'm in love with a leatherman.

Well, I hope the Goat is right, whether his remark will cover the things he thinks it will or not: in a year or two more, it would be really nice to have a handle on some of what has gone on. At the moment, it's still too slippery to know what it is--it won't sit still long enough for me to look hard and figure it out--it's all I can do to keep the damn thing in my hands.

Stay tuned.
What else can we do?
C