Revisiting my past

I'm starting to love this place, I feel like I've come home in a way. There are so many threads here that really speak to my heart. After so many years of being ashamed to look myself in the eye, it's nice to be able to accept myself for what I am, and to find others who are the same way. I wish I had figured it out sooner, but better late than never!

 

I've often wondered what it is that sent some of us running for the safety of the closet, while others were able to fact the world as gay and love their lives as they saw fit. Sometimes I think that a lot of us, myself included, had other issues, and being gay was just the final tipping point that made us go completely into a closet we had already built and furnished.

I can vaguely remember being a very open and affectionate kid before about age 9 or 10. Open and affectionate, but also very sensitive and caring. I would hear my baby brother crying in the night, and would work it into nightmares about trying unsuccessfully to save a crying baby from a burning room (and I was only 4 or so). I read a story in the newspaper at age 9 or so about the the number of animals euthanized at a local shelter and was tearful and depressed for weeks. But I come from a very reserved, stoic and unemotional extended family, and all of my emotion wasn't well received, and I learned how to bury it to escape their disapproval (and to keep the wooden spoon from crossing my butt too often). By the time the hormones kicked in, and later on, when I finally realized that not only was my fascination with other boys not typical, but also not really considered socially acceptable, I was already withdrawn and shut down and largely friendless.

Since finally accepting myself as gay in late 2012 and coming out to a few people, then my wife almost a year ago, kids, siblings and co-workers, I have found myself becoming so much more open to people and willing to participate in conversations and activities. I'm still somewhat shy, and I still desperately crave "alone" time, because I'm still an introvert, but I'm also realizing how much I crave and need human contact. My picture of me and my partner in my office has invited several coming-out conversations with people, and I have been told over and over that I seem happier and more self-assured than I've been in years.

So has all this new openness and happiness been the result of coming out? Or did I finally hit the bottom of the emotional ocean, and as I struggled back to the surface, realize what a weight the phony straightness was, and decide to let it sink while I swam? I haven't figured that one out yet. Whether growing up in an era with better gay role models would have kept me out of the closet is open to question and, I suppose, irrelevant since my childhood is long gone and isn't coming back. I suspect it might have kept me from becoming as totally withdrawn as I got, but really, I think my struggles with being gay were really part of other problems I had (and still have to some extent), and they all merged together into a strong lock on the door of a closet that was very much in progress long before I realized I was gay.

 

I'm having a real rough day of revisiting the past.

Yesterday I found a place to live and we got all the paper work in order so we can file for divorce. We also figured out what we are doing with this dumb house, finally. Those are all needed and, in the right context, good things.

But the waves of emotion that come with it are quite a lot. The finality of it all really starts to hit, and it makes me think of too many regrets and too much anger.

I gotta keep pressing forward, I suppose. No other option.

Going to try to not think about it too much today as I've not had much luck sleeping and that clearly can't help.

---------- Post added 10th Jul 2014 at 11:00 AM ----------

Choirboy and beingearnest, I feel like we are on the same page. So much of my childhood looked like that.