Man is not a creature of circumstance, I’ve heard, but instead circumstances are the creation of man. While I am not sure what to think of it, the idea that I might be able to control the circumstances of my life makes me feel a little better when I have days like this. I’m neither sad nor happy, just concerned – perhaps freaked out. I feel out of control again. This happens every once in a while and then something changes or, my personal favorite, I go to sleep. Tonight, the sleep is not coming. My mind is working more overtime than I have been, kicking my ass with demands for action. I feel like I’m at work again.

No matter how hard I work, I feel my finances will never be what they could be. Every week it is something. A serpentine belt, a lunch with Ryan, something. I can’t seem to just save any money because of the expenses associated with being a responsible adult, a boyfriend, an employee, or a friend. Being the boyfriend is perhaps the second most expensive role I’ve ever held. People told me this and I ignored it until I compared the budget surplus of the Josh break-up to the budget deficit of the Ryan relationship. I’m perpetually broke and it makes me feel like shit. I hate looking at Ryan when he wants to do something and saying “I can’t afford to…” It’s defeating in ways that I can’t even begin to describe.

I question my own judgment most of the time. This is something that came up as I was washing dishes tonight. I do most of my best thinking when I am cleaning, bathing, or otherwise indisposed.  The reason I question my own judgment is because I’m afraid I’ll make the wrong decision and end up missing out on something great for my life. In the end, I stick with what I know and still miss out on some of the greater things in life because I’m afraid of that change.  Why do you think it took me so long to break up with Josh? or go back to school? Because I had always heard that the grass was greener on the other side but I feared that it was in fact some really green weeds (and not the good weed either.) Where do I go from here? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself for the past couple of days. How do I know when I am pointed in the right direction?

I guess this all goes back to something I read a while back. The only way to make it in this world and truly be successful is to make a decision and commit to it – heading towards the goal but being flexible about the means. I just wish I knew what to decide. LOL.

First decision: Go to bed.

AW

I decided not to go to Frankfort tonight. This is based, predominately, on the fact that I do not have the funds to make it happen. More importantly, however, I see it as a sign. As hard as this is to consider, I asked God to guide me on this adventure. I don’t feel good about the break-up idea now. I think, perhaps, I need to re-evaluate. If nothing else, God would have opened the door for that break-up had it been His will. At least some gas money, right?

So all returns to normal. I’ll come back to this later.

Tonight has been rough. I went to bed at 10pm, woke up at 2:30 in a pool of my own sweat. My A/C is out and maintenance isn’t available until tomorrow. The BF has been incommunicado for the past 24+ hours. Overall, it wasn’t cutting it. It wasn’t until about 3:30, when I got on the phone with my friend Chris, that something in my head changed a bit and it felt a bit more controllable.

We talked about a lot of stuff, most of which I won’t share here because I’ve either covered it before or it is information that is not mine to share, but it got really good when we talked about how we had changed over the years. I thought about that but he was the one that really pointed out the good stuff. When my mom passed away, when I was 12, chaos ensued for years. When Bryan and I broke up, when I was 18, chaos ensued for months. When Mike and I broke up, when I was 20, chaos ensued for weeks. By the time Chris met me, things would upset me and chaos would ensue for days. These days, when something upsets me, chaos ensues for a few hours and then rational thought returns to save the day. I didn’t realize I had changed all that much until that conversation. I knew I was different but that’s kinda huge. The reason the conversation ever happened was because I had mentioned a break-up and how my preferred way of dealing with it these days was a dinner discussion. A few years ago, it was much different. It was usually some form of “back the fuck up” followed by radio silence. *shrug* Thank God for personal growth.

I fired off an e-mail to Ryan tonight. I’m feeling the urge to do something after work so I figured, in light of everything that’s been running through my head the past few weeks, that I would see if he would go out to dinner with me and talk. Please, for the love of God, read between the lines here. We all know what this means now. I’ve lost all patience waiting for him to bring the traits necessary for a quality relationship to the table. There is no real intimacy, except for the occasional bone thrown my way to keep me happy. In the end, I’m not happy and that has to change.

I don’t want to break up with him. I think he’s got a good heart and, well, he is rather hot. LOL. But I’m tired of trying to pry the qualities I need to see out of him. These should come naturally and the fact that they are not is making this way too hard. I expend way too much energy trying to sort through this relationship, make sense of him, or otherwise support this mess. I’m tired and I don’t have the spare energy. Besides, I’m a serial monogamist and that mess has to stop.

Since… well.. Mike, at least, I’ve gone straight from one relationship to the next without a pause for air. From Mike to Tyler, Tyler to Chris, Chris to Josh, and Josh to Ryan. There were gaps along the way but even those were filled with dates and *sigh* booty calls. I need the time to think and heal. In the absence of a real quality relationship, singledom may be the only place that I’ll find that time to think.

*yawn* I’m gonna go nap. Just thought I’d get that out there before my muse went away.

Greatness is not standing above our fellows and ordering them around it is standing with them and helping them to be all they can be.

- G. Arthur Keough

Prayer keeps resulting in the same mental message: Faith. It’s actually two thoughts wrapped up in one message. The first thought is that I need to have faith in people, specifically myself, but just as importantly in my significant other. I trust him in matters that most do not trust their significant others after a nasty break-up. I trust him to be faithful to me. I am 99% certain that he’s not the cheating kind. I know he cares about me, regardless of what the Tarot cards said (inside thought.) I don’t trust him to make the effort he needs to keep me, however. My conversations with friends all seem to be about the same subject – intimacy. I talk to my two favorite ex-boyfriends, my ex-girlfriend, and my best friends more than I talk to him. When we do talk, it has little to do with anything of substance – usually just pot, comics, or how we’re bored. Meanwhile, I’ve made a new friend at work with whom I talk about more than Ryan and I have ever covered. That strikes me as odd. At the same time, perhaps he is making all the forward progress he can. Perhaps he’s just as hurt as I am and has trouble getting close just like I do. Where I am afraid that he’s going to leave – he may be afraid that I’m not going to stay. Do you get the difference?

The second thought behind that prayer is that I am not being faithful with what I have been given so, perhaps, God is not going to make me responsible for more. This means that I’m actually going to have to do the work, work the hours, keep my house clean, etc. It means that I have to take care of what I have and master having it before God will bless me with anything more. I need to be driven. Speaking of driven, my supervisor called me out today. She said that she knows that I am capable of so much more than I am right now, as far as taking a leadership role and whatnot, but fears that my emotions are holding me back. She sees how angry I get when I am interrupted mid-thought, how stressed I get when there are tons of things going on, and how distracted I get when something off-the-clock hurts me. She’s seen me leave work early under the pretenses of being “ill” only to go home and drink because my heart is hurting. She’s watched me break down in tears on the call center floor because some customer hit some switch in me that made me relive some other more painful moment.  I can do better – I know I can – but I keep getting thrown off course by my heart. I let everything hurt me. I worry about EVERYTHING. I worry about worrying about hurting. It’s a vicious cycle. I’m scared.

My fears

1. I’m afraid of being abandoned – left alone without warning.
2. I’m afraid of getting my heart broken again – so I don’t get attached or at least I try my damnedest not to get attached.
3. I’m afraid of failing – proving to myself that I am just as bad as I think I am.
4. I’m afraid of being trapped – either in a job, in a city, or in a jail. I think this stems from a day or two I spent in jail that left me rather scared of returning.
5.  I’m afraid of being considered “sub-par” – also confirming what I already believe about myself.

The one thing I’m not afraid of – I’m not scared of telling the truth about myself. God knows it and I know it – those are the only two beings that matter so what will anyone else do? Say something? Like they haven’t feared something themselves, like they haven’t fallen short of their own expectations. This doesn’t mean that I’m open with all my insecurities, some show themselves as seemingly unrelated emotions – like fear of being abandoned showing as an angry “break-up.” It’s odd. If I think you might leave for some reason, I’ll usually go ahead and usher you out the door. I’ll say “I don’t have the time for this emotional fuckwittage” and then you wonder why? Well… it’s probably because you didn’t learn anything from what I told you.

I’ve told you that my last relationship left me a mess, that I wasn’t ready for dating – you dropped the boyfriend title on me as quick as you thought you could seal the deal. I let you keep that word. Then you dropped the L word on my head and I said “oh, what the hell” and I let you keep that word too. You used to send me the sweetest text messages each morning and again before I went to bed, now you rarely even respond to my messages. You show me the most basic forms of love on the weekends but can’t seem to extend yourself beyond that. I ask you to quit drinking and smoking so much and you wake-and-bake the next day. I am trying to justify these actions too, that’s what makes me sick. I’m sitting there, telling myself that perhaps you are doing the best you can when … well.. your best is just not enough. I’m moments from gone just because you don’t seem near as interested in keeping me as you used to.

Sorry.. folks.. that was a moment. LOL. I guess I needed to get that out somewhere.  I just wish I could say that to him. Alas, it is election day which means he is uber busy and I wouldn’t want to drop that on him in the midst of his wondering if he will have a job in the next few weeks. I wish I could talk to him that clearly period. I just seem to lack the balls to do it. I need to man up immediately.

Why can’t I talk to him like that? I don’t have any hesitation about saying what I need to say to anyone else – why is he so different? Ugh. Ok, I’m sorry y’all. I’m done for tonight.

My paranoia is at an all-time high today. I’ll be checking my biorythyms at some point this evening. I am feeling motivated but rough, like things just aren’t right. Today, I want to do something that I usually reserve for my less thought-intensive MySpace blog. I want to rant on points without really trying to form paragraphs and linear thought. Here I go:

• Resume writing gets on my fucking nerves. I spent almost an hour trying to flowchart the past 10 years of my life. Considering that most of those memories are gone courtesy of a cannibus haze, I’m not entirely sure what jobs I worked during that time. I most assuredly don’t remember when I was hired on. *shrug* It annoys me to no end.
• My boyfriend is becoming a source of annoyance for me. Perhaps it’s just my paranoia or, perhaps, I’m seeing warning signs that I don’t want to see. Case and point: He used to send me these cute text messages EVERY morning, just telling me that he hoped I had a great day and then making some positive comment about my body or heart. Now, nothing. Hell, I can’t even get him to respond to my text messages during the week unless I’m either talking about POT or getting pissed off. Meanwhile, his ass can respond to and leave comments all over MySpace. Which brings me to my next point: Who the fuck are these twinky motherfuckers hittin’ on my man on MySpace. I know, I know… I flirt like mad… but never where the BF can see it. I think that flirting inside of the boyfriend’s visual field is just disrespectful. Not on myspace, not in public, not in front of him. It’s just respect, I think. These guys hitting on him make me uncomfortable, but when he is doing it back.. it makes me insanely paranoid. Given my history, who can blame me? My final rant as far as the BF is concerned.. he’s way too much of a pot head for me. Now, I suspect he’s doing it as a “self-medication method” but, frankly, I’m reaching my wits end. If that’s really his reason, surely he should be talking to me about it by now. Ugh. I’m getting more annoyed just writing this out.
• My job pays the bills, granted, but it feels so beneath me now. I guess that explains my first rant.. that resume writing sucks. I’m now actively pursuing something different.
• Have you ever had one of those days where you were just tired of dating (insert gender of choice)? I am. I’m tired of being gay. I’m tired of how men act. What kills me is that all the good, interesting, warm-hearted men with decent communications skills are either busted, GU (geographically undesirable), or taken. The rest, well.. no comment. I’m tired of being cheated on (see posts regarding most recently terminated relationship) and I’m tired of dating emotional fuckwits, drug dependent douche-bags, or abusive bastards. I’m just tired of the game you have to play in order to date these guys. It’s different from straight games.. I’ve played those. I’m good at them. This game just sucks. You do realize, I could go straight right now and never have the same girl twice.. LOL. Not really, but I’d definitely have a selection.. too bad I like dick. Ugh.
• So overall, those points amongst others are just making me rather anti-everything today. I feel like writing one of those “Ani-Difranco-esque fuck you” entries. I miss those. Those at least made the point. *shrug*

Anyways, back to your regularly scheduled programming. Intelligent thought will resume next entry, I hope.

It has been said that hindsight is 20/20. I would venture to say that it is probably much better than that. While we see the past much clearer than we did when it was the present, we also see things that can only be seen with the knowledge gained in the future. Keeping that in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of retrospection lately – focusing on the good things that the past provided. One person specifically comes to mind over and over again – Josh.

It’s not that I miss him – I very honestly do not – instead I am missing some of the endearing qualities that he brought to the table. My “board of peer-reviewers” should be familiar with this line of thought by now. For as much abuse as was present in that relationship and for as much pain as it caused both Josh and me, we sure had fun. I distinctly remember being intoxicated – having smoked myself retarded – and running through the house or perhaps crawling is a better word .. nevertheless I remember crawling through the house with a bandana around my head yelling “cheeto bandito.” It sounds stupid as hell right now, I admit, but it is hilarious. Times like those are the ones I miss the most. Wrestling on the bed or, my personal favorite, the tickle fights are also some times I miss very much. This creates a small problem.

I keep looking at my current relationship and I can’t help but want to have most of those endearing qualities again. It’d bring me great joy for Ryan and I to wrestle around on the bed, tickling the shit out of each other. The underlying thought processes, however, trouble me because they are leading to an overall comparison of one good guy to someone he will never be. I find myself questioning the purpose of this line of thought. Am I attempting to find something wrong with Ryan so I can bail on him? Could my fear really be controlling me that deeply? Or is it that I’m simply not having enough fun with this? What does that mean? Is it a valid reason to bail? Would I want to given this opportunity?

I’ve always heard that you are supposed to date the person you want to date and not expect for someone who doesn’t meet the standards to meet them at a later date. If he’s not cutting it now, he’s not going to cut it at all. The chances of him changing are slim and the odds aren’t worth betting on.

What do I do with that? Am I happy with Ryan right now? Yes – to an extent – however something is definitely missing and I’m not sure if I’m supposed to look to Ryan for it. Ryan is good to me. Aside from a couple of alcohol-induced outbursts, this boy has never been mean to me. He has stood beside me during some of the scariest times I’ve had. I know he has a good heart, I’ve seen it before.

What burns me, I think, is that he is the typical man. Reserved and strong, never sharing an emotion that is not necessary to show. I want to know more. I feel like there is this stranger who shares a bed with me. I have no clue what makes him laugh or what would make him cry. I have no clue about a lot of things. All I know is that he definitely cares – to what extent.. well.. beats me. I guess I am a woman in that sense. If he doesn’t tell me he loves me and show it in actions every now and then, I assume that by his silence it means that he is losing interest. Then, out of nowhere, he’ll do something sweer and that will be sufficient for a couple of days and then back to square one.

God knows I’m still healing and that this may just be a product of my heart trying to put itself back together again. For as easy as the Josh thing looked, it wasn’t near as “pain-free.” Walking out of that room and saying nothing but “ok” was, perhaps, one of the hardest things my heart has ever had to bear. The fact that I actually gave up fighting for him, willingly, burned me to no end. When is enough, enough? When do two people who love each other so much but can’t seem to get their act together finally just stop trying? My answer used to be “never” but apparently, in the more recent past, it became “February.”

Damn it. Here it is May and I’ve got a good man by my side and yet I still think about this boy. For what reason do I continue this emotional terrorism in his absence? I think, for lack of more eloquent words, I just want to be happy. I want to smile and laugh and act retarded when time allows. I want to giggle, dance, and wrestle around like I’m 24 going on 12. I just want to find that peace that I used to have in brief doses when Josh and I would get stoned. I miss falling asleep knowing that everything was alright. That certainty was rather helpful to my heart.

Nothing feels certain now. It’s as if life has become this surreal experience, as if someone else is running the show and I’m just spectating. It’s auto-pilot for the heart. I’m going with the flow – doing everything that I’m supposed to – but I’m not feeling as much of it as I should. I love Ryan, don’t get me mistaken, I’m just not sure that I’m happy with him right now. Then again, this could all be a product of my trying to heal – or it could be the most blatant emotional sabotage I’ve ever committed upon myself.

I keep praying at night, mainly for Josh and for guidance on how to deal with the day-to-day, but also that God might help me answer a few questions. Is this what I am supposed to be doing? Am I supposed to be trying to love again so soon? Am I supposed to be second guessing this boy? Ultimately, I know that I just need to stop thinking and make a call. Either I need to just let all this mess go and let myself be happy with Ryan or I need to go find happiness without him. I don’t want to leave him, I just want to know if I’m supposed to be here in the first place.

Where in the hell is my happy place? When do I get to stop worrying and start just living and having a good time with it? I guess those questions will come after the exodus.

It’s a cruel, evil game we play with men, especially in the United States. We tell them to be brave, to be strong, to show no fear and then we get angry with them because they show few emotions and have trouble sorting through any emotion for which they were not prepared. I believe that, in the U.S., we socialize men to have three predominate emotions: anger, happiness, and a general somber mood. All other emotions, in my experience with men, seem to be routed through those three main outlets such that a man who is scared shows anger, a man who is depressed shows anger. A man who is disappointed will probably show a somber mood, a man who is extremely excited or in love will probably just show a general happy mood. Such was the realization I made the other night while attempting to have a conversation with the boyfriend that I had been dreading.

As previous blog entries have stated, I was far from pleased with the way he talked to me the weekend before last. I felt that he turned a simple argument into a character assassination. The other night, I figured out what really happened. While we were watching Scrubs Monday night, I looked at him and told him that I wanted to talk to him after the show. He asked me what I wanted to talk about and I replied that it was simply “some stuff that had been on my mind.” He made this grunt-like sound, like he was angry that I had a thought. The feminine side of me immediately responded with “what is that supposed to mean?” to which he replied that it was just him “being the man.”

That comment sent fire coursing through my veins for about 10 seconds until I realized that, contrary to everything I had wanted to believe about our relationship, he was right. I’m the wife in the streets and the husband in the sheets. I’m the feminine side of this relationship. Afterwards, I spent several minutes thinking about the situation. It was like something clicked in my head and a conversation that would have taken hours with anyone else was reduced to 15 – 20 seconds. “Oh, and just for the record,” I started, “if you ever talk to me like you did last weekend – turning an argument into a character attack – I will firmly put my foot in your ass.” He responded with “likewise.” That was it. I couldn’t believe how easy it was.

I spent the next day reading through material on the internet on the socialization of men, specifically with regards to men in relationships. The reading was funny in that it suggested that men should be regarded as children, that is to say that the should be instructed gently on how to act and that they should be given the utmost attention when they are talking about their hearts. Apparently, if you listen without controlling the conversation, men will eventually loosen up and talk more. Likewise, their communication is more in their actions than in their words. It’s a bigger deal when a man puts his hand on yours than if a woman does it because it means that the man not only has some affectionate feelings for you but that he is willing to express them which is an infinitely more vulnerable status for him than it is for those of us who have been socialized as feminine.

This line of research slowly morphed into a general quest for knowledge on how to relate to him within the boundaries of my own baggage or, even better, how to sort through my own baggage. I ended up with several megabytes of Anthony Robbins audio. I have always adored Anthony Robbins because of the way he is cuts to the chase but, at the same time, does his damnedest to make sure you laugh at the negative and embrace the positive.   The man is a genius and definitely a wonderful motivational speaker. So I’ve been listening to him at great length lately while intermittently studying for finals week.

This is what I’ve come to realize as a result of all this thinking:

• Ryan is far from a representation of any of my previous boyfriends. In fact, he is probably the first man that I’ve dated that has been socialized as such. When you are the more masculine gay guy seeking a partner, you usually end up with someone who has been more-or-less socialized as a female. Nevertheless, Ryan doesn’t deserve to pay for the sins of the “girls” that came before him. He’s a good man, operative word in that sentence being “man.”
• I’m worth much more than my most of my ex-boyfriends would ever admit. I’m worth much more than my friends would ever tell me to my face. In other words, I kick ass.

Perhaps the most annoying and troublesome thing about a new relationship is the guessing game. Compound that with the emotional damage left from the experiences I’ve shared in previous blog entries and it goes without saying that I’m climbing the walls at the moment. I can’t even begin to figure out what to do. The guessing game is that period of time in a new relationship where you can’t really tell if they are “in to you” or not. It’s that time when you may walk on egg-shells to keep them from thinking that you are some kind of freak because of the traits about you that even you find to be a bit “out there.”

I think Julia Roberts’ character in Erin Brockovich said it best, “Are you going to be something else that I have to survive? Because I don’t think I can handle it.” That’s the point I am at right now. My relationship with Josh spiraled into this dark, shit-hole not a month before I had planned to propose to him. I didn’t mention that before. I had planned to propose to him on April 5th. According to a recent e-mail from his best friend/roommate, I decided upon that date because I wanted to manipulate him into marrying me, assuming that he wouldn’t say no on what is often considered one of the darkest days of my year. (My mother’s birthday is April 5th, she would have been 60 this year had she not died in 1995.) The reality of the matter is that I had planned to propose that day because I figured that it would mean that two of the best things that could have ever happened to me would have been realized on that day. In other words, it was because I thought he was that damn special that I decided that he should share that day with my mom. Needless to say, that didn’t happen.

Ryan moved in for the kill in a way that I’ve never experienced before. It was roughly one week after we met when he became the first person to ever make the suggestion that we be “boyfriends.” Usually I make that move. Likewise, it wasn’t but a few weeks later that he dropped the “L-bomb”, that being a word that I’ve only used with one other person, namely Josh. I could have used it twice before, but I never told Bryan that when we were together 6 years ago. I think that demonstrates how much that word scares me. I believe that the “L” word is a surrender of power to your partner. It offers them the ability to have your heart but it also gives them the power to absolutely destroy it. Which is what scares me the most about Ryan.

On one hand, I know he has a great heart and he definitely cares for me. I’ve got 32 saved text messages and several fond memories of things he has said to remind me of that. To top it all off, he made the initial move which means he must be interested, right? On the other hand, like tonight, he’s a bit silent. He may be asleep, I don’t know. This is where my paranoia thrives. He’s been out of town for the past week and a half, working with some environmental campaign by distributing “whatever” all over college campuses. I know he’s been busy as hell and, to hear him talk about his day, it’s hard work. I can’t seem to shake the idea that something else is going on. I have no basis for this thought, no evidence to back it up. Just this sinking feeling that even I will admit is a product of the paranoia which comes with having been hurt. Ryan is not the cheating type, I believe this whole heartedly in my head. It’s my heart that I’m having trouble convincing.

The paranoia has gotten so bad that I actually hunted down his Gay.com profile, or as Chris would call it “Click-a-trick”, just to see the details. I was immediately upset when I saw that he still listed himself as single, that is, until I noticed that his last update was in late February – before he met me – and his last login was early in March – right as things started heating up between he and I. I didn’t even ask him to stop going there, I didn’t even feel the need to ask. There’s nothing wrong with chatting on a site like that, especially if it is clear that you are taken.  I choose not to go there anymore out of this intense respect for my partner, regardless of who I may be dating. It’s a gesture to them that I am pleased with what I have. I don’t expect that in return. The fact that he hasn’t logged in since he called me his boyfriend indicates to me that he may be serious… or just busy.

It’s this intense episode of Law and Order in my head. The prosecution is trying their damnedest to prove that the boy is a cheating, drug-addicted, alcoholic fuckwit. The defense is trying to discredit the prosecutions case and prove that the boy is a boy scout, one with a clean record, an impeccable character, and no evidence to the contrary. The problem with this, and any other case like it, is that the reality of life probably falls in the middle of those two things. That’s the scene in my head most nights, when my resolve to just “chill” gets weak. I worry that he is off sleeping with someone infinitely hotter than me, mainly due to the fact that my self-esteem is not exactly high. I worry that he doesn’t care anymore, that perhaps my baggage was enough for him to run away. Of course, I can’t prove any of this nor do I believe it with my head, just my heart. It’s hard to explain. What I can say is that I really just want to believe that Ryan is a good guy who won’t hurt me. My heart, however, cautions against the idea of surrendering my heart in direct defiance to my “better judgment.”

So I’m still guessing. Trying to figure out if my fears regarding him are the figment of my imagination or if, perhaps, my entire perception of this situation is just a product of my heart – clinging desperately to the concept that there may be love out there.

    In the privacy of a little known account on a blog site that no one would suspect, I begin to reflect upon what seems to be the end of the beginning. It’s the eve of a new chapter in my life, one that makes me the embodiment of statistical defiance. In less than a month, I become the first degree-holding member of my family. You would think I would be significantly happier than I am right now but, frankly, I’m absolutely tired. The past month has been perhaps the most chaotic on record, with old love dying and new love doing something – not sure what.

A couple of years ago, I found myself lurking on a site of ill-repute just killing time. It was my mother’s birthday and, having lost her 10 years prior, I was a little down on life and just trying to distract myself.  Over the course of a couple of hours, I fielded the usual barrage of messages requesting everything from general conversation to random, meaningless sexual rendezvous. Needless to say, the sex was out of the question. I don’t think I could have gotten it up if I had wanted to. This one creature, however, caught my attention. He seemed to have a heart and was real about it. He wasn’t out for sex, at least not to my knowledge, he just wanted a conversation. His name was Josh.  Josh and I spent several hours on the phone that night. We were up until nearly 5 in the morning, only to meet at a little restaurant near my house later that afternoon.  A month later, we were officially an item and I fell hopelessly in love with him.

The relationship saw so many hard times, the predominate portion of which were not our fault, but we made it through them – that is until the Summer of 2006. We broke up one night, in a blur of tears, and I lost it. I drank half a bottle of tequila and walked down the outer perimeter route here in town, only to get picked up by a friend of mine several blocks away. I was crying insanely because, to me, my heart seemed irreparably broken. It took several months for me to put myself back together and, right as I was about to get everything straight in my head, I got a message from Josh. He wanted to talk.

After several hours of conversation online, we met at a park near his end of town. There, we talked for hours about everything that we felt – our fears, our concerns, and the end of our relationship. That night, we got back together in secrecy and didn’t reveal this fact to anyone for a couple of weeks. When the news finally came out, my friends were supportive and wished me the best of luck. His friends, however, were not as amused.

We fought through the criticism from his camp and made another go at it.  We celebrated anniversaries as if we had never been apart, we did much better, I thought, than we ever had before. It was about a month later when he called me from the local bar, advising that he was drunk and surrounded by friends. I had class the next morning so I wasn’t feeling left out at all, I was glad he could have fun. His friend Jason was in the background referring to him as a “monogamous prude.” I had never been so proud as to hear those words, it meant that even his friends knew that he was happily taken.

The next morning, Josh called me in tears. He had drank too much, he said, and lost track of his “sober sister” – that is, his heterosexual body guard. The next thing he recalls is accidentally taking some acid and losing consciousness. According to his story, he woke up on the receiving end of some oral sex and immediately put a stop to it. He left the apartment – his friend Jason’s apartment. I skipped all but one class that morning and went to be by his side. After fussing at him for getting so drunk and losing his sober sister, I told him that I was sorry and that I was there regardless.  He fired off a message to Jason, via e-mail, that simply advised that their friendship was over as it almost cost him his boyfriend. That was the last time the subject was discussed until about three days ago.

Josh and I broke up the weekend after Valentine’s day. We had had a rather nasty argument the night before and figured that we probably weren’t right for each other. It was a simple break-up and seemingly pain-free for both parties involved. He said he thought we shouldn’t be together, I asked if he was sure. He said yes, I walked out the door and made some phone calls to start my day. It was as if nothing had happened.

Several days later, in a blur of alcohol induced weakness, I hacked his e-mail in an attempt to find anything to make my heart hurt a little less. I found it. It was a message to Jason advising that he was going to be out at that same bar that night and wanted to know where he could score some ecstacy. That communication was sufficient enough to let me know that it wasn’t that Josh was taken advantage of, Josh merely had lied to avoid getting caught cheating. Thus begins tonight’s reason for writing.

The Friday after Josh and I broke up, I went out to Applebee’s with some friends of mine. Maggie and some of the girls from school had requested my presence for drinks and whatnot. I, unfortunately, had given up alcohol, amongst other things, for Lent. En route to Applebee’s, I received a phone call from Jonathan, that same friend that had picked me up all those months ago as I walked from Josh’s house. He was coming into town from Frankfort and was bringing a friend. I invited him to Applebee’s.

So in walks Jonathan and his friend. We all have a seat and there the night begins. Maggie and the girls got hammered, Jonathan and Ryan, his friend, followed suit. I couldn’t stop looking at Ryan. He was absolutely gorgeous. After all the drinking, Maggie and the girls were going to meet back at her house for more drinks and other foolishness. Jonathan, being already way too drunk, advised that it would be best if we went back to my apartment instead. Ryan, of course, followed. The boys spent the night talking with me while watching random movies that I had bootlegged from Limewire. Ryan and I walked outside to smoke. On the porch, Ryan and I discussed where we were from, what we were doing with our lives, and where our hearts had been so far. I still couldn’t help looking at him. He moved in for a kiss. A week later, we were officially an item.

A few days later, I got a call from the doctor. I had gone and gotten tested the morning before the Applebee’s trip. The doctor was calling to advise that I had tested positive for Hepatitis C and needed additional testing to confirm that and to assess the damage. I immediately left school and had bloodwork done. On the way home, I called my sister and then, my ex-bf Chris to try and find some way not to lose my mind over this rather shocking bit of information. Chris spent hours on the phone with me trying to help me hash it all out. We had almost finished our conversation when I asked him how he would deal with this information in light of my new little relationship. He didn’t really know.

After a couple of hours of praying and thinking, I text messaged Ryan. “Hey baby, I’m not really gonna be good conversation tonight so I will just have to talk to you tomorrow. ” He immediately calls me and asks what’s wrong. After much hesitation, I tell him what the doctor had said. His first words were “Are you ok?” I said no and started crying hysterically. After all I had dealt with, I thought, why this too? I was convinced that Ryan was going to call this relationship off. I was surprised when he said, “Look. I don’t care what you are going through. We’ll get through this together. I just want to be with you.” I lost it again. I think that’s probably when I fell for him.

A week later, the doctor let me know.. It was a false alarm. I was good.

Fast-forward to this past weekend. I received an e-mail from Josh, replying to a blog entry I had written where I basically called him out for being a cheating bastard. He asked me if I was serious, I told him what I knew. I got really upset and ended up spending most of that night crying and drinking cheap red wine. It was then that I realized that something was wrong with me, something that I hadn’t thought was the case. I still had much more healing to do, most of which I had not expected to deal with.

I seriously considered leaving Ryan that night because I became rather scared of him. He represented the possibility of getting hurt again and, frankly, I still don’t know that I have it in me to survive another fuckwit breaking my heart. I spent two and a half hours on the phone with Chris, trying to keep Ryan in light of all my fears. Chris listened to the story I’ve told thus far, along with some minor details, and made it clear that I would be stupid for leaving him – this guy is a boy scout, figuratively speaking.

That next night, yesterday, I called Ryan while he was out of town on a business trip. He was sitting in a hotel room, drinking by himself and watching TV. We talked for probably an hour and a half before the shit hit the fan and we were fighting. The cause of the fight was a comment he had made about “doing some coke” and how that conflicted with my zero-tolerance policy on drugs harder than pot. I had overreacted, he wasn’t doing coke just pulling my chain. It was too late, however, because in the midst of the clean-up conversation, he made it clear that my little policy on this was judgmental and snobbish. He acted as if I was saying this just because I enjoy being on a high horse or something equally as insulting. I called him on the disrespect. He spent the rest of the night apologizing and, for that matter, sent texts most of today telling me that he loved me and that he was sorry.

He sent one around 2pm, I responded that I was in a meeting with my boss. I was and the subject was him. Heather, my supervisor, spent about an hour talking to me about the situation. I ended up coming to the conclusion that he may very well be an alcoholic. He drinks a lot and often. He drinks alone, especially in random hotel rooms 700 miles away. When he drinks, sometimes he gets verbally .. well.. abusive. He gets mean. Other times, he gets all wonderful and romantic and says the most heart-warming things I have ever heard.  Last night was the last straw, I think. Something has to change because, as if I’m not scared enough for my own reasons, now I have to wonder if I have gotten myself involved with a verbally-incontinent alcoholic.

I still don’t know what to do or what tomorrow will bring. Perhaps this will all go away and never be an issue again. My hope is that I am just blowing this out of proportion and he’s just .. well.. fucking French. In light of Josh and his deception, I just honestly don’t know what to believe when it comes out of a man’s mouth anymore. Hopefully God will straighten that out for me – soon.

The random creation of a WordPress account was the first sign that my writer’s block may have been cured. For years, it seems, I have flooded both MySpace and Livejournal with what I believe is the greatest literary disappointment since Dan Brown wrote Deception Point back in 2001. What concerns me the most about blogging these days is that it has turned into, in most cases, the mindless rantings of poorly educated adolescent children. One thing should be made clear, I am not opposed to children, especially the hormone-based writings of these children. I am only opposed to poorly educated people and those who waste my time with frequent reminders regarding the low-quality of their life. If there is to be a discussion of one’s “sucky life”, I would at least prefer to have it wrapped up in some explanation of why and perhaps a discussion of how this may impact them in the long run. This is an easy trap to fall into, as I have demonstrated for years myself.

I’m 23, gay, white, and male and I live in Kentucky. Is that not self-explanatory? Nevertheless, while my readers may have something in common with that description, what value does my writing have to them if there is not some point where they can relate?

I’m in love. Well that’s nice, one might respond, but perhaps I could fill a few minutes of my reader’s time with some insight into that emotion and why I felt it so necessary to share. For starters, he’s 22 and I met him in the most unlikely of places — an online dating site. I know what people think about those places and they are absolutely right. Online dating sites are mere meat markets, never a good place for serial monogamists but, instead, a place where one might go if being a serial monogamist doesn’t fulfill all one’s more carnal needs. I seem to have found the diamond in the rough while searching for what I shouldn’t have been seeking. That was almost 2 years ago.

The other details are merely facts, there to explain the origin of my line of thought or, at least, describe my background. I was raised in Charleston, SC and moved to Kentucky to be near the rest of my family while completing my undergraduate linguistics degree. I’m the product of a Lutheran church and a Southern home mixed with more recent yankee and secular influences. When I grow up, I want to teach linguistics and spend my free time surfing, playing with my golden lab (which I have yet to purchase), or cuddling by the fire with my husband (whom I have yet to marry.)

I have plenty of time to touch all these subjects in future entries so I’m off to bed for the night.