Well, it has been over a year since my journey began on a summer night in Montreal. A lot has happened. While there have been some highs, there have also been some increadible lows. It always helps me to write, so I feel compelled to share a few things with this community that I can tell no one else. Bear with me...it could take a while. Dante wrote that it is the saddest thing in the world to think of happier times when one is in dispair. God...how true is that? To think of happier times of love when love is lost fills me with an emptiness that is impossible to discribe. Needless to say--I have a scar I can talk about. While my beginning was in Montreal, my heart landed with a loud thud on the shores of Lake Michigan on a August midnight. Another random meeting that completely altered my pathway. I seem to be good at those. It would be VERY lame to say we saw each other at the sametime. I mean, who really does that? But, we did. Sorry...I know that sounds really gay. It was my first night there. He was a native. I was the visitor from out of state. We spent the entire weekend together--simply because of a chance meeting on some peaceful Thursday night. I knew then I was in big trouble because I had violated my Cardinal Rule: Never loose your heart...use your head. I thought I had it bad with my first encounter in Montreal (who doesn't have it bad for their first really?) but THIS...this was a music I had never heard. It was the perfect score--displace one note and it would be incomplete. Displace one phrase and the entire structure would fall. Over the course of the summer and fall we saw each other just about every other weekend. Gradually I found myself falling deeper and deeper for the utter impossible. No doubt I am a complete romantic...but I am also a prisioner of both time and circumstance. We were from two different worlds and hundreds of miles apart. I am not out at all, he completely was. I had never even thought about dating anyone...EVER. Afterall, I'm in the closet. But isn't just my luck? I meet someone that I could have an honest to God relationship with and he's 800 miles away. For the first time the walls of my closet began closing in. I started to gain the strength to begin to be who I really was. I started to loose the paranoia and fear. Could this be the one that finally does it? We talked everyday. My heart would race everytime I saw his number come across my phone. "I have never been like this in my life...ever" were some of the last words I heard him speak. Then....silence. Now I know how Ray Goff felt all those years coaching football at the University of Georgia: in the dark. Searching for answers. But, I knew this day would come. I knew that I was destined to slip out of his life the moment we said hello. But that doesn't make the burning pain any less dull. As painful as it is I must close this chapter and move on. But it has been one of the most wonderful narratives I have lived. While I may never see him again, I had the joy of sharing a brief moment with someone who brought me closer to myself and someone whose spirit is even stronger than gravity's powerful embrace. And so...this brings me to the end of this particular chapter. It has been an amazing trip. My journey has taken me to the depths of depression and alcoholism to the summit of complete absolution. I have ventured to The Castro in San Francisco and SoHo in Manhattan. I have been to DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C. and toured the streets of Atlanta. I have meet great friends. I have found love and lost love. At one point I think I even spoke with Elvis. I have done all this. But my soul still seems empty...and my heart aches with the struggle of geography and what could have been--but what is impossible. But, dispite my sadness, it has been--by all accounts--an extraordinary journey.
Nice story, and from someone like me who's had as crappy a 2009 as possible (except for coming out, that was the high point), keep your chin up, the worst is behind you, the future filled with possibility. Learn from the bad things but don't let them weigh you down. Remember the words that simultaneously bring despair to kings and hope to paupers: This too will pass.
Wonderfully well written! Thank you for composing that for us all to share. I'm sorry it didn't have a happy ending, but what a wonderful experience - filled with new places, things, and people. Once those fond memories are captured, no one can take them away. Has this inspired you to perhaps come out now? Life really can be wonderful all the time if you find that special someone with whom you can make a life. I'm living that right now, and it's wonderful. And the better I feel, the less fearful and more indifferent I am about other people finding out that I'm gay.
I did find that someone...but lost him. Kinda like the time I discovered the meaning of life....but forgot to write it down.
