Letting yourself feel

We all have bindings that will take time to undo.

 

Well Steller, I'm in the same exact limbo land. I'm concluding that I'm not really all that comfortable being gay. I've understood it cognitively, but still reject it on some deep personal level. Because of that I can't permit any kind of a relationship. So now I'm trying to get over all the self-loathing and "why me" and forgive my self for the cowardice that brought me to the miserable place I find myself in. I think that a lot of it has to do with figuring out who the real person is in contrast to the carefully created and nurtured cyborg I created to hide the real me. As a result the real guy was so buried and stunted that he's all but dead. There are 30+ years of development to regain. I'm not terribly hopeful. I feel like a damn ASPCA commercial of abused puppies nervously quivering in a cage.

 

Whoa! Runnerrunner,

I am not sure it is self loathing.

If you hit a puppy with a newspaper enough you fundamentally change the puppy's ability to trust.

You are 44, were aware you were gay since your teens and society has either been slapping their rolled up newspaper at their leg as they looked at you or literally hit you with it for being gay, for being different.

This lack of trust is not of your creating.

Be easy on yourself.

But you know what... Recognizing the newspaper is an illusion is a powerful tool. As a parent the biggest fear a parent has is that the child learns the parent has no REAL authority or power too early in the child's life.

Nobody can truly hurt you unless you allow them to.

You can have a relationship. Even though society altered your past you own your future.

 

Hey, Runnerrunner... I got 25 years on you, just coming out now. I lived in denial for 55 years-- no easy feat, let me tell you. I know what self-loathing is, and I know all about societal/cultural/familial/religious pressure. I love your analogy to an abused puppy--it describes very well how I feel. But I also agree with Skiff 100%. Once you realize what put you quivering in that cage, and reclaim your identity, that rolled-up newspaper loses its power. As Skiff said to me, I say this: I give up. I am gay. I am strong. H/t to Skiff.

And, Runnerrunner, even abused puppies get rescued. It's just that work falls to us, the puppies.

Don't lose hope.

 

I think most of the time it takes us a bit longer to be comfortable with the "new us" than we hope it would. I sometimes surprise myself when I notice some of my best friends seem to be more ok/open with it than me, and it's been almost 2 years.

BTW Runnerrunner your choice of avatars is awesome !

 

I know what you mean about not feeling. After decades of surpressing such a basic piece of our humanity, it's no wonder we forget how to feel...and that includes both the good and the bad. It's the numbness so many of us know so well. My hope is that the damage is reversible. It's a big reason I decided to come out.

 

I know how you feel. It's gonna be hard to learn all the things you didn't want to accept, at least in my case.

Wise words from wise people up there

---------- Post added 27th Jan 2014 at 02:45 AM ----------

Totally just watched the power of vulnerability.. Excellent very funny too made me laugh a few times . Thanks

 

Brené Brown: The power of vulnerability | Video on TED.com

 

It's hard for me too. I don't think it's easy for any of us. But we all slowly get used to it.

 

Damn, now I'm going to spend the rest of my day with visions of sad-eyed pets and hearing Sarah MacLachlan songs!

I think one of the things that will help us in the long run is to recognize what a really amazing opportunity we have in front of us. Everyone dreams of some kind of a "do-over" where they can start fresh and erase the mistakes of the past. We ended up in the closet for a variety of reasons--societal, religious, familial--and we were often too young and too inexperienced to take a mature look at the panicked reactions we were having. But now we aren't. We have the chance to take the many experiences of adulthood--experiences that may have nothing whatsoever to do with sexuality--and use that experience and maturity to re-evaluate all of the bad decisions we made about our sexuality--and do it right this time. I was an insecure and fearful teenager who was bullied by classmates and my brother, and generally ignored or held at arm's length by my dad.

I look at my life now and realize a few things....I have no classmates to bully me now. My brother and I don't live together and my dad is dead. I have managed to raise a couple kids successfully into their teen years without any major difficulties, and while my job is frustrating and unexciting, it pays the bills (well, barely). And I managed to navigate a 20-year marriage that has been difficult and maddening, but I have lived through it. My current life isn't incredible but it's not awful either, and I wouldn't really consider myself a failure as a person.

That's really the point here--none of us are failures as people, and acknowledging that we are gay can not MAKE us failures. This is our chance to realize that all that self-loathing was a really pointless thing that has done nothing positive in our lives--in fact, it has stood in the way of our happiness over and over. Now we can look at ourselves and think, I can accept this part of myself without worrying that it will make me a failure of some kind--because I already know that I am NOT a failure. None of us are. We have maturity and strength, and we don't have to sit around worrying about things that kept us afraid and hidden 10, 20, 30 or even more years ago. Society always can find someone to hit with the newspaper. But it's ONLY a newspaper, not a baseball bat or an ax or a mace. It's there to shame, nothing else, and shame is 100% OUR OWN REACTION that we can either HAVE, or FIGHT. Like tic-tac-toe and global thermonuclear war, "the only winning move is not to play". It means actively working to trust ourselves and believe we're right and allow ourselves to feel, for certain, and that's not easy. But we are, at our ages, where many on this board are at 15 or 20, only we've faced many unknowns in life and have lived through them and succeeded. This is just another unknown that we can live through and succeed. Let's go for it.

 

Hi,

Tremendous oppurtunity! Question for me is how to let go, trust, and be vulnerable in this new context.

I know openly sharing and meditation (self examination) are important but I am unsure how to approach those after decades of denial, self deceit and making mistakes.

Do I trust me to "finally" get it right?

Tom

 

What choice do we have--in ANYTHING in life--but to trust that we will eventually get it right?

I know I have a tendency to come across as relentlessly optimistic, often to a rather unrealistic degree. I wasn't always like that--I used to be much more grimly realistic, and I still have moments of that. But I've spent 20 years married to someone who I have watched destroy every chance at her own happiness--including with me--by imagining a black cloud around every silver lining that comes her way. It has been a very sad thing to see and it's been a very bitter lesson as well. I love her, as much as I can, but she's made me realize how very much we are really the ONLY ones in charge of our own happiness. It's the serenity prayer in action--we accept the things we can't change, change those we can, and do our damnedest to figure out the difference.

I do get insecure and fearful sometimes thinking about what my future will be. But I know that I can't expect anyone else to take a chance on me if I'm not willing to trust myself enough to take the chance. We allow ourselves the future we think we deserve. So the first step is convincing yourself that you really DO deserve it.

 

For me, the challenge is to learn how to feel again, in ways that I haven't for a long time. I have to learn how to listen not only to my head, but also to my heart and my gut. And then I have to take a leap of faith. Tough work, but what's the alternative?

 

In my case part of it was the way I was raised and wanting everyone to be happy. Trying to please everyone and do what was expected of me. In the inside I was dying, because I never lived for me. I am finally starting to enjoy life simply by realizing who I am.

 

Let me follow in Choirboy's footsteps. A very good friend of mine on EC have been sharing about the chains and lock boxes we've forged in our lifetime of being closeted (think of Jacob Marley's Ghost). I've joked that I don't just have baggage, but a complete set of Louis Vuitton, including steamer trunks and I have in the past loved my luggage. It made everything safe, all neatly packed up with layers of blue tissue. Well, let's open a big one. I'm a perfectist. As Chip pointed out it numbs and covers up the shame.

Let's start out with the fact I am an only, no sibs. My family was prosperous, comfortable. My parents lost there 1st child due to a birth defect and were advised not to have children. Nine years later I come along, as my mother would say, a weak moment on a New Years Eve. A very happy, blessed occasion. My big, tough Marine Daddy would have wrapped me up in cotton batten if he could have. There were 3 rules: don't lie, don't be disrespectful, and don't do anything that would bring shame to the family. He was very affectionate. I was always his "Duke". To my cousins, all much older than me, I was the "Brat" and still called so. My father died while I was in my senior year at 47. My world was rocked. This was a punishment for having toyed with the idea of being gay while I was going to school in England. Later on after grad school, and a year or so later. Spent a weekend with a friend who was gay, nothing really happened, but my mother had a cheque for $50,000 made out to me and an ultimatum. Choose this way of life, take the cheque, leave town, and forego any further contact; or change my ways and remain part of the family. Did I fail to mention the dishonor I had brought to Daddy's name. How ashamed he would be of his son?

Perfectionism was the answer in dress, taste, food (that's packed away in another bag). I've never felt I ever done a good enough job; either at work or when I went back for a second masters. Even as a young child, if I got a spot on something it'd have to be changed, If it got a hole or a stain I was ready to throw it out. I gave up on golf as a novice, because I couldn't beat my mother, who'd played all her life and had an 8 handicap. I've stood like a sheep before the shearers, because nothing I did was good enough. I did marry well: great gal, dood family, great career, 3 blond children, Volvos in the garage, the right suburb. This house of cards has come tumbling down, since coming out and finding I have a genuine voice. I no longer am willing to rollover and play dead to maintain this pretense. Perfectionism has kept me from my real self, opportunities, and fun (God forbid I do something foolish, get too dirty, or de trop). Hell, I was worried like a 14 year old girl over what I should wear to a local Bear Bar night.

The truth is I have suceeded. I have 3 wonderful kids. I've made a go of a tough second career teaching middle school in the inner city. I've worked at a marriage for 25 years with reasonable success.

For me the credo I learned as child about family honor still holds, but not as a way in the twisted way I internalized it, because without honesty and respect it means nothing.

Many tears have I shed over this. My mother's words still haunt me on occasion, but they haven't since this process has started. Who's next?

 

Wow. Just wow.

What powerful stories and messages! I never had to deal with parental/family disapproval the way so many of you had to. My choices were made due to societal and cultural pressure, and to my own feelings of insecurity because, deep down, I knew who I was, and felt doomed to a long, lonely life unless I conformed in a hetero-normative world. (Even today, I can't believe I've begun to use phrases like that!)

So I conformed. I built my own prison, knowingly but still in denial about that knowledge. (There it is. I can't believe what I'm saying even as I say it.) How stupid was that? But that's in the past. I'm redefining my life based on a new normal. I don't even know what that means yet.

Family is not an issue for me. My parents are long gone, my sister has a gay son, and the one cousin with whom I feel an emotional connection is a social worker with a very long streak of tolerance and acceptance. These people may question my life decisions, but not my identity.

But I do know that learning to feel again is such an important piece of what I need to do now. Yesterday, I spent over 3 hours chatting with my good young friend's new boyfriend. He doesn't know about me yet. I'm holding off on that conversation until I can see them together (later in February). It seems wrong to come out to this boy (I mean, he's 21, and in the blush of first love--so sweet...), before I tell his 24-year-old lover who's been my personal friend for over 5 years.

All that is kind of beside the point. The point is, this young man lives and goes to school about an hour away from me. On my drive there yesterday, I had the first moments of true peace with myself, of feeling truly alive again, of having chills from my scalp to my toes. Excuse me, I'm having another of those moments now...

OK, back again. The challenge for me is to maintain that feeling when I'm with others, not just driving alone in my car. This is going to take serious work, but it feels so much worth it!

And that's my story...

To all of you out there who have provided such great advice over the last 8 days, thank you so much! The only way I know to repay the debt I owe you is to keep passing this newfound experience to others.

And now excuse me, I'm going to go away and have another of those moments.

 

This is a brilliant thread - I can relate to so much of this.

So, I'm 28. I came out to friends at 19/20, had a long relationship with a great guy (although with hindsight, I treated him like sh*t). But even in the relatively liberal environment of a British university, I was still incredibly uncomfortable with myself.

Regretably, I went straight back into the closet after University. I didn't fake straight relationships or anything, I just went back to the old habits of emotional sabotage, avoidance and living my life for everyone else.

Then a few months ago I realised I was heading towards a dark place & forced myself to come out to my parents. I promptly fell apart. I was questioning everything - why do I act how I do? Why do I go through life saying things to please people? Why can't I stick up for my own interests? What the hell are my own interests? Who AM I?

Pretty quickly, I found myself in a counsellors chair and after a few sessions she asked me to write my name in the middle of a piece of paper, then write words that describe who I am. I sat there for 10 minutes and couldn't think of anything. My head was just complete nothingness.

The only thing I knew for sure was that I was gay.

It was then that, despite being 'out' to everyone, I really realised that a big chunk of my persona was just an elaborately chiselled facade. The last decade of my life had been spent either hiding, or running away.

It turns out, there is a "me" underneath - and the actual me is ostensibly not much different to the old "straight" fake me, just one hell of a lot more relaxed. I no longer spend practically every waking moment analysing & modifying my behaviour. I don't think i'm any more camp or ostentatious, but I also wouldn't care if people thought I was.