I wanted to write this not because I wanted any of this publicly known, but because I felt like seeing it in print would help make it real, or final, or a point from which I could start moving towards the things in life that I really wanted. I'm not sure that it belongs here, but I put it here because I didn't know where else it should go. I think I always knew that I wasn't quite like most everybody else. I was in elementary school, and I remember thinking about how the prettiest girl in the grade was someone that I should talk to, but I never really knew how. Even then, even with a child's mind, I didn't know what I wanted to do; I don't remember ever wanting to kiss her. She liked me, as I later found out. I was invited to her Halloween party when I was in 6th grade. I never expected the invitation, mostly because she hung out with the cool kids, and I was most certainly not one of them. I came to her house with a gift, as I had misunderstood the invitation (I thought it was a birthday party). I came in, realized my error, but I brought her the gift. She took it, thanked me, looked me in the eyes and took a few steps closer. I found myself instinctively backing away. I realized afterward that I thought she was going to kiss me. I didn't know how to react. In fourth grade a friend of mine and I played 'doctor'. I won't discuss details, but you can imagine the parameters. Eventually I think he realized that this wasn't something that most 10 year old's were doing. We changed some of what we did, though we still did things that no two straight kids would have done. By the time we hit 6th grade he and I didn't speak much, at all. He's a firefighter in Colorado now. I haven't spoken to him since 2000, not that I really want to. Middle school, predictably, was difficult. I wanted, very much, to be normal, to want one of the girls there, to feel like things were fine, and that I had just gone through some kind of phase that had since passed. There were two people that I remember being 'attracted' to in middle school - a guy from Louisiana and a girl from Belgium. Even then, I wouldn't have known what to do with either. It later came out that the guy was a homophobe, which makes sense, I think, given the part of the U.S. that he was from. I probably had a shot at a middle school relationship (which is to say, nothing real) with the girl from Belgium. Being an entirely oblivious guy, I messed it up, which was fine in many regards. I had the opportunity to turn her into a lost cause that I could pine for, delaying the necessary recognition a while longer. High school was miserable, as I expect it was for many of the people on these boards. One day I was walking around the building about twenty minutes after school had ended when the varsity track team started training. During the winter they would run the halls, though they'd run shirtless. There was one guy (whose name I never learned) who was tall, blond and beautiful who was on the team. I remember the first time that I saw him running, and I remember staring at him as he made his way down the hall. Eventually he realized that I was staring at him, looked at me, and I averted my eyes, blushed, and found the quickest available staircase to escape to. There were others; a guy in my gym class, some other people that I never really got to know. But I still had a girl or two out there. I spent most of my time hanging out with guys who were not the types to end up in relationships in high school. I had two groups of friends; one group was into gaming, another was my group of nerd friends. One of my nerd friends in high school was quite clearly gay, and while we all knew it, he wouldn't admit it to anyone. I didn't care that he was, though I wasn't attracted to him at all. I spent a lot of time with my nerd friends, and I found myself resenting him for some of the things that he did that I thought were overtly homosexual. I realize now that my problem wasn't really with him so much as it was with myself, but I prided myself on my ability to blend in, seem straight, and ignore the bait that people would use to get a rise out of potentially gay students. As high school went on I found myself put in positions where I had to push some girls away. I wasn't interested, and I did my best to let them down without crushing them. My first year at college was a disaster. My parents marriage, which had been falling apart since my first year in high school, was starting to aggressively break up. I'd talk to my mother, and she'd have stories about things she hated that my father was doing. I'd talk to my father and he'd be silent for a while before he blew up and let loose on all the things that my mother was doing that he hated, or that he felt was directly contributing to the financial failure of his business and our lives. While all of this was going on, I fell for the first of the emotionally unavailable, abusive guys that I ended up letting into my life. I was recreating the relationship that I had with my father, who never really knew how to react to me. I never really spent time with my father; we didn't talk about sports, play catch, or do anything together. Once in a while he'd get drunk, or do something destructive that hurt. I taught myself how to shave. I learned the life lessons that I'd hoped he'd help me with. He was the first emotionally unavailable person. Looking back now, I realize that I wanted to make that guy love me because I wanted to make my father love me. I had to push away a few more girls, which made things awkward at times. I was also, still, oblivious. One of them said "My roommate is out of town this weekend and I have our room entirely to myself". The 30 year old can look at this and say "Hey, moron, she's looking to hook up with you". My response, as an 18 year old was "That's great, you get to sleep in and you don't have to worry about anybody waking you up". Oblivious... I essentially failed out of that school. I could handle the work, if I actually tried, but I didn't show up to any of my classes. I have $20,000 in student loans on my plate because of that mistake, though I suppose that if I had continued at that school, I'd have a degree with $100,000 in debt. Maybe, if I'd been better suited to handle what I had thrown at me, I'd have found a job after high school (when the economy wasn't terrible, in 2004) and I'd have been secure by now. That didn't happen, but it's my fault. I came back, after one year, ashamed, and I went to the local community college. I still cut all my classes, but it was significantly cheaper there. I got a job working for my father's company, and I worked midnight shifts doing security. The years went on and I ended up in all sorts of semi-relationships. I found younger guys who were emotionally insecure and unstable, and I devoted all my time and energy to them, all while they were dishonest with themselves, and with me. I even ended up in a weird three month relationship with one of the girls who propositioned me while I was at my first college. I'd have these moments with those guys where I'd feel like I had some kind of breakthrough - i.e. they'd admit that they were bisexual (at least), or they'd say that they loved me, or they'd say sexual things, and then, a few days later, though they had just recently told me those things, they'd violently push me away. I thought about suicide a lot in 2003, though, obviously, I didn't pull the trigger. I went from one awkward relationship to another. I hadn't kissed anybody until I made out with a girl in 2005, at 23 years old. I sabotaged the relationship shortly thereafter. I traded it for something that was wildly unstable, bound to fail. And it did. I kept coming back to one guy from 2003-2009. I obsessed, read into everything, and never wised up to the fact that nothing was going to come of it. I missed the one opportunity to do something with him. We had gone to a convention in Connecticut for a weekend. We booked a hotel room together, and we talked about drinking on Saturday night, which was a big deal for me, as I don't drink (too many alcoholics in my family to become another one). Saturday night came along and we went out to get some alcohol when we realized that every liquor store was closed, and that all the supermarkets wouldn't sell us anything (because of state law, I was 22, he was 17 at the time. It would have been underage drinking for him, but he already drank at that point. It would have been new to me, old hat for him). The way he talked that night, and the things we talked about, led me to believe that something would have happened. Instead, nothing happened, and I ended up losing my composure in the car ride back, as I broke down, cried, and he refused me. I've guarded myself from getting too emotionally invested in the current guy. I had known him for a while, but we didn't really talk until 2010. I started seeing him around more often, and we became close friends. In some regards I treated him like a kid brother - helped him out where I could, taught him the ropes to a few things, was generous with him, etc. His father is a recovered alcoholic, and he has a drinking problem. He had asked me for a ride to a party that we both went to back in 2010. I don't like parties - I don't know most of the people who are there, usually, I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't do drugs, I don't enjoy being forced to spend time with people whom I might otherwise not choose to spend time with. But he was excited about it, and we had both been invited, so I went. I was there for an hour when I realized that I couldn't possibly stand being there any longer. He was having a great time. I told him then (while he was still sober) that I'd be back at 2 am to get him. I told the guy hosting the party, along with some friends, that I was leaving, and I left. I went home, did laundry, cleaned, organized some things, and I came back at 2 am to discover that he wasn't there anymore. I later found out that the host's wife thought he was too drunk and didn't appreciate his antics. Anyone who knew him knew that I had driven him, but instead of calling me, she told him that she needed him to come with her, as they needed more ice for the party. She drove a couple of miles away, told him to go into a Dunkin Donuts and get ice, and then drove away when he got in. It was 35 degrees outside and he was dressed in a t-shirt and blue jeans. I lost it when I came back and he wasn't there. I called him, but he was too drunk to know where he was. I kept asking him to stay still, not keep walking, and let me find him. He kept walking, though he kept repeating that he was staying still. I was worried that he'd randomly get arrested by one of the myriad cops out that night (public intoxication), worried that he'd get arrested when he told me that he was 'home' (he had gone into someone else's house and just decided that was home), or that he'd be hit by a car, as he was drunk, walking all over the place (including in the lanes of a major highway). I spent 90 minutes looking before I finally found him. He was half frozen. I blasted the heat and held his hands to warm him up. I stopped at a CVS to buy a giant bottle of water, along with some baby wipes to clean up all the dirt and nastiness that was all over him. When I told him that I was going to clean him up, he had no issues with it, and he exposed himself to me. Nothing sexual happened, though it was the first time that had ever happened with a guy for me. He continued his drinking, and our first experience was in that December. He started making out with me in my car and one thing led to another. He was drunk. We hooked up again on New Year's. It was the same script; alcohol let him be the person that he was, without judging himself for it. I eventually decided to ask him about us, and what was out there for us, together. He told me that the only reason why anything happened was because he was drunk those nights. Our most serious night together came after that explanation. It was in February of 2012. He had put himself in a ridiculous situation that he needed to be extricated from, and I did just that, again. He was living at home, still working on his C.P.A., and his parents were very watchful of his drinking, given his father's alcoholic past. I wanted to just clean him up, get him somewhat sober, and get him home, but he had other ideas before he passed out on my bed. I texted his father, lying to him (pretending to be him), saying that he was fine, but that the driver who got him out to an event that we went to that day was drunk, unable to take him home. Things were amazing that night, when things happened, and then he hit a point where he pushed me away. We woke up in the morning, early, and he had a splitting headache. Given what he drank, I can't say that was unfathomable. He was distant in the morning, which was also predictable. I brought him water, Advil, and we talked for a bit, though not about anything that happened that night. I just blurted out 'So, do you hate me now?' I was thinking it, but I mentally told myself that I wasn't going to say it, right before I said it. 'How could I hate you?' was his response. It has been a year, and nothing has happened since then, though we still see each other. He's argumentative with me at times, though when he drinks he drops his guard, lets himself enjoy my company, and we can act like normal human beings. I saw him today, and we spent the better part of the day together, in the company of many other friends. He does little things, subtle things, to show that he values me. He uses things that I've made him (when he could use things that he had made for himself for precisely that purpose), he shows me his commitment to things that he knows I love, he says complimentary things. He did those things today, though as the hours passed he became more difficult, more argumentative. By the end of the day I was arguing with him over petty, completely meaningless things. But when I saw him in the morning, I could see the love that he felt by how he looked at me, how he wanted to be around me, how he spoke with me, about me. I know that things are difficult for him. He's 24 and I'll be 31 this year. It's a significant age gap, and beyond that, I know that he needs time to figure out all the things that I figured out for myself as I went through my 20's. I know that, realistically, I need to disengage, address my flaws, and find someone who is emotionally available all the time. I want to be happy, but I don't know if I want it so badly that I'm willing to make the sacrifices of convenience that make this difficult situation ever so barely tenable. I'm 30, and I'm probably still not ready to definitively say to my family that I'm gay. There's a part of me that still wishes that I could find someone who lit fire to my world, and who wasn't a guy. I realize that it's terribly, terribly, terribly unlikely to happen. I have friends who are very religious, and I fully expect to lose face to them, if I don't lose them. I know that anyone who's not willing to consider me a full person, though I'm gay, is someone who shouldn't be in my life. It makes me sad, they're not bad people, though I know that this thing, which should be completely irrelevant to them, will change the tenor of our friendship, if not destroy it. If there is a God, I would tell them, I, too, was made in His form. To deny me would be to deny Him. I could go into true depth on every single failed relationship, and what that truly meant, but there's no real value in that. I know what I need to do, and while I'd like to believe that I'm capable of doing all those things, I don't know if I am. I should apologize to this community for the cowardice that I've shown, and for the negative reactions to some people based on the things that I hate about myself. For whatever it's worth, I never hated any of you, I hated the thing inside me that made me this way, made my life more difficult, made things impossible, and finds ways, daily, to bring me down. A few weeks ago I was thinking about what it would be like to be in a long term relationship with a guy I loved, and what it would be like to have kids. If one of them called 'Dad', how would I know it was for me, or if it was for him? I thought about what their lives would be like, and the stigma that would be attached to them for what I am, and for what he is. They don't even exist yet, if they ever will, and all I wanted to do was protect them for that. I've gone on for far too long. If you've read this, thank you. I don't talk about this to anyone else, this was the only place that I felt like I could go to; somewhere I could be anonymous, leaving my words in a place where judgment could not be attached to me.
