There must be something better then going home at the end of the day and trying to kill my mind to keep this constant heartache at bay. 

The other day I ventured out to a bar on Hampden’s "The Avenue" and sat down at the bar, just not to be home alone for once.  I had several drinks, chatted amicably with some of the others there, and then walked, a tad tipsy, home, feeling comfortably numb.  The next day a friend actually congratulated me on going to a bar by myself.  Don’t be too thrilled, I replied, I’m drinking more.  Which is just why I didn’t want to become a barfly in my middle age.  The next morning I woke up with a middle of the week hangover, something I won’t say I’ve never experienced before, but then it was in the comfort of my own little bar in the basement, which came with the house.  I’d never have put one in of my own accord.  I was raised in a Baptist household, see…

So I don’t want to do that again.  At least not until my regular Happy Hour gang meets again this Friday.  So I’m hitting on my humidor more.  Which of course, taxes my body in its own slowly lethal way.  But at least it numbs the heartache somewhat and the next morning I don’t feel it, other then perhaps a little more tiredness in the veins.  I wonder what it’s doing to my heart.  The physical one that is.

There must be something better.  Tonight I saw something I have in common, at least remotely, with the ex-gay survivors, something I see over and over again in their words:  you always get told that if you’re still gay, then you aren’t trying hard enough not to be.  And as it turns out, the lonely get the same painful, hurtful message, often from well meaning friends and family.  It’s always your own damn fault.  Stop whining and work harder at it.  And when change never comes, you just feel more guilty, more worthless.  There is something wrong with you.  It’s your own fault.

So here I am tapping my keyboard, as a way of therapy.  Somewhere out there, the guy who left me those messages last December may read this and feel justified once more.  Maybe he’ll want to twist the knife in again.  Wonder if they basically feel the way I do, frankly my dear, we just don’t give a damn.  If it’s who I think it is who wrote that, then he knows exactly how to make it hurt in a way I’ll never get over.  Maybe he was being nicer to me then I realized at first.

My productivity is going down into the toilet at work.  My little Baltimore rowhouse is a mess.  I need to sit down and do my monthly bills and budget.  I need to work on some of the exercises in that Advanced Java Web Services textbook.  I have repairs to make on the front porch.  My drafting table has been sitting idle for so long.  It takes so much energy to push back constantly at the heartache and some days I just don’t have anything left.  And it’s been that way with me for decades now.  Decades.  Lonernomore1, you should be impressed with how long I’ve managed to hold it all in and not spill my guts out to everyone.

Again its a pathetic method for sympathy. Have a great life, and yet once again you will be alone because that is what you choose… 

No…it isn’t what I choose idiot, any more then I choose to be a gay man, although I’m perfectly content with that.  If I choose this solitude then it stands to reason I would be content with it now wouldn’t I?  I have a nice little house, a job I couldn’t have imagined in my wildest dreams I’d ever have, that earns me a very comfortable living, I’m in reasonably good health, although if I keep on smoking and drinking that might well change.  I have a nice car.  I have good friends.  Just no arms to come home to.  I would give it all up if I could have that.  I’d wash dishes forever to have that.  But you can’t make bargains with fate.  Fate doesn’t care.

There must be something better.  I just can’t seem to find it.  If it won’t find me then I’m done for.  The reason you accept being gay is that it’s the only way to finally make a whole person out of yourself because it’s what you are, and true love, if you’re ever going to find it, is with another of your own sex.  You accept being gay, in order to find that love.  The catch of course is, that doesn’t mean you will.

The people who know me all tell me that I’d make a very worthy lover.  Fate doesn’t seem to much care about that either though.