This came in the mail yesterday, and I gave it a first try this morning here at Casa del Garrett…

How Deep Will You Go is advertised as a connection conversation card game to play among friends or lovers. “What if the next time you hang out, phones were away and you saw a side of them you never knew?” There are three types of cards: Ice Breakers, Confessions, and Going Deep. But I didn’t buy this deck to play with others. I’m really not comfortable exposing myself that much to anyone, except the boyfriend I never had, I bought it because it looked like it would give me a more structured way to deep dive into my own self, by randomly picking a card every day and thinking about its question. Self psychoanalysis if you like.

This first morning I tried one of each type. Going forward I think I’ll just pick a card from one type depending on my mood when I wake up. The going deep card I pulled asked me to describe my biggest heartbreak and what it taught me.

Oh boy…

That would not be when I discovered my first crush had moved far away, like out of the country far away, and I’d probably never see him again, and I almost jumped off a bridge in front of a train. Which I didn’t do when it occurred to me that it would probably traumatize the engineer. Isn’t it always the case that when you think about how your life affects others it makes you a better person. But then Elon says empathy is western civilization’s biggest weakness.

No…it was my second crush, a few years later, which when it hit me left me overjoyed to think I’d been given a second chance at love after I was certain it was over for me, and we became very close, to the point of intense heart to heart conversations when we were alone, sending love letters while I was away with other friends on a road trip, then only to realize sometime later that I’d fallen in love with a straight guy, and it would never be.

I think I knew then what the future held. And in a culture that back then gave gay guys nothing but venom and static from every direction…

Mad Magazine, July 1978 by Jack Davis

…who was I to think it would be any different?

Well the card deck is working. I probably gave that question more serious thought than I ever did before. What did I learn? Well…it wasn’t a lesson I was ready to take to heart just then, but I knew it all the same: that we are all utterly, totally, completely alone in this life. That the universe does not care about our deepest heartfelt hopes and dreams, and if we cannot make that heart and soul connection with another, then we either treasure and care for our own heart, so as to at least keep being good people and doing our part to keep civilization moving forward, and loving as best we can our families and friends in this life, and somehow some way endure the empty loneliness ahead of you, or you just go find a bridge and jump.

Obviously I haven’t jumped. But there have been moments it really came close. What I have to think about now is I made a bunch of young gay friends during the Love In Action protests, some of whom still stay in touch with me, and I don’t want to set that example for them. It’s such a stereotypical way for gay guys to go. I don’t want them thinking its inevitable. I want them to see a future.

Empathy isn’t a weakness. It’s what makes civilization possible. It’s what makes moving on with your own life possible, absent that body and soul romance you never got.