Saturday, April 19, 2014

I'm not okay.

I'm sorry if I'm not joining in on the holiday. For those of you celebrating, I hope you have a great Easter. Me, I'm working in the morning and afternoon and will likely just be at home in the evening.

Just like every other night.

Guys.

I'm not okay.

Recently, I just feel stuck. As some of you know, I've more or less been at the same job for about nine going on ten years now. And frankly, it is not a job I want to be in. Last year, a friend suggested I look into a specific field. Well, I did and had a number of job interviews, and apparently failed them all. I get e-mails every day from a couple job search sites with positions that I don't apply for. Perhaps I'm just sure that if I tried, I wouldn't get them.

I also live with my brother in a small apartment, and frankly, I need out. He and I are not a good roommate match. Maybe it's me, maybe it's him, but we just don't work. Also, I need space. Tonight the lack of space was almost unbearable when my little brother visited.

I've recently realized how little of figuring out who I am I've actually done. While I try to keep in mind that this isn't a bad thing, I keep getting certain people who want to crow about their accomplishments, specifically people who have basically scolded me about my life. And I know, this is my life, but they need to understand that just because one person can be married and having kids and renting or mortaging a house by my age doesn't mean my life is any less just because it hasn't happened for me yet.

And I want to tell them this. I'm happy they've gone so far, and really don't want to sound like I'm conflicting statements. I also don't want to be saying, "It's all so easy for you," because I'm sure from their perspective it wasn't. But from where I am, it almost seems that way.

Frankly, I'm depressed over this, and the toll it's taking is becoming noticeable. Technical issues aside, I've barely done any work on the next episode of my podcast and don't blog as often as I used to. I can't seem to get into my creative writing so well either.

This isn't just my creative output. At work yesterday, I had a full-on mood swing. I tried to laugh it off, but it happened. Overbearing people become unbearable, and I even admitted to a couple homicidal fantasies about them. (Also, decreased sex drive, but let's not go there.)

I haven't written about this issue in this level. I have put out a few tiny cries for help that have gone ignored. There's been no one I feel comfortable with talking about it. Even in private chats with my dear friends Jami and Tiffany, I've had trouble spilling to them.

So on top of not being able to get a new job and thus try to get my own place, my current state of mind now is really not helping.

Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Most of the actual story

Two years ago, I published a blog titled "A question of what you like" in which, I made public that I identify as homosexual. Since then, I've looked back at that blog many times and realized how little of my coming out experience I actually documented. It even contains one or two things I now wish I hadn't said then, but I've learned a lot in these two years since posting that, so I've elected to let it remain as an example of who I was then.

Not long ago, I was looking at Yahoo Answer's LGBT section and found a question asking when you first realized your sexual orientation/gender identity. In the 2012 blog, the way it was written, I made it sound like it was a recent realization. The truth is, I probably would have identified as gay years ago with better sex education.

My parents never had "the talk" with me. The most I got was assurance was that some woman would find me attractive and that I should follow up on it. Well, I'll be honest... Some women did. At church camp one summer, a girl got an all-out crush on me and went out of her way to say hi. I simply was not interested and probably brushed her off a bit ruder than I should have. On two occasions, women have asked me to marry them. Both times, I let them down. (I was dating neither. One was a coworker who was married with children. The other was a friend I chatted to online.)

"You just haven't met the right girl yet" is the mantra to encourage single guys in this situation. And in my case, it was true: I hadn't met the right girl yet. And I never will. Because she doesn't exist. And the more I think on this, the more I realize I should always have known that I never wanted to fall in love with and marry a girl. The signs have been right there, I just didn't know how to read them.

Thus, I'm presenting most of the times in my past when my same-sex attraction seems obvious. Most, because there are some that I've elected to stay private. I'm typically pretty open about my life, but there are things that I just don't want to share with the world.

I've had a fascination with other guys (particularly their bodies) as far as I can remember. Being the third kid in a big family, if I had a bad dream, sometimes I'd go to my oldest brother and sleep with him. Thinking back on that, I know what I liked was his warm, comforting body near mine.

When I finally heard what homosexuality was, I kind of sneakily looked up gay pornographic images online and found myself liking them. This was when I was 16 or so. I didn't have home internet access, so I had to fleetingly download it to a disc at a library before anyone noticed and I'd look at it at home.

My sister and I moved into an apartment when I was 20, and in a little over a year, she moved out to be with her then-boyfriend, now husband. After she moved out and I had the place to myself, at one point I considered a rent boy. I had heard a coworker use the term "bicurious" and wondered if that was me, because frankly, when I tried to imagine having sex, it always wound up being sex with another man.

Note, over this time, I had people making accusations about my sexuality and some people asking and wondering. I didn't date or go out with anyone. At all. I once worked with the church youth group and even taught that homosexuality was wrong, but I found myself saying that homosexuals weren't necessarily evil people. The woman who was teaching with me agreed. (Surprise, her husband came out a couple years ago.)

At age 25, I met a long-time pen pal in person on vacation and we shared rooms in hotels for a few days. I couldn't help but think that he was very attractive. I found my interest in men becoming more dominant as I got closer to 26. 25 is the age where your mind is finally able to understand love, and on April 1, 2012, I accidentally made close contact with another gay guy's butt and knew that beyond any shadow of a doubt, I was gay. I came out of the closet to friends and family a week later.

I often wonder what may have happened if I'd had a better sex education, the actual "birds and the bees" talk. Would I have come out sooner? But then, considering that from third grade on, I was homeschooled and then put in a Christian school for one year, I likely wouldn't have heard an LGBT positive view.