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National Coming Out Day

Today is National Coming Out day.

Most straight people have no idea of the emotional pain one suffers when they can not live life as the person they are because society has told us all our lives our needs and desire to love and be loved by someone is wrong / a sin / evil / abomination etc. My struggles with it kept me under a cloud of severe depression in my youth through my 20’s, and that included serious thoughts of suicide on various occasions.

I don’t automatically consider everyone who is uncomfortable with the concept of homosexuality a homophobe. That said, real homophobia is still accepted and promoted in too many circles, and violent behavior motives by that hatred is all too often justified in its name. Years ago someone I loved was taken from this world because someone didn’t like that he was gay. He was bashed to death. A friend recently had to deal with physical violence from not just one, but two members of his family because he started living his life honestly, and the family members freaked because he was “being a girl”. He was verbally assaulted by others in his circle of friends and family. Even though the acceptance of homosexuality has increased in society by leaps and bounds in the last 15 years, my friends experience shows that we as a society still have a long LONG way to go to stamp out the vile rot inherent in homophobia.

PS: I’ve helped three people come to accept the fact that they are gay. One is just a couple of months into his journey. I also helped a band mate find peace with his gay son.

Helping people deal with gay is my superpower apparently.

Loss

I’m gonna try not to go into any detail, but my heart hurts.

I have a long time friend who is suddenly having very serious health issues. We’ve been friends for 30 plus years and have a lot of good history. We’ve talked some about what is going on, but not enough apparently. I was planning to go down to Southern California to visit. He was good with the idea. But, in a brief text session, I managed to be clumsy with a comment, not recognizing a shift in tone and saying something in the exchange that in retrospect I should not have. In times gone by this would have just faded away as dumb comments do.

Those days are gone.

He has no interest in ever talking to me again. I think he deleted my number. One of the best friends I ever had has dissolved our friendship.

I know part of this is a result of the tremendous stress he’s going through. I pretend I can wrap my head around it. But, honestly, that would not be truth. I know I can’t. That also makes me understand I probably can’t change this turn of events. All I can do is hope this is not the way things end between us.

Note: This was posted on Facebook, but I decided to delete it. I want to share it, but I really don’t feel putting it on that forum is constructive at the moment. Since few read this blog, and it functions more as a diary, I felt this was the right place for this.

I had been meaning to start blogging again anyway.