(no subject)
I'm in one of my potentially whining, certainly self-analyzing, and tired-but-not-tired-enough-to-sleep-so-I'll-write kind of moods. Largely a general update, too.
As far as a general update, things have been decent lately, I guess. My normal holiday depression set in a couple of weeks ago, 6+ weeks to go on that one. Granted, it isn't as bad as other years, but it could just be warming up. I've been trying to spend time away from the computer and out with friend's when possible. This has put me behind in things that I don't want to be behind in, but at the same time, I've realized that if I keep pushing at the breakneck pace that I have been for nearly a year, I'm going to fall apart entirely.
But it still makes me feel bad knowing that I have a list of things needing to be done that aren't getting done as quickly as I want them to be.
Back to the topic of being out with people...Jennifer and Danelle have both been around a lot lately. It's always good to be out with Danelle, if for no other reason than the absolutely insane yet often very serious conversations we have. Jennifer is...well, Jennifer. :) A never ending source of new things to ponder over, though I'd never give her the satisfaction of telling that to her face. ;)
Jennifer and I went to the middle school band concert at the high school tonight. As one of the directors (none other than Jackie Deen herself) put it, tonight's Christmas concert is the only performance all year where you get to see the entire school district's band program perform in one place, from 6th grade through 12th. There is nothing like having the Touch of Gold burst through the doors to the cadence of an awesome drum line and bust out with the fight song or The Horse or any number of other very-pleasing tunes. I've rambled about the ToG before, but truly, you just can't understand how awesome a program we have here unless you've been lucky enough to be a part of it. Alas, as you can tell, the nostalgia hit me pretty hard tonight.
After the concert, we came back here for a bit. Decided to track down Danelle and see what she was up to, but she was at Wal-Mart...so sayeth her mother over the phone. Ahhh, but all is not lost! Danelle can spend 15-20 minutes just picking out the right shampoo! Of course we had time to drive across town to Wal-Mart and still manage to find her casually browsing...what else, but the pen aisle. :) This led to the decision that I'd help Kelsey (Danelle's sister) study for the math part of her test tomorrow. I miss math, working on it of course inspired more nostalgia. Yes, I'm a math-and-music-loving computer nerd. Go figure.
I provided nice massages to all three of the ladies (Sorry, no explanation, it's funnier that way.).
Jennifer and I ended up here just in time to watch And the Band Played On. I'd love to summarize it, but even words can't do the movie justice. As usual, it's something like this that puts me over the edge and into one of my moods. It's a wonderful movie with an incredible cast (seriously, pull up IMDB's site on it and look at all the well-known stars...). Briefly, it follows the outbreak of AIDS in the 80s and focuses on the political garbage and the medical determination involved in determining exactly what it was. It's not really a movie to make you cry, but once it's over and Elton John is singing his song while images of celebrities affected by AIDS flashes by...well, it'll get ya.
I had the thought while watching that same sequence tonight, "I'm not afraid of it." Amost 3 hours after having the thought, I'm not quite sure what I mean by it. I try to imagine knowing that I have AIDS and that I'm inevitably going to die because of it, and it doesn't elicit any type of fear-based reaction. It doesn't bring any kind of reaction, and I guess that scares me a bit.
You ever reach a point in writing where you have one sentence you want to put, but multiple topics that branch off from that one sentence? ::g:: I dunno which to pick. Let's go with the statement anyways: I have no problems saying this, but in January I'll be 21, and I'm still a virgin. No surprise to you? Yeah, not much of one to me either. :) While the statement is true, and isn't going to change in the near future, the statistics are still against me compared to an average straight guy in regards to getting AIDS.
I should have some type of fear-based reaction to that, but I don't. That bothers me, but I don't know how to resolve it. I can't force myself to be afraid of something that I'm obviously not afraid of, because that's just silly. Granted, I don't have a "Bring it on" mentality about it, either. If it happened, I think it'd end up being treated like most things in my life...invisible to others, yet a source of constant frustration to myself. Yeah, ok, so the jury is still out on all of this apparently. Let's head to that other topic I was going to branch into.
Statement: In January, I'll be 21, and I'm still a virgin. The more time that passes, and the more comfortable I get with who I am, the more I realize that I'm not gay for the sex. To completely cheesey-fy this post, I'm going to steal a line from Dawson's Creek that I saw earlier today, paraphrased of course, because my memory sucks: "Being gay isn't about who you sleep with, it's about who you are." I have very little (certainly a seemingly diminishing) desire to sleep with a guy. I appreciate the male body far more so than the female, but I'm more interested in the companionship of another guy than that of a woman.
I told Christina and Jennifer a few days ago that my idea of perfection is being held by a guy that cares about me, to feel protected and sheltered and un-alone. To not have to talk to myself and sort through my issues alone while cleaning the kitchen (odd thing that is, really...happened again tonight before I came in here to write this).
Yes, I'm moving on again and leaving that topic unresolved. It's an unresolved issue for me, in many ways. The lonely holidays certainly don't make it any easier.
I've also been thinking a lot lately about 'me' and where I stand in life right now. In some ways, my life parallel's that of my mother's when she was my age...except that I don't have a kid now thankfully. She graduated from high school, married my dad, and popped me out. She was a stay-at-home mother with minor excursions into the world of self-owned clothing/craft shops that all inevitably flopped. Maybe she wanted more, maybe she didn't, I don't know for certain. She's hinted before that that's all she wanted, was to just be at home with her kids, without a job and without going out too often with her friends.
Before I go much further, I want it understood that what I'm going to say isn't being said in a whiny tone, but a deadly serious one.
That's the life I want. I want to stay home for someone, to keep a clean house, to cook. I don't want to get a real job. I don't want to interact with lots of people on a daily basis. I don't want to go back to school. I don't want a degree. Those things have been expected of me my entire life, by teachers, friends, family of all levels (so much for being the first one to go all the way through college!), and complete strangers. I tried to make everyone happy, but it isn't what I want. I don't regret any of these decisions, I only wish I could make people understand them. More than I wish people could understand them, I wish that they could really happen.
Even with me helping out with the babysitting, I'm still being pressured to get a job. Mom gripes at me for staying home all of the time and not going out often enough with people..which to be honest, I find mildly hypocritical, but whatever.
*le sigh* Yes, that's another unresolved issue too.
Apparently my family doesn't really believe that I'm gay. They're making jokes about me behind my back. They're saying things directly to me. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm in no rush to be in a relationship, so of course I can't prove anything to them. I don't have any gay friends that I hang out with. In fact, the only people I *do* hang out with are Jennifer and Danelle. Sarah is around sometimes, as are a few others. I spent all of my time with girls, of course to them it appears that I'm not gay.
But damnit. What am I supposed to do about that? Compromise the standards I've set for myself for a one-night stand just so I can be overly loud about it and make them regret having doubted me? Amusing thought, but hell would freeze many times before it happened. I know the truth, I'd hope that my friends believe me, but to be a running joke with family is...well, like I said...frustrating.
Here's another thing I've been thinking about lately. I'm gay, I'm not a believer in the spiritual arena, yet I consider myself a good person. I like to think that I'm helpful to those who need it, that I would bend over backwards to help someone even if it meant some type of burden on me (financial, emotional, whatever). I like to think that I'm a good friend. I don't talk about people behind their backs, I keep the secrets I'm asked to keep (unless of course it's something ridiculous from the family--like the potential moving thing), I do things that I don't personally enjoy because I know they'll smile about it. My bad language is rather limited, I think. 'Damn' is my word of choice, and these days it's not much of a curse word. An occasional 'shit' will come out in my writing, but for the most part, my mouth is pretty clean, so to speak. The music I listen to is Christian Rock, 100% clean stuff (granted, I listen to it because of the style of music, not because of any message contained in the songs, but still). I like to think that my writing, maybe not so much now as in the past, has helped at least one other gay person in some way, whether through some personal revelation I had that he/she could identify with or just knowing that there are other gay people out there that don't buy into the gay culture (though believe me, I do wish that I could be a club kid or a raver or any of the others). I believe that my sense of right and wrong is pretty decent. Right means sometimes saying, "I'm sorry", even though you may not have anything to be sorry about. Wrong is waving a pair of panties around in the middle of a restaurant (No, I've not gotten over Heather doing that.).
In spite of all of that, more often than not, I feel like I'm some kind of a reject. Nothing I do is right to anyone, and my own justifications just don't cut it. I feel 'wrong', but I cannot begin to grasp where that may be coming from. My fear on this is that on some subconcious level, maybe I've realized that I might not be gay. As damaging as it is (yet no surprise to anyone who has any sort of contact with me), my life is built to a large extent around the supposed fact that I am gay. I've already said that the male form appeals to me while the female form doesn't, but I also said that I wasn't too interested in gay sex. Truth be told, I'm not interested in any of it. There's more to a relationship than that, though.
Is it possible? Yes, but I can't begin to imagine the sort of downward spiral I'd throw myself into if I ever consciously had that revelation. That scares me. More than any sense of being alone I've ever had, just the possibility that it could be true absolutely terrifies me.
As far as a general update, things have been decent lately, I guess. My normal holiday depression set in a couple of weeks ago, 6+ weeks to go on that one. Granted, it isn't as bad as other years, but it could just be warming up. I've been trying to spend time away from the computer and out with friend's when possible. This has put me behind in things that I don't want to be behind in, but at the same time, I've realized that if I keep pushing at the breakneck pace that I have been for nearly a year, I'm going to fall apart entirely.
But it still makes me feel bad knowing that I have a list of things needing to be done that aren't getting done as quickly as I want them to be.
Back to the topic of being out with people...Jennifer and Danelle have both been around a lot lately. It's always good to be out with Danelle, if for no other reason than the absolutely insane yet often very serious conversations we have. Jennifer is...well, Jennifer. :) A never ending source of new things to ponder over, though I'd never give her the satisfaction of telling that to her face. ;)
Jennifer and I went to the middle school band concert at the high school tonight. As one of the directors (none other than Jackie Deen herself) put it, tonight's Christmas concert is the only performance all year where you get to see the entire school district's band program perform in one place, from 6th grade through 12th. There is nothing like having the Touch of Gold burst through the doors to the cadence of an awesome drum line and bust out with the fight song or The Horse or any number of other very-pleasing tunes. I've rambled about the ToG before, but truly, you just can't understand how awesome a program we have here unless you've been lucky enough to be a part of it. Alas, as you can tell, the nostalgia hit me pretty hard tonight.
After the concert, we came back here for a bit. Decided to track down Danelle and see what she was up to, but she was at Wal-Mart...so sayeth her mother over the phone. Ahhh, but all is not lost! Danelle can spend 15-20 minutes just picking out the right shampoo! Of course we had time to drive across town to Wal-Mart and still manage to find her casually browsing...what else, but the pen aisle. :) This led to the decision that I'd help Kelsey (Danelle's sister) study for the math part of her test tomorrow. I miss math, working on it of course inspired more nostalgia. Yes, I'm a math-and-music-loving computer nerd. Go figure.
I provided nice massages to all three of the ladies (Sorry, no explanation, it's funnier that way.).
Jennifer and I ended up here just in time to watch And the Band Played On. I'd love to summarize it, but even words can't do the movie justice. As usual, it's something like this that puts me over the edge and into one of my moods. It's a wonderful movie with an incredible cast (seriously, pull up IMDB's site on it and look at all the well-known stars...). Briefly, it follows the outbreak of AIDS in the 80s and focuses on the political garbage and the medical determination involved in determining exactly what it was. It's not really a movie to make you cry, but once it's over and Elton John is singing his song while images of celebrities affected by AIDS flashes by...well, it'll get ya.
I had the thought while watching that same sequence tonight, "I'm not afraid of it." Amost 3 hours after having the thought, I'm not quite sure what I mean by it. I try to imagine knowing that I have AIDS and that I'm inevitably going to die because of it, and it doesn't elicit any type of fear-based reaction. It doesn't bring any kind of reaction, and I guess that scares me a bit.
You ever reach a point in writing where you have one sentence you want to put, but multiple topics that branch off from that one sentence? ::g:: I dunno which to pick. Let's go with the statement anyways: I have no problems saying this, but in January I'll be 21, and I'm still a virgin. No surprise to you? Yeah, not much of one to me either. :) While the statement is true, and isn't going to change in the near future, the statistics are still against me compared to an average straight guy in regards to getting AIDS.
I should have some type of fear-based reaction to that, but I don't. That bothers me, but I don't know how to resolve it. I can't force myself to be afraid of something that I'm obviously not afraid of, because that's just silly. Granted, I don't have a "Bring it on" mentality about it, either. If it happened, I think it'd end up being treated like most things in my life...invisible to others, yet a source of constant frustration to myself. Yeah, ok, so the jury is still out on all of this apparently. Let's head to that other topic I was going to branch into.
Statement: In January, I'll be 21, and I'm still a virgin. The more time that passes, and the more comfortable I get with who I am, the more I realize that I'm not gay for the sex. To completely cheesey-fy this post, I'm going to steal a line from Dawson's Creek that I saw earlier today, paraphrased of course, because my memory sucks: "Being gay isn't about who you sleep with, it's about who you are." I have very little (certainly a seemingly diminishing) desire to sleep with a guy. I appreciate the male body far more so than the female, but I'm more interested in the companionship of another guy than that of a woman.
I told Christina and Jennifer a few days ago that my idea of perfection is being held by a guy that cares about me, to feel protected and sheltered and un-alone. To not have to talk to myself and sort through my issues alone while cleaning the kitchen (odd thing that is, really...happened again tonight before I came in here to write this).
Yes, I'm moving on again and leaving that topic unresolved. It's an unresolved issue for me, in many ways. The lonely holidays certainly don't make it any easier.
I've also been thinking a lot lately about 'me' and where I stand in life right now. In some ways, my life parallel's that of my mother's when she was my age...except that I don't have a kid now thankfully. She graduated from high school, married my dad, and popped me out. She was a stay-at-home mother with minor excursions into the world of self-owned clothing/craft shops that all inevitably flopped. Maybe she wanted more, maybe she didn't, I don't know for certain. She's hinted before that that's all she wanted, was to just be at home with her kids, without a job and without going out too often with her friends.
Before I go much further, I want it understood that what I'm going to say isn't being said in a whiny tone, but a deadly serious one.
That's the life I want. I want to stay home for someone, to keep a clean house, to cook. I don't want to get a real job. I don't want to interact with lots of people on a daily basis. I don't want to go back to school. I don't want a degree. Those things have been expected of me my entire life, by teachers, friends, family of all levels (so much for being the first one to go all the way through college!), and complete strangers. I tried to make everyone happy, but it isn't what I want. I don't regret any of these decisions, I only wish I could make people understand them. More than I wish people could understand them, I wish that they could really happen.
Even with me helping out with the babysitting, I'm still being pressured to get a job. Mom gripes at me for staying home all of the time and not going out often enough with people..which to be honest, I find mildly hypocritical, but whatever.
*le sigh* Yes, that's another unresolved issue too.
Apparently my family doesn't really believe that I'm gay. They're making jokes about me behind my back. They're saying things directly to me. It's incredibly frustrating. I'm in no rush to be in a relationship, so of course I can't prove anything to them. I don't have any gay friends that I hang out with. In fact, the only people I *do* hang out with are Jennifer and Danelle. Sarah is around sometimes, as are a few others. I spent all of my time with girls, of course to them it appears that I'm not gay.
But damnit. What am I supposed to do about that? Compromise the standards I've set for myself for a one-night stand just so I can be overly loud about it and make them regret having doubted me? Amusing thought, but hell would freeze many times before it happened. I know the truth, I'd hope that my friends believe me, but to be a running joke with family is...well, like I said...frustrating.
Here's another thing I've been thinking about lately. I'm gay, I'm not a believer in the spiritual arena, yet I consider myself a good person. I like to think that I'm helpful to those who need it, that I would bend over backwards to help someone even if it meant some type of burden on me (financial, emotional, whatever). I like to think that I'm a good friend. I don't talk about people behind their backs, I keep the secrets I'm asked to keep (unless of course it's something ridiculous from the family--like the potential moving thing), I do things that I don't personally enjoy because I know they'll smile about it. My bad language is rather limited, I think. 'Damn' is my word of choice, and these days it's not much of a curse word. An occasional 'shit' will come out in my writing, but for the most part, my mouth is pretty clean, so to speak. The music I listen to is Christian Rock, 100% clean stuff (granted, I listen to it because of the style of music, not because of any message contained in the songs, but still). I like to think that my writing, maybe not so much now as in the past, has helped at least one other gay person in some way, whether through some personal revelation I had that he/she could identify with or just knowing that there are other gay people out there that don't buy into the gay culture (though believe me, I do wish that I could be a club kid or a raver or any of the others). I believe that my sense of right and wrong is pretty decent. Right means sometimes saying, "I'm sorry", even though you may not have anything to be sorry about. Wrong is waving a pair of panties around in the middle of a restaurant (No, I've not gotten over Heather doing that.).
In spite of all of that, more often than not, I feel like I'm some kind of a reject. Nothing I do is right to anyone, and my own justifications just don't cut it. I feel 'wrong', but I cannot begin to grasp where that may be coming from. My fear on this is that on some subconcious level, maybe I've realized that I might not be gay. As damaging as it is (yet no surprise to anyone who has any sort of contact with me), my life is built to a large extent around the supposed fact that I am gay. I've already said that the male form appeals to me while the female form doesn't, but I also said that I wasn't too interested in gay sex. Truth be told, I'm not interested in any of it. There's more to a relationship than that, though.
Is it possible? Yes, but I can't begin to imagine the sort of downward spiral I'd throw myself into if I ever consciously had that revelation. That scares me. More than any sense of being alone I've ever had, just the possibility that it could be true absolutely terrifies me.