Is the break over?

After over 4 years and 4 Christmas holidays not setting foot in Utah, I went back to Utah to visit this year, and become reacquainted with family and the changes that have taken place with everyone and myself.  That being said, I ended up at Starbucks for at least one day.   I actually like Starbucks, I was just hoping for something of a local flavor.  Fat chance it seemed in the northern suburbs of Salt Lake City.  

Five days in to my trip I still hadn't had any alcohol since the plane ride.  The family party, which was normally on the day after Christmas, had been moved to the following Saturday because my sister's family were still getting over their illness.

I wanted to get some alcohol for the party but I had no idea where these Utah state controlled liquor stores were and I had no GPS.  I ended up calling a friend in New York who talked me through it over the phone only to arrive and find out it didn't open until 11am and I wasn't going to wait around all morning for it to open.  So, I sent a text to my brother-in-law to pick up some Jack Daniel's Honey Whiskey on his way in later that day.  I was hoping for the single serve bottles but found out you couldn't get them in Utah.  So we had a large bottle that he and I drank from.  The other half my dad decided he wanted it, much to my surprise. 

Early in the week my mom and I went driving around the valley looking for a new winter coat as I badly needed one.  We tried REI, Cabalas, A.A. Callister, and I ended up finding some nice winter riding boots.  I had my eye on them for years.  It's hard not to buy tall boots when they are right there in front of me, and they fit.  My mom offered to pay for them but I declined as they were an impulse purchase we were there to buy a coat and we should stick to the plan no matter how much it costs us in the end.  You might get the impressing that I like shopping.  Nope.  I don't.  But having my mom there assisting, made it easier.

But one thing led to another and I realized I couldn't wear my new boots around unless I had some new Levi's to tuck into them.  I packed light this year and only brought basic pants and shirts, nothing more different than what I would normally wear to work.  So we went to look for pants.  I was quite surprised that the 501 button fly ones fit me really damn well, despite my fat thighs and butt and huge belly hanging over my belt. They made my boots look damn good on me.  I wore my new jeans and boots pretty much the entire week. I even wore them home on the plane.

I had hoped that I might get to meet up with some of my furry acquaintances in Utah whom I had gotten to know over Google+.  But they were all too busy with family which is understandable this time of year.  But I did have a chance to meet up with my friend Jen whom I had gotten to know through her blog and the Facebook ex-Mormon groups.  She has horses!  And it turns out that impulse boot purchase paid off as I got to go riding.  Well sort of, the horses were not in the mood, so we relented and let them eat.  But we didn't get off.  We sat on them while they ate.  We showed them. 

I'm so glad we sat there.  The smell, the touch, the movements, of these animals allowed me to dissipate my anxiety.  The anxiety that hit me when I pulled into her driveway.  It's hard for me to meet people I already know in person.  And this one hit me particularly hard and quickly.  In the 90 minute drive it took me to get to her house, I was feeling calm and joyful to be going.  But upon approaching the house and pulling into the driveway, it hit me hard.  I couldn't get out of the car.  All I could do was send a text and let her know I was here.  I'm sure she realized that without the text  but I sent it anyway.  Thankfully she had gotten past her anxiety of meeting me and came out to the car to get me.  And that is what I needed.  I think I had become consumed with the fear of rejection, and when she didn't reject me, I started to feel ok again.  Still, the anxiety still took time to dissipate, and I still found myself pulling back a bit, not really relaxing and letting myself be all there. 

My family hasn't been all that troublesome in my life since coming out.  They may be Mormon, but they take the religion on their own terms, which is what I wish the rest of the Utah Mormons would do.  I even found myself in a conversion with my dad and later with my brother-in-law about BDSM.  I had a brief moment when I felt awkward when my dad asked about MAL and what I did there.  But as with my mom, the conversation was challenging but never got awkward.  The conversation was friendly as I talked about what it meant to me and many people and that for many, its therapy.  Just like my mom, he gets it but doesn't get it at the same time.  Just like how I get why they remain Mormons but I don't get it at the same time.  And just like that, the conversation quickly moves to politics as we commiserate on the pathetic state of Teabagging Republican dumbasses or the embarrassment that is the Utah Governor and the stream of Attorney Generals.  There was little to no mention from anyone about the gay marriage drama happening at the time.  The few mentions were from a random nephew or my dad reading to us joke making fun of the Governor about in City Weekly.  

 Times have changed.  I would never have had the freedom to be who I am twenty years ago.  So it's good to know just how far, not only I've come along, but the rest of my family as well. And in many ways, they had passed me.  I hadn't been aware of it because I had moved out 20 years ago.

My main reasons for avoiding them was their general emotional dysfunction, co-dependency and the triggers from them and of being in Utah.  I needed the space to find and break those triggers.   And now gauging my experience over the week, it seems that many of those triggers have gone, mostly within the last year.   

But, I'm still not so sure that I'll ever move back there.  My last day there I spent the day with my brother-in-law.  We went to one of the local micro breweries in Layton and attempted to order some tasters for the beers they severed.  I sat in stunned silenced as the waiter tells me that I'm restricted to only two 4 oz tasters and then 1 beer per hour after that.  Only two tasters?  One beer per hour?  I wonder if Utah will ever legalize adulthood. 

My New New Year

I originally posted this on Facebook on December 21, 2012. 

Happy Winter Solstice everyone.

Today marks the dawning of a new year.  For me, it's a time to re-evaluate what is important to me and work toward better awareness and alignment of what I believe vs. what I truly value.
Each day is a step in a direction.  Not necessarily forward, but a step nonetheless.  And when each step is taken, it is unknown the direction I have taken until well after the footprint has settled.

Looking back, it has been an excruciatingly difficult year.  I've had many profound experiences which have permanently and profoundly changed me.  For the good or bad?  That's not a judgement that can be made with much clarity any more, nor could it be.  When such things happen, they challenge and change beliefs and perspectives.  What once had been called good is now called bad, and what had been called bad is now called good.  Each item settling into a place where it best belongs.  And in the end, the labels of good and bad fade into meaninglessness until it all just exists as experience.  What I take from it is a new or expanded awareness.  And not to be too ironic in my dismissal of the labels of good and bad, awareness is a good thing. 

I may be remiss in not sharing the deeper parts of my life with people but, somewhere along the way, I had found that such openness wasn't always welcome.  So, out of a sense of self protection, I keep things to myself for the most part.  However, this is changing. To what extent, I can't say.  Future awareness might further level my caution.  Wait and see.  I'm just going to take it one day at a time. 

This year I look forward with anticipation, wonder, and unfortunately, a great deal of anxiety, to what is coming.  But with that, I'm working to not look forward so much that I miss what I'm doing right now.  One day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one second at a time.

At the risk of sounding saccharine, I want to thank the many people in my life who have, over the past year, made a difference to me in profound and long lasting ways.  Some of you may not even realize it as we have never met in person, but your presence here and the things you've shared with me publicly and in private messages have meant a great deal to me.  Don't take my silence as lack of gratitude.  It's there; I just don't always express it.

Winter of 2012 Assateague Island, VA

Today used to be my Birthday

Without trying to sound dramatic, today is my birthday and I'm just waiting for it to get the hell over with it.  I HATE being alone on days like these.  Sure, there is an expectation of what I think a birthday should or could be, a happy celebration of my birth, but birthdays are also like the holidays to me, empty and void of genuine well wishing from most people.  There are a few exceptions, VERY FEW, and those few are the only ones that keep me here.  It's too bad they are all thousands of miles away.

I can understand everyone wishing me a "Happy Birthday". It's expected and many do mean well.  But they don't stop there.  They have to rub it in with things like this:

"I hope you're having a fabulous day, filled with lots of happiness, friends and/or family with you!"
"Hope your livin' it up today. Have a good one."
"I hope you get to go do something fun to celebrate the day."
"Hope you do something fun"

Etc.

Everyone expects birthdays to be a special day where you get to do something special, and I'm one of them.  But its specialness is really a stupid idea that I need to let go of, because here is the cold hard reality:

It's no different from any other busy, late summer day.  And today was typical of what happens.

I had asked some other "friends" if they would like to do something today for my birthday but, either they were already at some other event (that I was not invited to) and couldn't hang out, or they just didn't want to do anything.   So I was just going to find something to do on my own.  I was feeling the depression start to hit me early this week so that was not helping it.

So, this morning I woke up groggy and frustrated from a restless night caused by an unbearably stressful and mindless job.  Immediately I got a call from a "friend" who wanted to drive out to The OC* and watch the Red Knights motorcycle procession honoring the fire fighters killed on this day in 2001.   That sounded interesting so I agreed to go.

On the way, I told him that it was my birthday today.  He was surprised and actually thought I was joking. I wasn't surprised that he would do that.  You see, this person doesn't really pay much attention to the thoughts, feelings or lives of other people.  If it's not about him, it doesn't matter.  When he called me -- and he calls me often -- he was merely just bored and looking for something or someone to entertain him.  I've known him for 5 years.  I have to tell him every year that it's my birthday.  I don't expect him to care.  But he will at least buy me dinner, because by his own definition, it's expected.  He'll just do it.  I'm not manipulating him, I'm just taking advantage of his predictability.  But it comes at a cost.

We get to The OC* and I have to listen to him complain about... oh, I don't know.  Who gives a shit anyway?  I stopped listening to him after the fifth time he mentioned how he regretted wearing a black t-shirt in the heat... the whole time.  I finally told him to either walk in the nearest shop and buy a white t-shirt, (there being a shop every 100 feet for the next two miles of the boardwalk) or shut the fuck up.  After a little back and forth about how he would never do that etc. he finally stopped complaining.   But it doesn't stop there. His excessive narcissism kicks in and he as to express himself on every little thing he thinks, sees or does.  And I'm expected to listen with deep interest and even laugh at his non jokes.  Also, I must be prepared to be outwardly and aggressively dismissed, sometimes quite rudely if I dare express anything that interests me and doesn't interest him.  No, I'm not exaggerating here.  And No, I'm not pretending to care about his interests either.  I pretty much ignore him but he really thinks I care, even if I tell him I don't!   He really is that narcissistic!

There is nothing as depressing as being surrounded by people and still feel utterly alone.  But, being out in the sun on a crowded boardwalk with an asshole is better than the alternative, which is sitting at home contemplating ways to kill myself.  I resist going home because to do that is to face my loneliness head on and I just don't want to lose myself in the suicidal thinking.  It's best to stay distracted for now, at least until it passes.

Anyway, because of his incessant boredom and his need to be doing something, we end up missing the processional anyway.   The only reason he wanted to go.  Typical.

Now, I'm sitting at home writing this while debating if this should be deleted or posted.  The day will be over in a few hours.  And I'm starting to feel like I might make it.  I don't know.  I was in the hospital again a few weeks ago because of my heart.  Is this the life I'm to have from here on out?  When is my heart going to kill me so I don't have kill myself?

* The OC I'm referring to here is Ocean City, Maryland. 

Mormons and their Missionaries

The Heretic, over at Heretic, Rebel, a Thing to Flout, posted a fun story about distracting Mormon missionaries.

Ever since becoming a heretic myself, I have been looking forward to new opportunities to distract missionaries.  So far I haven't had much success living out in the middle of nowhere.

But this summer, over the July 4th holiday, I ran into a couple of Elders setting up a display in Alexandria, VA.  One Elder was so distracted by me that he was watching me rather than paying attention to the fact that the folded-poster he was setting up was upside down.  At which point I started to fumble for my camera.

I was standing about 30 feet away when I finally took a picture but unfortunately, in the mean time, the other Elder noticed and had him correct it.  Bummer, it would have been awesome, a picture of a Mormon missionary watching me as he was setting up a poster upside down.  I was tempted to walk over there and ask him to recreate the scene for me so I could take a picture.

Lesson learned.  Never put away camera!

They were sort of giving each other "high fives" for whatever reason as they noticed me take their picture.  I was with two other somewhat regular looking gay guys who both looked like tourists, but I stood out, I was wearing knee high boots.  I would like to think he was enamored with my boots.  Many people are.  I mean I totally understand if he was as I can totally relate.

When I was a missionary in New Zealand back in the early 91, I found myself distracted, ...erm VERY distracted by guys in those one piece motorcycle leathers with matching boots and helmet as they zipped down the road on their matching sport bikes.  I HAD to watch them!  I could not look away!  Every time they went buy I twisted my body around in the car seat to continue watching!  It's just one of those things.  Leather clad male bodies drive me wild!  My companion, however, was in his own world. Staring down the road.  Lost in his own head somewhere thinking about his girlfriend at home or the fact he was leaving the mission in about a month anyway. He had no idea.

Anyway, here's the picture I finally got:

July 3, 2010: Alexandria, VA

So young, so earnest, so naïve.   Those were the days.  I'm glad they're over.  

And here is a shot of me in my boots:

Yeah I know, I'm not quite ready to show my face on this blog yet.  But that is a picture of me...and my boots!  (It takes me about 7 minutes to lace them up.)

My Yearend Evaluation 2009

I had a moment of clarity the other day.  When looking back at the year, I had completely forgotten about all of the awesome things that happened in 2009.  I didn't blog about most of them.  I probably should have or at least made some mention of them somewhere.  Hell, I don't even have any journal entries of most of them.  I seem to just want to stew in the drama and I failed to really dive into a lot of the fun and positive moments, and there were many.

So what are some of the cool things that are worth mentioning?  Well, for one, I had my first real gay date this year!  I lost my gay virginity during that date too.  Just a few months before my 40th birthday!  That 40-year-old-virgin thing was a stigma in my family that I DID NOT want to try and live down.  Seriously!  How funny is that? 

Well, I guess you would just have to understand my family.  

OK, so what else happened?   I don't remember a lot of stuff.  I should have written it down.  I think the "losing my virginity" thing has completely overshadowed anything I care to think about at the moment. 

Anyway...

I think this goes without saying but I'll say it anyway, this blog is a small part of my life and it's an even smaller part of my daily mental process.  I have used it to open up an even smaller window into my head.  Sometimes the view was an honest and sincere searching of my soul, other times it was wrought with whiny, self-centered, self-pitying and otherwise pathetic pandering of my ego.   But, either way, it was the shit in my head at the time it was written, so at least that accounts for something.   Right?   I think it does. 

I'm a normal, happy, person most of the time.  I have an OK job where I write software (sometimes) and I do it really well.  I have hobbies in music, filmmaking, writing, photography, renaissance festivals, dressage, walking/hiking, biking, BDSM, yoga, blogging etc.  The list goes on.  I stay busy. 

But like all normal people, I have my bad days.  And it just so happens my bad days get dark, really dark.  Dark, in that I will have those moments where I swing to the irrational suicidal thinking.  Rest assured those moments have been happening with less frequency and shorter in duration.  Two years ago, I would be in a stupor of suicidal planning for months at a time, long gut wrenching months of anxiety and despair.  Now, the anxiety bit is missing and the rest only lasts for about an hour, then it's gone.

However, no matter what, I always feel a deep heavy sting moving into and during the holiday period.  That sting I noticed became more and more prevalent around 2004 after the last of my siblings got married.  It reached its worst in 2007 right after my mental breakdown and has tapering a little bit since, although, this year felt like a step back somewhat.  That's something to explore some other time.  I may even write about the event in 2007 too.  I still have some work to do to sort it out though.

Most of my posts happen after I've been pondering a concept or situation in my head for a while, in some cases months.  Some of them have been rants, some of them haven't. But all of them have been a process for me to clarify as to who, what, when and where I am, and what I'm trying to accomplish.  And in the end they have succeeded in getting me to see, albeit sometimes grudgingly, what my hang-ups really are. 

No matter what the realities of my mental state, conscious or unconscious, I needed to sort some things out in a public way.  So this blog, in addition to the comments I got back, really ended up giving me some profound self-realizations.  Not the ones I was setting out to realize, but nothing ever happens the way we intend. 

Because I worried too much about making my blog some sort of self-important, quixotic, beacon to the world, I got too self absorbed which weighted it down on the dark side.  Not that would be a worry to me but, -- and here is me pandering to my readership again -- it did leave the impression that I am unhappy.  Ironically, unhappiness was precisely what I was worried people would think.  Well to be honest, the last three months I was very unhappy.   And, as much as my ego hates to admit this, I was very much using my blog to bask in my own self-induced victimhood.  Not that there is anything inherently wrong with that per se, it is what it is.  However, it ultimately accomplished something good in the end.  In order for me to understand what was happening, what was going wrong for me, I had to travel that path of wrongness until I hit a brick wall.  It seems unfortunate but how else do we learn?  I have a hell of a lot of book knowledge on these subjects, but awareness and perspicacity only comes from experience.

I'm proud of myself. I really came though this year.  After all of that coded nagging in my writing and day to day life, I finally cracked the code.  I finally faced my fear of what people think of me.  Not only did I crack the code, I processed it so that I would no longer get stuck on it again.  I had a sudden and dramatic shift in my thinking when I hit that point.  So, from this point forward, I know things are going to be very different.  I don't know how or in what way, but I do know it's not going to be the same old shit that I have been doing.  Granted, it will probably be the same old shit I write though.  The ups and downs are still going to be there.  But, will I care what you think?  Yeah, in some ways I will, but not in the same way that I've cared in the past.  It's different.  How different?  It's wait-and-see.  I don't expect any reader to notice but I will and that's all the really matters.

It amuses me when the media looks back on a year well before the year was even over.  I can't really look back on something until it's in my past and I've had a chance to let hindsight and my shady memory shape it into some sort of perspective.   It's still too soon to get any real sense of the profound impact this holiday season has had on me.  All I can say is that it was profound enough to cause a shift in my thinking, a shift in my consciousness.

So, looking back on the year, I have been able to come to two absolute conclusions.  1) I realized I had set out on this blogging adventure for completely the wrong reasons.  2) No matter what the original reason was, it didn't matter; I still learned a shit-load about myself in the end.  

So, here is to a new year that just happens to be called twenty-ten. 

Happy New Year!

Before I go off on a heavy handed tyrannical rant, I would just like to pre-apologize for the offenses that I will deliberately be dishing out.  OK, to be honest, this is only a partial or rather fake apology.  What I'm really getting down to is that this is just a preamble to some serious and offensive ranting and I'm not holding back.  Why I'm even bothering to warn the reader?  Why don't I just start ranting?  Because I seriously don't want to hurt anyone's feelings with what I'm about to say.  As I'm currently in a state of some deeply hurt feelings myself, I wouldn't wish such things one anyone else.   With that being said, I'm going to start off my little rant by first inviting anyone who might be offended to seriously fuck off.  I'll recap on that later.

Anyway...I just got past the holiday season.

Oh My Fucking God!

I have a love/hate relationship with this time of year.  But this time around it's mostly the hate.

How did the year end and how did the new one start?  It ended with a crash and a bang and bunch of other complete bullshit.  It was an otherwise great year that came together in the most fucked up holiday season ever.  And it's still not over yet.  In fact I think I'll still have a few more months of this shit before I might be clear enough to start thinking and feeling grounded again.  It's not to say I'm in a constant state of rage.  I do have moments throughout the week of positivity, but it's only about 0.6% of the time.  I think that equates to about an hour per week where it's just me and the equines.

I debated if I should even bother listing all the shit that has gone down since October but I don't think I will.  There is just too much of it.  Perhaps it would have been better had I made small blog entries for each incident as they happened.  But it really came down to the fact that I'm still relatively anonymous on this blog and after considering the implications of revealing the nature of the shit that's gone down, it would seriously compromise my identity.   Besides that, listing all that shit would incite a pity party.   It's bad enough that I pity myself as much as I do.  Getting it from others doesn't feed my ego in healthy ways.  And right now the combination of all this shit going down and the affects of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), regress me to some serious irrationality.  Besides, all of the shit that's happened is actually incidental and doesn't really have any real meaning.  The important question to ask is: How I've been handling it all?  To which I would respond: GAH!!! 

Needless to say I've got so much pent-up anger right now I could bite anyone who crosses me...until they bleed of course, and then I would let them go.  I'm not a vampire and don't like the taste of blood.  Don't worry.  I am seeking counseling. 

But for now I feel like ranting about shit that I've wanted to rant about for decades.   And to make it even worse my rant is all a fucking cliché.  When ranting about the so-called Holiday Season how could it not be? 

When I see people walking around wishing each other "Merry Christmas" and "Happy New Year" and all that crap, I want to gag.  And yet I find myself going along with it anyway so I don't come across as a complete asshole.  But deep down inside I'm screaming, "Whatever!"  That alone pisses me off further.  It's hypocritical and I'm angry at myself for playing the game.

It's a pointless and mindless time of year where people try to act extra nice.  Why now?  Why not all of the time?  These holidays and their dates are utterly arbitrary to me.  Take New Year's Day for instance.  That one is especially pointless to me.   It is a week and a half after the winter solstice.  To me the solstice is more like a new year than January 1.   A solstice is an actual measurable physical phenomenon that can be used to mark the end and beginning of a solar cycle.    January 1 is just a number on some made-up calendar.  Who made up that calendar anyway?  And why does that calendar say the year has to be 2010?   Why not 8302 or some other number in say, base 12?

And then there is the Christmas holiday and all of that crap.  Set aside the fact that December 25 is not even the actual date of the birth of the Christian religion so to speak.  But that doesn't really matter.  What matters is that it's the one time out of the year where all of the hypocrites can come out in droves and be EXTRA hypocritical.  Personal experience has allowed me to witness many so-called Christmas holidays where Christianist behave in some of the most unchristian ways ever seen.  That really doesn't bode well for celebrating the birth of their Savior™.

Another thing that doesn't bode well is that most of the modern Christmas traditions claimed by some Christianist come from the Pagans!  Yeah, PAGANS!    After all, to trick the Pagans into becoming Christians they had to assimilate their traditions.  But don't worry; it was all done in the name of Christ.  Too bad that Christians don't know who Christ really is anymore.  Not that they would care anyway.  And they especially wouldn't give a shit what a godless heathen such as myself would have to say about it anyway.

Sorry folks, I guess I just don't have the Christmas spirit.  Well, I guess if I stick with just the hypocrite part I do have it.  I get that.  But the rest of it?  Whatever!

Am I waging a war on Christmas?  I don't think so.  Christianist are doing it themselves just fine.  I'm just watching them go at it while I do my own thing.  Such as: no lights, no tree, no music, no shopping, no family, no handouts and no Christ.  Selfish?  Meh.  If you want all that stuff, great!  Go for it.  I don't care.  Just don't expect me to do it to. 

God, I'm glad the holidays are over!

I guess this makes me a scrooge or a curmudgeon or something.  It doesn't matter.  I'm hated by one group of people or another no matter what I think, say or do.  So I'm going to do my own god damned thing from now on and if you like it, join me, if not, FUCK OFF!  I'm serious.  I invite anyone who finds my little rant offensive to seriously fuck off.  I don't mind at all.  It may sound like I mind because of the seemingly harsh language but at this point I'm really not talking directly to anyone.  It's more of a proverbial use of the phrase to anyone in my life who really does need to fuck off.

Postscript: It was the Christians who came up with the word 'Pagan' to call these unbelieving, polytheistic, heathen, low life, evil people.  I'm proud to be called a Pagan.  It's like taking back the word 'fag', which I'm am one of those as well.  :)  Happy Xmas!  (Nov 20, 2010)