Hi All. This weekend I have had several wake up calls that have made me question just what I did to be where I am today. I find that I am not completely able to comprehend it all, but I am working to make the best of the messages I have received over the last few days.
Probably the biggest revelation of the week was discovering at 53 years old that I have never lived in a place where I felt safe. It seems that I have either been in a monetarily stable place with the wrong people, I have been too monetarily instable to feel at ease, or worst of all, I have experienced both at once. But I have never lived in a place where I have had the whole package at once.
As a child I lived in a home with an alcoholic father and a hormonal, abusive mother. To make matters worse, I was the youngest of the family and sort of an outcast. My closest sibling was 7 years older than I. Add to that the fact that I was chubby and smart and you have a perfect brew for an insecure maladjusted mess.
Then I made it out of there and off to college. I chose a religious college, not the best place for a young gay man to be. In fact, probably the worst place of all. I constantly felt as though my secret would be exposed and I would once again be the outcast and the villain. I knew that I could not live the kind of life they prescribed for me, but I believed what I was taught as a young man and I really thought that if I had enough of God and prayer in my life I would be made whole. I was not, I was just a gay young man in a bad situation.
Than I moved to New York as a young adult. I was so excited and for the first time in my life I was in a place where nobody looked at me like I had a spare head growing off of my shoulders. I was alive and happy and for the first time, I was feeling like I had a purpose in life. The different ways and peoples and cultures made me feel at home and safe for a brief time. But my old insecurities got the best of me and I got involved with some strictly religious fundamentalist and allowed myself to be taken down the road that I knew so well from the past.
I started to worship in a fundamentalist type of church and started to hate myself again. I refused to acknowledge who I am and lived in deeper denial than ever before about who I was and who I would become. I lived in constant fear of being exposed and being held up as a symbol of evil and sin. After all, I could never be good enough or straight enough to please these chosen children of God, could I.
Later, I made my biggest mistake of all and married a deeply troubled hormonal abusive woman. (sound familiar?) Yes, it's true, for all intents and purposes, I married my mother. I literally scoured the earth until I found a woman who could actually rival my mother's neuroses and ability to abuse. She would even go one step further by being the laziest sloth on the planet.
While my mother may have been a troubled woman, she did her best to care for her home and family with the resources that she had. And my mother got help as she got older and grew in grace. In fact, today she is one of the most kind and loving individuals that I know.
Unfortunately, my children's' mother simply embraced the role of Bitch Goddess of the Universe and worked hard to make it her starring role in life, second only to her role as victim to all things. She made it her business to create heartache and turmoil wherever she goes. Even as I write this, she is preparing to move into a new home that she has purchased for herself and openly brags that she will walk out of her fathers property (the fourth home in a row that the man has purchased for her) without giving him any notice or cleaning up. Great example for our young adult kids, isn't she?
But I digress, back to my point. I married someone who made me feel unsafe in my home again and I stayed in the unsafe situation. After several years and one too many physical attacks from my beloved, I decided to call it quits and I left her. I would rather be alone and gay than to try to live a life to please God that required faithfulness to Atilla the Hun in the flesh! And while I did not divorce her, I left and was perfectly happy to stay away.
After the divorce, my life began to transform. But I ended up trading one kind of unsafe for another. Now I was away from the demons that literally daily tormented me, I was away from being physically and mentally abused. But I lived in worse poverty than I had ever known. I moved from place to place trying to survive and I age five pound bags of rice to hold me from paycheck to paycheck. I would buy regular groceries and enjoy real meals for the weekends when my kids were with me and the rest of the time I would live off of plain white rice seasoned with salt if I could afford the extra that week.
I was fortunate to have good friends and family who would send lots of meals and treats my way during those first two years after the divorce. They made it possible for me to have weekday treats of full meals at times and to get the occasional night out. Otherwise, I would never have survived.
The challenges in my life changed radically. I no longer lived with anyone who was physically hitting me or who was abusing me. I did not have to deal with anyone who would degrade me for sport or to have tolerate any negative attitude at all in my home. I lived at peace with myself and that was a treat I had never experienced in my life. But it came at a substantial price.
Fortunately over the years life has gotten a lot easier. I can now enjoy both eating meals and having a reasonable degree of peace in my home. I can not say I have a safe situation, in fact, my lifestyle is quite fragile and could easily fall apart fast under the right conditions. I am quite grateful for what I have even if it is a long shot from what I would consider ideal!
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