“For a very long time, my efforts to understand myself and what life was doing to me and I to it, seemed to be going nowhere. I went for counseling. I tried prayer. I tried meditation. I read self-help books …
“In all these efforts – which have been going on in one form or another for years – I felt like I was following pathways through a labyrinth, searching for the pathway that would ultimately lead me all the way to my center. … The problem was, I kept running into dead ends. Some of the pathways went on for quite awhile, but the result was inevitably the same: dead end. I would then have to backtrack, looking for yet another path to try, hoping that it would lead to the center …
“This situation abruptly changed in early October, when I stood deep inside the labyrinth of my own persona, wondering which path would take me to my center. Suddenly, and quite unexpectedly, I was shown Ariadne’s thread. (In Greek mythology, Ariadne made Theseus a thread to take with him into the maze so he could find his way out after slaying the Minotaur.) As if by magic, a scarlet thread lying on the ground was revealed to me. I picked it up and started to follow it, but instead of leading out of the labyrinth, I soon realized it was leading directly to the center of the maze …
“After following false paths for years, hoping to make sense of my life and find happiness, I finally realized that my ‘Ariadne’s thread’ was my gayness. Accepting this reality about myself is leading me directly to my 'center.'"
(I'm working on a memoir about the year I came out. This is one of a ongoing series of posts based on the blog - entitled "Invictus Pilgrim" - that I kept during that year.)
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