From an email written to a cyber friend (also in a mixed-orientation marriage) 12/7/10*:
“You wrote that you don't know what your future holds and that there are times you want a boy friend and a male connection so badly it hurts. I have felt and do feel the same way. I feel so much time has been lost in my life. I've had missed opportunities, and now that I've come to the point I'm at, I really want to experience what I was wired for.
“I have to say I'm envious of you falling in love with that guy you told me about. I had infatuations before my marriage, but never a reciprocal relationship, nor a feeling of real love. But I could so relate to what you said about really falling in love for the first time. I have loved my wife, but it's never been a heart and soul thing.
“At this point, I wonder if I'll ever experience that - a heart and soul love that I’m wired for. I think we as humans were meant to experience that, don't you? I mean, the path that people like you and me have had to walk, striving, always striving to do the "right thing," never experiencing real fulfillment of that aspect of ourselves …
“Like you, I long for a relationship with a guy, to find some fulfillment of that huge part of myself that has been wandering in the wilderness for so long. I have been so far in the closet and so 'celibate' in terms of interactions with guys that I haven’t even had any male friends as long as we’ve been married. So even just establishing friendships is something that is going to take me out of the zone I’ve been in …
"I can already envision the kindness, acceptance and love that I will find amongst my gay brothers, just by tasting what I have been so freely offered by you and others. This, almost more than anything else, gives me hope for the future and offers a glimpse of what life can be like … I've turned a corner and I will never go back to the way I was.”
_______________________
* This was written a week after my wife and I had decided to divorce and during a period in which I was starting to make cyber friendships with other gay Mormon men in mixed-orientation marriages.
I began the process of coming out in October 2010. I'm working on writing a memoir about the year following that coming out, and in order to help me stay on task, I've decided to publish this ongoing series of posts based primarily on the blog - entitled "Invictus Pilgrim" - that I kept during that year.
So very, very poignant.
ReplyDelete