kabo11

I think I am exhibiting signs of desperation.  You'd think after this messy (at least for me) breakup, I would not a) still want to talk to him despite the fact that he clearly is either ambivalent or totally uninterested in staying friends and b) still try to look for peope out there.  I mean, if he has just moved on after five years without batting an eye, why can't I?  Why do I still spend nights crying over him?  I guess that I am trying to cling on to the memory of the positive experiences.  He says there are no regrets for him and I guess I agree for my part too but I also feel as though the last five years might as well have never happened.  In the case of b) I am trying to fill the void that he left.  I struggle to find others who have his combination of personality, wit, charm and intelligence.  I am left cold by so many guys that I meet.  I mean, I am sure there are still many people to meet but...everything right now seems rather bleak.  This summer's events are conspiring within me to create bitterness and the desire to cloister myself from the pain.  I know that's no solution but it sure is tempting.

I have been musing about whether or not its a problem that I am someone who enjoys beauty.  I guess what I mean is- should I be worried that I seem drawn to particularly beautiful young men?   I guess that my concern is that instead of realizing that I am not likely to wind up with such a person, I will spend my life chasing after what is unattainable.  Maybe my attraction to beautiful young men is an excuse to avoid being serious about finding a relationship and creating a stable life for myself.  If I create this Adonis complex for myself, I avoid having to actually work at a new relationship.  Maybe this whole getting dumped thing has thrown me way off and back into unhealthy ways of thinking.  I thought I'd escaped this infantile obsession with beauty but maybe not.

I do believe I have gone insane.  I am making a strange project out of trawling OkCupid! (its sort of a dating/social networking site) and basically looking through hundreds of people's profiles and trying to convince myself that there are other people out there who can compare to Nathaniel. I may not even talk to them or actively try to do anything, it is just a psychological exercise!  So far I am seeing that there are people who could potentially fit the bill when it comes to attracting me and being as compelling as Nathaniel was.  I probably will send some of them messages simply to make more contacts in that wide world even though I just said I wouldn't.  I want to make my life the best that it can possibly be, given bad circumstances.

I am pretty sick of the angst that I've been experiencing lately so this post will just be a series of random observations.  I did talk to Nathaniel on the phone and it was perfectly fine, no huge revelations but on the other hand, at least I know that its possible to talk to him and not feel depressed or angry.  I have also been enjoying my emailing with my friend Joe. He is a fellow intellectual and someone with similar geeky interests and its nice that he reconnected with me after many years. It is too bad that he's not single but then again, I am not really ready to be trying to meet anyone new.  I am really tired of my body acting up. I hate the disability but at least I can still accomplish some good things right now.  Well, that is all I have to say at the moment!

I was just reading that poem by Lord Byron and it perfectly encompasses the feelings I have right now.  I especially like the verses, "For the sword outwears its sheath/And the soul wears out the breast/And the heart must pause to breathe/And love itself have rest."  I guess I need to put love to rest right now.  The love I had has gone and I need to stop trying to seek out a replacement love.  I should just give my heart its pause to breathe.  I wish that Nathaniel still wanted to talk to me, he once said he'd never stop communicating with me even if we broke up but I suppose people change.  He should do what he wants to do, I just wish he'd let me know that I should leave him be.  If we have to make a clean break, I want to know that's what he wants.  Five years vanishing into memory is hard to take.  I still wake up lonely.  I am still scared of my future but aren't we all?  Fuck. I'll start crying again. I guess I better go for now.

I sometimes wonder if we don't overemphasize the importance of relationships in our lives. I look back at the years I spent feeling as though the relationship I was in would go on forever.  I kept imagining this future of a loving and comfortable relationship and now I'm sitting here staring at the blank space thinking that if I hadn't privileged this now ended relationship so much, it wouldn't be killing me to have it end. I feel so bereft of purpose now.  There is a part of me that just wants to give in and declare myself celibate for the rest of my life and swear off relationships totally.  The chances of finding another person like Nathaniel are few and far between and I feel as though nobody will measure up.  This city is so empty of interesting people that I can't imagine meeting anyone nearly as fascinating.  It doesn't help that I'm stuck in the house for a while and I'm not sure in what capacity I will be mobile when I do get healed. I'm trying to make connections and look around, my friend Joe sent me a link to a group here for single gay men and it looks decently interesting, I am not going to be serious about looking though. Nathaniel is obviously going and meeting people but I guess everyone recovers differently and we likely view the break-up in quite different ways!

The anger and antagonism I feel towards Nathaniel seems to be ebbing away.  Of course I am still feeling the lingering effects of losing him as a lover and a romantic partner but ultimately, he was unhappy in the relationship as it stood and I didn't want him to feel trapped and stifled.  He deserves to be with someone who can make him feel good in all possible ways.  I could not.   This isn't totally as a result of personal failings on my behalf but there certainly were a few.  I am loathe to admit them but  as part of recovering from this breakup, I need to do it.  I guess the biggest failings were not disclosing my disability to him as soon as I should have and forcing him to come visit me as a closeted person.  It was unfair for me to expect him to come into my house as merely a friend when we both knew he was so much more.  If I am unable to be out, I guess I should refrain from relationships.  T

he process of coming out fills me with dread to be honest.  I don't feel it is fair to pile my sexuality on top of my disability for my parents. They don't need to blame themselves any more.  On the other hand, I have even less hope of love and closeness in my life if I don't come out.  The disability will make it hard enough to find a partner, let alone the closet.  I feel trapped right now with no hope of independence.  *sigh*  I had placed so many of my dreams on being with Nathaniel and that was a mistake, given the obstacles (distance, age gap, two different countries).  I still feel a deep love for him but I will have to get on with making some sort of life for myself.

Well, I guess its another day to seek meaning in this crazy life.  I woke up and realized that it was pretty much this time last summer that Nathaniel (my ex) was here. I would not have predicted that a year later, we'd have broken up after five years of a relationship that had some real substance.  Maybe the failings were largely mine even though he says not.  I just have lived life as a sleepwalker, stumbling through doorways that slammed shut behind because I was too fast asleep to notice.  The cold smack of reality across my face has torn me out of that dream and now I am staring at what's actually here and I do not like it.  I let self-pity and fear paralyze me and I'm not sure how I can undo the damage.  I have waited too long to assert my own independence.  It is ironic that the very instant I come awake is the instant that I am at my weakest and least physically able.

Once there was a man who sat in sunny fields and watched butterflies as they passed. It was his job to observe them and write poetry to memorialize their beauty. He was mesmerized by their patterns and resplendent colours so he wrote beautiful odes to them. There were others there who attracted the butterflies, people the butterflies were drawn to.  He was not one of them.  One day, he desired to have one of these lovely butterflies, desired to keep it close to him like the others could.  He purchased a butterfly net and a glass aquarium to keep the butterfly in.  He went out and found one of the most exquisite butterflies in his field and netted it.   He imprisoned it in his glass aquarium and kept it alive.  But every day it would batter itself into the glass and tatter its wings.  The butterfly was dying and he could no longer stand it.  He released it and watched it flutter across the grass of the sun-drenched field.  He had learned that unlike the others, he could not keep that ephemeral beauty close to him but could merely observe and celebrate it.

I am that man. I learned that I'm foolish to dream of keeping that beauty close to me.  I should merely watch it pass and enjoy the beauty and the joy that  others experience. I need to write about it and celebrate those I know who attract the butterflies.  Maybe that's the best way to enjoy love in my life.

I am sitting here veering between love and hate, anger and crushing depression.  My entire life has come to a crashing  halt in the space of a few months. I have lost the only relationship that ever meant anything to me and it is never coming back.  I am struggling with a physical state that is severely restricting my freedom and I feel utterly  empty and bereft of hope in my life. For so long I put everything into this relationship and it failed. For so long I tried to keep positive forward motion and now it is just at a stop.  This has to be a chance to start all over again but at the moment, it merely feels like a chasm that is unbridgeable.  In the ending of the love I thought would stay strong, I am floundering and there's no rope being tossed to me.  If I could leave the room I am sitting in under my own power,at least there would be an escape.  Now I am in a house with family and friends, to be sure, but it might as well be a prison cell.  I have no doubt that things will improve but at the moment, I feel left with nothing.