Maudlin

There was a black hole.

It didn’t matter how many people offered me support. It didn’t matter how often I heard their encouragement, or tried to see their perspective. It didn’t matter how much kindness was shown to me, because it was never enough. It couldn’t be filled.

“It will get better. You need time. You will come out on the other side of this. You will be stronger for it. You will survive. You will get through this. You will grow, and change, and above all flourish.”

I didn’t believe it.

The universe abhors a vacuum and will fill the emptiness with something else. Cher left my heart and my life and the universe filled the void for me. It filled that vacuum in ways I’ve never imagined.

I have endured.

I have survived so far, when I didn’t think it was possible. I’ve been picked up off of the floor and someone dried my tears. I’ve had my hand held tight as I walked through the darkness. I’ve been carried when I couldn’t move. I’ve been fed, and nurtured, and cared for.

I am very loved.

Every person in my life has been there for me. Friends I’ve known since I was four to friends I just met yesterday. Amazing people have given of themselves to help me along. They’ve been a shining light of guidance and have loved me unconditionally and with intent.

You are a blessing to me.

Thank you. Thank you friends and strangers and the strangers who have become my friends. Thank you for seeing something in me that I couldn’t see in myself. Thank you for your continued love. Thank you for the grace of your presence. Above all thank you Universe for filling the world with wondrous people.

I am forever grateful.

 

Hurtful Things

Hurtful Things: Leaning Against
Sei Shonagon’s Hateful Things

One has hopes and dreams that are thwarted by the decisions of someone else. If one is capable and strong, one can make them happen anyway. If one is heartbroken and stuck, the situation is very hurtful indeed.

One finds that the joint checking account has been shorted $300 for the month, making the budget quite tight, creating new worries.

Someone has fallen in love with another woman. Since this someone is already married, the situation is very complicated. It would seem that prevailing minds and morals would guide one to make decisions that are respectful and considerate to the injured party, but sadly this is not the case. Oh, how hurtful!

A lady sits alone in a sushi restaurant that she’s visited every week. She’s never ordered for herself so she sits and stares at the menu. “What are you in the mood for?” her wife would ask. “You pick,” would be her answer. So many years of eating sushi perfected the lady’s use of chopsticks—a very good piece of social capital. She sits there alone eating cucumber salad and sipping Pinot Gris while reading this week’s New Yorker, surrounded by couples.

I hate the sight of couples that are in love and holding hands or maybe having a kiss while saying, “I love you,” and “You’re so hot!” Don’t they realize that someone around them may have been left recently and doesn’t want to see their public displays of affection? I find it most distasteful.

To reconnect with an old childhood friend who lives 100 miles away. To have drinks with that friend and then keep from your wife the hundreds of text messages you exchange. To lie to your wife and have an affair, and then leave her after knowing the friend for six days—oh, how hurtful!

One goes to the doctor for an STD screening to have a lump discovered in her breast.

An admirer invites a lady to dinner and when she arrives, he is not what she thought he would be. She feels like running out of the restaurant.

The waiter comes to the table and asks if she is coming. “No,” she replied, “She left me,” and he looks back awkwardly. “I’m sorry,” he offers. “Me too,” is the standard reply. One can almost feel the thickness in the air each time the story is told and one finds it hurtful to the extreme.

One has been foolish enough to think that dating again might be a healthy distraction from
her pain—it isn’t.

A radiologist comes into the room to deliver the news, “We found two masses in your breast,” she says. Suddenly the world begins to close in and there is no air to breathe or light to see. A core needle biopsy and surgery consult is ordered and you wonder how you will face such a thing without your wife.

One takes her lover on the sailboat she owns with her wife—disgusting and hurtful behavior!

A woman makes love to another woman’s wife as if she is entitled to do so.
Such a person is hurtful, and so, indeed, is anyone, who does the same.

Equally hurtful is knowing your wife is socializing with her new girlfriend with your mutual friends and laughing and holding her hand—kissing her. She comes to stay with your wife every weekend—her bath towel hanging next to your wife’s—her toothbrush sits on the sink—her clothes hang next to the ones of yours that your wife took with her when she left.

Very hurtful is finding out your wife is taking the new girlfriend to Mexico to meet your in-laws.

Indeed one’s attachment to a woman depends largely on the elegance of her leave taking. When she jumps from your life on day of the Winter Solstice cloaked in a shroud of lies and deceit, and chooses to be with someone else, someone she barely knows, when Christmas is ruined for everyone because of the dark sadness that lingers over the family home, when she replaces you in her heart and in her bed without any regard to your feelings—one really begins to hate her.

Apokalypsis

It was the day of the Winter Solstice and the supposed Mayan Apocalypse. That morning, my wife kissed me goodbye–she was off to meet her friend Suzanne, whom she reconnected with from childhood. “Have fun,” I told her. “Thanks,” she replied, “I’ll see you later, I love you.”

I wish I would have known that was the last moment of normalcy in our marriage.

The Winter Solstice is an astrological event and the longest night of the year. It’s recognized and celebrated for survival, role reversals and to venerate life-death-rebirth deities. After that long stretch of darkness, the next day marks when the light begins to return, just a little at a time, leading us to spring and rebirth and renewal. In many ways, it’s an ending, a death. An apocalypse.

Apocalypse comes from the Greek, apokalypsis and means, “the unveiling of unseen realities, both in heaven as it is now and on earth as it will be in the future.” The word is associated with the Book of Revelations, a cosmic event revealed through a series of symbols and visions that some believe denote the end of the world.

The truth is that we experience apocalypses many times in our lives–seasons begin and end, parts of us die and are reborn. We transform and hopefully grow stronger and more beautiful each time. We’ve all been pruned to the ground and then the spring arrives and newly formed buds appear. We lose jobs, we lose loved ones, we lose homes and our health and relationships. There is no escaping the apocalypses, but they don’t have to indicate only endings, death, and destruction–there’s another part as well. “The unveiling of unseen realities, both in heaven as it is now and on earth as it will be in the future.”

The unveiling of unseen realities.

Is it better to see truth in the light of day rather than to hide in the darkness? Those who have eyes will see, and the rest of us are in denial; the veils drape over the truth that we don’t want to know, or can’t face and hide us from the realities that exist. The apocalypse unveils those realities because in order to grow, we must have light.

The unveiling hurts. We see what we didn’t know was there–the unseen realities of ourselves, of others, and of our situations. What we see usually shocks us, shakes us, and breaks us down to the point of utter despair and destruction often pushing us to the very brink of death–so close that we can feel its arms reach out for us. Death flirts with us, gently kissing our necks and luring us towards its will. It would be a welcome relief from our anguish and we want to go there–we long to be taken in Death’s arms, swaddled in its dark robes and lulled off to a place where our pain doesn’t exist and we aren’t forced to regard the unseen realities that have been veiled.

Most of us aren’t that lucky; we don’t drift away with Death and instead are obliged to find a way to gather up the broken pieces of our hearts, our lives, and our souls and sit with the uncertainty of what is to come–the “Negative Capability” in the vicissitudes of life.

My apocalypse, my unveiling of unseen realities, came on the Winter Solstice when Cher kissed me goodbye and I went about the business of our lives: going to Costco, planning Christmas Dinner, shopping for stocking stuffers, and wrapping gifts to put under our tree. I didn’t know that Suzanne, this person my wife barely knew, and had reacquainted with just five days before, was the unseen reality that would be unveiled. I didn’t know that evening, as I sat in our living room with a glass of Cabernet wondering when she would be home, would be the last night of my life as I knew it.

I didn’t know, until blanketed in a quilt of lies, Cher walked into our bedroom the next morning and said, “I have something to tell you…”

The Winter Solstice reminds us that we managed to live through the darkness and will soon awaken to light, and the realities in heaven as it is now, and on earth as it will be in the future.

Cruelty

The depths of cruelty knows no bounds.

adjective

1. a cruel person: brutal, inhumane, heartless, uncaring, callous, unkind, ruthless, pitiless, cold-hearted, remorseless.
ANTONYM: compassionate.

2. a cruel blow: harsh, severe, bitter, harrowing, heartbreaking, heart-rending, painful, agonizing, traumatic.

Take a breath, and step away.

I’ve been chronicling my life here for eight years. I don’t look back at posts very often, but today I did. I read that very first post (it’s in the archives,) and was amazed at where I was, where I went, and where I am now. It would seem, that I’ve come back around full circle. Eight years ago I was mourning my marriage to my husband, caught up in a dysfunctional relationship with someone I couldn’t trust, and figuring out what the hell I was going to do with my life.

I moved no where except to the beginning.

Now I’m mourning my marriage to my wife, caught up in a dysfunctional relationship with someone I can’t trust and figuring out what the hell I am going to do with my life. This time, however, wasn’t my choice. I didn’t destroy our life together, on the contrary, I wanted to do everything I could to help save it. I wanted to make it better than it was, and keep moving forward to a future together that we could both be happy in. I didn’t have the choice this time. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t choose not to trust, not to believe, not to understand; I had no ulterior motives or exit strategies. I didn’t put someone else in the middle of my seven-year marriage.

But sometimes we don’t get to choose. Sometimes we don’t have power over our own lives, sometimes that power belongs to someone from long ago who sweeps in and steals it away. Someone who thinks only of herself and not the destruction of her thoughts, words and deeds. Someone untrustworthy and unkind with no apparent ethics, morals or values; someone who would destroy a family and think nothing of her own responsibility in it, only the immediate pleasure and gratification of getting what she wanted.

I’ve known her before. I’ve been her before. I’ve played all three parts in this situation and I know, that it never turns out the way one thinks it will. What starts in chaos ends in chaos; what is born out of destruction and built on the carcass of murdered love and shattered dreams draped with lies, deceit and heartache will never grow into something beautiful. The lies continue between all three players and the one who thinks she’s hears the truth is naive. The one who thinks she speaks the truth can’t, because there is no honesty where deception lives. There is only darkness disguised as light.

So here I am. Afraid of what’s around every corner, sitting with uncertainty, loneliness, pain and questions of what will we do? why? how could this have happened? where will we go? Starting over, but I can’t breath and don’t know how to step in that direction because the one who led my life for so long is now leading hers with someone else. And all of the, “I’ll always love you no matter whats” just linger in the misty grey purgatory where I dwell, and are just as meaningless as I feel.

There are no directions and no beacons of light. Just nothingness in every part of my broken heart.

End, then begin.

Now that I’m fully engulfed in my MFA program, I tend to think about things in relation to writing–words, structure, form, punctuation, beginnings, middles, and ends.

Any piece of writing is structured with a beginning, middle and end, (moderate exceptions apply.) To create anything begins with an idea. With those ideas, we bring with them, everything inside of us–the lens in which we view the world, our past, our feelings, our prejudices, and our fears.

Idea.

Sometimes that idea starts with a beginning, sometimes an end, but no matter in what order we imagine it or even write it, the end result is linear. We begin, we have a middle, and we end.

A sentence begins with a word and ends with a symbol of punctuation. A sentence must first end before the next sentence can begin. A paragraph begins with an arrangement of sentences; the last sentence ends before the next paragraph begins and new chapter can’t begin until the last one has closed.

Life is like a piece of writing; it mirrors it in many ways because writing is the expression of life; it’s the articulation of ideas, thoughts and emotions in a way that can’t come from simple speech.

Life is like a piece of writing; it has a beginning, middle, and end–but unlike a piece of writing, we never know when one chapter ends and the other begins and we also don’t know when we’ve come to the end until we do. Sometimes we think we can figure out the plot, the prose, the structure and the form–sometimes we know what’s going to happen and sometimes we do not, but one thing is certain–we can’t skip steps–we can’t flip to the end to see how everything turns out. The book of life has no certainties, no guarantees of happy endings, and can change in a moments notice.

I am trying to put a period at the end of a sentence, and somehow I need to figure out how to do that before I can form the next sentence of the next paragraph of the next chapter. But first I need to find that period

Why I’m better off than I was four years ago . . .

The Dems are having their convention. Tonight, President Obama will receive his party’s nomination for the upcoming presidential election against Mitt Romney. Last week the Republicans had their convention and because I’m obviously some kind of Masochist, I watched some of it. I was pretty much disgusted the entire time and actually felt physically ill.

This convention is better.

I have been inspired, moved to tears, hopeful and once again happy to be a Democrat in America. It’s true that the president has disappointed me a little on a few things; to me he’s not nearly liberal enough, but I also understand that it’s politics and no matter who is in office, there are going to be politics that I don’t always agree with. The fundamentals of the president’s term so far, have been good and I can honestly say that I am better off than I was four years ago.

Why I’m better off than I was four years ago:

• I have a college education that wouldn’t have been possible without the federal and state financial aid and student loans that were made available to me.
• If I were so inclined, I could join the military and openly serve without fear of being dishonorably discharged because of my sexual orientation.
• The validity of my relationship has been recognized by the leader of our nation as one that should be held in the same regard as my heterosexual marriage was.
• I have restored faith that our home won’t be worth less than we owe on it when we sell in a few years.
• Because of low interest rates, I was able to consolidate the small amount of debt that I had at less than 3%.
• My credit card company is restricted in how high it can raise my rates.
• I am ensured that life saving tests and preventative care will be available to me if I need them.
• I will not be charged more for the same medical care because I’m a woman.
• I know that my wife, my daughters, and I have access to birth control, including Plan B.
• I know that my wife, my daughters, and I have access to a safe and legal abortion if it were ever to be necessary.

In many ways, I’ve always been a one-issue voter: if a candidate is at all opposed to a woman having control over her own reproductive health, I won’t vote for him or her. This is of course true in this election as well, although there are other things that scare me just as much, including the chance that 10% of our population will be pushed back into the closet and stripped of whatever rights we’ve managed to obtain and hold onto thus far, millions of people losing healthcare coverage and promising young people being deported, even though they’ve lived in this country most of their lives.

But for me it is, and always will be, about a woman’s right to choose. I honestly don’t understand how any person who has a daughter, a uterus or both, could ever consider voting for a Republican this year; why would any woman vote against her own best interests? Why would any woman want the government to control what grows in her body? Why would any woman concede to being forced to undergo unnecessary medical procedures? Why would any women be okay with being forced to be pregnant against her will? Why would any woman agree to be paid less than a man for the same job? It’s very confusing to me.

The speakers at this year’s convention have blown me away (Warren/Castro 2016!) and I’ve spent most of the time in tears. President Clinton last night? Amazing. I’m sure tonight will be no different and I look forward to it with vigor.

But for now, all I can say is:

Four More Years! Sí, se puede!

Adventure

Every June, I think to myself, “Wow, I will have so much time to do things this summer. I will do home improvement projects, organize my entire life, read the twenty books that are in my queue and write the great American novel!”

This has never happened.

I did manage to do a lot this summer. Besides vacation with the girls, traveling to PA and camping with friends, (which took up the entire month of July,) I did manage to organize my closet and re-do M’s room, a project that I meant to finish last summer, then I was going to do it over winter break, then spring break and then put it off until this summer. It’s nearly finished and it turned out very nice. I ripped out her carpet (something I made her help me with and she HATED.) I did the Brown Paper Floor treatment, which turned out absolutely beautiful, painted her walls and some pieces of furniture and coordinated it all with new drapes and bedding. I think it’s gorgeous, and even though she’ll only be living at home for another year, I wanted her to have a sophisticated room to be in until she’s launched from the nest. You know, make it comfortable for her before she faces the big scary world all on her own!

I read a few books in my queue but didn’t quite make a dent and I didn’t write the great American novel, but I did do some work on my book project and wrote a few essays just because and not for a deadline, which was one of my goals.

Most of all, I spent time with my girls and that’s the most rewarding thing I ever do when I have time off.

Throughout the summer and for the better part of the last five years, Cher has been looking for a sailboat. She has carefully researched different options, first thinking that she would buy a very small starter boat, then thinking perhaps a larger boat would be better as to not “grow out of it” too soon. After we took a Learn to Sail class this past spring, she had a few ideas narrowed down and began to do a more diligent search. She had been saving for a long time and knew she what she could afford and what she couldn’t, which was anything very new or above a certain size. We wanted something that we would learn on that wasn’t too overwhelming or complicated and something that would be nice for the girls to enjoy as well.

Looking back, (at two weeks ago,) it kind of seems that we were a bit impulsive, but nevertheless, Cher bought a boat and her name is Serenity.

She is a 1995 MacGregor 26X and until a few weeks ago, I had no idea what that was. It’s a sailboat, but it also has a 48 hp engine, which makes her a bit zippier than a regular sailboat. Zippy enough that we can pull the girls on a tube, albeit not very fast. Also zippy enough that we can fully enjoy the boat, even without wind. It’s also (supposedly) a forgiving boat to learn to sail on, and we definitely need forgiveness for our lack of sailing ability.

To say that we’ve been a little bit overwhelmed and obsessed with Serenity would be an understatement, but it’s also exciting and fun and something we’re both interested in at the same time that we can learn and work on together. That probably sounds a bit more romantic than the inevitable reality; we’ve been told that owning a boat is a bigger test to a relationship than putting together a piece of Ikea furniture. Additionally, despite the fact that I barely keep up with my writing in this blog, Cher and I decided to chronicle our (mis)adventures with Serenity on a blog, and yes, Cher is contributing as well, even a bit more than I have! Martini’s Serenity can be found at martinisserenity.blogspot.com.

Follow along . . . if you’re not faint of heart.

Chick-Fil-A-Fail

Although I’ve not yet blogged about it, I became a vegetarian about four months ago. At this point, I will still eat fish as long as I know where it comes from. Even before I became a vegetarian (technically I guess I’m a Pescatarian,) I would only eat at a fast-food restaurant if it was Burgerville (I will still eat there, they have an amazing white bean burger.) Burgerville is a Pacific Northwest company that strives to use fresh, local and sustainable products for their food which is not made of fillers or a bunch of artificial crap. For a “fast-food” restaurant, they manage to keep it real. Besides, their mission is “Serve With Love” and really, that’s pretty awesome.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself a  health nut by any stretch of the imagination, I truly feel like eating at other fast-food establishments is just as bad as eating poison and most of the people who eat fast-food don’t realize just how bad it is for them. They eat it because it’s cheap, easy and well, fast. Additionally most of the people who eat fast-food are also poor and I feel that supporting an industry that profits on the ignorance and susceptibility of the poor is wrong. We shouldn’t have a society that makes bad food cheap and good food expensive; it should be the other way around.

I don’t eat chickens and I don’t eat at fast-food restaurants so I would never be inclined to walk into a Chick-Fil-A for any reason.

I also try very hard to not give money to businesses and individuals who will use that money to hurt me and my family.

The company’s President or CEO or whatever he is gave his opinion that he believed in “traditional marriage”, which is completely his right. He gives money to organizations that not only “defend traditional marriage” but also actively try to prevent certain citizens of this country from being able to have the same rights as other citizens of this country. That’s also his right but his “freedom of speech” is called discrimination and no matter how hard people try to wrap themselves in their faith and in their bible, it is still discrimination. Chick-Fil-A also donates money to organizations that believe in “repairative therapy” for gay and lesbian children, believing that these children (and all gay people) are sinners and need to change their sexual orientation to be pleasing to God. Donating money to organizations that actively hurt and discriminate people is also his right, but it doesn’t make it okay.

Who are these people who speak for God and for what He wants? Who are these people who label me as: lost, a sinner, depraved, disgusting. I read a comment on a blog today that said that “all homosexuals will burn in Hell for their sins.” Really? Who is that woman to stand in as God’s decision-maker?

My friend Dana posted this on her Facebook status today:

My one and only post about Chick Fil A: For those people who went and spent money at one of those locations yesterday and claimed they were supporting free speech but don’t have a stance on gay marriage, your money just went to a business that donates money to fund a bill which continues to legalize the killing of gays in Uganda. The company also donated more than $2 million to groups who make it their mission to attack the gay community through lies and distortions. These groups push several false notions from homosexuality is connected to pedophilia to the idea that gays can change their orientation (which I wouldn’t even if i could. Women are beautiful). Chick Fil A has also donated thousands upon thousands to fight marriage equality. I find it amusing that you would defend the 1st Amendment and Freedom of Speech, yet you’ll support a company who has no problem publicly admitting they would like to deny a “child of god” his or her inalienable rights. So if you don’t think you have a stance on these issues, money talks and you just said more than a mouth full of chicken by spending a penny at that restaurant.

This isn’t about one man’s right to “freedom of speech,” or supporting a business’s right to operate how it wants to operate. Yes, Mr. Cathy has a right to free speech and a right to conduct business how he wants and a right to believe what he wants. He also has the right to not be discriminated against and to legally marry his wife. It must be nice to be entitled to all of those rights.

But while people are all up in arms about Mr. Cathy’s rights and Chick-Fil-A’s rights they are forgetting something very important: the rights of a marginalized minority in this country to be treated equally. What about our rights? What about the rights of my family? Fighting for the rights of some while denying the rights of others is wrong, no matter how one tries to spin it. So while Sarah Palin and right-winged, conservative, “Christian” flock into Chick-Fil-A and eat unhealthy food that was produced through the suffering of others (people and chickens,) in order to support Mr. Cathy’s rights, they are at the same time, actively trying to take away mine.

Perhaps Chick-Fil-A should take a lesson from Burgerville and “Serve With Love” instead of supporting hate.

Reunion

Mikayla and I just returned from a whirlwind tour of Pennsylvania and Washington D.C. The purpose of our trip was to visit family and friends, visit our nations capital, and attend my 25th High School Class Reunion. Twenty-five years? How could that possibly be?

I grew up in Danville. It’s a small town in Northeastern Pennsylvania with a population of around 5,000 people. We moved there when I was in the seventh grade and remained until I moved away to become a flight attendant when I was 19. When I left Danville, I rarely went back to visit and when I moved to Oregon in 1992, I visited even less often. The last time I was there was 2000; my stop was rather brief and was during a family tragedy, so I didn’t do a lot of socializing. I also didn’t keep in touch with really anyone except my best friend of twenty years who told me she wanted nothing to do with me when I told her I was gay. I guess because of that experience, there was little motivation to want to reach out to anyone.

Once Facebook came along, I [cautiously] began reconnecting with several former friends and classmates from long ago, (if it weren’t for Facebook, I don’t think I would have ever attended a reunion.) Last year sometime, I messaged my classmates on Facebook and asked if there was going to be a 25th. I wanted to go. When I said goodbye to our class president after the party, he told me, “We did this for you, you know? You were coming all the way from Oregon!” That made me very happy, although others traveled from San Diego (hi Bobby!) and Orange County (hi Myra!) The long distance trip was more than worth it.

We flew into Pittsburgh so we could visit with family. Upon arrival, my father and stepmother threw us a party and several of my relatives whom I haven’t seen in twenty years came to see us and meet Mikayla. We had a wonderful time. The next day we went to a cook-out (the PA word for a barbecue,) with the other side of our family. In 24 hours, we saw almost our entire family. We did a quick tour of Pittsburgh and M had her first Italian Ice and Mancini’s bread, saw her first firefly and learned rule number one when driving in rural areas: watch for deer. She was also inducted as a Steeler’s fan.

We rented a car and drove to D.C., following my dad and two sisters. What should have been a nearly five hour trip was done in four due to the fact that no one drives the speed limit, something I’m not used to here in Portland.

Unfortunately it was super hot in D.C. but we tried not to let that spoil our fun. We visited the Smithsonian Museum of American History and looked at the monuments and buildings. The next day we toured Arlington National Cemetery and nearly melted, visited the Holocaust Museum, the Lincoln Memorial, Korean War Memorial and Vietnam Memorial before getting caught in a torrential rainstorm where M saw her first lightning.

That’s the White House. We were very disappointed that the First Lady didn’t come out and invite us in.

After D.C., we drove to my aunt and uncle’s house and had a lovely visit.

The next day, we went to Danville. When we were about ten miles away, I started to get so nervous thought I was going to throw up. My hands were shaking and I felt out of sorts; I didn’t know how I was going to make it through the reunion events. We arrived at the hotel and while checking in, I ran into one of my besties from high school; I screamed and started to cry! After a shower and some encouragement from M, I was ready to go meet my friend A in the hotel bar. As I walked over and into the bar, I realized that there were about twenty people from my class there; it was so surreal. When I saw my friend T and she started crying, I really lost it. I haven’t seen these girls in so many years and they were at one time, the most important people in my life. We grew up together, we shared everything, we loved each other so much and here we were in the same room.

The rest of the evening was a blur of hugging and questions and reuniting. I had the BEST time! I also got back to the hotel at 3:00 AM, which I realize I am way too old to do but that didn’t stop me from doing it the next night as well (I’m still trying to recover.)

I was nervous about what people would think of me. Even though I feel comfortable with who I am and the life that I live, I couldn’t help but wonder if my classmates and old friends would think differently of me because I’m now a lesbian. I had the courage to ask a few people if it was weird for them and was assured that it was not. I even asked an old boyfriend and he said that it didn’t matter to him in the least; he was glad that I was happy and he was happy for me. I tend to believe them and why I’m surprised, I do not know. I guess I expected them to be more close-minded because it’s a fairly conservative town and to be sure, no one was openly gay when we were younger. I don’t think I ever even met a gay person (that I knew of) until I moved away. What I realized from this experience is that it was I who had the problem, not them.

I made assumptions of how my old friends would react and found that they didn’t give a rat’s ass; they were thrilled to see me, they missed me and were glad we could spend time together. I was wrong. I judged them, thinking they would judge me. That was a mistake I hope to never make again. I can honestly say that each person I interacted with at my reunion was even lovelier than I remembered and it was a sincere pleasure to become reacquainted with them all. I will never let that much time pass again without a visit.

Portland is where I live and where I love, but Danville will always be my home!