Recoup

So yesterday I had 3 clients in a row, which is my least favorite thing to look forward to. Because that means 3 more hours of work on top of a full-time stint in the day.

But they were the fastest 3 hours of the day. I love doing therapy. I love winding through folks' lives. It's like reading blogs, and being able to comment during the writing of it. It's a beautiful experience to be invited into folks' lives and being trusted to have influence in them. Isn't it? You guys know, because you guys are my therapists.

I'd really put forward the attempt to do therapy full time if the economy wasn't so bad and if I didn't need the security and health benefits. (My meds ain't cheap without insurance!)

To add to the forward momentum and improving mood, on the 15th of this month I will have amassed 4K in my savings. I only give the amount here because it isn't the goal, it's just a means to an end. The goal is to drop a load of money on a prospective landlord to pay for a full year's lease at one time instead of applying for a month by month lease and failing the credit check and being denied the chance to live independently again. So having 4K is nothing compared to what I actually need. Say I find a place for $1000 a month--then I'm only 1/3 of the way there. But it's way better than nothing at all! But and however, with the economy being the way it is, I might also just approach perspective landlords with the offer to drop 4K on them as a prepayment to offset my bad credit. Maybe in this economy, a landlord would jump at the chance.

See? Despite my interpersonal hangups, I've still got some cool goodness going on!

AIAFOMA. So that's alright then.

So, Yeah ... Mortality. Hnh.

On Friday I seriously considered taking a bow off of The Stage. And it occurs to me that I could be a little more concerned about my willingness to end The Play, but I'm not.

Last night I gamed with my D&D buddies, which includes Grim. And we were back to the Summer Behaviors, which is bare feet, shortsleeve shirts, and fit bodies on display. Only this year, Grim's fitness is joined by The Cop. The Cop's fitness and weightloss makes him look very masculine and very attractive. Very dark Italian. God bless him. And he really likes me telling him so, which I do because I'm not ashamed to. I've long established with the group that I can recognize good looks in a man, even though I haven't told them the exact nature of it. So The Cop craves my approval. It's almost cute how he acts. And what I like the most about him is his lack of facade. He's wide open. His ego needs stroking and he puts it out there, like a dog would offer his head for patting. And because he's wide open, it's also clear that he's 100% hetereo. I've never known him without a woman in his life. And now he looks good doing it.

And naturally, it makes me feel like an utter Jabba. I'm 4 lbs lighter now than I was at my maximum weight, which means I'm 4 lbs. away from losing ALL the gains I've made over the past few years. Which means I've lost ALL my gains save 4 lbs. All the work and gym memberships and NutriSystems food wasted. Wasted. And all of it has to be done again if I want the same results. Months and months of more. More more more.

And it's a perfect example of what is ahead of me in other areas. Or THE other area. It's going to be work. My life is just one big slog. One big Sisyphusian hustle up the hill behind the boulder. Work work work.

And who wouldn't be tired of it? How much work does a man have to do in one lifetime? 60 hrs a week for less than 50K a year isn't enough? I'm tired.

I've been tired and I've been striving ever since I started blogging on December 26th, 2003. No doubt this is why I've put the pounds back on. I've let an area of my life go because all these other areas are FUBAR. And in letting this area go, I've compounded my unhappiness by having a bigger stomach that I can't hide in this hot weather.

Last week, I called the hero who I left behind in the midwest, Pastor Hero. I just wanted to get my final indictment from him, ready to be cast away finally and end my relationship with him because I knew I was tired of fighting. I wanted to tell him that I'm gay and I'll never not be gay, even after I've married a woman who knows I'm gay. But my courage failed me and I couldn't say it as blatantly as that. I could only muster enough to tell him that I knew I'd always have this thing about me and that it would be safest to stay single forever.

But Pastor Hero wouldn't do what I wanted him to do. He wouldn't dump me. He fought for me. He prayed for me. He didn't try to cast demons out of me, and he loved me. He acknowledge what this was inside of me. He accepted that I'm gay, but to him, it didn't mean that I couldn't fulfill my goals if I wanted to. And he made the same suggestion that you did, Ned. He suggested I find a therapist who could help me work on my goals. He suggested I do the very same thing I've done for my clients. (Reading your comment Ned ... I had to chuckle. It's so clear that I have to get this help, but to get it confirmed by two people who love me... what other kind of sign do I need?

As long as a future woman knows me fully, and trusts that I mean what I say about wanting to be with her only, and can use the evidence of the fact that I've never been with a man and have no intention to, that I can be happy. With help, I can be happy.

So who am I to argue?

But on top of all this, if I get ground beneath the steel wheels of the crosstown freight train on my way to Happyville, as long as it didn't hurt for too long, I'm just like "whatever."

It is what it is.

My Last Day on Earth?

So in about twenty minutes, I will have a client return to me who stopped a few months ago because I made him quite angry. He was handling his life best way he could but he was growing dangerous. Crossing physical boundaries. Not with me, but with someone who he said he loved.

Well, I felt like I did my job. Time comes when you have to confront something which is just wrong. My conscience won't let me do otherwise. I'm very very supportive, but I know when enough is enough.

Now I look forward to his return. But I can't imagine why he's coming back. Unless it's because he realizes he needed to be confronted and he trusts that I will serve in his best interest, just the way I had done before.

Either that, or he's coming here today to kill me.

I will surely let you know one way or the other. Because if I die, you'll never hear from me again. And in that case there are things I want to say.

I did the best I could with what I had.

I helped people.

I loved God.

And I was tired anyway. I wasn't looking forward to the struggle ahead of me. These last days have only been about trying to repair the damages that I had done to myself. The damages that others had done, well ... I had to live with it.

And I loved all of you. You helped ME.

Life was so much better for having you guys in it.

Thank all of you.

Okay.

So if I'm going out, I'm ready. Hope it doesn't hurt too much, lol.

Look for the news of a midtown therapist's slaying in NYC on 4/24 some time between 5-6 EST. I mean, I'm ready to go, but lets not let him get away with murdering me, y'know? He might do it again to someone not as fabulous as I was.

But I'm ready.

Hopefully I'll see yas on the other side some day.


EDIT: An hour later, oddly, I live. It was clearly another torturous suggestion from Worst Case Scenario Man. I'm not only glad to say that I'm alive, but that the client trusted me enogh to come back for help.

Take that, WCSMan.

Resurface

So, yeah. I appreciated all the comments to the last post. Coaster Punchman took it to e-mail and engaged me with some real talk and a psychotherapuetic exercise to help me suss out the real me. In addition, I called up my Pastor Hero to drop it all into his lap again after a year of absence. He too turned the mirror of therapy around so that I could get a long hard look.

Also, I called MFTD and used him yet again for a stress valve. He and Coaster Punchman have a lot in common, I'm amused to say. And they have the goal they would both like me to reach.

And I was able to make up my mind.

Either I get with a woman who's life I can enrich and draw enrichment from, or I stay single.

Is that going to make you happy, I hear you ask. And this is the answer--I would be significantly less happy if those two conditions weren't occurring in my life. I'm not expecting to be more happy than what we all usually experience, whether we're hetero or homo.

When I'm alone, I'm mostly happy. I get to do what I want. All the money is mine. All my non-work time is mine. I get to be selfish by default. And when I live on my own again, I'm getting a cat.

And yet I know that with the right person, sharing your time is worth it. Enter the little missus. Since relationships take work, I need as little a reason to bolt as possible. I've got a lot of things to learn about personal compromise, and dividing my time and growing my tolerance. While carrying out these tasks, I need next to NO ONE in my face adding to the challenge. No people who disapprove, no societal battles to fight, no stares from children, no scorn or patronization from neighors.

Dead horse beaten one last time.

FUBAR

F.U.B.A.R. is an acronym that stands for F*cked Up Beyond All Repair. Both as an acronym and a pronounced word, it seems powerful and angry. I don't feel either powerful or angry, but I do think I have a life that is FUBAR.

I have one purpose on the planet. And I am really good at my one purpose. I am here to make other people's lives better. There are Givers and Takers, Movers and Shakers, Upper, Middle, and Lowerclasses, blacks, whites and everything in-betweens, male, females, and everything in-between those too. I am not so unique that I don't fall inside one or more of those catgegories. There are others like myself, even though yes, there is only one me. So this isn't about "poor little me, no one understands my pain." It's just about seeing things for what it is.

FUBAR.

This is my 45th year on Earth, in any recognizable human form. I am at the peak of my development. I am mostly homosexual and completely unwilling to be. My semiotics are telling this to everyone I meet, even though my mouth will not. I want to be different things when I'm with different people, but with all of them, I'm still the same. I'm a whimsical, funny, strange little enigma. People who know me know that I am without a partner and they don't ask why. Deep down inside, they know why. Girls that I trick myself into believing that I want to be with--they know I don't really want them. And even if they took my word for it, as even I attempt to do, they know it'll end in tears. They don't want to take that chance on me. In the long run, they might care for me, have affection for me, find me attractive physically and intellectually, but there is no heterosexual spark.

There is no internal switch to flip. There are no hormone shots I can take. I am fully male in my biological chemistry. I have normal, functioning genitalia. I have body hair commensurate for male designation. I am aggressive, egotistic, competitive, crude, ignorant, impatient, intolerant, sloppy, and greedy. And emotionally, I am not drawn physically to the gender for which I was made.

I can't accept this. This is as though I've been robbed of sight and now must live my life out as one who is blind. As though I must now learn how to navigate through the world with assistance and tools. Must learn how to be entertained with alternative media. Must learn how not to be a burden on my sighted friends and still answer my needs for friendship. Must learn how to accept this.

And I can't.

I can only distract myself from this condition. I can only live the rest of my life escaping this reality, because it is FUBAR. There is no repair for it. Science is not advanced enough to repair it. Minorities are too endangered to repair it. I don't care if it's right or wrong, moral or immoral, designed by God or by Satan. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care.

So I distract myself. I read comicbooks and dream of lives other than mine. I play roleplaying games and pretend I'm living a life other than mine. I write scripts and produce other people's voices to make adventures about heroic lives other than mine. I go be a therapist and help people get through misery other than mine. These thing work for me. The minutes, the hours, the days that I am lost in these activities take me through life. Gives me joy. Makes me happy. Lets me live.

And that's what's going on.

FUBAR.