#5 Not If but How


Here's a copy of a journal entry I made quite a while ago. I wanted to share it as it gives a little insight into how it feels to be hiding something, to never quite feel like you can be fully in a friendship.
Twice in the past two weeks I've been talking with friends and had those moments where you feel like there's a trust thing going on and they're sharing personal things and you want to share personal things and so you say...what?  Yeah, and oh by the way, I'm gay.  Yeah, just me, the guy you go running with and who works in the office next door.  Yeah, I'm married to a gal and have 4 kids.  No, it's not strange for me at all.  Quite normal in fact.  You mean you find it strange?  

Or maybe they won't find it strange.  I just don't know.  Don't know what to expect or how to say it. I realized, though, that I had at some point moved past Should I tell my friend? to How do I tell my friend?  I'm pretty much scared.  I've created all kinds of possible scenarios in my mind.  Probably none of them are accurate, though.
Why do I want to tell him?  Well, for the reason I've already said.  I don't feel like an equal partner in the friendship.  I feel like he's trusting me with personal feelings but I'm not reciprocating.  But then again, there probably is a lot that he's not telling me.  
But it's more than that.  It's that I want to have a straight guy to talk to that can trust me because I'm completely open with him so I can trust myself.  That sounds really complicated.  I'd so like to have the support of another friend who I could go to and say, hey, I'm having a rough time of it and here's why. I'm tired of making excuses when he knows I'm down or having a tough time but doesn't know why.  
Part of me still is not comfortable being open, even with myself, but on the whole I'm getting much more comfortable with it.  And it actually feels quite natural to be writing this, in a way.  Almost like it is overdue.

Comments

  1. Thanks for sharing. A friend of mine told me about your post. It sounds like you're needing. I remember when I was first going through this that I told a lot of close friends about my struggle. It was somehow therapeutic to have them know my DEEP DARK SECRET, and still have them look at me as a friend. Well. . . most of them did. A few of them totally wigged out, but luckily most of them were very cool with it. Wow, I found that the fear of total rejection was almost all of my own imagination. But reaching out to other guys and having them accept me totally as I am was so healing. I'm thankful to each of those friends who helped me at that point in my life. I think it was an important and critical stage in my journey.

    As I continued on learning, having my friends know about grew less important, and I found that I didn't need them to know in order to have a meaningful relationship with them. I stopped feeling like I was hiding something or being dishonest with them if they didn't know. I think it's because I grew more confident in my self-image and less reliant on other guys to define myself. I also realized that my attractions were only ONE part of my life. I can now relate to guys on many more levels: family problems, problems at school, problems at work, feelings of inadequacy, shared interests, jokes, etc. Much of my life, I felt like I didn't HAVE an identity, which only fueled my desire to have an outlet from my isolation, and to have someone else help "shore up" my identity. Now I know that I am a fun, likeable guy, with many of my own hobbies and interests (and weaknesses and differences, too). My attractions are only a part of my greater whole.

    Good luck on your journey this week!

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