My head turned back from the barroom window where I’d been staring.
”I’m sorry. What did you say?”
The waitress gestured at the margarita with extra salt around the rim that sat, untouched, across from me.
I’d been sitting at the table in silence, alone, for nearly half an hour. It was nearly 11:00 PM on a Tuesday evening. We were the only two people in the bar.
“Excuse me. I didn’t mean to bother you. I asked who the extra drink was for.”
“Umm… it’s for my friend R.”
“Are you expecting her soon? I can bring a fresh drink if she’s on her way.”
“Oh. That’s very nice of you, but…”
I paused and cleared my throat.
“No. She won’t be coming. But… thank you.”
“Of course.”
She hesitated.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry… but is your friend OK?”
I bit my lower lip and closed my eyes, then took a deep breath.
I was seated in the office of M, my therapist, one recent winter afternoon.
“Do you remember the two blogposts I brought in before Christmas?” I said.
“Of course.”
“Well, I wasn’t sure if anyone would read them, but I actually got email from a few people telling me how they could relate to them.”
“That must have made you feel good,” M said.
“It did,” I said. “In fact, one of the people who wrote told me that she had something similar happen. Only she asked someone out, and then wasn't able to follow up.”
“How sad,” M said.
“That’s what I told her. But it also made me think about the one time someone actually asked me out.”
“Really?” said M. “I don’t think you ever mentioned this before.”
“I don’t really like to think about it much. But what’s odd is that ever since I have started thinking about it, I also keep thinking about another girl I knew years later.”
"Why is that?"
"I don't know. I just know they’re connected somehow."
“Well, why don’t you tell me about them?” asked M.
Several months ago I wrote a pair of related blog posts about several of my many attempts at a relationship when I was younger. Like so many of us, I ached to be with someone, anyone, whose love would take away what I knew to be the truth about myself.
These increasingly desperate attempts ended in failure, without exception. I invariably chose poorly, as Release Vol. 1 describes. Or, as in Release Vol. 2, I chose someone who would have been suitable, but wasn't able to return my feelings. My choices as a result of her decision had near-disastrous consequences.
Due to the intensely personal nature of these experiences, I was fairly certain I would not post them to my blog. My therapist, M, without telling me which choice was better, suggested I at least consider posting them. It would be part of the process of letting go of these memories and removing the power they've held over me for far too long.
Ultimately, I decided to post them. If it helped even one person who had gone/was going through something similar, I reasoned, then that alone would be justification enough for making them public.
It turned out to be the correct choice. While it would be an exaggeration to suggest that these posts set the Internet ablaze ;c), it's fair to say that they easily generated the greatest number of comments, both posted and private, of anything I'd written. I was genuinely moved by people's reactions. When I mentioned this to my friend F, he said, in his typically perceptive way, that everyone understands loss, no matter their background.
One commenter in particular (you know who you are :c)) wrote to me privately to express her sympathy and ask if I'd ever had a successful relationship of any sort.
I replied, truthfully, that I had not. I had been turned down by every single girl I'd ever asked. She then related a story from her life in which she asked someone out successfully… only to never follow up.
And suddenly I realized that, in fact, I actually a similar story in my past, one I had worked extremely hard to forget for nearly half my life.
As I thought about those long-ago events, I was puzzled when memories of a dear friend from my past began to fill my thoughts. I was never interested in her romantically, nor was she interested in me. So what was the connection between these two seemingly unrelated women from my past?
I mentioned this to my therapist, M, at a session shortly after the initial conversation that sparked these thoughts. She suggested that we discuss them in an effort to discover that connection.
The next two posts are the results of those discussions.
In the introduction to those two earlier posts, I mentioned that they were the most painful things I had ever written about. And without diminishing their impact on me in the least, the first of the two posts you're about to read was harder on an exponentially greater level. It reached the point that I stopped work on it at the 3/4 point, a period that soon stretched to two weeks. For whatever reason, I was unwilling and/or unable to relive those memories again.
Finally, last night, I recalled the words of a wise friend. Last summer, when I first began this blog, she was kind enough to reach out to me, a total stranger, to offer her support. I told her then that I had several topics I felt I needed to address, but was reluctant to do so. Her advice was simple. Follow your instincts, she said; they'll tell you when it's time.
And she was correct. Last December turned out to be the right time to finally let myself process those incidents. And late last evening turned out to be the right time to go back and relieve events I hadn't allowed myself to think about for half a lifetime.
I feel I must apologize for the extreme length of both pieces. I debated shortening them significantly, but in the end I decided I needed to give these stories enough space to do justice to the two women who are their subjects. I hope I was able to get across at least some measure of what made them so special.
Having finally finished, I have to be honest and admit that I feel no sense of closure, which I did when I completed the posts from last December. At the risk of being melodramatic, these events, particularly those described in the first post, are going to be with me for the rest of my life. It still hurts, and hurts a great deal, to think about them. But whatever healing that might take place can at least begin now. And that will have to suffice.
Thank you in advance for your patience in bearing with me. And thank you for letting me share these stories with you.
I've been thinking a bit more about something that happened at the wedding last Saturday. Or, to be more precise, something that didn't happen.
At the reception, I was at a table with some of J & T's co-workers. I was the only boy at the table. I knew all of them, at least a little bit, and they're all very nice, just like J & T.
As you can imagine, the alcohol was flowing freely; I was the only one not drinking. I don't drink at all when I'm driving, but I rarely drink alcohol anyway. Alcoholism runs on both sides of my family, for one thing. And on a less somber note, I'm also not all that big, and it only takes one beer for me to get a serious buzz. It only took two and a quarter beers for me to get the only hangover of my life, a fact my friends still tease me about two years later. So I'm a true lightweight in every sense of the word. :c)
Most of all, I don't drink because I've always been terrified of what would happen if I ever lost control. I didn't dare risk people finding out who I really was. It was hard enough pretending to be a boy when I was sober, after all.
I tend to be quiet at events like this, partly because I'm naturally introverted, but also because I like to watch and listen people. You can learn a lot. And this day I did.
As I said, after a few drinks the talk around the table loosened up quite a bit. Being a table full of girls, the talk naturally turned to men, and dating, and, well, other things. :c)
What struck me was what didn't happen - namely, no one seemed to notice that I was sitting there. The talk got raunchier and raunchier, and no one gave me a second look.
This has happened my entire life. It used to bother me; I felt as if I were being ignored. But I have a new perspective on it now. I think that on some level everyone at the table simply, intuitively accepted me for who I was. (Or wasn't, maybe? This gets confusing sometimes. :c))
A friend was telling me a similar story about working in her mother's office with a group of women, with the same result as me. And also about how out of place she was when she was with a group of boys.
Growing up, my friends always seemed to leave me out of their more, um, masculine pursuits (read: strip clubs, boozing, and other, less savory pursuits). It wasn't to exclude me; I didn't *want* to be included, and they knew it, and respected it, without even asking. It was always acknowledged, without comment, that I was different. And they were OK with that. And still are, as I'm still friends with all of them. I plan to tell them the truth about the real me at some point in the near future, and I suspect they won't be all that surprised. I also have a hunch I won't feel invisible any longer, either.
Here's one of my very, very favorite bands really doing justice to my favorite Who song:
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