Love and Loving Unconditionally

Love and Loving Unconditionally

I've heard it a thousand times. "I will love the person, but hate the sin." I truly believe that most Christians who make use of this popular phrase truly mean well. I also think that they've heard it so many times that they don't consider how conditional that makes their claim of "unconditional" love. First, there's the idea of homosexuality as a sin. I find it very difficult to believe that a God, who first claimed unconditional love, would ever find real love in any form to be wrong. Now, I know it's popular opinion among most Christians that being gay is a choice. But really, what is a choice?

Waking up everyday and deciding what you're going to wear that day? That's a choice. Coke or Pepsi? That's a choice. Cooking dinner or eating out? That's a choice. Now, what do all of these "choices" have in common? Options. All of the above situations can reasonably be considered choices, because there are options. You can select one or the other by making a conscious decision to "choose" one of the two options instead of the other.

Now let's look at Love: Emotions, feelings, attractions. Let's assume for a moment that you're straight, which you may very well be. Now let's also assume that you chose to be straight. When did you make that choice? What year? What month? What day? What was that pivotal moment that made you choose being straight over being gay? I've heard a lot of Christians defend that question with "Well, that's what I chose, because the Bible says homosexuality is a sin." I'm sorry, but that doesn't fly. Let me tell you why. Puberty. Seems bizarre, right? How does puberty debunk the "Bible" defense of choosing to be straight over being gay?

Attractions that come along as a result of puberty start at a young age. Most of the time around middle school, actually. How many people can claim that they knew that much about the Bible and homosexuality then? Now let's look at attraction itself. Assuming you "chose" to be attracted to the opposite sex: when was that? Could you make the other choice now? Notice, I didn't ask "would you?" I asked "could you?" Can you honestly tell me that you could find someone of the same sex and fall head over heels in love with him or her? Could you spend the rest of your life with that person? Would you do anything, give anything, for that person? Would you die for this person that you "chose" to become gay for?

I would bet that most straight people, or all if answering honestly, would have to say no to that question. I doubt there's a straight person out there in the world that could honestly fall in love with someone of the same sex and spend the rest of their life with that person in perfect happiness. Why? Because you aren't attracted to the same sex. It's not physically or emotionally possible for a straight person to feel that way toward someone of the same gender. Let's flip it around now. In the same way that you, as a straight person, could never "love" someone of the same sex, I, as a gay person, could never love someone of the opposite sex. Trust me, I've tried. There's nothing going on there. 

I began having feelings for guys around the same time you began having feelings for men if you're a straight woman or women if you're a straight man. The only difference between you and me is that I hid what I felt, ashamed of my attractions, because they weren't like everyone else's. Looking back on everything, it definitely wasn't wrong for me to have those feelings; it was just different. As I got older, those ashamed feelings were reinforced by what I was being taught in Church. It wasn't until grad school that I started doing my own research on what the Bible really has to say on the subject. Those in favor of the choice theory, beware: the results of my findings were not in your favor. 

You didn't just wake up one day and decide to be straight. In the same regard, I didn't wake up one day and decide to be gay. Why would I? I know there are some really masochistic people out there, but I'm not one of them. I try to avoid as much self-inflicted pain, or pain in general, as possible. Why would I wake up and decide to live my life outside of the norm? Decide to be hated? To be ridiculed? To be told that I chose to go against what was right and expected? To go against the will of God? There are so many reasons not to choose being gay if it were actually an option. That's the issue, though. It's not a choice, and I didn't get to choose. Looking back on everything that's held meback from being myself for so long, I wouldn't change that fact either. I'm perfectly amazed with who I am as a person. The only thing I would change is the fact that I waited so long to embrace that part of who I am. 

And for those of you out there that are preachers who are standing at your pulpit on Sunday claiming that homosexuality is a choice? Shame on you. Stop it. It must be incredibly easy to stand up in front of the Church on Sunday and claim that my life as a homosexual was a choice when in the eyes of almost everyone staring back at you, you've already made the right choice and so have they. You know that they'll trust what you have to say, because they believe that they've somehow made the right choice too. The only catch is that no one seems to be able to determine exactly when it was that they made this pivotal life choice. I mean, isn't that kind of a big deal? You "chose" your sexuality, so shouldn't you remember when you made that choice?

Enough about choices, though. This is really about what loving unconditionally means. I kind of got off on a slight tangent (alright, so it was a large tangent...). I'll start with the meaning of unconditional. The "un" in front of conditional has a purpose. Conditional means that as long as one thing happens, another thing will happen as well. "As long as you clean your room, you can go to the movies on Friday with your friends." Whether or not you clean your room or not determines whether you'll be going to the movie on Friday with your friends. The condition of your room is keeping you from having fun with your friends. 

The "un" changes everything, though. It changes the meaning to "without" conditions. So, claims of unconditional love are supposed to mean "regardless of every other factor, I will love you." So, going back to how I opened this post, it is impossible to unconditionally love a person while hating the "gay" part of who they are. You can't "love the person and hate the sin." Being gay is part of who they are. A part they can't, and shouldn't have to, change. You can't unconditionally love someone while hating part of what makes them who they are.

Which brings me to the next question: How can you love someone conditionally? It kind of defeats itself and doesn't make any sense. "As long as you're straight, I'll love you." That's basically what you're saying. Regardless of what you actually say, that's how it comes across. There's not a whole lot of meaning in telling someone, "I love you, but I don't approve of you being gay." Who asked for your approval? I didn't choose to be gay, and how can you really love me if you hate who I am as a person? Sure, being gay isn't the only part of who I am. But it's a huge part of who I am. Humans were not made to be alone. We were made for each other.

If you're married, how did you get to that point? You fell in love. Where did that love come from? Attractions that turned into feelings for that person. Those feelings allowed you to become emotionally attached to that person and in turn to fall in love with that person. No one steps out into a crowd of people, points at someone, and says "You'll do. Let's get married." 

While it's true that love doesn't just happen overnight and it takes time to develop, it's also true that love can't be forced out of nothing. When you try to say that being gay is a choice and that gay people can choose to be straight and fall in love with someone of the opposite sex, it's like telling them that they can force themselves to fall in love with someone. Sorry, it's not going to happen. 

Live your life and be happy. Be with the one that you can't live without. Remain true to who you were meant to be, no matter what society tries to tell you. Embrace everything about who you are. Real love is unconditional, and love has no idea what gender is. Most importantly, love is never wrong. 

I Still Feel It Sometimes...

Today, I decided that I was going to clean my room (or start the process of...there's a lot to be done, both in my room and around the house...thank you roommate for the house part). As I was rummaging around the bookshelves, picking up clutter. Tossing things out here and there that had collected on the shelves out of my laziness to not just toss them where they should have gone in the first place (the garbage or the bill pile), I came across something that I had displaced from my mind for quite some time.

It wasn't anything major (at least nothing that most people would consider major) but to me, in a way, it's everything I ever wanted and everything I hoped I would never see again (despite the fact that I cannot make myself throw it away). A note. That's it; just a note. Most people would react that way had I told them I found a note and was now convinced the rest of my day would be miserable; however, to me it's not just a note. It's a part of my past (kinda recent past actually) that I can't and don't want to get rid of, hence the inability or lack of desire to actually get rid of it. It's the note that Kevin wrote me a couple months after we'd broken up.

In the note, he apologized for hurting me and told me all of these wonderful things that he thought of me. He tried to explain why he pushed away from me, and he tried to reconcile with me. At the end of the note, he even said he regretted his decision and understood if I didn't still want to be with him, but that he would leave that choice up to me. I pushed a little toward mending our relationship, and I messaged him a few times on Facebook, which brought promises of going out together to try and start things back off slowly. None of which ever happened. Today, we talk only occasionally, and for a while I'd thought my mind free of the feelings I felt for him (not that I'm dumb enough to think that they'd ever really go away, but I thought that they were at least tampered down enough to not be a mind wrecking gut wrencher throughout my day).

I was wrong. Finding and rereading the note was just as painful today as it was the first time I read it and found out they were just words. I'm not really sure why he wrote the note; it's fairly clear now that they were just words and nothing more than that. Maybe his apology was sincere, but that's not really the part that I'm bent out of shape about. When I read that note, I only see the part where he says "I leave that decision to you." The words that left some hope in mind at one point, thinking that I might still have a chance with him. A hope that was shattered fairly quickly by his lack of response to my attempts.

This is likely the most depressing thing I've written in a while, and for that I apologize; however, I'm hoping that by getting it out in writing, I might be able to go throughout the rest of my day without thinking on it too much, though I know that's not likely to happen. I need a getaway more than ever. Arkansas, for what it's worth, should help a little with that. I'll be too busy scrambling around to different things to think too much, I hope.

Nothing can beat the time spent with a friend, though, which needs to happen soon-ish. :)

Sorry for the overly not-so-happy blog post.

Love is...

*Begins sappy writing*

"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.  It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.  It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails." - 1 Corinthians 13:4-8.


I had to look that passage up on the internet. It's been so long since I've brought out my own Bible, that I've most likely forgotten where it is. My faith is blind. That's the terminology I use to refer to myself in regard to where I stand spiritually. I'm not an atheist, but I'm not sure I can call myself a Christian despite my upbringing. I believe there's a higher power out there. How can you look at the world around you and not believe in a higher power? Maybe it's God, or maybe it's another god. Who knows. Or maybe there really is nothing, and the universe is so mind-blowing on its own that it simply lends itself to crediting a higher power for its beauty. Not really the point of this post, so I'm moving on.


Despite my blind faith, the passage above has always been a favorite of mine. It's definition is so pure and so very unlike the definition that most Christians I know give to love. A couple days ago, Obama announced his support for gay marriage. Now, I've never really paid much attention to Obama or his agenda, but for him to openly express his support for a hot-topic struggle is incredibly humbling to me. 1 Corinthians offers a perfect definition of love. There's no gender bias in there. It doesn't say "Love is patient, love is kind. Love is between a man and a woman." 


With all of the debate going on right now on the issue of same-sex marriage, my mind starts to wander. It starts to worry that I might not ever have someone that I can legally call my husband. The struggle for equality in love is a seemingly unending battle. With the loss in North Carolina after so many losses already, it's a little disheartening. But no matter what happens, it's a fight to keep fighting. It's not a fair fight by any means. In my opinion, it's not for someone else to decide. Why is it even up on the chopping block? There was no vote on straight marriage, yet in order for gay couples to express their love in a legally binding commitment, there has to be this drawn out battle?


It doesn't really matter. My faith might be blind, but I still believe the part of the passage that says "love always perseveres. Love never fails." This battle will play out in our favor eventually. And, I'll keep waiting for the guy I'm meant to spend the rest of my life with. If there's faith worth having, then I'll have faith enough to believe that he's out there waiting for me too, and one day we will find each other. On that day, everything will fall into place, and I'll know that all of the waiting, all of the struggles, and all of the battles were worth it. 


To my future husband:
I'll love you until I find you and forever after that.
I'll dream of you at night, and on nights I can't sleep, I'll lie awake thinking of the day we'll meet.
When I find you, we'll both know it's right, regardless of what others may think.
I'll do my best never to hurt you, and I'll give my life to protect you.
I'll love you at your best and at your worst.
When you're hurting, I'll hold you in my arms, and I'll tell you it's ok.
When the world seems like it's falling down around you, I'll hold it up above your head.
When you go to sleep at night, you'll never have to worry whether I'll still be there in the morning.
I will always be there in the morning.
When you can't find the words, I'll sit with you in silence.
Until that day, I hope you'll keep fighting. Until that day, I hope you'll keep looking, because I'm looking for you too.


I needed to get that out there. Today has been a roller coaster of debates on Facebook. Going out to the Nature Center to walk the trails and take pictures was an escape, but this beats that by far. 


I don't know what direction my faith is heading. I'm not in a place right now to be comfortable with God, and I know that it has nothing to do with him. One thing I know for sure, though, is that my desire to express this kind of love to my future partner is what keeps my faith from being drowned out entirely. In a world of so much hate, I have to keep believing that there's someone out there that just as much in love with me as I am with him and that one day, faith will bring us together for eternity. 


*Ends sappy writing*

NOH8

I don't know who you are, and you don't know me. However, we have a mutual Facebook friend, and that's how I came across and was able to read the words you don't even realize have torn me down. You claim that you have never used hate, bigotry, or harassment to promote your beliefs, but your words tear at the very fiber of my being. You've thrust libel out onto to net in order to try and pull others into your thinking, and you don't even realize who you're hurting in the process. You claim to be a Christian, but my guess is that your God would chastise you for spreading such a hateful message.

To claim that gays have an "agenda" and that "the gay agenda" is the number one supporter of child pornography is ludicrous, and I would love to see your proof from "the FBI" as you claim. I would agree with you, however, that gays are connected to the highest percentage of violent crime, because that violent crime has partially been against us. Due to the hateful nature of so many people "Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth are up to four times more likely to attempt suicide than their heterosexual peers (Massachusetts Youth Risk Survey 2007)." 

Because people find it so hard to be truly accepting, "LGB youth who come from highly rejecting families are more than 8 times as likely to have attempted suicide than LGB peers who reported no or low levels of family rejection (Ryan C, Huebner D, et al - Peds 2009;123(1):346-352)." 

"Nine out of 10 LGBT students (86.2%) experienced harassment at school; three-fifths (60.8%) felt unsafe at school because of their sexual orientation; and about one-third (32.7%) skipped a day of school in the past month because of feeling unsafe (GLSEN National School Climate Survey 2009). Sexual minority youth, or teens that identify themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual, are bullied two to three times more than heterosexuals. (Nationwide Children's Hospital, Columbus, OH 2010)."

I offer you proof. Proof that the LGBT community stands a higher chance of being faced with hate crimes than members of the heterosexual community. 

You're fully entitled to your beliefs but to post such comments on Facebook just goes to show how hurtful you are to your own Christian foundations. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but people like you are the reason why Christians have such bad reputations. I know incredible people of faith who don't always believe my lifestyle is acceptable, but that doesn't keep them from accepting me as a person. To say that gays are a part of an agenda to promote violence and child pornography is just ridiculous and goes to show that you don't really even know who we are. 

Do you want to know our real agenda? Let me tell you. Our real agenda is to find love. To be able to live our lives with the person we love without ridicule or having to worry about what might happen to us if we walk down the road holding hands or if we kiss each other in public. We want to be able to start families and raise our children with the same kind of love that everyone else gets to experience. We are not the threat to the sanctity of marriage that so many would claim we are; if there's such an attack on the sanctity of marriage, it comes from divorce, not from same-sex marriage. 

The love I have to offer to my future partner is just as real as any other love. It's not tainted with lust, and it didn't originate from any kind of childhood trauma or abuse. It's the love I was born with. My dream is to one day be able to look into the eyes of my partner and be completely lost in something amazing. To be held and know that our love is real. 

Being gay is not the life I chose. In fact, it's the life I fought for years. I tried to be just like everyone else. Tried to pray away the feelings for men, tried to force myself into heterosexual relationships. What resulted from these attempts was unhappiness and depression. Thoughts of ending my life, because I was raised thinking that the love I had to offer was wrong and that somehow I made a choice to be the way I am. I didn't make a choice to be gay. One doesn't simply wake up one day and say "Today is a good day to start being gay. I think I'll leave girls behind and try out a lifestyle where I'll live in constant fear of what everyone else around me thinks. A lifestyle where it's not ok to spend the rest of my life with the person I love under commitment of marriage. A lifestyle where I'll have to constantly look over my shoulder when I'm with the person I love just to make sure I'm not going to be physically attacked for displaying my love in public." 

If you don't believe that same-sex love is right or that it actually exists, so be it. I'm not writing this to change your mind. I'm writing this to let you know that your claims of having never spread hate, bigotry, or harassment are false. If you don't believe in gay marriage, then by all means, please never marry a man. In your practice of being a preacher, you're even entitled to never marry a gay couple. But to write things like "gay agenda" and "number one supporter of child pornography" is an attack against the love that the LGBT community has to offer.  

Christianity is supposed to be a faith surrounded by spreading the unconditional love of your God and the same love that you're supposed to express to those around you, not the unrelenting hatred that stems from your lack of humanity. 

My faith is blind, and I'm not sure what kind of higher power (if any) is out there. But I don't need faith in a god to love people. I don't need faith in a god to desire an achievement of the same homes and dreams that others desire to have. My life has been surrounded by incredible people that love and support me, just as I've made it my mission to love and support others, no matter what their beliefs are. My mission is people plain and simple. I don't have a hidden agenda. My agenda is pretty clear: I want to find love, and I want that love to be recognized for what it is and not for what those with your views claim it to be.

If I Can Marry One, Why Not 3?!

To the argument posed in the subject line, which happens to come from a best friend's sister, I say, why not? Don't get me wrong. Polygamy is not for me, and I think in most circumstances, it's not for most people. I'll explain why in just a short little while. First, I want to talk about what I think love is. Please, keep in mind that this post is purely opinion. It's not meant to offend or bring on the war sirens. 

I've spend a lot of time growing up trying to figure out what love was. Most of this discovery stems from trying to "create" for myself what I thought love was supposed to be: that is, between one man and one woman. As I grew up, I started to discover that the love I had to offer wasn't like most others around me. I didn't feel the "one man, one woman" love that seemed to be an expected equation. My brain and body had other ideas swimming around; despite the efforts I put out to be "normal" and to create the "expected" love, I was unable to give myself over completely to the relationships and the women that I dated. Why? Because my attractions and feelings are for men. I'm gay. Duh. 

I literally tried everything. My first relationship with a female came in high school, and it lasted three years. What can I say about that relationship? Only that I'm sorry for the person whose life I wasted for three years. She felt it, I felt it. She wanted more out of me than I was ever willing to give her, and it was probably the worst three years of my life. So, why did I stay with her for so long? Because, I had it in my mind that this was how it was supposed to be. One man, one woman. Eventually, she cheated on me, and I used my opportunity for an out to end our relationship. I still regret never having the courage to tell her that it was not her fault but mine that our relationship wasn't what she always thought it would be. Today, she is with someone new, and from what I can tell, he makes her extremely happy. It doesn't alleviate the guilt I have for having stolen so much of her life as I tried to discover mine, but I'm still glad to know she found someone that can treat her like she should be treated.

Time carried on and I met a friend at work. This friend quickly became a close friend, and now I consider her a best friend. We became very close, and for a while I thought that this could be it. Maybe I had finally discovered where "love" comes from. So, when she asked me out, I accepted, and once again, things went spiraling downhill from there. I could tell how she felt about me, and I tried desperately to feel the same way about her; however, when I looked at her, I saw only a best friend, and it never amounted to more than that for me. So, after nine months of trying to "create" love again, I ended our relationship, and I feared, our friendship. 

After that, I decided I was finished. I knew what I felt, and I knew that anything else beyond that would be a lie to myself and a lie to the person I was trying to be with, so I told myself I'd never enter into another relationship unless it was genuine. I finally admitted to myself what I had been trying to avoid due to what I had learned growing up. I finally allowed myself to understand what love meant for me despite what the world tried to tell me it should be. Love isn't simply something that's felt between one man and one woman. Love, for me, is something between two people. <--Do not misinterpret that to mean I have something against polygamy. I'm getting there, keep reading.

To get a little more specific, love is a connection between two people. I've discovered through personal experience that it doesn't have to be one man and one woman. I've tried that twice, and it doesn't work for me. If you're straight and it's your thing, kudos to you; however, that doesn't mean that the rest of us should be hindered because yours is the dominant love. There is no dominant love. Want to know why? Because love has no idea what gender is. Love is its own thing, and it's not limited by gender like our minds are. 

My brain and body tell me that my love is for another man. BF's sister obviously feels her love is for a man. Although our brains and bodies are telling us that those are our only options, love says, "that's ok, I'll accept them both." Yes, I realize I'm referring to love as if it's a living being that thinks all on its own. But that's the easiest way to illustrate the fact that love isn't bound to one form or another. 

With all of that being said, do I believe that polygamy is wrong? For me? Yes. For others? Not necessarily. With love, you have to be willing to give yourself over completely to the person(s) that you're with. The key word there is "completely." I honestly believe that love is only felt when you can say that you're completely theirs. When you can say that you'd do anything and be anything that they needed. When you know in your heart that you would like more than anything to spend the rest of eternity with that person. I can't say that if I was in a polygamous relationship that I could ever give myself over completely to each person involved. I can't fathom how it's possible. If you've already given yourself completely to one person, what's left for everyone else? 

I'm not saying it's not possible. If there are people out there that are being real with themselves and still feel that they've found true love in a polygamous relationship, then I'm ok with that. For one, it's not my place to judge them regardless. It's not my place to decide that they should or shouldn't be together. As someone that is currently experiencing what it's like to be on the downhill side of being told who it's ok for me to marry, I understand how extremely frustrating that can be. How dare you try and tell me that it's not ok for me to express my love to someone by joining with them in marriage?! I never once tried to pass a vote for your marriage, so why the hell do you think it's ok to decide on mine?

Love doesn't know what gender is. I never decided to be gay, just as you never decided to be straight. I fought my feelings, and it almost killed me. At one point, I had decided that if I couldn't be true to myself, I shouldn't be at all. I'm done with that, because I am being true to myself. And one day when I find the person I'm meant to spend the rest of my life with, I will marry him, because your opinion has no part in the love I feel. Just as I cannot decide the outcome of a polygamous or straight relationship, no one can decide the outcome of my relationships.

So to the best friend's sister who posed the question: "If I can marry one woman, why not three?" I say, "Sure, why not?"

Rediscovering Myself as a Writer...Hopefully

Writing has always been a passion of mine. From the time I could pick up a pencil and find a piece of paper, I was writing. Before we had a computer in our house, I used to go over to grandma's house and spend hours typing my stories into Microsoft Works. I still have those stories somewhere in the basement at home. I'll have to dig them out sometime and read them. I suppose they're awful, but that's not the point. Even at such a young age, I had a desire to write and become an author.

It's a passion that carried through to high school, and English quickly became my favorite subject. Reading and writing both seemed to come naturally to me, and I never received anything less than a B in any of my English classes (Academic writing in college was a bit challenging at first, because my brain tends to linger more on the creative side of writing). What's the point? The point is that somewhere along the way, I lost it. My muse took flight, leaving my mind filled with all of these ideas for stories, and when I try to get them on digital paper, all I see is a brick wall (aka, writer's block).

I think I know what happened. Somewhere during the college years as I was writing all of those academic papers, I found it harder and harder to find time to let my muse out to play. The more I kept him bottled up, the less he made his presence known to me. My writing shifted from creative to academic to keep up with all of the required papers that come along with being an English teacher and a grad school student after that.

I need and want to recapture the attention of my creative muse. The best way to do that is to begin exercising him once again. Reestablish the relationship that I used to have with him, so that I can get those ideas out there again. My dream job is to be a published author, and that's never going to happen if I'm not writing....constantly!

My goal is to write something creative everyday. It doesn't have to be extensive. Tonight it was a character development profile for a new story idea. It just needs to be something creatively productive in some way, shape, or form. I know I made my muse sound real, which kind of makes me sound crazy, but it all works out in my head.

"Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will." -George Bernard Shaw

~Joshua

Reflections from the Past and Dreams for the Future

Reflections from the Past and Dreams for the Future

Tonight I was rummaging through some of my past writings, both way back when and in the more recent past, when I came across a writing from when I first began the coming out process to my friends and co-workers. Mostly, it was about Nick and how he helped me come out to them, where it led from there, and it also talked about where I thought my life would never go from there. Most of the narrative is uncomfortable for me to read now, despite the fact that I wrote it. Take this passage for instance:

"I didn’t choose to be who I am. One doesn’t wake up one morning and say, “Hey, today’s
a good day to become gay and hated!” I do choose to continue living a double life.
Although, now the cards have turned a little in my favor. One life is one in which I’m
happy and accepted among those I care about. The other life is one in which I hide from
my family in fear of what they’d think if they knew the real me. Maybe one day I’ll be
able to open up to them and everything will be all right and completely different from
how I’ve always imagined it would be. One thing is certain, though. When I find the one
that I feel like I can be in a relationship with (I’m still hoping it will be him, but we’ll see
where that goes. It’s a work in progress), I’ll want them to know regardless of how they
feel about it. For now, it’s a sacrifice I choose to make, because I’m not at the point
where I feel like I can live without them or feel like I’ve disappointed them.
For now, I have a circle of friends and an amazing non-boyfriend, as some of those
friends like to refer to him, for love and support. Since I started this journey, I’ve been a
much happier person. There have been good days and bad days, of course, but most days
are better than the day before with little trials and obstacles along the way. I’m finding
out that it’s not wrong to be who I am, and the lies that I’ve grown up around no longer
imprison me. To set the record straight about how I met him, I’ve quit looking for
random hook-ups online since then, because I’ve found that I don’t need those
momentary feelings of acceptance to feel like a real person anymore. I don’t need them,
because I’ve found acceptance all around me."

Remembering how I met Nick always kind of makes me feel sick inside, and only a few very close friends know the way we met. It's not something I'm proud of, but I feel like it was meant to happen anyway. Like I said in the passage, I've stopped looking for momentary acceptance and have begun the search for something real. Unfortunately, that something real isn't with Nick, but there were just some things that neither of us could look past in the other's lifestyle; we made the wise decision to move on and just remain friends. 

Thank goodness I was wrong about my family! Since telling them, they have been so accepting. They do not, however, know how I met Nick. Like I said, I'm not proud of it, and I'm definitely not that person anymore. Luckily, that was a very brief experimental time in my life that began and ended with Nick.

That about sums up my reflections from the past. I found that tonight and made myself open it up and read it again, knowing the shock it would put to my mind-frame. Sometimes it takes those jolts from the past to make you focus on the future again, and I know I've been in a "doom and gloom" funk here lately that I haven't been able to shake myself from. I feel like when I complain about my life and my bills and my feelings of loneliness that I'm sapping all of the positive energy from everyone else as well, and I don't want to be that person.

I chose the picture of the beach at the top of this post, because that's what I'm looking forward to. It's the picture I've painted in my mind of somewhere I see myself retreating to, hopefully within the near distant future, to escape from everyday life for a while and just take some time to build me again. That, of course, includes one of my best friends, Heather, plenty of books to read for the duration of the trip, and lots of coffee (probably iced for fraps, because it will be warm as beaches should be). If we're on a real beach, there will of course be guy watching (because bird watching is overrated) and natural tanning (winter has not been nice to my skin...lol. Just kidding; had to throw that in there.)

I'm trying to get myself back to a place where I'm happy all the time (or most of it, at least). Life is too short to be stuck in the "doom and gloom." People, myself especially, tend to focus on the negative. I'm not sure why it's so human-nature to do so, but sadly negativity is more evident in a person's life than positivity and happiness. We discussed this in training class today: When a customer has a negative experience, they will rant about it to at least 8 of their friends; however, they may only tell 1 or 2 people about the great experience they had. 

Consider this my attempt at a happier me: There are great things in my future, despite the current struggles of my past and present, and there's so much to live for. There's really no reason to be "doom and gloom."

"There is only one cause of unhappiness; the false beliefs you have in your head, beliefs so widespread, so commonly held, that it never occurs to you to question them." -Anthony de Mello

~Joshua

Fragmented Pieces

Fragmented Pieces

Everything has shattered, but I didn't notice the falling fragments of what used to be my happiness until each individual piece came at me fast and hard. Individually, the fragments are minor and unimportant. Little things that would normally not bother me; they're things that could easily be brushed off. When put together, however, they form a picture of what has become my daily nightmare. Constant reminders of self-disappointments and failures. These pieces are the negative things that have all seemed to hit my life at once.

College. It's that thing you do after high school. It's supposed to help you gain the skills and abilities you need to land the job of your dreams. And dreams don't come cheap. I knew that going in, but I still went for it. I succeeded in finishing out my college career, graduating with a degree in Middle School Education, but then I made a choice that became a double edged sword: I kept going with college instead of looking for a teaching job. Perfect in the fact that I graduated college again with my Master's Degree but destructive in the fact that now I'm a first-year teacher with no outside-of-college teaching experience who has a Master's Degree. In this economy, getting a teaching job with those credentials has proved challenging and so far unsuccessful. What of my other degree, though? As of yet, I haven't found anything there either. My experience is with ResLife, but my heart isn't in it anymore. I no longer desire a job that requires me to live on campus, because it's stressful going home at the end of the day but never truly escaping your work.

Money. I hate it. No matter how much you make, it's never enough. When you're not making enough, it's even worse. When it was time for taxes to be done, I made grand plans to use my return to pay off some of my lower balance credit cards. College left me with quite a chunk of debt, and I thought that would be a great way to cut down on some of it. Then I was laid off from Teletech for two months and denied unemployment, which forced me to reevaluate my use of the tax money, so I could survive those two months in between projects. I'm also being turned in circles over some medical bills and the financial assistance process, which becomes more and more stressful every day it seems. There's always one more hoop to jump through. 

Love. Not really a huge deal, right? Being single? It shouldn't be I know. I should be holding on to the idea that there's someone just right out there who is waiting just for me; all I have to do is find him. But I've felt the sharp stab of love's sword twice now, which has left me with an unrelenting fear of finishing out my life alone. The fear that maybe I'm not good enough to find someone just for me. The fear that someone doesn't even exist. 

All of these fears and failures have been dog-piling on me here lately, and I don't know why. I know that I'm strong enough to deal with all of these things, but lately I fear that I'm not. That soon I'm going to be crushed under their weight and that I'm going to break under the pressures that they create. I'm trying hard to not disappoint my parents as I continue to search for jobs in my degree fields. I'm trying hard not to worry about how far my next paycheck is going to stretch, and I'm trying hard not to let the fear of spending the rest of my life alone consume me. Sometimes, though, the unending battle of "trying" seems like just too much. I need a break from it all.

I'm not giving up. I'm better than that. I just needed to vent and get it all out there, because writing it out makes it real and tangible for me. I can read over it again and again until it seems insignificant and manageable again. And trust me when I say that it helps to have friends and family that love and support me no matter what. People that I could talk to about anything, and I know they would listen. For that, I can never say thank you enough. 

"Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is." -Maxim Gorky

~Joshua