To start with, I should tell you that I am a 40-something year old, white, gay man who is living in one of the outer boroughs of NYC. I am struggling to live with HIV and Hepatitis C while also fighting to hold onto my recovery as a crystal meth addict (knock on wood). I am very much alone on my journey at the time. Hopefully, that will eventually not be the case. But it is what it is at the moment, and I have no choice but to deal with it. "Dealing" with things, however has never been one of my strong suits, which is part of the reason I find myself in the situation I am currently in.
I was raised in an Irish Catholic household in the sticks. Exactly where is sort of irrelevant, except to say that while I am well traveled, I have never lived anywhere outside of the Northeastern part of the United States. Nor do I plan on doing so. Though I guess one never truly knows where one will end up. Trust me, I never expected to end up where I am now both geographically and metaphorically.
I attended college at a large, major urban university. I do not yet have my degree, though I spent more than enough years in college, that I should have that piece of paper hanging on my wall. I think it was way back then that that my addictive personality first began to rear its ugly head. Let me explain by first taking a small step back to my grade school and high school years. I attended private, Catholic schools for 12 years in a very small mining town. I was by far, not a member of the "in" crowd in both grade school or high school. Quite the opposite. I was in fact, the nerdy, awkward kid who everyone loved to pick on and who despite being a rather big kid, never quite knew how to defend himself. I suspect that this is often the case with young people who are secretly struggling with their sexual identity.
When I went off to college, I intentionally picked a school far from home and in a completely different setting than where I grew up. I hoped that I would and was actually successful at escaping the legacy I left behind. In college I joined a fraternity, mingled with all the jocks, hit up the bars. And it was then that I discovered alcohol and weed. I ended up being what I thought at the time was a borderline alcoholic and pot head. The dean at one pointed suggested I take a year off to reconsider my academic priorities (his words more or less). I did and suffered through a year back in the sticks, living with my parents. That included my alcoholic father, who I just never could seem to get along with. To this day, despite having what is now a amicable though not close relationship with him, we have absolutely nothing in common. Other than our addictive personalities, unfortunately. I worked for a year at the local big discount store, uugggh. But eventually I returned back to school.
During my first go around in college, I experimented with exploring what I secretly knew my sexual orientation to be. However, I was extremely uncomfortable with both my orientation and the gay community in general. Something I suspect still continues to this day, but we will get to that topic in just a bit. In any event, when I returned to school, I had decided that being gay wasn't for me. I decided that I was going to just ignore what I felt deep inside and try and be what everyone expected me to be. I know now, that is a truly bad way to live one's life. While reading on, you may notice a trend developing of bad decisions being made me. This was just the first. And it would be a long and painful lesson that I needed to learn.
However, I met my "college sweetheart" when I returned to school. Let's call her Julie. Julie was a sorority girl and I was a fraternity boy. We ran in the same circles and eventually we began dating. I pinned her. She eventually graduated. Because I was paying my own way through school, I eventually got a job offer that I could not turn down. I took the job, thinking I would eventually finish my schooling and get my degree. That was twenty years ago, and it still has happened. Though I am once working on it.
I should say, that I honestly never meant to deceive anyone, especially Julie, by denying and running away from my sexual orientation. At the time, I thought that I could learn to be that heterosexual man that I was expected to be. I ended up spending the next 13 years with Julie. Eight of those years were spent in what could hardly be called wedded bliss. How blissful could a marriage be, when one partner is hiding something so serious as his sexual orientation. Going into it I knew that I loved Julie and thought I could grow to be "in love" with her. But alas that never happened. Over the course of the marriage, my addictive personality once again reared its ugly head. Though this time, not through either alcohol or drugs, but through food. I began to self-medicate by eating. And I gained well over a hundred pounds while being married. Something that would later haunt me and eventually worsen the condition I was self-medicating for... that being depression.
Let me point out here, my theory about addiction and its links to depression. Its something that I am not alone in believing either as many experts agree. I feel that most if not all addictions are a sort of self-medication for depression and/or anxiety. In terms of my addictions... the early alcohol and weed addictions, the food addictions, the later sex and crystal meth addictions... were I believe, all ways of dealing or rather not dealing with my own underlying depression and anxiety.
OK, I know this is a lot to digest so far. But all this brings me to 2002 where I find myself being a 380 pound, closeted, married, genuinely unhappy gay man. I was living in a nice home in the suburbs of a major Northeastern city. While still without a college degree, I was very fortunate to have been in the right place at the right time in several instances. I was employeed in a healthcare marketing position earning a six-figure salary. I think Julie by this point began to suspect my sexual orientation, as it really could not have been that much of a surprise given our lack of intimacy.
We led a very comfortable life up until this point. She too, was making a six-figure salary. In fact, she made even more than me. We had a beautiful home... had two nice vehicles in our driveway... travelled the world on vacation twice a year... did a lot of socializing. Julie went out shopping and had her mani and pedi every weekend while I watched sports on TV.
Everything was copacetic. Or was it? While I think Julie had gotten to the point of being OK with things and was resolved to the fact that the lack of intimacy was something she could live with in exchange for the lifestyle we had. Plus, I don't think she relished the idea of having to acknowledge to family and friends, that her husband was queer. So I think she resigned herself to the fact that if we didn't talk about, it wasn't an issue.
But I on the other hand, began to have some serious problems. I became more and more depressed, as I longed for the intimacy that I so desperately missed. I finally realized that I was never going to grow to be "in love" with Julie, as I once thought I might. And as talk about and inquiries made by family and friends about babies began to escalate, I realized I had to make a decision.
Was I going to pass on ever truly experiencing a passionate, intimate, loving relationship with a man and settle for the comfortable lifestyle I was living with Julie? She was a trusted companion and a dear friend, but no more. Or was I going to give up everything I had spent years working so hard for... everything that everyone had expected of me... to start over. And to quite possibly to so entirely alone. I knew I ran the risk of being shunned by family and friends. But could I pass up on trying to find the true happiness that I longed for, but had no guarantee of finding? Well, I think the answer to those questions is obvious, but we will pick up the story there next time.
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