I was me for a day

I acted for myself yesterday. It honestly felt good.

I woke up early (again) in the morning, watched the awesome episode of House that I taped. I felt a great deal of love for Bren, and worry, and just wanted to see him, and without asking anyone, I left for his house. We hugged, cried, talked. I'm not ready to be back with him, I can see that out. There's still way too much fear and confusion in my mind about it. I do know that I love him very much, and that he loves me. That will be enough for now. I was happy to see him. I went to therapy (late).

Went to work, talked to people a bunch, including Aud and Pablo and Bren. Looked up interesting things, and enjoyed that. I felt nervous about going to the GSE event last night, but at the end of the day I said fuck it, I want to go. So I went to the library and exchanged books - the huge graphic design book for "Dreams of Trespass", which I'm really enjoying. I went to the Green and watched a puppy play in the fountain, kids running around, and read my book, which was interesting. Around 6, I packed up and headed for the shul in Summit where the event was to be held.

Garden State Equality is a fantastic LGBT rights organization. The fight now is for marriage equality - civil unions haven't done what they were intended to do, and GSE is very close to getting enough votes in the Assembly to get actual marriage equality passed. Good stuff. So this meeting was a talk, a short video, and actual grassroots activism - I wrote a letter to an Assemblyman, which was pretty cool.

I'll be honest, I was also going to the event to meet other LGBT people, hopefully people my age, to see how I felt. Maybe to pick someone up? I'm embarrassed about that, but there we go. What I found though, was entirely different. People with families, family, a few lesbian couples, I met one woman from RU who'd been with her partner for 13 years, has three kids. Another couple who was fighting for health insurance for the partner, etc etc. Everyone was so...normal. I really glamorized same-sex relationships, I can see that. These people just loved each other and wanted the same rights as straight people do. And I saw one couple who brought their kids and actually thought, I don't think I want that. Someone asked, "Are there any straight people here?" and deep down, I wanted to raise my hand. But I didn't.

It gave me so much to think about. People are just people. I make people into something more - paragons of whatever, integrity or sexuality or who knows what. I fantasize and seem to forget what people actually are. But in the end, it's just about who you care about, who you love, your friends, etc. Who makes you happy. I felt really...straight. I'm very curious about women, but maybe it's less of a big deal than I thought. Which is confusing.

Still, I felt very glad that I went. I drove home to the Yankee game, got back and sat myself on the couch, watched Hell's Kitchen (love that show), got myself comfy and read more of my book. For the first night in a long time, I fell asleep in silence, without the need for a TV show or game to distract me.

I feel good about myself today, confused, but good. I think this break is a blessing in disguise. What I want to learn more than anything is how to love again, how to love people for people, and how to love myself again. And to do that, I must accept my feelings, see those I love, and learn honesty. Maybe that's what I've been missing all along.

Labels: personal