Confronting my Sexuality

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a looooong time, and now that it’s been nearly a year since this story happened, I figured now is a better time than any to finally write it. There was one defining moment when I started to question my sexuality, and this is it.

Around this time last year, there was a lot going on, a lot of things that brought out a bunch of my insecurities and fears. Friends were graduating university, others were fully-employed and independent, even more were in healthy, long-term relationships and some were out partying, going on crazy trips overseas and enjoying their twenties. And then there was me, about to turn 22, still in school for a while yet, no real job and living at home, too afraid of people judging me to go out and enjoy myself, and definitely way too closeted to have a “girlfriend” or any sort of relationship. 

Bro-Date

As a much needed break from writing papers, I went out for dinner with Brian last night. Nate was supposed to join us, but flaked on us for his girlfriend, so instead he decided to text and tease us all night about our “bro-date” (Hence the title.)

Whatever you want to call it, it was a lot of fun, mainly because I got to be honest about things that I’ve wanted to discuss since I came out to him and Nate (or anyone else for that matter). Like how hot I find his girlfriend’s cute blond friend. “Yeah, he is kind of hot, isn’t he?” “Yup, and I’m glad you agree bro.” A little bit of a downer though, because Brian went on to tell me a few stories about this guy goofing around with him and his girlfriend, so I’m losing faith that he’s being anything more than friendly when I see him. Oh well, a guy can hope...

There was a bit of a pause after we stopped talking about cute blond guy. “Hmmm...some things don’t change, do they?” Brian noted. He was talking about my thing for blonds/sandy blonds, since I had told him before that that’s one of the things I had been attracted to in girls. And then I had a “Matt-moment” and said something ridiculous like “You know, my taste in guys isn’t really much different than that from girls...light coloured hair, nice chest...except masculine...but I guess that’s the defining feature between guys and girls, isn’t it?” Brian just chuckled and worded it a bit better: “you mean just more butch and muscular and with a penis” Yeah, sounds about right.

 Cute like this would be nice.

I guess I was (and maybe still am) on a bit of a high that Brian was completely willing to talk and gossip about my gay side. In fact, he was the one to ASK ME which guy I had a crush on high school. *Side note: the answer was none, since I was in too much denial back then to crush on a guy, but I did tell him who I would have hypothetically crushed on and listed off a couple guys I remember being pretty hot for good measure. Anyway, I’m glad that he was so responsive and pretty enthusiastic to talk about that kind of stuff. I was always worried about things being awkward with The Guys after they found out about me being gay and having to avoid topics like dating or crushes or attractions because they didn't want to hear it or they felt uncomfortable talking about it, so it was encouraging to hear Brian ask the questions and discuss those topics like nothing had changed and it was perfectly normal.

To top it all off, I was telling my sister about my night while I was driving her home from the bus station. She was pretty pleased and happy for me that I could talk to my friends about all this. And being the wise-ass that she is, she reminded me that “As your SISTER, I have the LEAST vested interest in your sexuality, so don’t be afraid to talk to me about it.” Heh, thanks sis.

I got really lucky with my friends and family...I'm glad I have them. 

Still Kicking!

A lot can happen in three and a half weeks, so I’m going to try and condense this down the best I can, but I can tell you now that it’s still going to be a novel.

I’ll start with an explanation of what happened at that fateful counselling session. Liz and I came to the conclusion that I lead my life by following what people want or expect from me (or at least what I assume those things are). Where a lot of my stress originated from was forcing myself to do things I don’t necessarily enjoy, but since it’s what people expected me to, I did it anyway. So the solution we discussed was to find something that genuinely made me happy, not anybody else, as to boost my confidence and focus on something other than worrying about pleasing other people. I ended up misinterpreting that to mean that I was on my own to find what made me happy and that no one else could be around me since they could potentially influence what I decide to do, and the ruminating snowballed from there. And that’s what brought me to my last post.

No New Conclusions

Okay, time to play some catch up. I went back to counselling last week, and I’ve got to say it really helped. I’m a lot less anxious, feel a lot more social and I’ve just been more at peace with myself this entire week, which is a nice change. I just feel like I have a plan on where I want to go with my coming out, my relationships and now I’m not so worried about everything. It’s odd though, because all the revelations I’ve made since then aren’t really anything new or ground breaking, they’re things I knew subconsciously, but I suppose I needed the “push” to actually fully realize it.

The most important revelation I made was that I really want(ed?) to be perfect. I want to be everything for everyone. I seem to think I need to be an expert on and have all the same interests and tastes as everyone else. Plus, I thought that any little flaw I see in myself needs fixing, and all these flaws seem to compound, so I can’t move on until everything gets fixed. Confused? Say if I wanted to be more outgoing, I should be more talkative, but being more talkative should mean I’m not obnoxious or conceited...and it goes on. And I started to realize that this is ridiculous; there are 7 billion people in the world, I’m not going to be able to please every single person, so what is the point in stressing about trying to impress and change myself for everyone? Just because I’m not big into sports, or someone else isn’t into cars, doesn’t mean we can’t get along or enjoy each other’s company. I keep reminding myself that people are going to look past my flaws and embrace the other parts of my personality, so I really don’t need to keep “fixing” things. I just really need to be myself.

I’m also starting to relax a little about the Lindsay situation. I think I mentioned I haven’t spoken to Lindsay in a while (probably about 2 months now?), but I never really mentioned why. The last time I spoke to her, I really pissed her off. Short version of what happened is I assumed that she didn’t care about me, when in reality she was busy with dealing with her own problems and I tried to force her into telling me about her problems when she clearly wasn’t comfortable or ready to share. I feel like a jerk now, but at the time I felt like she owed me to tell me all her problems since we were such great friends and I told her my biggest secrets. So because I wanted to reciprocate and be Lindsay’s shoulder to cry on, I ended up pushing her even further away by trying to pry into whatever was bothering her. And now I realize I can’t manipulate and force things out of her (and my other relationships for that matter), it just doesn’t work that way.  It still stings a little to not hear from her in so long, and part of me is afraid that she’s not coming back after the way I left things. I let Liz know this and she had this to say:

“She was in love with you, Matt. And now she’s realized that she can never have what she really wants, and that’s got to hurt. So let her go off for a while and lick her wounds, and she’ll be back.”

I hope she’s right. I suppose time will tell...

-Matt

"Great having a chance to talk, dude"

This week I’ve spent some time mending relationships by hanging out with The Guys and chatting with them on Skype during the week. It’s not that I’ve really had any bad blood between any of them, but I’ve pulled back from them in recent years. Part of it is because I’m sort of intimidated by them, they’re all pretty masculine guys who are into sports and other stereotypical “guy” things that I’m not really into, so I hold back since I don’t want to sound wimpy or stupid. Maybe I’m slowly getting better, but I realized that there’s more to them than just talking about sports and video games and put my thoughts aside and took the effort to reconnect with them.

Part of the reason I’ve been brought back together with The Guys is because of this group of girls we met a few weeks back through Danny and his girlfriend. They’re really awesome, down to earth girls who aren’t really the partying, hard drinking type, but would rather go explore the city and go on an adventure, just like us. Out of this group, there is a set of twins that our other friends are trying to set Nate and myself up with. I appreciate the gesture from my friends, but I just feel like I’m being put in that awkward position of lying and telling half-truths to pretend I’m interested in them. Well, not to say I’m not into them, but I’m just not into them in THAT way. They make really cool friends, which is great, but I’m not sure if they want me in that group as something more. Nate’s been seeing his twin, and I’m not sure if the two of them keep inviting me out with them to set me up with the other twin/as a double date or whether they just like me as a friend whose personality and values match theirs. I mean, the four of us did go out Saturday night with a bunch of our friends to a bar, but then today it was just the twins, Nate and I going kayaking (??). It’s just a little unsettling for me because I don’t want to lead anybody on, but I really don’t know what to do to figure out my role in the group, other than to come out to them, which isn’t going to happen just yet.

Here Goes Nothing

Yesterday I ended up meeting with a counsellor at school for an intake appointment. Yes, that’s right...I actually went through it, and it was interesting to say the least. Anyway, this appointment was supposed to be a sort of evaluation session to figure out what kinds of issues I’m having, what type of counselling would work best for me, what I wanted to get out of this and establish that patient-counsellor relationship, amongst other things. 

I started and left work early to make it on time to the health clinic on campus. It was a tiny office that you had to ring into, in order to protect patient confidentiality, which was sort of comforting. What wasn’t so comforting was all the paperwork I had to fill out upon arriving there. Most of it was pretty general: allergies, medications you’re taking, family medical history, etc...but once it started asking questions like, “Have you or anyone in your family been diagnosed with depression?” or “How often do you have thoughts of suicide?” or “When was the last time you considered harming others?”  or warning me that “the clinic must take reasonable action if they suspect that there is a potential for you to hurt yourself or others”, it got a little intimidating. I asked myself a couple times if I was actually going to do this. I didn’t want to be looked at as depressed or suicidal or have the cops called on me by doing this, but I still carried on with the questionnaire anyway. Even more intimidating were the questions asking what issues I hoped to resolve. I couldn’t help feeling just a little pathetic writing down that I was having trouble maintaining my relationships and interacting with people. And it’s still a little unsettling that somewhere out there, there’s a record from myself in writing, which tons of medical professionals have access to, stating that I might be gay. 

A True "New Beginning"

A week ago today I woke up thinking “what the hell did I do last night??” And now, one week later, I’m sitting here thinking the exact same thing about the last seven days. I’m completely drained, both physically and mentally, plus I’m starting to realize I still have plenty of issues to address: Lindsay, wondering if my parents and sister have noticed my strange behaviour this week, completely unsure of where my emotions are going next, wondering if I’ll ever figure my sexuality out, amongst other things.

And I wouldn’t change it for the world.

I swear I’ve talked more in the last seven days than I have my entire lifetime. I’ve told secrets and feelings that I’ve never told anyone, and to hear what I’m thinking isn’t crazy, or just hearing that my negative thoughts are normal and will slowly disappear as I confront my issues has made me more confident, less stressed and less paranoid. 

Like today, I met up with my best buddy Brian to do some shopping. I’ve always been really paranoid every time we went out just the two of us, wondering if we look like a “couple” and not wanting to pry into his personal life, just in case he did the same to me and my secret slipped out. But today, I asked him every question I thought of, made tons of jokes, said just about anything and everything, and yet he didn’t look at me weird or act all awkward like he knew my secret. And that’s what I need right now, to talk and get confirmation that the crazy assumptions I’m making about what others are thinking aren’t true. It’s even better because lately I feel as if we haven’t been close and haven’t talked to each other a whole ton, but today both of us didn’t shut up for a minute, we talked the entire three and a half hours we hung out. And that’s great, because I really want to have a great relationship with Brian, we have so much history as friends and I always thought he’d be one of first to know my secret, so at the very least, he’ll probably be the next to know.

I started to worry this week that I would never be able to talk/blog about any positive experiences at any sort of length, and that every post and conversation was going to be just a complete bitch-fest about how awful my problems are and how terrible they make me feel inside. But here I am, an entire blog post in, and it’s all about how great my day’s been so far. And although I still have a lot of work to do, that gives me a lot of hope for myself in the future.  

And a special thank you to everyone who has supported me and this blog. I can’t begin to describe how hearing your words of encouragement, stories and personal experiences have given me the strength and reassurance, much like talking to my friends and family has this week. I’d love to pay it forward by talking/listening/helping my fellow bloggers, so don’t be afraid to drop me an email (tangerine995@gmail.com) or add me on google. I'm here for you guys just as much as you are for me.

-Matt