The Official Homo Thread

Bored and got some time to spare? Then check out this thread from the offtopic section of one of the car forums I frequent:

"The Official Homo Thread"

It's a pretty candid 110+ page discussion covering everything from coming out, relationships, dating, sex...lots and lots of sex (you've been forewarned). It's a long read (it took me a few solid days to get caught up), but it's definitely interesting. The best part of it is that there's such a wide range of participants, straight and gay, from all different walks of life and experiences, and everyone's got an opinion about everything. But be the judge for yourself, and check it out.

-Matt

Busy Bee

I’ve been meaning to post about counselling last week, but there was a lot to digest and a lot of writing and re-writing going on as a result, so that’s still a work in progress. I’ve been keeping myself distracted with other things this week though.

I’ll start off with some slightly frivolous stuff. Over the weekend, I picked up my first video game in a while, Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. I haven’t played it too much yet, but I loved the first two, quirky storylines and all. Plus, there’s something rewarding about platformers (and falling from heights and failing!). Speaking of platformers, I’m also stoked for wall-climbing this weekend with Nate and a couple of the girls we met. I might be afraid of heights, but I actually enjoy wall-climbing a lot. It’s rewarding to struggle and push yourself to keep climbing and climbing till you FINALLY manage to tap the top of the wall. Unlike Uncharted though, it’s not quite so much fun to fall and fail...

Also, I enrolled for courses for January this week, and I’m going back to school FOR REAL this time. It’s been an enlightening break, living in the “real”, working world for a few months, but I need to get back and finish my degree. For what it’s worth, I’m a sociology major, and I’ll be taking 2 courses, one of which is a sociology of info tech course (sociology of facebook, anyone?) which I’m kinda stoked for. I’m a little nervous though, because I’ll have been out of school for 7 months by the time I get back into the lecture hall and I’m hoping I haven’t lost all my study habits (like riding a bike, right?), but I’m taking it slow with 2 courses and easing myself back into things. I’m going to be filling the rest of my time volunteering and getting ready to do another work semester during the summer, so I won’t be completely bored/lazy anyway.

Lately I’ve also been looking into some of the local LGBTQ resources, just for shits and giggles. Being back on campus, I’m sort of tempted to go check out our LGBTQ centre, just to see what it’s like and how it works, and maybe meet some people face to face going through the same thing. I also found Qmunity here in Vancouver that offers, amongst other resources, a couple workshops like the coming-out group and bi support group, which sounded interesting.  Maybe in time though, I’d like to be out to a few more people before I go about attending meetings and support groups; being all deceptive about counselling is hard enough and it’d be great to talk to friends and family about what I’d actually get out of these things. But I’m glad organizations and resources like these exist though so they’re there when I’m ready. Eventually, I think it’d be really rewarding to volunteer or something with something like Qmunity and get more involved with the LGBTQ community. Maybe it’ll even help me figure myself out a bit? One step at a time though, one step at a time... 

All for now...

-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.

I let her get away

Lately my mood’s been pretty good, a little up and down, but decent. Despite that, I still made an appointment to go see my counsellor Liz next week. Now that the intake is over, I’m sort of curious and excited to really get down and try to figure out the root causes of all my insecurities and self-confidence issues. I don’t even know where I’m going to start, but as long as some good comes out of it, I’m still pumped. Part of me is still a little wary going into it though; I suppose it’s the fear of the unknown of what she’ll say or recommend, but fuck it, I’m going anyway.

I think I mentioned in passing that part of my anxiety of this whole counselling experience was over a friend of mine from the past. It’ll make sense in a second, but my biggest fear doing this is that I’m going to be diagnosed with depression, or passed onto a specialist for some deep digging into my problems.  Anyway, Britney and I met back in science class back in the 9^th grade. We really hit it off, we both felt really comfortable joking around with each other, we had a lot of common interests, and well...our personalities just clicked. At the highest point in our friendship, we used to talk to each other every day, had little inside jokes with each other, picked out the perfect Christmas gifts for each other and did stupid things like sing at the top of our lungs in the car along with each other. Now, I swear I’m not making this up, but like Lindsay, she had feelings for me that she made apparent a couple times throughout our friendship. And like Lindsay, thinking back on it now, I had (still have?) feelings for her too and I really should have gone for it, but there was a *little* secret, that I disguised in the “I like being friends” excuse that held me back. We eventually got past all that though, and always became best friends again. 

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. 

Trying to move out of the comfort zone

Just a quick couple of things that have happened recently:

I had a conversation with Lindsay last week that made me come to the realization that I should probably go see a counsellor. I need to talk to someone who can be non-judgemental and who can give me objective advice in identifying and dealing with my problems. I’m still a little apprehensive about it; I got to thinking about what counselling says about me and what the outcomes of it will be. My biggest fear is that I end up being diagnosed with depression or GAD or something. I had one friend who I was very close with that had depression and it was very taxing on me and my friends that knew her. I made a huge mistake letting that relationship lapse, but that’s another story. I’m worried that being diagnosed with depression or the like is just going to stir up bad memories for my friends and I don’t want to have to put them through what I went through dealing with my friend. I’m also a little stressed out at having to lie about seeing a counsellor to my parents. I’m not usually out on weekday nights after work, so it might seem a little suspicious if I start going out all of a sudden. And if even if I tell them I’m going to go see a counsellor, they’ll want to know why, which will be tricky to handle. Despite all these worries, I think I’m going to go ahead and do it anyway. For one, I just keep reminding myself that if I feel this doesn’t work, I don’t have to keep going. I’m not being forced to do this, but I’m choosing to do this because I’m finding myself making a lot of assumptions on what people are thinking, and it’s not usually positive, so I need some help changing those thought processes. I’m planning to make an appointment this week, so I’ll keep you updated on that.

In other news, I spent this weekend trying to impress girls. No, really...my buddy Danny’s been seeing this one girl, so they both invited a bunch of their friends (his friends mostly single guys, hers single girls...hmmm...) out to a pub for some live music Friday. The music kind of sucked, so a bunch of us ended up just talking and we all really hit it off as a group. So much so, we ended up going hiking as a group today, and Danny, Nate and I took it as an opportunity to show off our feathers and be all gentlemen-ly (“Hey, do you want me to carry your bag up the mountain?! It’s not a problem...). I’m totally lost as to why I went along with this, maybe it was machismo speaking and I wanted to one-up my buddies,  or maybe it was a way to be more open and expressive about myself in an appropriate situation (how else are you supposed to impress girls without talking about yourself?!). Regardless, they’re a pretty chill bunch of people and it was a fun weekend, so there are plans in the works to hang out again next weekend. Not sure what I’m looking to get out of this, but at the very least I’ll get some cool new friends out of it.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I haven’t had any random car content for a while, and I'm sad the Mazda RX-8's going out of production, so...

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