Nurse Sean (dot) com

Have you ever gone on one of those super relaxing, no effort, sit on a beach and tan kind of vacations? The kind where you get home, and you feel refreshed, as though the whole world is new. Going to work seems that much better, because life seems so much better. You dream of being back on that beach, but since the beach isn’t reality, there’s nothing you can do but bask in your rested self.

Thats how I feel. Last Sunday night I took an airplane back from the world of unrequited love and landed back in my life. I’m not sure what triggered my entire self to drop this load and break free from my emotional contraints, but I did it. I woke up in the morning and felt different. Thinking of Glenn didn’t bring tears to my eyes, thoughts of lonelyness didn’t phase me. I simply felt as though I’d been away from myself for awhile and now I was back, ready to continue along my path.

There was a foot of snow or so here on Sunday night, but the world felt like spring. I had to work with three new employees which is always stressful, but I was purely relaxed.

So myself went onto vacations. Now, you may be thinking that vacations are supposed to be fun, and that the place I was in certainly wasn’t. It was! Call me strange, but the strive for the primal human urge of love (some would argue purely sex) felt great. What person can ever say to themselves that they’ve ever been in love, but not learned something about themselve, and grown just a little bit more. I trekked through the steaming jungles of the deepest part of my mind, challenged completely by every lake and valley. The destination may have been a relationship, and I may not have reached it, but HECK! How many times have we said that its always about the journey.

I miss my little vacation from myself. It was great to be lost in love; that mysterious land that seems so foreign to us. I made it back, and I feel refreshed.

Now all I have to do is start saving up for my next vacation!

I had family over last night. By this I mean my gay family. Unfortunately this family is not constant and is ever changing. I had a revelation last night. I discovered that I don’t have a single friend except for Jason. I simply have several people I associate with that happen to be Jason’s close friends.

The one person in the world that is quickly becoming my close personal best friend is Glenn, however, it is only because of my feelings for him. If I had never been attracted to him, he’d probably still just be some guy with a forgoten name that I’d met through Ross.

Why is it that I can’t have a friend without falling in love with them? I have to be brutaly honest. I don’t love Jason, or any friend I’ve ever had. I don’t miss people. I don’t even miss my family for heaven’s sake!

But I miss Glenn every second of every day.

Why?

Why can’t I just love people without being IN love with them? Why am I so selfish and uncaring about myself and those I love. So I’ve come to a cross-roads with Glenn. I need to either let it be, just as the Beatles tell me to do. Or, I need to try and transform my feelings for him into a true friendship of the kind I’ve never had.

I want the kind of friend that I talk to every five minutes on the phone. The kind that hang out together all the time, and are never seperated. They go camping together, and go out together. They know each other better than everyone.

But really, the only difference between that and a lover, is that the friends don’t have sex. That’s where I think the gay life becomes the most confusing. Who’s your friend? who’s your lover? Who’s your friend that you happen to have sex with all the time? I’m met many gay couples that really should be just best friends. Not to mention many best friends that should be couples.

Where in this God damn world do we draw the lines?????

In straight relationships, its more than obvious that once a male and female friend have had sex, something has change. I’m not trying to make generalizations, just speaking from personal experience. Females have female friends…males have male friends. Usually when there’s a cross-over you can expect there to be more feelings involved than friendship.

I’m babbling. What this comes down to is that a gay man will have sex with his friend, then say “thanks for the fuck, are we still up for a movie tomorrow?” without a single note of romantic feelings.

Can women do that?

There’s no boundries in my life. There isn’t even a clue to tell me I’m getting older. Straight men get a serious girlfriend, they’re older, they get married, they’re older, they have kids, they’re older, the kids move out, they’re older etc., etc., etc.,

What I’m getting at is that in the life of a gay man, there is no such thing as social norms, or those things that we are expected to do throughout our lives to prove ourselves as human beings. We start out as rejects, so we rebel against society, and then one day we realize that we’re sixty and about to die, because society forgot to tell us that we’ve aged.

I need to create these norms within my life. I need to decide what I should expect from myself. What I won’t tolerate myself doing. And then live by them.

This proccess has already begun. Is this what growing up is?

Through love, I understand the pychology of an addict…

I mean honestly! The withdrawl symptoms are devistating. The moodswings are the worst. The urge to throw up, the headaches, the exhaustion, the pain. Not to mention the contant bitchiness that lasts until I hear the voice, or see the sight of Glenn.

However, Tuesday night at about 10:30pm I made the horrible decision that I just can’t do this anymore. I can’t see him. I can’t handle the pain of breathing him into my lungs and then having to let go.

I stared at the computer screen watching his name sit there in the chat room, and I couldn’t bring my self to even say hello to him. I knew that just doing that was to painful, too much for my shattered emotions to endure.

So I watch his name flicker and then disapear. And I cried like a baby, because I knew that I couldn’t do it. I knew I could never let go until the day I die. I’m not saying I’ll never move on, he’ll just go down into the catacombs along with the rest of my collection of men I will love till the day I die. The other men that I can’t bring myself to see or talk to.

And then I was mad, because I knew that it would only be a matter of days until I heard his voice, and I would go through this all over again. And then I’d meet another man, and I would go through this all over again. And then the cycle would just continue.

I might as well be smoking crack…

But, as I studied the strength card from my tarot card in reverse, I discovered something about myself. I take problems that are far to complex for my own human mind, and let them marinate for eternity. I assume that I’ll be able to solve them on my own. I learned that I never will be able to fix these issues. Nobody could. The only solution was to release the pain and confusion into the world, and wait for fate to take hold and deal me the next logical blow.

It made for a happier day. Everytime I felt the pain climing up my throught like heartburn, making its way to my tear ducts, I took a deep breath, and simply released everything I could into the world.