Reconnections

One of the things I have said repeatedly throughout the separation is the fact that I feel that I lost myself in my marriage.

I'm not the only thing that was lost in the marriage. I also lost a host of friends. Oh, not intentionally...it just happened. In the marriage, "we" had "our" friends.

The majority of "our" friends became "her" friends when the separation began.

So, as I have contemplated my life this weekend....and celebrated at my "pity party", I realized that I needed to reconnect with some of those "lost" friends.

I'm glad that I have.

One of them is a female minister who once saved my life...literally.

The other was a male minister that both Lovey and I had known for many years. In 1990 - 1991, he lost his church and he lost his wife, when he fell in love for his male minister of music.

So in each of their own special ways, these individuals had a profound impact on my life; one literally, one emotionally.

The female minister was a nurse with extensive medical training. I was at her church with Lovey to conduct a children's crusade, and the morning of our last service, I walked into a cloud of chemicals in the parsonage bathroom and went into anaphylactic shock. The minister and Lovey drove me down the backroads to the hospital. The minister worked fiendishly to keep my airways from closing. I could have died.

The male minister served as a kind of role model for me. He had been married for 20 years and from outward appearances was a successful heterosexual pastor. When he left the church and his wife, in favor of his lover, it showed me that there are instances of true love in gay relationships. Until then, I had thought that gay relationships were solely based on sex.

Isn't that silly?

But when I look back at how I viewed my closeted existence, that's what my male relationships were all about -- the sex: no emotions.....no love.....no real enduring relationship.

But then, I saw this minister and his partner...up close. It was profound to me. They each left their wives and moved out of state and began a new life together. At one point, when he was going through the fire, he said that he believed that there was no love like gay love. He said it was powerful and that it had to be in order to withstand the criticism and other fallout that comes from the church and society.

This was in 1991.

I didn't know that 16 years later, I'd be facing a total change in my life....and contemplating a new life as a gay man.

But here I am -- warts and all.

I'm determined to get through all this. I have to.

I'm not the only man who has walked this path. This weekend, when the tears stopped flowing and I stopped my personal pity and I sat and actually contemplated all the things I was whining about, I realized that I've gone through a lot of stuff and I'm ok.

Every time there has been pain and sorrow, a period of encouragement and growth follows.

It's so good to have made these reconnections. My friends have provided such encouragement.