My 500th Post!

Well, this is my 500th post you all!

When I started this blog, I wondered if I would have anything to write about. AND...two years later, I'm here at #500. It's simply unreal.

Sometimes I have suffered from writer's block and I took several days off. At other times I've had to be away from the computer and I couldn't write when I wanted to. Then there were those times when I wrote several posts in one day. It all just depends on what's happening in my life on a given day and what I feel like writing about.

Today I'm worried about a new friend of mine that I met recently at PFLAG. He's a very young man from another country who has come here to get a job and to also get away from the pressure and questions his family ask about his not being married yet. He's gay and he's afraid to tell those who are close to him.

As he shared his story at PFLAG, tears rolled down his cheeks and his voice quivered.

I felt very sorry for him.

He called me later on that evening to talk about some more issues, but I didn't get the message until late. By the time I tried calling him back, the people who answered the line knew of know one by the name he had given....and so I pretended that I had called a wrong number.

So I'm thinking about this young man this evening. He's frightened and alone.

There are so many like that in this country. They don't know where to turn. Heck, I grew up here and I was at that point in my life. I didn't know what to do or how to deal with the issue of being gay. For the longest time I couldn't say the words, "I am gay."

Something about verbalizing it made it concrete -- made it real -- made it irreversible.

I didn't want to be gay.

But, there I was, gay.

Thankfully I came to this area at the age of 20. Cautiously and very skittishly I began experiencing the world....and seeing what being gay actually meant. I got married...had kids.....and I'm now where I am because of the journey that I am on.

But as I said not long ago....one of the main things I have learned is that there is life after divorce. It doesn't have to be a sad life.

As I contemplated divorce a couple of years ago, I remember so well thinking about my friend Jack. He had been married a long time and several grown up children. He had also been a minister and was pastoring a nice church here in the Washington, DC area. He came out to his wife and one day, his wife, (contrary to the agreement they had reached at the time of his disclosure to her.) outted him to the church. He lost it all...his church....his ministry....everything.

So he found a menial job by ministerial standards and worked to provide some semblance of life for himself.

He found an efficiency apartment....and spent many a lonely night there. He then went into the leather, pain, bondage scene. This is an example of going directly from one extreme to another.

I remember visiting his apartment and thinking, "I could never live like this."

It would have been so claustrophoic...and I could sense a real spirit of sadness....emptiness. Oh, I inew that I didn't want to have a life like that.

So here I am a few years later....and thankfully, I'm not in a situation like that. I'm slowly creating my new world.

Thank God that it didn't have to be a bad one.