I know what I want to do

I finally know what I want to do with my life!!

I know why the universe has put me through all the trails that it has for the past few months.  I feel like my strength is getting to the point that I need to helping others, I need to be doing more.  I have been telling my friend that I wanted to do more for the gay youth and wanted to be more then what I currently am. I can't stand to just sit here and see all the hate that is out there for no reason  and do nothing to try to help.  He is always telling me the universe has a plan and just waiting on me to be ready to stand up and act on what I need.   He has been helping me grow and strengthen my own personal self and now it is time for me to stand up on my own two feet and hold out my hand and help others. I need to do this, I have to do this, this is where our journey has taking me

I know what I have to do now

   

Strength... What does this mean?

Strength....what does this mean to each of us?

What makes some of us want to get out of bed each day and others want sleep til noon?
What makes some of us want to work out each day and others be OK with being over weight?
What make some one get up in the morning and run 5 miles while others sleep all day?
What gives each of us the strength to face a new day and all the trials that come with it and others to hind?
Why do we look up and say YES I CAN, instead of WHY BOTHER?
Is the strength inside of each of the same or do we all have different levels?
What makes us access this so called strength and what do we do to harness it and bring it out?
What makes you stronger then me and what do I have to do to get to your level?

These are all questions I have been asking myself.  I have been trying so hard to push and push myself in different directions each and every day.  At 6am I try to get up and get ready to face a new day.  I get up and get dressed and take a long 90 minute walk around my neighborhood to start each day.  I do 5 special exercises and then I take a shower and head to work, where I will usually spend the rest of the day and sometimes into the night.  But why am I doing this now and when in the past I would not do any of this?

Does the strength come from my own personal growth or did I get it from others around me?  Do I take from others what I can't see within myself?  Is my strength something that I posses or just something that I steal from the ones that I love?  The strength to get up and make something of ourselves is different for each and every one of us, but we all have it with in us.  We just have to know were to look for it and how to find it.  We all have some kind of internal strength, we all just have to know how to access it and we all have to know what we are looking for.  I think we all the strength to overcome any obstical and any set back in our lives sometimes we just need the help of others to pull this strength out of us.

I am a very very lucky person that I have very special people around me that are willing to stand by me and help me look for my strength and help me pull this strength out of me.   These very special people have stood by me in my worst times and in my best times.  They have always been there for me to help me stand on my own feet and reach a hand out for me when I was down on my knees.  So thinking about this, strength doesn't really come from inside us but from the special people we surround ourselves with.  These people are what feeds our souls and bring our strengths out of the shadows and into the light.  But on the opposite foot, we have to have these strengths within us for our friends to pull it out.

Your true friends will stand by your side when things are going wrong for you and they will always hold out their hands when you are down on your knees.  They will be the ones that you will turn to in you darkest times and the ones that are always there for you when you think you have nothing left with in yourself.  They will save you when you thought there we no way you could be saved.  I have these kind of friends and I love them very much and cherish every second that I am allowed to spend with them.  These times with my friends is special to me in my own personal way, I trust them, I wonder at them, I look up to them, I use them to help me bring my strength out of me.  We all use each other in some way and we all work together to help friends and loved ones to make our own lives better.  I love my friends and there is nothing that I wouldn't do for them or sacrifice for them.  They are my strength and they are my light and they are the ones that keep me going each and every day.

I might do things for myself now and do things to make myself a better person now because I want to make myself better, but why now and why not last year or five years ago or ten years ago?  What has caused me to start pushing my self so hard and start making myself so much better?  Well this is a question that I have been asking myself lately and the only answer that I can come up with is that "Its Time".  The universe has brought me to a crossroads and told me you can go this way or you can go that way, now you must choose.  There are very special people on both sides and it all came down to which one meant more to me and which one brought out more my strengths that were locked way down deep inside me. I had to decide what the universe was telling me and I had to make the choice as to whom to listen to.  What was the universe telling me?  What was my inner soul and spirit trying to tell me? Who do I listen to, the outside world or what was deep inside myself.  There is only one answer...you must always listen to yourself.  You must always believe in yourself.  You must know yourself and love yourself before this inner strength can be brought out.  That is where I am at right now...do I love myself, do I listen to myself, do I believe in myself?  These are all hard questions to answer for someone that has been hiding in the corner for so so many years. But one person brought it out of me.

This one person saw in my things that I didn't knew excised.  Saw strengths in me that I never experienced or ever saw.  He was the person that I used to pull my strengths out of myself and the best part was that he knew I was using him for this and he didn't mind.  He saw through me and allowed me to grow at my own pace.  When ever I was down, he helped me up, when ever I was crazy he listened to me and waited for me to calm down.  He would always look past me craziness and only see the goodness inside of me. This is the kind of friend that everyone should be lucky enough to have, that everyone needs to have to really grow and be strong.

I am a very lucky person to have him and all my other friends in my life, I hope that this will never change, although I know it will.  Friends come and go through out your life, but if you are lucky enough to have the universe connect you with someone very special like I have...your life will never be the same.  No matter if this person moves own out of my life, it will be OK, I will always have a piece of him with me.  I have taken from him everything and given very little in return and I think him for this every day, now it is my turn to do the same for others.  I need to be the friend to others that he has been to me, to help, to listen, to nurture, to share my strength.  It is all a part of the never ending universe, we must all be love for one another....

Old Love One's

I just got a call from a very special and very good friend today.  I sent him an email last week because I have not heard from him in a long time and when we last spoke it was not good.  He is young and just now getting to know who he really is and at the time, he was in over his head.  He was being pulled in all kinds of ways, by me, by his family and by his church.  He texted me this morning to my surprise and we ended up chatting for almost two hours.  It was really good to read what he was doing and were he was with himself and his life.  He has a job, a new home and his own car.  He has really grown up and really taken responsibility for his life.  When we were hanging out together we got into some hot and heavy stuff and I was basically supporting him.  I bought him a phone, gave him money and actually bought him a car. I think at his young age and the pressures from all around him, he kind of snapped.  He was man enough to give me back the car and phone which I was able to return.   The last thing he to told me was that he was no longer gay because his church told him so and he was going to start dating women and get married.  I tried to tell him that he has to be who he is and not let anyone tell him any different, but he wouldn't listen.  I thought it would be better for him to find out on his own then to try to press the issue.  I told him good luck and I only wish the best for him.

Today he is telling me that I was right, but he is still in the closet and worried about his new job, church and family finding out about him.  My advise was to be himself and take his time and let things play out the way they should.  He is only 21 now so there is no rush to scream to the world that he is gay, just the fact that he has finally excepted it for himself is a start.  Take your time and continue to find your place in this life is the only way around this.  There are some people that want to scream to the world that they are gay, but most of us do not.  We just want to be excepted for who we are and loved by those that we love.  Nothing more or nothing less.   We don't want to be beat down or called names or treated any differently then anyone else in this world.  Just because I love a man over a woman, it should not make any difference what so ever.  I have a very special person in my life right now that I love very much but he is straight and he excepts me for just the way I am, with out judgement, and that is the way it should be.

I hope he will continue to keep in touch with me, and maybe we can start talking more again.  I offered to take him to the MCC Church to let him see how god loves gay people, straight people, black people, Latino people and white people and everyone in between.  He said he would think about it and let me know. I hope we can work this out, I think it might change the way he views a lot of things and himself.

If you are reading this and you know who you are, I love you man and I always will.  I will always be here for you if you ever need me or just need someplace to get away and chill.

Who was Chris? Part 1- The Early Years

I have decided to tell you the story of Chris, my longest and oldest and first "Best Friend".  I can remember back to age of about 4 years old, and Chris was always in my life.  We both lived on Baltimore Ave in a little small town in South Georgia.  His dad was in National Guard and he was the youngest of 6 brothers and sisters. I lived up the street from him and my dad was a traveling sales man and I was the youngest of 4 boys.  His mother was a stay at home mom while my mom worked for the school systems as the head of the lunch room.  Yes my mom was the lunch room lady, go ahead and laugh all you want, but it was cool in elementary school with her there, I could do what ever I wanted in the lunch room. I never had to wait in line, and I could always go back and get all that I wanted, or all my friends wanted...LOL!!!

Chris and I used to play all the games that little boys used to play back in the day.  He was the only friend that I remember up until the age of about 8 years old.  When I was about 6 years old, my parents decided to move and built a new home about 5 miles from where we lived but as fate would have it, Chris's family also moved to a new home about 2 blocks from our new house so we were still together.  He went to a school at his church and I went to public school, but we were together every afternoon and spent most weekends at each others house.  We were just the typical two little boys have having a good time...then came the teenage years!!

Well since Chris and I went to different schools we both developed a different set of friends, but we managed to mix the two separate groups together pretty well, but we were not as close as before.  We still spent a lot of time together but we also spent a lot of time with other friends.  We went through all the trials and tribulations of puberty together and explored all the things little boy explore as they are growing up, so needless to say we knew each other pretty well and shared a lot of things.

By this time I had already learned that I like boys more then girls and I was learning what it meant to be gay.  The major problem was that I didn't have anyone to talk to about this and I felt like I was left out on an island all alone, even when I was around my friends.  This was a time before the internet and there was no real outlet to the outside world beyond the small town life that I lived.  One major problem, or fear that I had was that my mother was born and raised in this town and so was her mother, so she pretty much knew everyone and everything that went on.  To add to my paranoia about being gay in a small town, my dad had stopped traveling when I was 6 and opened his own business, all three of my brothers were high school football stars, and my parents best friends (my god parents) were the high school principals secretary and the head coach of the high school football team. So needless to say, everyone knew me or my parents or my brothers, no matter if I knew them or not. My mom would know what I did before I woke up the next morning.  It was like being under surveillance 24 hours a day...every day.  I was scared to death to take the wrong step or try to explore what I felt on the inside so I decided to hide.

I learned to keep more to myself and to become more self aware of what I was doing at all times.  I still hung out with my friends but I would spend a lot of time alone. I was so scared that I would do something or say something that would give my secret away.  Living day to day with such a huge burden on such young shoulders and to be so scared that you would not live up to your parents expectations really effected my personality and how I interacted with others.  When I was young and before I became aware of my sexuality, I was an extremely out going little boy that was always smiling and laughing and enjoyed life, but that all changed.  I mean I still had fun with my friends and family, but now I had a wall up and was always on guard as to what I was saying but the worst part was that I started listening to what others were saying very closely and would turn these words against myself.  I developed a habit of always looking for meaning in everything everyone said, and in my own paranoid mind, these words always took on a meaning that reflected what I was thinking they might be thinking of me.  This is the main reason I started becoming more of a loaner.  If I wasn't around others, they couldn't see what I was doing and they couldn't say anything about me, so I wouldn't have to worry what they thought of me.

We anyway, I am getting off on to me instead of Chris, which this post is all about. Chris and I continued to be friends into about 9 grade when his dad got a promotion and they moved to Atlanta.  After this we kind of lost touch with each other.  I was lost in my own little world of life and fantasy, wishing what I could have but never trying to obtain it.  After Chris moved to Atlanta, I got to go see him a couple of times, but not until I was in college and I could drive my self up there.  My dad was not fond of Chris, he never told me why when we were little but looking back on it, he thought Chris was gay and didn't want me hanging around him.  He thought he would change me...little did he know. I wish I would have known, and we could have had each other to talk to, I know things would have been so much different for me and for him.

Once I got out of Waycross and off to college things changed for me...but that is in the next post.

Emotions...WHY!!

I have been on such an emotional roller coaster ride over the past few months that I am getting sick of it.  My emotions are not only on my sleeve, but they are all the way down my arm, and it drives me insane some times. One little thing or one little word will set me off on a completely different directions without even thinking about it.  I can be in such a good place and one word (no matter how it is meant) will stick in my head and lock onto every thought that comes my way, its like poison.  I don't know if there is anyone else out there that is this way...but I know I am.  I have been trying so hard to move past these type of emotions and I have been working so hard to make myself stronger for those that I care about and love so I don't fall into this same old trap, but I did it again.  It's like a nightmare merry-go-round that I can't seem to get off.  How can I ever be strong for others if I can't be strong for myself.  I have come so far in learning to love myself and who I am, but I will let one little thing turn things around.  I guess I am not as far as I thought I was.

Well you might be asking what set me off?  Well I was in such a good place for the past few weeks and last night something was said in passing and BOOM...here we are.  Someone that I really care about is having issues with his friends regarding all the time that me and him (he is straight) spend together.  He just mentioned this in passing last night.  He said he didn't care what they think, and I know inside that he really doesn't, but it really got to me. I know how he feels about me and about our friendship and I know how I feel, but it is eating away at me.  I really care for this person and I really don't want to cause him any trouble with his friends, I want to be strong for him the way he  has always been strong for me.  He has been so much stronger for me over these past few months than I have ever been for him.  He is such a rock when it comes to knowing who he is, or what he is doing, but when some one you care about says they are having a problem with something, you just want to help in some way.  He told me not to worry about it, "HE" would get through this.

I don't know...I just don't want him to have any problems, I guess it's me, but I want to protect those that I care about. I guess it's just me putting others before myself, which is something I have always done.  I don't really care what his friends think about me, I just don't want them giving him shit (even if it is in fun) about our friendship.  I offered to lay low for a while, but I don't think that is the right thing to do either, hiding is what I have been doing most of my life.  I know he doesn't want me to lay low, and I know he really doesn't care what others think of him, but I do.  Its fucked up!!

I have to be strong for him and that is all that matters.  I have to be the friend that he deserves.  I have to be the friend that he has been for me.  I have to stand strong and tall and not fear anything or anyone.  I have to be proud of our friendship and the love I have for him.  "WE" have to get through this together and move forward.

What are real friends for anyway?  Why do we have friends?  Who do you look at and say "you are my friend"?  To me it is a very very personal thing.  If I am going to call someone a friend you really have to be special to me.  I have tons of people I know, but very few people that I call friends and communicate with.  Pretty much when I get to the point that I consider you a friend of mine, I am on call for you 24/7 no matter what.  There is pretty much no mountain that I want climb for you or no ends of the earth that I want travel to help you if you are ever in need.  We can be out of touch for 20 years and one call and I am at your side as fast as I can get there.  I will be the shoulder for you to cry on, I will be the ear for you chew on or the person sitting in the corner if you just don't want to be alone, I will be your dinner mate, I will be your drinking mate and anything in-between. This person is truly my friend and I cherish our friendship and I will do anything I can to help him, no matter what he feels he needs to do.

You have to be strong for your friends when they need you and sometimes you have to be weak and relay on your friends to hold you up.  Its a balancing act, you have to trust each other and not be afraid of opening up your heart and sharing your emotions and showing the raw nasty dirty side of you that you try to keep locked down.  He has seen my raw nasty dirty side, more times then I would have liked, but he has always been there for me know matter what fucked up state my emotions were in, I just hope I can be as strong for him when he is ready.

First Time

Yesterday I went to my very first HOT YOGA...

I don't know if anyone has ever done this before but it is a very intense experience.  Basicly the room is set to 105 degrees and you do yoga for 90 minutes.  My friend Jack does hot yoga, personally I have never heard of it, so I decided to look into and see what it was all about.  I checked a few web sites around town and decided on one place that I thought would be best for me.  I can't really explain why I felt right about this one but I just did.

Well I got there about 30 minutes before the class was scheduled to start and I meet with both Yoga instructors and we talked a bit and I let them know that this was the first time that I have ever done anything close to this.  I explained why I was doing this and listen to them tell me all the benefits of completing these class.  I went ahead and signed up 10 classes to make sure that I would follow through with this.  I have three months to actually use all 10 classes so I am thinking once a week to start with and maybe add more often later down the road.  I even bought my own personal yoga mat.

Since I was so early for class I went ahead and went into the class room to relax and wait for everyone else.  This was a mistake.....  It is good to get there early and relax your mind before you get started, but you don't want to sit in the room that is 105 degrees for 30 minutes before the class starts and then spend another 90 minutes working out.  Well maybe you do, but I surely don't, and I want ever again.

The instructor came in and once everyone was settled in she introduced me to the class and showed me how the first move went and we all got started.  The range of skill levels in this class is huge.  I didn't feel so uncomfortable once I saw how many different levels each of us were on.  There were some people that were experts and others that have been doing it for a while and then there was a couple of people like me...first timers.

Christina started everyone off slowly, basically stretching and breathing and I thought, yeah I can do this.  About 45 minutes in I thought, Yeah I can't do this!  It was so hot in there and I was sweating like a PIG!!  I only had on nylon shorts and was I completely drenched in sweat from head to toe.  This is when I started looking at the clock on wall and wondering if I was going to make the entire 90 minutes or not.  I mean what do you do, just get up and walk out of the class, my mama raised a better man then that?  I kept looking at the instructor and I think she could see the concern on my face and she kept giving me encouragement and kept telling me how good I was doing.  She did tell us that if we felt like we were over doing it then to stop and rest for as long as needed.  Well I kept pushing myself and forced myself to focus on what I was doing and just breathing.  After a few minutes I got over my need to flee and finished the class.

I was burned out when I was done but it was worth it.  When I got to the health club, I weighed myself and when I was done, I weighed myself again.  Remember when I said that was sweating like a pig...well I lost 10 pounds of water weight in 90 minutes.  I was pumped up now and really ready to go.  I took a cool shower and went back and chatted with the instructors again and asked them how they though I did.  She said most people get up and leave about half way through the class...duh!!  I am so glad she told me this after the class was over because this would have given me an excuses to stop.  I told them I would be coming every Tuesday night for the next few weeks and maybe increase after that.

With out all the things I have been through in the past few months and all the all the stuff I have done to make myself healthier, I never would have been able to complete this 90 minute class.

So my final thoughts on Hot Yoga is that when you go...

First - don't go in the room til it almost time to start the class
Second - Take your time and rest when ever you feel like you need to
Third - You must push yourself and stick with it.  It is all good in the end!!

The 3 Major Changes

Ok, this is the first time I have ever put something like this together and like I said this is completely for my own benefit.  This blog is to document all the changes that are taking place in my life and all the changes that my body is going through after I meet this special person that changed my life. He showed me how to  learn who I am and learn who I can become.  He has opened many windows for me and told me to look through them and see what is out there for me.  I will not post his name because I have not asked his permission to do so, so for this blog he will be called Jack.  This blog has nothing to do with anything but my own personal experiences, it is all about the journey that I have been taking in my mind and body over the past six months and into the future.  Just to let everyone know that happens to read this, I am not the best speller and I tend to re-read things over and over again and make changes to them, so if some things don't make since, then you will have to over look them or get over it, which ever works for you.

So lets start at the beginning...

A little about myself first, I am a gay man that has recently gone through 3 major life altering changes that have really turned things upside down in my life.  The first one was that my partner for 13 years has moved back to San Francisco to be closer to his family while I am currently living in Atlanta.  This was fine with me, it is giving us time to figure out what we really want out of life and see where we want to be.  Our relationship is stale and more like friends then lovers.  We are still in contact and still talk, but are on separate completely different paths now, and I can see this. Were these paths take us, I am not sure...but we have to figure them out as we go.  That was the major change #1.

The second major change was that my best friend of 38 years passed way very suddenly.  I have know him since I was 4 years old.  We grew up together in a small town in south Georgia, and let me tell you being gay in the bible belt was not an easy thing to do.  As fate would have it we didn't come out to each other until many many years later, I can only imagine what we could have done if we would have opened up to each other when we were young and the fun we could have had, not to mention the support we could have given each other. His name was Chris and I will talk in great detail about him in the future, let just say for now, he has left a huge hole in my life that I didn't know how to fill.  The bad part (or maybe it was the good part, I am still not sure) is that I was the one that found him in his apartment almost dead and called 911 to get him to hospital, but he didn't make it through the night.  I wonder to this day what would have happened if I had been there earlier, but more about that later like I said.  Any way that was major change #2

The third major change was meeting Jack.  I don't know what power or universal stings were pulled to put me and Jack together, but what ever they were...wow what a major change this was.  A lot of this blog will revolve around what Jack and I do together and the journey's we are on. Even though we are on our own separate paths, he is helping me and I hope I am helping him in some way also.  Just for the record Jack is a straight man and there is nothing but respect and friendship between us.  Jack has changed my world in so many ways, it will take a while to fully explain all the things he has done for me, physically, mentally, and emotionally.  Its been a very rocky ride so far with many high high's and low low's. Seeing that I had two major holes in my life when we meet, I was looking for ways to fill both of them (love and friendship), but my closed minded and heart were thinking only that I could never get love from a straight guy.  I have come to the realization finally that the love he has for me as a friend is much stronger and much much more then what my weakened emotional heart ever needed.  I have also come to realize that all the love that I need is within myself and I have to learn to love myself before I can except love from someone else. That was MAJOR CHANGE #3.

So those are the three major crossroads that have brought me to where I am now.  I will start explaining them all in detail as we move forward. I might jump around a bit, but like I said in the beginning, this is all for my own personal growth and expression.