I will not See You

I am a deep feeler and a deep thinker. I have used my deep thinking throughout my life to try to understand the pain of life. So although I am deep feeler, I exceled at managing my emotions when around others. I could be a bleeding out ER case on the inside, but appear to be calm on the outside. I’m sure I mentioned this before, but I didn’t come out until I was 35. I was not living on the down low. I didn’t engage in a secret gay life because I wasn’t out for religious reasons. I believed that having sex with a man meant I would burn in a lake of fire for eternity. Sometimes I would imagine myself in the lake of fire, and the agony was such that it collapsed in around 3 seconds. I decided that there was no way I could endure that level of pain so as much as possible I buried any hint of my gayness. I called that part of my life, The Madness (no sex) and also The Living Death (as I went emotionally numb around age 25).

I came out at 35 because The Living Death had collapsed into a 24/7 anxiety/panic disorder. The dissociation of The Living Death that had protected me from pain I was no longer able to bear was gone and I rapidly declined—physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally—and I believed that I would be dead in about 6 months. Before I died, I wanted to be authentic to who I was. So I prayed, fervently, and I felt God’s blessing that it was okay—that love was love, and love had God’s blessing. So I came out.

I have an idealist side to me. It’s beautiful. And it’s painful. I didn’t know anyone who was gay. There is a place called the Montrose Center that offered LGBT support services and counseling, but I didn’t know it existed. The internet was still primitive. And I didn’t know enough to search for such a place. Because of the Living Death, I was unusually naive for my age. I existed within my mind, trapped in a NI-TI loop, and when I had awareness of the external world, it was usually a hyper, narrow band focus (which made me a superman when it came to work).

I had it in my head that the community would be welcoming (idealist). But that wasn’t my experience.

At the time, I was hurt and angry at the community. More than I should have been (deep feeler!). It was only last weekend that I understood why after listening to in Instagram post. https://www.instagram.com/reel/DY2xklDRAH2/

I sobbed as I listened to the post. The emotional outpouring was spontaneous, and it was intense. For the rest of the day, I opened into a part of myself to understand what it meant. Why was my reaction so strong? There was more than 1 reason.

One of them was the lack of eye contact when I came out.

The most common reactions I got when around gay men were 1) brief eye contact that was dismissive and never to occur again 2) no eye contact at all.

In truth, I was a broken human being who hit puberty at 8 and by 9 I knew I was gay. I had spent most of my life figuring out how to hide my gay energy, how to present in ways that were presentable for the straight world (and I got an early start). And though I wasn’t perfect, I was pretty good at it. Also, I had not had sex. My sexual energy was connected to being gay, and that was dangerous so that had to be hidden as well. I was guarded. I was distant. Yet I wanted connection.

But gay men especially of that era had their own pain that they carried. Most of them were unwilling to carry or even to see more of it. At the time, I judged that gay men were mean (and there was some of that!) but overall, they were simply hurt. And I carried a lot of pain—from both my experience as a gay man and from being a human being. I think there was a way in which I was a walking mirror that one wanted to look into. And of course, eye contact between gay men could be a signal for interest though with me it’s more nuanced because I seek eye contact as a matter of course.

I reacted in a way that has carried with me until last weekend— that gay men were heartless and mean (this wasn’t something that lived on the surface but was a deep-down judgment).

Memories unfurled. When I was little, my mother used a tactic that in my mind was a form a punishment/retaliation for existing. She would refuse to make eye contact. I would sometimes grab my feet, rock back and forth and scream to high heaven to try to force her to look at me. But she knew that was what I wanted, so she refused to relent. That by itself created a lot of pain—that I wasn’t even worthy to be acknowledged as existing—but as an INFJ, my primary means of connecting is prolonged eye contact. If you ever have tea or coffee with me or any sort of one on one, expect a lot of eye contact. The refusal to make eye contact cut me to the core. It shook and shattered my identity. I questioned whether I deserved to exist at all.

When I walked into gay world, and I was met with a refusal of eye contact, it triggered the mother wound. But I didn’t understand that was happening. I didn’t have the social skills to manage in those situations, and the wounding was profound and went straight to my core. In my early twenties, I went to my pastor to discuss my gayness, and he would not even look at me. He continued to talk, but he looked away. He pushed a name/number for a reparative therapist, again without looking at me (on this point, I went one time, but I realized that I was already messed up too much and that the therapist would send me deeper into the abyss if I continued). So on top of the mother wound, I had a god wound as well as at the time I thought of the pastor as someone closer to God (even God would not look at me).

I have gratitude for the Instagram post (which I found courtesy of a repost from one of my gay MKP brothers).

There is still energy around the mother wound. But I see the wound. I’m able to give grace to others for their wounds. It may be that I will be more willing to acknowledge my natural gay energy. It will be a process. It will work better if I’m around gay energy. Though I was married for 23 years, most of our friends were straight. I am highly adapted to editing/filtering to make others comfortable. I was doing that even before I knew I was gay (when I realized I was gay, that became a fulltime occupation).

But healing has occurred. I feel a part of me in the deep depths that is more relaxed—that is at peace with itself.

For that, I have tearful joy.

And I give thanks to James Wallis (Instagram post) for unexpected healing.

And I give thanks to my MKP brother, Joseph Moore, for posting it.