Gardening and Whac-a-mole

So, what do I make of these therapeutic revelations now, eight years later?  

First, I neglected to see that Kelly was not an external processor. She and I talked about a lot of things, feelings and opinions and thoughts, but I don’t think she processed as she talked. She was more thoughtful and contained, formulating her opinions and feelings before she spoke. I so wanted an easy and tidy reason for my attractions to women that I clung to the external processor explanation like it was my only lifeline. I could not yet accept that I was just attracted to Kelly. I just was.

Second, I realize now that I can feel immediate attraction with a woman, that powerful sense of feeling drawn to someone when I’m first introduced to her. It can happen before I know whether she’s an external processor, before I know whether she shares her feelings and thoughts as she is talking. I once met a woman at a Halloween party, and it was there instantly, that attraction, like a phantom recognition had passed between us. EEE-lec-tric. Like the hairs-on my-arms-standing-up kind of chemistry. I have never felt this kind of immediate chemistry with a man.

Third, I see how ashamed and scared I was. I was grabbing on to any theory or rationale I could find to explain away the gay. Sarah even told me that she could feel how much I did not want to be gay.

I carried a deep discomfort and unsettledness inside me.

I was nowhere close to accepting myself, my complicated sexuality and my attractions to women.  

I was also scared that God was going to make me be alone forever. God was a stern father-figure, someone that giveth and taketh away as he saw fit…the God of Job. Maybe, just maybe, he would grace me with a man but definitely not a woman. Sarah asked if I realized that I had more choices than just “I can’t be with a woman. I’m not attracted to men so I’ll be celibate.” She said it was more complicated than that, that we have our needs met from different sources. One person cannot meet all our needs. I did not buy it. I could not fathom that there might be other options. I had reduced God to human ways of thinking, to my way of thinking; I had made him in MY image (no wonder he wasn’t very appealing). I did not trust that God had good things for me. And I certainly did not trust that he could have good things for me if they did not involve marriage or being in a relationship with someone.  

So what did I do?

I fixated on Justin, feeding and nurturing my feelings for him. I thought about him and tried to keep tabs on him through his friends and on Facebook. I fueled my feelings for him as long as I could because I wanted to have feelings for a man, I wanted to be straight, and as long as I had feelings for him I could have hope. And then, after he had lived overseas for a couple of years and finally moved back to Boulder, I saw him at a party and he was still charming and attractive. Still had the square jaw. But there was a major difference…he had a freaking fiancé. And she was there and I met her. And, at long last, the spell broke. This garden of bright feelings I had been cultivating and tending for him withered fast. It’s like a freeze came through and killed everything overnight. It dawned on me. He was not harboring any feelings for me. He had moved on from me the moment he talked to me after church and told me he didn’t know me. The fiancé was real. I had been living in fantasy land. Any residual feelings I had for him hard-freeze died that night. 

During those years I was busy watering my Justin garden, I hardly thought about women…or men, for that matter…it was all Justin, all the time. No attractions, no crushes, nothing. But after I could no longer summon up any feelings for him, I started noticing women more. Again, with the females.

I had hoped I had kicked this, like it was a common cold.

But, no, here it was again.  

Before I knew it, all the feelings and desires and shame that had been latent and hibernating for a couple years, awoke, raring to go and demanding to be satiated. It felt like that arcade game, whac-a-mole, where you use a mallet to beat down toy moles that pop up randomly through round holes. I would be going along fine living my life and then I would feel desire for a woman pop up and I would beat it down with my mallet, or I would feel longing for a woman and hammer it down. But sometimes, they would pop up in quick succession and I had to work harder and faster to beat them down. The worst was when multiple moles popped up at once, when I felt lonely and isolated (just me and my secret), when I yearned for a female partner, when I felt desire for women, when I craved romance…then, I could not beat them all down. Then I felt despair.  

This thing wasn’t going away. I had tricked myself into believing that the worst was over. That Justin had changed everything. That I was a heterosexual. That Kelly had been an anomaly, an aberration. But no.

I had been delusional.  

Mercifully, the whac-a-mole onslaught never lasted too long. The moles would go into hiding, not because I beat them down, but just because the pummeling passed and that round ended. The moles receded to reset for another time. I had lost. I always lost. I emerged from these bouts a little worse for wear. After one particularly difficult weekend, I dragged myself to a class at the gym on a Monday morning and the instructor asked me multiple times if I was okay. When I finally questioned him after the third time he asked, he responded that the light in my eyes was gone, all the glimmer had vanished.

After each whac-a-mole barrage, there would be a period of relative calm and I would gain back my equilibrium, grateful for the reprieve. Until the next time.