Expanding Whorizons

I’m often confronted by the realization that what I want frightens me.  I know that’s… vague.  but that is what the experience is—a vague feeling of fear.  I want, but I’m afraid of, responsibility. I want, but I’m afraid of, major purchases. I want, but I’m afraid of, intimacy. I want, but I’m afraid of, sex. I’m coming to grips with a lot of the above.  And, reading over that list, the one that feels the most vulnerable to admit to is the last.  Sex, as a youth, meant furtive masturbatory experiences.  There was no place for it in polite conversation, or in my every day.  Sex, in college, meant struggling with what I was told was ‘right’ with what I felt was right.  I ‘should’ want a relationship with a woman, I felt I wanted—no craved—the touch of a man, instead.  For years, I continued to struggle with that juxtaposition and, afterward, with the bifurcation of my personal life with my ‘family’ life.  Secrets kept until ...

***Warning: Not the least bit sexy*** I will admit to a certain amount of melancholia at this time of year.  Birthdays do that to me.  It’s a reminder of where I am, and where I thought I’d be, and how disparate those two really are.  Add to that a certain amount of upheaval—new job, new lifestyle (working from home)—and it’s a bit of a recipe for disaster. So, imagine how my evening turned out when someone posted a link (below) with little preamble.  Once I clicked on it, I found it to be an 11 minute section of Prayers for Bobby.  Never having seen it, I watched it.  Fair warning—if the rest of the movie is anything like these 11 minutes—it’s an amazingly moving story, heart wrenching and uplifting in turns.  All the more so because it’s not just a story.  Bobby was a 19 year old boy who, having come out to his mother—a Christian (capitol C)—was greeted with all of the litany of things I feared when I grappled with the realization that I w...