38. Out of Kansas…

or “out” in Kansas The journey to Colorado from Kansas in 1978 signaled the end of another era. I would be reinventing myself once again. The new kid in town, trying to fit in with peers that had known each other their entire lives. By this time I had become the ultimate Chameleon for a number of reasons. The “real” me was unlovable, Harley had made this abundantly clear. Being attracted to the same sex was a serious flaw if not a mental disorder. Society would hate me if they knew and in my mind, rightly so. I didn’t identify with the only example I had ever been exposed to. A once a year 60 second news story about a parade in San Francisco which was ridiculed and mocked by all. That wasn’t me. I was a country boy and had no interest in dressing up in women’s cloths or dancing around half naked. My fantasy was a house…a home, a family and a white picket fence in a rural setting. Domestic and a reflection of what I had grown up around. Everything about me was wrong so I had to pretend and convince the outside world, and myself, that I was something else.

An innocent encounter with a close friend, at his instigation, the year before solidified this ideology. It confirmed both our sexuality’s. He was not gay but I certainly was and although I had no intention of engaging him again in this manner and could have just moved on, it ruined our friendship. I vowed, and have held to that vow, to never allow something so fleeting as sex to ruin a friendship. He would go onto make jokes in front of others, pretending to expose me, that were terrifying. I locked and barricaded that closet door and would not emerge for seven years. In reality, I never planned to unlock that door…ever. I would marry and have children, living a quite life of desperation and unfulfilled desires within that white picket fence that now somehow felt like a prison…but it would be “normal”.

To survive and fit in I would quickly figure out what people needed me to be and become that. I had learned long ago that the quickest way to make friends and be accepted was to make them laugh. My internal dialogue and driving force in my life was to be “normal” and be accepted. I longed to belong. The people pleaser syndrome was a survival skill that would serve me my entire life, even to this day, but it would also keep me from being my authentic self for many years. There were many times throughout my life that I would wonder if I was being me or what I thought others expected me to be although this boundary would blur as the years wore on. I could rarely, if ever, be spontaneous. Everything I would say or do would first be run through a filter. Did or would that look or sound gay? If yes, damage control. Make a fag joke. Even though I developed very deep and genuine relationships I felt internal guilt for my deception but what choice did I have? This was truly an act of self preservation, life and death.

Here’s the catch, the lemonade so to speak. I wasn’t really aware of all this internal turmoil at the time as I was within it. Its all I had ever known so it was “normal”. I did what I had to do to survive, even thrive and because I had no outside perspective, I assumed everyone else was doing the same thing. My situation wasn’t unique. I would realize over time this was actually a much bigger truth. Everyone is carrying some sort of trauma. Maybe some are carrying more extreme forms than others. I found that because of my own trauma, I had developed a deep sense of empathy for others and was a very effective friend and confidant. I had faked it so long, that I was “it”. Always finding a silver lining to ever dark cloud. Always there for others and frankly, myself as well. I was an overall happy guy regardless of my circumstances. I think my experience of happy was multiplied due to my pronounced experience of being unhappy.

And as it turned out, I was always being me, on my way to being a bigger version of me.

Be “you” in the here and now and and always remain open to becoming “you”.

“Curse not the darkness for it is only within the darkness that we may truly know ourselves as the light”

Nobody Knows / Billy Squire

I may get around
I may laugh a lot
Now you’d think that I’d be happy with the life I got
Nobody knows
Nobody sees
Ain’t nobody really knows the inner side of me

I may seem secure
I could have it made
You might think you see a lucky man who made the grade
Nobody knows what dreams I see
Ain’t nobody really sure just who they want to be

But everybody has a place and time
A chance to live
A need to find
We all got somethin’ that we care about
I propose you find it out

It’s not in a book, or a magazine
Or the stars who guide our fortunes on the silver screen
Nobody knows, it’s up to me
Ain’t nobody who can say it like it outght to be

I see my future at the rainbow’s end
Happy hours, timeless friends
And if I ever chance to find my way
Rest assured, I will stay

You may see your life as a compromise
You may live to find the promise dancin’ in your eyes
Nobody knows, it’s meant to be
Let the magic of the moment say it all to me