So here I am once again faced with the annual decision of whether to renew my domain name and registration. Undoubtedly I will because I remain existent with a lack of poverty stricken qualities to my life. Don’t misunderstand – we are not of noble means by any measure but can pay the bills and have some fun on the side.
What kind of fun I have on the side is being debated and discussed. I have transferred to a less stressful job within my company and now I absolutely love working for my employer. The emotional wear and tear of six years had absolutely worn me down. Compounded by the emotional journey I have gone through for the past few years and it all came together to be too much to handle.
A few years ago I ended up taking a few months out of work to get my life sorted. What precipitated the sudden decline in my mental health? All I can remember is sitting in my therapist’s office with my wife and looking at Facebook wondering if I was making the right choice in blocking my mother. Thus started a long long period of wondering if I had made the right choice, wondering if I would ever talk to my mother again. If you have followed along with my website you caught glimpses into the mental hell I was subject to.
I don’t know if cutting off all contact with her and other was the right thing to do. The people around me understood why I was doing it but I wondered if that was because I had manipulated them into agreeing that I was indeed a victim/survivor of abuse. Through the work I have done with my therapist I now accept that I do not need anybody to agree with my perspective on what happened to me and how I reacted to life in the face of those events.
It is safe if the people you love don’t agree with your stance, it is safe to tell them they have harmed you. It is revealing to see their responses. You can accept their actions or not but love means that you will always want them in your life, and you can rely on their desire to have you in theirs.
But I will never regret having the courage to ask my mom if she wanted to try again. I’ll never regret answering my dad’s happy birthday text after not hearing from him for years. He was a month off on the date but I was so happy to hear from him I didn’t care. The idea that he thought about me after all that time and got up the guts to reach out meant a lot to me.
My mom’s patience and accountability mean a lot to me, too. I was right. Our love is so strong we can look our own uglinesses in the face, call them their true names and still choose each other at the end of it.
I never regret choosing my wife. How surprisingly dull and inadequate the rest of humanity is when your life is so full of someone suited exactly to you. Unfortunately I become a bit arrogant and assume I simply have the best wife in the world but the reality is that all she needs to be is the best wife for me. And she is. Telling the truth with grace is one of the highest acts of love in my eyes and her actions every day speak to the truth of her love for me. I never have to doubt she loves me, will choose me. Her safe harbour allows me to face risks in life I would merely suffered through and feared.
I never regret renewing this subscription either.
Queer Pandemic 