Emptiness
I’m not sure what the above painting is called or who the artist is, but for me, it summed up a lot of emotions I’ve been experiencing. After two weeks, I thought I’d be able to come to terms with the loss of my friend, and while I can keep from crying, there is still an emptiness that I cannot deny. This will be a short post because if I wrote any more it would just be a repeat of emotions I’ve already discussed.
I was glad to see that Jordan Smith was the winner of Season 9 of The Voice.
Sonnet: I Thank You
Sonnet: I Thank You
BY Henry Timrod
I thank you, kind and best beloved friend,
With the same thanks one murmurs to a sister,
When, for some gentle favor, he hath kissed her,
Less for the gifts than for the love you send,
Less for the flowers, than what the flowers convey;
If I, indeed, divine their meaning truly,
And not unto myself ascribe, unduly,
Things which you neither meant nor wished to say,
Oh! tell me, is the hope then all misplaced?
And am I flattered by my own affection?
But in your beauteous gift, methought I traced
Something above a short-lived predilection,
And which, for that I know no dearer name,
I designate as love, without love’s flame.
These last two weeks have been some of the most heart wrenching of my life. I finally stopped crying constantly, but I’ve now moved on the random panic attacks. Someone will mention something that reminds me of my friends and my emotions come crashing down on me. While I can often hide my panics, I feel completely on the verge of tears. I don’t know what will trigger them, but someone will mention something that is innocuous, but it brings back strong memories of my friend. I know that this too will get better. I’ve never experienced such grief when I have been so alone.
However, with your comments and emails showing your love, support and friendship, I don’t feel as lonely. All of you have been a lifesaver these past two weeks. You’ve shown what beloved friends you really are. Your gestures have meant so much to me, because I know it’s the love you send and the meaning that it conveys. This poem conveys much of my thank for all you’ve done, but it can’t come close to how thankful I really am. While I’m not out of the deep dark hole of despair, you have helped me to begin pulling myself up again.
Thank you all for also being patient with me and offering your kind words. I answered some of your emails yesterday but I haven’t answered any of the comments many of you left on my posts these past two weeks. Some of them are written so beautifully that I don’t want to mare them with responses that would never fully be able to convey the gratitude that I feel. I hope that the above poem will at least begin to let you know how thankful I am.
Blogging
Some of you may or may not have noticed this, but I removed a blog from my “Blogs I Like” in the lefthand column. Some of you came to my blog from that blog. Some of you already know why because I’ve seen that you commented on the last post of that blog. The thing is, this person had written a blog as three different people for years. Suddenly yesterday, he told the “truth” that he was a man more than twice the age of the people he pretended to be and that all of it had been a lie. He claimed there were grains of truth, but who the hell really knows at this point. A few weeks ago, the same thing had happened on another blog (not one I read, the one from yesterday I did usually read). The blog from a few weeks ago turned out to be a female author pretending to be a gay man.
Gay romance is filled with women who write under a male pen name. That doesn’t bother me, because mostly it’s an open secret to those who pay attention to the industry. Also, it’s nothing new, women have been using male pen names for centuries. When you’re trying to sell books, it really is about getting published and actually selling the book. That’s an entirely different debate and not the same thing.
If you’ve ever been on a gay dating site, you know that people on the internet lie. That’s one of the thing about the Internet, there have always been and there always will be people who lie and deceive. They will always make excuses for why they do so, but it is still lies and deception. Lies and deceit just hurt other people, and ultimately it will bite you in the ass. I think what hurt the most and angered me about this situation is the memory of my friend who recently died. He had the real issues that this guy described in his blog. He looked up to “these guys” and it gave him hope that things could be better for him. If he had lived, he would have been completely devastated by this. The thing is that I know my friend wasn’t the only person who did identify with that blog, and I’m sure they are now devastated as well.
I sure these blogs I’ve mentioned won’t be the only blogs who reveal they are all lies. I think of all the gay bloggers who are out there and are real. For everyone of these fakes that emerges more people will doubt the validity of others. That’s the saddest part. Because when I say, I’m real, I sure there are people who will doubt that. The truth is that I’m just not creative enough to make all of this up and I’m certainly not cruel enough to do so. When I pour out my emotions on this blog, I do so with my whole heart. Over the course of this blog, I have been devastated by three major losses in my life: my grandmama, my beloved cat Victoria, and my best friend. I’m not even going to count he loss of my job, because that turned out pretty damn well in the end, but the other losses devastated me. You’ve been there when I was happy and excited over other events in my life. There have been many ups and downs, and believe me when I say that I like happy ending and happy stories. If I was making this stuff up, I would never have included the downs. I know the many people who follow me feel my ups and downs. I couldn’t live with myself if I were making this stuff up because I’d know I was allowing people to be hurt over things that weren’t true.
Some of you know my last name (yes, my real first name is Joe, well actually Joseph, but most people just call me Joe). Some of you know where I live, or know my address. If you pay attention, it wouldn’t be terribly hard to figure out where I work. Others have talked to me on the phone, some have even met me in person. Some really long time readers are friends of mine on Facebook. My Facebook, my GoFundMe account, and even the Facebook for where I work, have real pictures of me.
This post wasn’t to convince you that I am real, but to talk about the deceptions of others. I am most certainly real.
Anger and Doubt
All of you know that I am a man who has great faith in God, at least I hope you think that. These last two weeks have been so difficult. Why did God take my friend? Why would he let something so tragic happen to someone with such a beautiful soul? Some terrible things had happened in my friend’s life when he was younger. His parents disowned him for being gay, which had nothing to do with religion but pure homophobia. God brought wonderful people into his life and helped him through those difficulties. My friend had a difficult time understanding how such a great and loving God could allow tragedies to happen. Whether those tragedies were accidents or caused by someone hatred or cause by natural disasters, he wondered how God could let those things happen. I never had a very good answer for him. He had suffered in his life because of his family’s rejection, and I’ve never been able to understand how they could be so cruel.
These past two weeks, I’ve struggled with the same issues. I can’t help but wonder how God could allow him to die in an accident, while his hateful parents continued to live on. I admit that it has made me so angry at God. Being angry at God just compounded my sadness because I felt guilty for being angry at God and questioning the faith I have in Him to protect and provide for us. God took this beautiful man (and I don’t mean in just physical beauty, which he was, but also in his soul.) He was beautiful and so kind. God took him away from not only me, but the rest of the people who’d considered him part of their family: his boyfriend and other friends. For me, he was more than a friend. He was family. He was my confidante, and he was my confessor. He was the younger brother I never had. There are so many wicked and hateful people in this world that God could have taken, but he took someone who had the purest heart I have ever known.
One friend told me that I had to think of this as purely an accident, because horrible tragedies like this are not the hand of God. While I wish I could think that way, I was always told that God guides all things. God performs miracles every day, why couldn’t He have saved my friend? I’ve always believed that everything happens for a reason. If so, what could possibly be the reason behind this? Being angry or disappointed with God is a troubling subject for me. If God is such a loving God, how can He allow such pain? It reminds me of a scene from Steel Magnolias. I produced the play a couple of years ago as part of the drama club I was in charge of. It’s the most difficult scene in the whole play and one that I never did get through without tears in my eyes:
M’Lynn: [crying] I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine.
[screaming]
M’Lynn: I’m fine! I can jog all the way to Texas and back, but my daughter can’t! She never could! Oh God! I am so mad I don’t know what to do! I wanna know why! I wanna know *why* Shelby’s life is over! I wanna know how that baby will *ever* know how wonderful his mother was! Will he *ever* know what she went through for him! Oh *God* I wanna know *why*? *Why*? Lord, I wish I could understand!
[in a firm tone]
M’Lynn: No! No! No! It’s not supposed to happen this way! I’m supposed to go first. I’ve always been ready to go first! I-I don’t think I can take this! I-I don’t think I can take this! I-I just wanna *hit* somebody ’til they feel as bad as I do! I just wanna hit something! I wanna hit it hard!
The scene of course is followed immediately by a humorous scene that breaks the tension. While I’ve always found this an emotional scene, it’s a very close description to how I feel.
I’ve read that being angry with God is something that both believers and unbelievers wrestle with. When some extreme difficulty or tragedy happens in our lives, we naturally ask God the question — “Why?” I’ve asked that question a lot in the last two weeks. I was researching ways to deal with my doubts and anger and came across the following passage written by Dr. D. W. Ekstrand:
This response indicates two flaws in our thinking — first, even as believers, we all have the tendency to operate under the impression that life should be easy and pleasant (especially if GOD is our God), and that God should prevent tragedy, difficulty and pain from happening to us (Jn 11:37); so when He does not, we get angry or disappointed with Him (Jn 11:32). Second, when we do not seem to be able to reconcile the extent of God’s sovereignty, we lose confidence in His ability to control all of the circumstances we go through in life. When we lose faith in God’s sovereignty, it is actually because our frail human flesh is grappling with our own frustration and our own lack of control over events. All of us tend to live life in such a way that we can positively affect the outcome of situations… that everything will work out as we have planned; as such, we believe that we are the ones who ultimately determine our fate — when good things happen, we generally attribute it to our own efforts; so when things go bad we are quick to blame God, and get angry with Him for not preventing it. Deep down we believe we should be immune to unpleasant circumstances (flaw number one as noted above), especially if God loves us.
While I think this is a good answer to what I’ve been dealing with tragedy, he’s flawed when he says “when good things happen, we generally attribute it to our own efforts.” I don’t. I attribute it to God’s guiding hand. So if we give God the credit for what good happens in our life, why shouldn’t He also take blame for the tragedies. Why does God continue to have us go through pain and loss? When will good Christians and faithful believers be rewarded? Is it only in death? If feel like in the past seven or eight years I have been constantly beat down. Finally something good had happened in my life and career, and I was thankful for God’s guiding hand. Then suddenly, all of that joy and happiness was ripped away by the loss of my friend. While I am still thankful for my job, I have to wonder: is this God’s way of reminding me that I will never be fully happy? It seems like in my life for every ten failures, I have one success. Is it my destiny to be knocked down each time God helps me up?
Dr. Ekstrand went on to say:
Tragedies and suffering bring home the sobering truth that we are not in charge… that God is the One who ultimately determines what happens in our lives… that everything is either caused or allowed by God. Remember, He is God. We can complain, get angry, and blame God for what is happening, yet if we will trust Him and yield our bitterness and pain to Him, acknowledging the prideful sin of trying to force our own will over His, He can and will grant us His peace and strength to get us through any difficult situation (1 Cor 10:13). We can be angry with God for many reasons, so we all have to accept at some point that there are things we cannot control or even understand with our finite minds.
This has not been the most upbeat of my post on religion. Maybe it doesn’t even belong here, but this is where I think through my relationship with God and try to understand it. Right now, I’m having trouble understanding it and maybe some of you have better answer than I do. Quite frankly, I have no answers right now.
At least for a little while, I am going to suspend my Saturday Moments of Zen. I’ve always used them as something that made me happy or made me smile, but I’m sure y’all understand that right now it’s hard for me to find those moments. I promise that they will return, it may just be a few more weeks at least. I will bring them back because they were my late friend’s favorite part of my blog. He always said that he enjoyed everything about it, even if he wasn’t much of a poetry fan, but he always found joy in my Moments of Zen. I will bring them back in honor of him, but right now, I just don’t have the inspiration for them.
Continue readingHidden Pain
In my counseling session yesterday, my therapist brought up something that I found quite intriguing. I’d woken up with a headache yesterday. It should come as no surprise that I have been having them more frequently in the last two weeks. When I mentioned my headache, we talked about the causes of them, and I explained that they are caused by different factors: environmental, emotional, and dietary. I talked about how long I’ve been suffering from headaches, and he asked me how I handled them. I told him that for the most part, I just carried on and tried not to let them ruin my life. He brought up that I have a lot of “hidden pains.” My headaches are just one example of it. Rarely can someone look at me and tell that I have a headache. Only people who know me very well can tell on even rare occasions. You see, I try not to make a big deal over them. Yes, I have mentioned them on this blog more than once (an understatement), but I don’t want it to be something that defines me. I also don’t like to show weakness, so many times when I have a headache I don’t mention it. I go about my day and then when I’m alone and away from everyone that’s when I can deal with the pain.
My headaches aren’t my only hidden pain. I hid my sexuality for a very long time. My sexuality wasn’t something I wanted to be defined by either. While you hope that people will react kindly to finding out you’re gay, it’s not always the case. Someone that I’d always thought of as a friend (he is married to a friend of mine), once said to me after I made some offhand comment about a guy being sexy, “I don’t care if you’re that way, I just don’t want to hear about it.” As a whole this group of people knew I was gay and didn’t care, and it was one of the few times in Alabama that I could be my true self. After he said that, what I’d thought of as my safe zone shattered. I eventually stopped hanging out with this group because I realized that while they’d all acted like they accepted me, no one called him out on him calling me out. All the people I work with now know that I am gay. I never made it a secret, but at some point you do have to come out. To me that’s the worst thing about being gay, you have to continue to come out all your life.
I also hide my emotions. Southern boys/men aren’t supposed to be emotional. You can’t talk about your accomplishments because then you are bragging, unless it’s something manly like hunting or athletics. Accomplishments in academics and the arts just makes you a weakling and a braggart. Men, of course, no matter where you are must hide weaknesses. You most certainly have to hide emotional pain. I “fail” at this one too often. While I can usually keep my emotional pain hidden, sometimes the sadness bubbles over. With the death of my friend, it was hard to keep that sadness hidden, but I’ve suffered from depression for years, and I do my best to keep it hidden. My anxiety is the same way. I hide the magnitude of it often by making a joke of it. I always say that I fly Air Xanax because I have to take Xanax to be able to fly. If I don’t, then I have full blown panic attacks and generally burst into tears. So it becomes anoher pain that I hide, but with anxiety I just make a joke out of it so that no one realizes the magnitude of my anxiety at times.
Even though I may look fine on the outside, it doesn’t mean that everything is great. Often I feel ashamed if I can’t maintain poise and self-control at all times, even when I am alone. I hate the loss of control over my emotions or other pains. I have to begin to understand that it is human to break or to feel that I just can’t take another hit. It is okay to lose it once in a while. That is when I need my friends and family the most. My friend that I’d lost was one of the few people who I could be completely myself with. I didn’t have to hide my pains. The sharing of vulnerabilities, mess-ups, weak moments and despair with my friend who was a trusted listener helped. No matter what the problem was, I could get past hellish happenings, cease downward spirals and emerge from an abyss because he made me feel understood. Being understood is empowering. It’s right up there with being loved or respected. With my friend, I had all three. He understood me, he loved me, and he respected me. Now I have to learn to deal with these hidden pains by myself, without the tremendous help of my friend.
Grief
I don’t know that someone can ever get over the loss of their best friend, especially when that person was so integral to your life. For me, it seems like each day gets a little better. I can talk about him now without bursting into tears, but then there are times when I want to tell him something and I realize that I can’t. When I have moments of happiness or moments when I’m not thinking of the loss, I feel guilty for thinking that way.
Last week when I couldn’t seem to stop having thoughts sadness filled with the loss of a willingness to go on, I knew I needed some counseling. I saw a counselor last week, and I will see him again today. I haven’t had suicidal thoughts, but I wished that it could have been me in that car accident and not my friend. I’m not sure when or if I will get over wishing that it had been me instead of him. He had so much life to live and so many wonderful things yet to do.
Anyway, it’s getting a little easier each day, the grief and sadness isn’t, but the ability to continue becomes a little easier. I’ve thought for a while that I needed to see a counselor, so I think these appointments will do me good on many levels. I have to remind myself to still find the joys in life because that’s what my friend would have encouraged me to do. He was the person I always turned to in times of need, and I need him now more than ever.
Thank you all for your words of sympathy and support. They mean a lot to me and have helped me through this last week and a half.
Sacrilegious
Queerty published an article the other day titled, “Jesus Had Two Dads: Guys Share What It’s Like To Be Gay And Religious.” I clicked on the article because I thought it would be be interesting. Instead I was disgusted and outraged. While the pictures like the one above with the text were posted on Whisper and many made excellent points in my opinion, the Queerty article chose to deride and belittle people because they held religious beliefs. To make the article even more detestable, the commenters were so bitchy and chose to make fun of gay people who had religious convictions. While a few tried to comment in the defense of religious gays, they were completely attached by other commenters. It’s one thing to not believe, but it’s another to call someone a fool because they do. I think everyone has their right to believe or not, but no one on either side has the right to belittle me because of what I choose to believe or not believe. I tried very hard when I was a teacher and teaching about other religions to get my students to not think of other religious beliefs as crazy, but to try to understand other religions and cultures. As gay men and women, we don’t like people judging us for our sexuality, so why should we allow for discrimination against those who are religious or have a different skin tone. People need to quit being so judgmental. If they would do that we would have a much better and far more happy world.
Holy Sonnets
Holy Sonnet V
By John Donne
I am a little world made cunningly
Of elements, and an angelic spright,
But black sin hath betrayed to endless night
My worlds both parts, and oh! both parts must die.
You, which beyond that heaven which was most high
Have found new spheres and of new lands can write,
Pour new seas in mine eyes, that so I might
Drown my world with my weeping earnestly,
Or wash it, if it must be drowned no more:
But oh! it must be burnt; alas the fire
Of lust and envy burnt it heretofore,
And made it fouler; Let their flames retire,
And burn me, O Lord, with a fiery zeal
Of thee and thy house, which doth in eating heal.
Holy Sonnet X
By John Donne
Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so,
For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,
And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.
Holy Sonnet XIV
By John Donne
Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me and bend
Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.
I, like an usurpt town, to another due,
Labour to admit you, but Oh, to no end,
Reason your viceroy in me, me should defend,
But is captiv’d, and proves weak or untrue.
Yet dearly I love you, and would be loved fain,
But am betroth’d unto your enemy:
Divorce me, untie, or break that knot again,
Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
“Wilt thou love God, as he thee? Then digest”
Holy Sonnet XIX
By John Donne
Oh, to vex me, contraries meet in one:
Inconstancy unnaturally hath begot
A constant habit; that when I would not
I change in vows, and in devotion.
As humorous is my contrition
As my profane love, and as soon forgot:
As riddlingly distempered, cold and hot,
As praying, as mute; as infinite, as none.
I durst not view heaven yesterday; and today
In prayers and flattering speeches I court God:
Tomorrow I quake with true fear of his rod.
So my devout fits come and go away
Like a fantastic ague; save that here
Those are my best days, when I shake with fear.
Sonnets are my favorite form of poetry. While Shakespeare, Spenser, and Petrarch are the most famous sonneteers, I do love the sonnets of Donne and Elizabeth Barrett Browning. Today though I am featuring four of Donne’s Holy Sonnets. The Holy Sonnets—also known as the Divine Meditations or Divine Sonnets—are a series of nineteen poems by the English poet John Donne (1572–1631). The sonnets were first published in 1633—two years after Donne’s death. The poems are predominantly in the style and form set forth by Petrarch (1304–1374) in which the sonnet consisted of two quatrains (four-line stanzas) and a sestet (a six-line stanza). However, several rhythmic and structural patterns as well as the inclusion of couplets are elements influenced by the sonnet form developed by Shakespeare (1564–1616).
The primary theme of Donne’s Holy Sonnets are to mourn the passing of his wife and address religious themes of mortality, divine judgment, divine love, and humble penance while reflecting deeply personal anxieties.
I’m not sure I’m in full blogging mode again yet, but I had read Holy Sonnet V the other day, and it just sort of stuck with me. I used to teach the Holy Sonnets when I tortured taught my students about sonnets. Donne wrote some of the most difficult sonnets to understand but I think if you are in the mindset he was when he wrote them, it becomes easier to understand. He is obviously coming to terms with changes in his life (Catholicism to Anglicanism), the loss of a loved one (he lost his wife), and general anxieties that come with such struggles. Moving from Alabama to Vermont, I can see allegorically how I moved from a rural conservative place that was what you expected of Alabama, to a somewhat rural but much more liberal (and even more urban since I live in town) Vermont. Anyway, just my thoughts as I woke up this morning, and decided to add this last paragraph.
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