Well here's an email I recently sent to some of my friends. It tells you pretty much where I am right now:

"Well, it’s been a year now since Michael and I broke up, and MAN have I learned a lot about myself, about life, and about love. These have been hard lessons, but valuable knowledge dearly won.

I have spent the last year dancing frantically, trying to deny and escape my own pain. Trying not to “give in” to depression. I was worried that men wouldn’t find me attractive if I was sad, or not laughing and full of fun every moment. I felt a duty to be charming and witty around my friends – the “old Steve”, who hasn’t changed. I didn’t want my friends to worry about me. It hasn’t done any good guys. I have changed. I’ve still been sad. Denying my pain has not made it a bit less real, but it has made me tired. And so I’m stopping. If I feel like dancing I certainly will, but if I don’t, I’m giving myself the luxury of sitting one out.

I know now, deep in my heart, that I did truly love Michael. There was a part of me that wondered about that. I wondered if I had experienced “true” love. I now know we did. But it doesn’t mean what they say it does in books. True love, at least ours, sounds very simple. We belonged to each other. I remembered the things that drew me to him in the first place. I had never truly belonged before. In the six years we were together, I had forgotten about not belonging.

My whole life, I have been a person apart. Except for a brief period in my life in my 20’s, when the bar life seemed to fit, I had never really belonged anywhere until Michael. He knew me better than anyone else ever has, warts an all, and loved me anyway. I’ve always been an odd duck in my family. There were only a few people in my family who really understood and related to me. It’s not just being gay – I am just different than them. I have never felt truly part of the straight world at large. I have friends there, and I function and work there; but it’s like a foreign country in which I move. I get along there, and I speak the language, but I am “other” there, and really on some level, I always will be. I understand now why people move back to their hometowns. But Michael was my hometown, and I can’t move back there, that’s over.

I’ve never really fit in to the gay community. I have made some very close friends that I belonged to there, and I feel more at home in the Bear community than I have anywhere else, but I’ve never really fit in to any of the cliques in the gay world. I’ve never had enough money to be a snob queen. I’ve never been truly shallow enough to be a bar fly, although I gave that one a good shot when I was younger. I’ve never had a big enough or nice enough house to be a house queen. I’ve never liked exercise enough to be a muscle queen. I’m not hairy enough to be a bear, and I’m not really an outdoorsman. I don’t want to spend my weekends in the woods crapping in a hole and eating granola out of my hand. I’m still not going to spend a huge portion of my life in the gym becoming a muscle bear. I’m also not going to spend huge portions of my life in front of a television watching grown men play children’s games or race cars.

I do like traditional “gay” things. I like reading and talking about books. I like to play cards with my friends, and spend time with the wonderful people I am lucky enough to have in my life. I like to go antiquing and flea marketing and digging through other people’s junk. I like movies. I love to cook and talk about food, as well as eat it! Keeping up with those things, and keeping up with the things that you “have to do” (work, cleaning, pets, family) also pretty much fills my life.

I have time to date. But I am no longer “looking” for a husband. If someone wonderful came into my life that would be great, but at this point I am not expecting it. It just doesn’t seem that it’s going to happen here. Since Michael and I lost each other, the people I still belong with are my friends. I can’t give them up. I’m not giving up all the people who care for me on the possibility that I might meet one person to care for me, as nice as that would be. So I’m here. A man alone in many ways. And I’m learning again to accept and live with that. Moving away won’t solve that, because it’s very true – no matter where you go, there you are. I have to get back in touch with who I am, and figure out who I am now.

I used to hear that losing your partner is like a grieving process, and I didn’t realize how true that really is. It’s a loss I live with every day. It’s a pain and a sadness that is always with me, a shadow on my heart of which I am always conscious. The loss is a part of me like an arm or leg, and to deny it would be just as useless. I am accepting that pain as part of my life. That doesn’t mean I am not moving on. This acceptance is part of my moving on. At this stage, I am thinking of it as learning to live with a roommate that I don’t particularly want, but one with whom I have to make peace.

A life partner is not like a puppy. You can't just go get another one.

I used to think that people who got divorced lost friends because their friends couldn’t relate to them as being single, that they were abandoned because they were no longer convenient. I don’t think that now. I think it’s because that person changes. It’s a life-altering thing, and you don’t come out the same person you were. I hope all my friends come through this with me. I hope they understand that I may not be the same Steve that you have known any more. I may not be as much fun for a while. I love you all, and I am grateful for you every day. But if the new Steve doesn’t fit any more, I understand. "


At this point, I just can't put up a front for everyone any more. I'm not morose, but I'm having some hard times right now, and I have to be able to go through that honestly. I just don't have the energy to keep people from worrying about me any more.


This is the quote on my desk right now:

"The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain. Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?"

I sure hope so.