I turned 50 on August 13, 2023. I had always been afraid that it would be hard to accept, for many reasons. You hear stories of how turning the big Five-Oh changes you. Some say that you finally adopt the IDGAF (I Don’t Give A Fuck) mindset, others say that it was the point that they started to realize that life was more about taking things away from them now, than what lie ahead. I waited for any inkling of change in me and the only thing I felt was shock. Shock that I made it to fifty. Some may wonder why that was a surprise and others still may simply write it off as me being dramatic, but it is nonetheless the truth.
I have spent these last six weeks contemplating a lot of things and you will forgive me if I take a little time to share them with you. Some may be a bit repetitive and they will be lightly touched, others may be a bit of a deeper dive. EIther way, I hope something here can be beneficial to others, along their journey.
13,140 days until expiration
Most kids fear death, to some degree, and it’s only natural. For me, I was afraid of being stuck in a box, alone, for eternity. No one to talk to and no one to hear my terrified screams of being alone in the dark. It was around the year 1984 that I started having this dream that I would die in my adulthood. At the time, I don’t think I had a concept of the age other than I wouldn’t get the chance to be old and gray. It terrified me.
As the years went by, I continued having this dream, with no change to it. It was around my sophomore year in high school that this dream solidified more and I realized my death dream was the age of 36. It was so frequent that I accepted it almost as reality. And I waited. The dream was vivid in how I would die. By my sophomore year in high school, I no longer feared death as I did when I was a child. I didn’t see it as the endless loneliness. I slowly realized that it would just be the end. I had seen family members and friends die and sat in quiet mourning over each of their passing but understood it was a part of life. The only thing that scared me was that it would be coming to me around when I turned 36, of this I was sure.
Obviously, I did not die at 36 or if I did, the afterlife is a very different place than they have us believe.
The sin’s of the father
Winston Churchill was once quoted as saying “Those that fail to learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.”
My father had a rough childhood. At a young age, he was forced to tend a 180 acre farm while his brothers and sisters got to enjoy their childhood. He had a mother and father that would beat him for “stepping out of line.” His own mother ran over him with a pickup truck. And his parents took him out of school so he could run the farm. Thanks to being the oldest child, he didn’t have to serve in the military as he was the provider to the farm, instead his brothers went. He did not grow up in a loving household.
As such, he was ill equipped to dole out love and affection to his children. He didn’t take the lessons of his childhood to do better with his kids, instead he let it drag him down in the same modalities that his parents visited upon him. He stayed at a distance, rarely said he loved us or showed affection, and was much more prone to show anger and violence. He preferred to be the one doling out punishment. He never knew how to talk to my sister and I. I constantly heard how he was disappointed in what kind of a man I was. How I wasn’t the son he wanted. How I was worthless and stupid and thought I was so much better than him when in fact, I was much less. He knew how to dish out verbal abuse in the way many people give compliments .
As a child, I contemplated running away and taking my own life, weekly. I planned them out in great detail and many of them were without notes, just letting my family find out what happened in time. The only thing that stopped me was the thought of how I wanted to be more than my father, to be better. That and I could not imagine making my mother or sister live with the mess of my suicide or making sense of me running away.
Youthful setbacks
I spent most of my life ashamed of two events, specifically. I left elementary school in the fall 1984 and started my time in middle and high school. As a kid, I didn’t realize a lot of my learning issues came from not being able to see and then not wearing my glasses because of kids making fun of me. When I got to sixth grade, most of our classes had us sitting alphabetically so that meant I was in the back and unable to see. I also did not advocate for myself, so I never mentioned I had vision issues. My grades suffered. I failed my first year of middle school. I had already witnessed my friends pulling away from me due to the enormous pool of kids they could now choose from for friends. I was the poor kid, so I often was left behind.
After I failed sixth grade, all of my friends moved on without me. I spent the summer in summer school and not getting to see them. I was pretty much punished for failing. They… moved on while I was stuck. My second time in sixth grade did not go unnoticed, as my teachers pointed out that I was back again. I was slow to make friends due to the shame and, of course, my grades still suffered. I managed to pass this time and move on with my new class. But the damage was done to my psyche. Add to that the constant verbal abuse of my father and even the guidance counselor telling me how I would never amount to anything, you can see how it would take its toll on a child.
My second shameful event was failing out of college. I left home to get away from all the shit I had grown up with. I wanted away from it and believed going halfway across the country would be the answer. It was not. My shame from losing my friends in middle school hung on me and I was never good at making friends because of it. I knew they would always leave me. By my junior year of college, my grades tanked, I had joined a frat and spent a lot of my time drunk. The rest of my time was staying up late, sleeping in even later, and dating people that only fed my internal despair and self pity. When I received the letter from school that said I had failed my classes and was removed from school, my world plummeted even further than it had been. I fully felt worthless but I knew that by age 36, it wouldn’t matter.
As love dies
While all of this was going on, I was also going through the tumultuous emotions of being gay. The truth is, I had known since I was a young kid that I was different sexually. I found more attraction to men in porn than women. I was obsessed with catching glimpses of my naked friends in the locker room. And my fantasies were consumed by frolicking with men. I hid it because I was raised to believe that was disgusting and wrong. The times I acted out on my fantasies, I went into depression for weeks after. After I was kicked out of college, my feelings were all I had. I started sneaking to a gay bar that was within 45 minutes of my home. It was there, one fateful night, that a guy bought me a beer and sent it to me. Once I pulled out every bit of courage I had, I met that man and his name was Shawn.
Shawn had a zest for life I couldn’t understand, especially since he had told me about having AIDS the first night we met. I could not understand how it wasn’t depressed all the time. HIs reasoning was he knew at some point the virus may take him but it would not stop him from living life how he saw fit, until he was ready to end it. I could not fully understand that.
Our time together was too short and mostly spent with me being terrified of being in love with a man and the shame I had grown accustomed to carrying. I cheated on him, out of fear. And when his health declined and he died, I was mad that he left me alone. HIs passing destroyed me more than any one event that came before it. At that moment, I vowed I would never date again. I was 30 when he died and still believed I only had six years left.
Death comes to all
Shawn died in February of 2003 and from them until February of 2011, a lot of things happened to me. I was still running from a great many things in my life. In 2008, I had been dating a guy that cheated on me from the time we started dating till it ended four months later. I would lose a job that meant a lot to me and had to move back in with my parents. In February 2011, my mother died. It was as if my life had ended, the way I knew it.
In Tarot, the Death card strikes a lot of fear in people. They assume since the pale rider is upon a pale steed that it means an end to you. The truth is death is about transformation and, yes, endings. Endings that are needed for you to grow and become more. I turned 36 in 2009 and my mother’s health was declining more than she let on. Watching her fight made me start to question whether I was wanting and ready to die, as I had believed for so many years. It would seem that Death was riding to me with a message, a message that I would only later understand.
In December of 2020, I got new from a doctor that I might have cirrhosis and would need to submit to further testing. This was a prognosis I was not expecting. It would seem that Death was calling for me. In a flash, I blamed everyone for this outcome, other than myself. Had my bf not forced me to go to a doctor, I wouldn’t have known I was dying. Had it not been for my fraternity in college, I wouldn’t have started drinking. The list went on. At the same moment, a light illuminated me and I realized while my condition is not reversible it also was not anyone’s fault but mine. And if it was, in fact, my fault, then I was the only one that could make any changes. As I was not 47, I had outlived my dark dream of dying at 36. These were my years and I would fight for everyone I had left. I would start to make the changes I need to survive for as long as I can. I even sought out therapy to try to deal with all of the issues I had been carrying throughout my life.
Acceptance leads to forgiveness
I spent my life blaming my father for how he raised me. I blamed my friends for leaving me behind in school. I didn’t even take blame for failing in school, twice. I blamed my lover for leaving me in a world without him, even though I was not the lover I should have been for him.
Now, I realize this was passing the blame or avoidance.
I don’t need to blame my father for how he treated me and my family. He has to carry around what he did. I only have to realize that it has no bearing on the person I would and have become. I can choose to be open and loving where he was closed off and cold. Failing in school came from me not applying myself, at the time. I can fix that now by applying myself, fully, to ensuring I can be around with my boyfriend as long as I am capable. I can’t even blame my childhood friends for outgrowing me, I have outgrown so many beliefs of my childhood that I can afford them the same privilege.
The only person I need to forgive is myself. I was the one that kept me tucked away in a darkness that I thought was protecting me. It was in fact holding me back. I only need to realize that those things that happened way back then are over and done with, they have no power on me today. No power except that which I give to them. I choose to take that power back and apply it to trying to make myself a better person. I am going to stumble as I move forward, but allowing myself to make a mistake and accept it will allow me to grow from it. These are lessons that I have learned both from my current boyfriend and from therapy and a healthy dose of life lessons. This is how I want to proceed going forward. Live life on my terms, as Shawn did. Move forward to find new experiences and people, as my old friends did. And transcend to the next steps in life as did those that have left before me. And lastly, learn from how my father wasn’t there for me when I needed to be there for those I love and hold dear, in any way I can.
Thank you for allowing me to share this with you. If you have learned anything from it or have gone through something similar, let me know in the comments below. Your lessons may be the foundation someone else needs to start making the changes they have wanted in their lives for so long.
Gay in the CLE 