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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Silly things take a while to leave us. I will never be free from two people, one of whom I will always love despite no longer being 'in love with', and the other I will always admire, and with whom I was seriously in lust.
It used to matter.
There are two dates that mattered very much. One is November 25th, John's birthday. He is the boy I adored and who truly does not exist today in anything like the form I thought I knew. The other is Paul's birthday on June 14th. Paul is the boy I was outed over most cruelly.
I used to give John birthday cards and mail anonymous cards to Paul. Paul was four years younger, you see. Well, he still is! John was the boy I loved and Paul was the most beautiful boy in school.
Today, while I remember the dates with fondness I am no longer tearful over what could obviously never be. I do, sometimes, imagine what life might have been like with either of them and realise that they are heterosexual!
It's been a hard road.
Getting 'rid" of my childhood obsessions has been truly a titanic battle with myself. Like alcoholism I am not sure I've won and treat each new pang as it comes. I have worked out, finally, that I never really liked John, for example. I have realised that I never knew Paul. And I have reconciled with myself that I was simply an intrusion into their lives.
So the point of posting this?
I can't tell anyone else how to deal with unrequited love. I'm an expert at suffering it, not at handling it!
What I can do is to tell anyone who will listen that unrequited and unanswered love can be eased by telling the object of one's desires that one loves him. Rejection is as important as acceptance. Once you know for sure then you can move on.
I still manage, sometimes, to tell myself that each of these two boys gave out signals that they were attracted to me. Rationally I know this to be total bollocks. But, when I am in the grip of depression, I wonder in torment if I missed their wanting me.
I'll not be free of them, nor of Fraser, Tony, Allan, David, Nigel (yes, there was a real Nigel, oddly never a Chris!) and all the rest I was deeply attracted to, none of whom I ever told. Except John, and Paul that is. Only they never answered because I was far, far too late to speak, and too late to be rejected. But it's Ok today.
It's taken me since 1970 to get this far. Is this a record?
[Updated on: Wed, 16 June 2010 21:22]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Yes, Timmy, I agree that it is best to tell someone you love and not to bottle it up inside.
But a whole lot depends on the way the news is taken. I think I was amazingly lucky - unlucky to fall for a straight guy but lucky it was someone who was kind and understanding and willing to help me get over it. And he really is the same guy I fell in love with and we are friends still.
And I'm still ashamed of some of the way I dealt with the problem.
I guess that when it happened it took me well beyond my ability to control my behaviour and I could have fallen for someone who outed me to the whole college. And I guess that I was obvious enough for anyone with a sensitive nature to be able to see my state and situation.
But maybe I deceive myself and things weren't quite as I now remember them.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Since the probability of returned love is made the more remote by the boys being likely to be heterosexual, the way the news is taken is almost irrelevant. The message is delivered in hope yet with an implicit understanding of impending rejection.
In other words it is for the teller that the message is imparted, not for the told.
Being outed is only a true risk when being gay is risky in itself. But one must be confident of one's support network in any case.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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RichardG
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Getting started |
Location: UK
Registered: December 2007
Messages: 12
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Your comparison with alcohol got me thinking: once we have put down the alcohol we have to deal with the "ism" which is usually harder- since there is some core of unhappiness or discord or sense of failure that needed to be drowned in order to be acceptable. This often requires alcoholics to unlearn old behaviours which though painful have also become secretly pleasurable. It requires us to get people and their behaviour to us and relationships with us into perspective when they have grown out of all proportion. I remember a wonderful sense of turning over a page in my book of life and finding it blank and ready for me to fill.The past had been cleansed
How to get there? You have obviously come a long way.Your rational logical conscious mind says thats just a waste of time.. but your unconscious says this pain is ok ,it lets me enjoy being 'poor me'etc One trick I often try with those I am helping is to look for a symbolic act which can signal to our inner self that things are changed for ever. I once saw a very moving TV programme where a woman needed to exorcise the demon of a non-sexually abusive father who was dead: she wrote a letter of forgiveness and said her own apologies. She then - with a witness- burned the letter on the seashore and scattered the ashes in the sea. Might it be worth a try in your new location?
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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If I had not done all sorts of similar things in the past I would think it well worth a try. But my heart is no longer captured by these boys. They are now part of my past. Sometimes I grieve for that past, but it's rare, today.
I have got to the point where I am, at least at present, comfortable and happy.
In part this is because I know John for what he is - a very successful loser who wears brown suits with brown ties, whose visage is no longer pleasing, whose eyes are empty, whose smile is false. Paul, by contrast, is a success in his field, if you count being a tribute artiste as success. He's still a hunk. But he was always like a film star - celluloid and unattainable. He and I have exchanged very few words. I do not know him and never knew him. He was just a pretty, cheeky, flirty kid.
My real life is now far better than my imaginary life. That also helps. I've worked hard to make that happen. I live in a place of beauty, no longer a commuter suburb.
I'm also learning that having sex and homosexuality are not the same thing. While sex is desirable I do not want sex with just anyone, and find I do not want sex with John, nor with Paul, nor, really, with any boy or man my head turns for. Sex I can get in my head with pornography. Sex is simply a pleasant and small part of homosexuality, which is something that is all about companionship and shared experience rather than purely about the next great orgasm. I haven't lost my sex drive, I've simply discovered that, instead of being all consuming as I felt when I was 13, it is a thing of beauty that is by no means always necessary when one loves someone.
Desirable, yes, essential, no.
Today I can look at a gorgeous boy without taking all of his clothes off in my mind.
But, if he were to leap into my arms and rip my clothes off, that would be hard to refuse!
[Updated on: Thu, 17 June 2010 06:59]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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Timmy, I feel you did rather well in relating how to deal with unrequited love.
Raymundo
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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This may sound weird, but I don't feel I did. SO may I ask you to do something?
Please reply relating what you have received from what I have written. That way I may actually see what I have done. And it will help others.
[Updated on: Sat, 19 June 2010 22:25]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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An honest attempt at looking at your past and getting some closure to past events. Maybe I feel at least two past friends in which I wish I had some more time to tell them how I felt about them. Just like you, there was no telling them that I loved them. I just have them in memory. You have actively achieved some calm. That's how I see your post anyways. One boy is dead and the other is MIA, probably dead.
Raymundo
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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That makes a lot of sense. Sometimes we stand too close to what we do or say to understand it as another person does.
You have suffered a different loss. You have closure, too, of a sort.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Cameron
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Toe is in the water |
Registered: January 2008
Messages: 70
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I am so happy for you timmy. I have read your posts over the years and felt sorrow for your suffering. It is gratifying to know that your life has turned out well and you are very happy. It gives me reason to hope for my own.
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Well, Cameron, it might be worth your effort in trying to express what might work the miracle in your case. Maybe it would enlighten us or enable us to make a helpful comment or even change your feelings or attitude in some way.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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It's a process that you have to start and work at with determination. And you have to notice when good things happen. And never give up even if the route changes.
My route was, at first, to find John. I found him, eventually. Then I tried to talk to him and discovered that was not going to happen. I kept fighting for my goal, which was and is to be happy. I fought hard to understand that my happiness does not depend on anyone else at all. It depends on me.
For so many years I thought my happiness depended on finding John, perhaps on finding Paul, and on speaking to them in the forlorn hope that one of them just might... Pointless and, intellectually, stupid.
I missed the good things that I have while seeking the unlikely things that I do not have.
Intellectually I know that an available and naked and horny John would be physically unattractive. Emotionally I have wanted that for so many years. But I have wanted the 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18 year old. He 'died' years ago. And he was never, not really, my friend.
I'd still like to meet him and talk to him. I am fond of what I believe he would be like. But that is as far as it goes.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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I agree.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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Damn, I never thought of it in that manner. I had no sense of closure though, but now I see it clearly. It sort of took my breath away momentarily.
Raymundo
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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It can take a little getting used to. You may find you grieve all over again. It's Ok to do that.
When you get your breath back, is there ay of this you can share with us?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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ray2x
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Really getting into it |
Location: USA
Registered: April 2009
Messages: 430
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At the moment, I'm fine and tired. Been thinking of these two guys. It is closure, and I'm trying to reopen the case, or whatever the word. Letting go of the ghost...is hard.
Raymundo
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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If it helps at all, John has been a ghost since 1970 despite being alive today. The fact that he exists, lives, breathes, laughs and jokes has been almost ironic in my fight to be free from the hold I created between him and me.
If he had been dead I would still have adored him and wondered what might have been in the unlikely event that he returned even half of my love for him.
The only areas I am luckier than you are that I have been able to try to speak to him and been rebuffed (not closure at all, more a source of further wondering), and that I have been able to see his picture today, something that I would only have found appealing had we grown old together.
What I know clearly is that the boy I loved is absent from the face I see in the picture.
I wonder how well that translates to the boys you loved being no longer living? The grief is able to be concrete for you, it is abstract for me, but it is still grief.
[Updated on: Fri, 25 June 2010 08:36]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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