metamorphosis

It has really been ages since I wrote in here. Although I may not have kept up with OD very well, I have missed you guys.

My life has been such a whirlwind the past year-and-a-half that I am not sure where to begin with this update.

I am not sure that I can fully grasp just how much I have grown as a person. I have undergone a complete metamorphosis. A transformation from a person plagued by self-loathing and chronic depression to one who fully embraces himself with self-love and now has experienced true happiness. These profound changes were complicated and far from simple. I have had to make the most difficult decisions of my life.

This metamorphosis ultimately centered upon what was for most of my life: my most shameful and darkest of secrets – my homosexuality. From the day I had the realization that I was attracted to men, not women I have spent my life in an endless and vain struggle to repress my true nature. Ten long years of my life were dedicated to this fruitless pursuit. Ten years of ceaseless defeat, never succeeding even for a moment in eliminating those horrifying urges. I hated myself and a great portion of my life was completely lost in spending hours alone wishing that I were someone else. No amount of prayer or tears could change who I really was.

It took ten years before I understood this. Ten years before I could accept myself for who I really am. It is strange to me that I cannot remember the exact date that I decided that I am who I am and that I am going to love myself regardless. It was sometime towards the end of May of 2004, right before I began pharmacy school,

My acceptance of myself was kept closely secret, but it was not long before someone decided to out me to all of my friends and former coworkers in a unexpected stab of cruelty. I remember how absolutely terrified I was. I was not ready for others to know the truth just yet and especially not ready for others to know outside of my own terms. It should have been my choice to come out to my friends, not someone else’s. I first came out to my best friend Jonathan and slowly over the course of the summer, to the rest of my friends and my sisters. The ability to be myself around my friends was extraordinarily liberating. I was happier than I could have imagined being.

I began pharmacy school and it immediately consumed my life. However, I was forced to think about the issue of my sexuality far more often than I would have liked. Jonathan and Wes made continual online jabs at my sinfulness. Two of my closest and oldest friends, they did not understand this incipient transformation. They sent me instant messages and emails that served only to upset me. If I did not repent, I was headed straight for hell. “All gay men get AIDS,” they wrote. I definitely needed to change my Hedonistic ways. They confused everything. I felt betrayed, but I did not know how deep their treachery ran.

The full betrayal came one Sunday following Thanksgiving. I received a phone call from them announcing they had arrived in Amarillo to hang out. This turned out to be a surprise ultimatum. They gave me three weeks to come out to my parents or they were going to tell my parents for me. Those were probably the three most stressful weeks of my life. I chose to tell my parents and cut off contact with those friends. My parents took it much better than I expected them, but it still took about a year before they were comfortable enough to ask questions about my love life.

About that time, I started dating Derek, who was wonderful. He was the first boy with whom I ever became serious. But, after four months, he decided to move on and broke my heart.

I went to Paris, France for the second time in my life during February with my aunt and uncle. They are wonderful people.

I finished my first year of pharmacy school with decent grades and spent the summer hanging out with my friends. I spent almost the entire summer hanging out with my British lesbian friend, Paula. I went to the club three nights a week for most of the summer. It was probably one of the most enjoyable summers of my life. It saddens that me that she seemingly arbitrarily stopped return my phone calls.

This past semester of pharmacy school has been by far the most rigorous schooling that I have ever received. But somehow during all of my endless studies, I found time to fall in love with a boy named Chris and came out to all of the family that had yet to learn of my sexual orientation.

I have never been so happy to be myself. The future is brimming with possibility.