One of These Days

So, I'm sitting here on a cool, Wednesday night in west Texas, and the roller coaster ride continues as I actually had a pretty decent day today with my grandmother.  A couple of days ago I was on one of the lowest of lows I have been on in a long time, and just a couple of days later I feel perfectly fine.  I'm sure you can imagine the impact that can have on you, but trust me when I say days like today are the ones that encourage me of a better tomorrow for me and my situation.

 Anyway, I pried myself away from my textbooks today to spend a little quality time with my grandma (upon her request) to talk about her situation with her husband.  To be entirely honest with you all, I kind of felt like Dr. Phil, but I tried to be as honest and as caring to her as she has been to me since I came out to her a few weeks ago.  We really have not had much time to talk about my situation because of my hectic schedule combined with her bombshell announcement, but today was nice in the sense that I was fully honest with her regarding what I think of her separation.  I, along with pretty much everybody else, was absolutely stunned with this news, and she is really struggling right now, and understandably so.  I let her know that I will support her no matter how their situation goes, and I also told her that she needs to follow her heart instead of relying on everybody's else's opinion, including mine.

The reason I brought that up is because this conversation led to a brief talk about my situation.  She mentioned how her husband keeps a lot of things to himself, letting it eat away until it just gets to a point of explosiveness, and I quickly let her know that that is how I have been for pretty much my entire life, and not by choice.  I told her that, unless you have actually gone through a similar situation, it is very tough understanding how much a person like me has gone through my entire life.  I told her that I have been struggling internally my whole life, and she said that hindsight is 20/20, and she definitely sees my past struggles more clearly now.  I could tell she felt bad for not seeing this at the time, and moments like this one are the ones I cherish most, knowing for certain that she loves me unconditionally and will support me no matter what.

We continued on with our conversation, and I told her that enduring disgusting and hateful homophobic language from people like my dad and grandpa on a daily basis is extremely difficult, and I expressed to her that all of this builds up in you and sticks with you until you have a virtual mountain of negativity stored inside, waiting to explode and be released.  I also told her that I really want to tell my nana about me being gay, but I am hesitant to do so because of other reactions as well as my reliance on them for my education.  We both agreed that she would probably understand me the most and accept me easier than some out here, but I've pretty much come to the conclusion (unless it just happens) that I will not come out to her until after graduation.

Finally, regarding this conversation, she brought up the fact that I may not be in Odessa, Texas by the end of the year once I graduate, leaving her with one less person to rely on.  In all reality, I personally believe I will be in Odessa (at least for a little while) after graduation, but I told her that one of the primary reasons I do want to eventually leave is because of all the negativity directed toward gays here.  I told her that there are more welcoming environments throughout the country where I would feel more at home, to which she replied: "You can't run away from this."  That statement really struck me, and I quickly let her know that I am not running away from being gay.  If anything, I am trying to run somewhere where I can be the real me fully for the first time in my life.  She seemed to understand this, so all in all, we had a pretty nice conversation (albeit a short one) today.

Sorry for rambling here, but this may be a long post.  All of this got me to thinking about my future.  I'm the type where the wheels are constantly turning in my head, but I do not necessarily worry about the right things.  I am so focused on my school, and little things like assignments and tests, that sometimes I lose focus on myself.  I tend to forget about my personal life, and as a result, I don't really have the opportunity to wonder about where I will be in the coming years.

Today, I got to do a little of that, and let me say that one of these days (hopefully soon) I will (1) have a great career where I am happy and making a good living; (2) I am out fully, living my life fully and freely, not worrying about hiding the real me anymore; (3) I am in a relationship with a great man who I can start the rest of my life with; and (this one I have kind of changed my stance on over time) (4) hopefully I will start a family with a couple of kids, living a normal, happy life, understanding that there are bigger things in life than textbooks and material things.  I'm just so ready to start living.  With all of this said, I'm going to go ahead and wrap this up for tonight.  I'll blog again soon.