Below is an e-mail that I just sent to one of my closest friends and cousin. I'm blotting out his name. This is kind of an OH SHIT! moment.
Hey XXXXXX,
I don't know why the hell I am sending this to you. Perhaps in the hopes that I can stand before somebody naked, stripped of a dream and encountering reality. Read on, if you are still interested.
I'm finding myself entirely crippled in discussion recently. I live in a world entirely alone, it seems. I cannot relate to other people's discussions, and I find them fleeting and entirely uninteresting. The content is fascinating and relevant, but they demand a discussion for hope, a phenomenon which I find myself having in decreasing numbers in the adult world and in my own heart.
I hear about how you, Tyson, Joni, Jenna, and Kyle and Andrea are protesting the expansion of foreign industry in the community, and I am jealous. You are people who are using your morals and operating in the world with them.
I haven't felt this freedom for a long time, and even then I have only felt it in limited amounts while working with youth ministry. As I am no longer involved with that at church, I do not know if I will be able to change the world, or even hope to. I get frustrated by trying, and I am so thoroughly conflicted that even my most exciting of ideas seem to be flawed by imperfection.
I don't think I can call myself a believer anymore, or if I ever could. Agnostic - certainly. Trying desperately to believe in something as sexy as God, but always finding myself restricted and incapable. Disappointed by those who claim to follow Him, and frustrated by the being himself.
I am also immensely lonely. I feel like I live on a continent entirely alone.
I have no friends who fulfill me anymore. Nobody who challenges me, or who is interested in the same things as I am. Nobody who will discuss politics or religion and do so with interest, or immense, blunt, and painful honesty. Nobody will listen to my compositions and provide proper critical feedback. Nobody will actually become a part of my life - exist with my existence. Befriend me with any consistency. I am on the backburner, in a locale called Regina, alone in a sea of 200,000 souls that move like giants. My continent is shaken by earthquakes and I do not respond. And I know that i have done this to myself.
You talk about Meadow Lake and it sounds sexy. Fulfilling. As though you don't really want anything more.
I have recently come to the conclusion that I am developmentally and relationally retarded or immature.
The disgusting part is that I know that only people who care about themselves have self-esteem issues. And I want to be able to put down my concerns and pick up a cross for somebody else - to die to myself so that I may live. But I am at an impass that I cannot overcome; I stand at a cliff alone and insecure. Unfortunately I must jump off in order to go anywhere.
And so I leap, with a question I thought of while we were discussing my relationship with Danae on Tuesday night.
XXXXXX, what would you do if I told you I was gay?
