I wonder sometimes what my life would be like had I chosen to do things differently. I wonder where I would be if I had been more successful at school. If I hadn’t blown off all of those classes, and really tried instead of breezing by. Understanding instead of remembering. But I was never good at that. I was great at remembering but the understanding part never made sense to me. I don’t understand understanding a subject that I have no need for. It’s like putting a huge desk in your room that you’ll never use. It just takes up space. That however is probably another excuse. Leslie tells me that writing my feelings down is good for me. It’s good for me to recognize the things that are going through my head. To me it’s kind of like having a ball of string that’s all tangled and then slowly straightening it out, so that it’s just a line of string. Coincidently I used to be particularly good at untangling knots. And sometimes I think that that has translated into my life. That I am particularly good at untangling the thoughts in my head, that seem to become so jumbled that they crowd my very existence. Leslie says that I amazingly mature for my age. That I seem to have the ability to logically think my life out. That I can connect the dots on my own, really all I need is for someone to sit down and listen to me. And I think that that’s what my journal is. It’s a place for me to string out my thoughts. To say what’s affecting me.

I’m scared right now. I always say that change is an amazing thing. That it’s the best thing that can happen to us because it forces us to reevaluate our lives. And yet even though I preach it, I sometimes don’t believe it. But I don’t fault myself for it, that’s just me being a human being. We’re all afraid of it. The key is to actually go through with it. And I will. But I can’t help being terrified. My whole life is changing and for some things, it’s like waiting in line to jump off a cliff. My mother is moving to Ohio, which means that I no longer have my family as a reason to go to Detroit, which means that I won’t see Tim nearly as much. On top of that it means a huge stress on my father and I’s relationship. We have a hard enough time as it is, but I’m not budging on this one. I’m not going to apologize anymore. I am not going to try and fix this. I refuse to sacrifice how I feel and who I am, so I can have a relationship with a man that I have struggled my whole life to be a part of. It doesn’t make sense to me anymore. I did it before because I thought it was the right thing to do. Because I thought that if I kept trying, things would work themselves out.

And that’s what I do in life. I butt my head against things, trying to make them work out. I believe that if you try hard enough anything is possible. That relationships are hard work. That they require dedication, and love, and determination, and understanding, and commitment. They require you to take the brunt of the hit sometimes. They require you to forgive people for what they’ve done, because you know that on the inside that they are better than who they present themselves to be. But that’s not all that relationships require. That’s not the only thing that you need to be successful, or else a hell of a lot more people would be a hell of a lot happier. You need that extra bit. That fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it. You need it to have to be destined to work out, and then on top of those you need all the other things to make sure it does. I guess really that’s what I believe, even though I don’t always practice it.

I look at the relationships in my life, and what I’ve done, and I have to say at the end that all I have done is learned. I used to be star struck by love. You don’t understand what it’s like growing up watching the woman that you idolize be used and abused by guys. To see the person you find the strongest in the world failing at things. And so for me, I told myself that I wasn’t going to do that. That I was going to be strong, and to find someone and be with them forever. That no one would use me, that I would wait until I found someone that I could love and be with them always. But if that were the case, how would I know what love is. If I didn’t get slapped a couple times, if I didn’t have my heart broken, and if I hadn’t broken someone else’s heart, how would I become this person that I believed I was supposed to become? How would I find the person I was meant to be. And I’m not entirely sure I’m done learning yet. I’m not entirely sure that God is done teaching me who and what I am supposed to be, and in turn who and what I am supposed to love. We as a society tend to rush things, we tend to grab at things as soon as we can, and in reality there are things that don’t adhere to that. There are things in life that you cannot rush. There are things that require you to experience things, for you to grow, before you are ready to handle them. And I don’t think that I am quite there yet.

I don’t think that I am anywhere near done growing. So much will change in the next six months. I will finally be able to do something about my bills. I’ll finally be able to fix the thing that has worried me the most over the last 2 years. I won’t fix it completely, but I will come close. And after my semester at school, I will be able to find a job. Finally, the thing I have wanted since I was 17, I will have a real job. I’ll be able to accomplish the things that I have wanted to accomplish. I’ll be able to command my own destiny instead of relying on others. And I think that’s what separates me from other people. Like Kara for instance. She will rely on others for the rest of her life. She will rely on her boyfriend John, on her father, on eventually her kids, on her mother. And there is nothing wrong with that. It is who she is. She is brought into this world so that she can give and rely. She is a reflection of letting yourself be helped by others.

I however was not meant for such a life. I don’t enjoy relying on other people. I despise it actually. I don’t want someone else to pay my bills, I want to do it by myself. I want to own my own house, and my own car, and my own clothes. I want to have nice things, and have them because I can afford to have them. I want to have my own dog, not share it with another person. I don’t want to need someone in my life, I want to want them. If there is anything I have learned from coming out, and dealing with the way people have treated me since, it’s that the things that people say you need in life, are not necessarily true. I don’t need my father’s family, nor do they need me. I would like them in my life, but I won’t sacrifice who I am so that they can feel safe in their little bubble. If they don’t agree with who I am, then they don’t have to deal with it. I am not here looking for favors, I am not here begging for your love. I don’t need your love. I would enjoy it, but I don’t need it.

And that brings up another point. I am through sacrificing who I am, and what I believe in for other people. I am a good person. I have my flaws, but in the end, I am there for the people I care for. And I am sick of being judged because of who I love. I am sick of these stupid preconceived notions of the kind of person I am because I am gay. I am sick of having to hide who I am, because it might make people uncomfortable. Why would you be uncomfortable with who I fall in love with? Shouldn’t you be happy that I did fall in love? There is nothing wrong with who I am. Trust me I’ve studied the things that are said about gay people. Believe that I used to go to church and pray all the time, to know why I felt the way I did. And I remember the night that I came to the deepest understanding of who I was. That I was made this way for a reason. That I had something to prove by accepting who I am. And I started the long road to showing that to people. I still haven’t reached the end. Just because you know who you are, doesn’t mean you become the person you’re meant to be. I have so much more to learn, so much more to understand and teach.

And in the end I come to the part where I say how I feel. I feel like I am meant to be with Tanner. After all of this, after everything that has happened, I feel like our time is coming where we will be happy. That even though we won’t necessarily be together all the time, we are going to finally allow ourselves to love each other. However I am not banking on that. I will not place all my eggs in one basket, because I would never assume to know the end of all roads. I simply feel like that, that doesn’t make it true. I feel that I am going to find a job that will fit me when I am done with college. I am not worried that I won’t, because I am finally ready to prove who I am. I am finally ready to accept the mantle that has been waiting all these years. I will become someone great. I do know that. I don’t question the fact, because I have known it for so long. I am meant to be something extraordinary. There are things that I still have to accomplish, there are things that I have to relearn, but in the end I will become something more than even I can fathom. I will change how people perceive me. I will become more assured in who I am. I will understand better how to treat those around me. I know that I have been less than stellar lately at being there for people, but that is only because right now I am trying to be there for myself.

I have sorted through most of this in my head as I wrote it. And it is not my first time writing it. But just like a great book, can you understand all the things it has to say in the first read? No. You have to read it over and over again. You have to find the nuances that are within it. To learn the secrets of an art, you have to study it over and over again. The same goes for the feelings that people have. And for fate. We can not profess to understand fate. We cannot profess to understand what destiny is, because it is larger than us. However we can be at peace with it. We can allow it to wash over us, and to do its job. This day is a new day. It is a sun rising up on the horizon. It is the silent breath of hope, which we release in anticipation of things to come. It is the dream that comes to us on a mid summer night’s eve. It is the conjecture of fate and control. It is a new day. And with that new day, we will come to understand things that we once did not. We will lose things that we no longer need. And we will wait in silent anticipation for what is still to come. But most importantly, we will exist within the now. We will strive to be at peace with the present. For God is not there nor before, he is here. He is present. He is not waiting, he is standing with us. And with that reassurance we can believe that it will all be alright. With that I can finally say that I know in the end I will be ok.

I love you.

Steve-ö