Sunday, February 28, 2010

Being gay: First crushes

This is part 4 of my coming out story; part 1 is here and part 2 is here. Part 3 hasn't been written yet; I don't feel ready for it. It will be a hard post to write.
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For the purposes of this post I'm defining "first crushes" to mean the drushes I had on guys after starting the process of ending my denial, if that makes any sense. I had other crushes previously, but knew they would never go beyond that, and the crush would never find out. I'm writing about "crushes" rather than "crush", because it's hard to define what exactly a crush consists of...anyway, it will be come clearer as I write.  Oh, and this post will count for the February Moho Blogger Theme.
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First was Raul. I found his email address on some penpal website, and I was lonely and decided to email him. I don't remember if I knew at the time that he was gay, I might have found out later.  Anyway, he was a few years younger and living in Canada at the time, but his family was from Panama.  We emailed and IM'd and got to know each other pretty well.  We might have called each other a few times too, but I don't remember.  He gave me support that I needed and I gave him support too.  I would always look forward to getting home from school and getting on the computer to talk to him.  I was definitely crushing on him...I don't remember if I told him or not though. It took awhile for us to be able to meet in person, since he was in Canada and Panama and I was in Washington and Utah.  One time we both happened to be in Puerto Rico at the same time, but I was too scared to meet him. Our first in-person meeting finally happened when he was in Utah visiting his sister and I was there visiting family.  I remember being very nervous, but ended up glad that I had gone through with it. He and I are still friends and see each other occasionally.

Second was David. I would define him as a crush, but definitely not a relationship.  In fact, we never even talked in person, all our communication was online.  I "met" him through another online friend, and both of us were in similar situations...barely out to ourselves, hiding it from others, etc.  We decided to be "boyfriends", but he never wanted to go beyond talking online.  I don't even want to consider that he very well might have been someone other than who he said he was...I was young and naive.  I definitely had feelings for who I thought he was, but we eventually drifted apart and stopped talking. I have no idea where he is now.

Third was Lino. He was a significant turning point in my process of coming out.  We met on myspace (back when myspace was still cool, of course!) and talked on there, and then started talking by phone almost every day.  I was very attracted to the fact that he was completely out and had no problems with it.  He and I shared very personal information with each other, and it was obvious that I was falling for him hard.  We couldn't meet in person, since he lived several thousand miles away.  But we always talked and I felt very close to him. Unfortunately, I became very emotionally attached to him and was happy only when I talked to him.  This was one of the factors involved in me becoming very depressed and realizing that (to make a long story short) I had to either come out, go crazy, or die.  (I'm still here and mostly sane, so obviously I chose to come out).  Anyway...the stiuation came about that he needed help moving from New Mexico to Dallas, and we decided that I would go down there and help him out and we could meet.  It was definitely an interesting trip, in which I had many adventures and gained some very good memories.  However, the trip also turned out to be a disaster in many ways.  Long story short, I realized that he and I would never work and I was not mature enough for a relationship with a guy anyway. I don't regret the trip because of the experiences it gave me, both good and bad. Shortly afterward, he and I fought and stopped talking. I found out that a short time later he was involved in a drunk driving accident in which he killed another driver.  He and I have talked occasionally since then, just on facebook or IM, but neither of us are really interested in maintaining a friendship and both of us have moved on.

Fourth was Peter. He and I also met on myspace, and our first date was to see a movie.  We both liked each other and started spending more and more time together.  We decided to become boyfriends.  All my memories of Peter are good...and sometimes I regret ending things with him (life took me geographically elsewhere, and we broke up).  He is a very kind and caring person, being with him made me realize that up until that point I didn't really know what it meant to love someone (which sounds very cheesy, and extrememly sad given my life situation).  We still consider ourselves to be friends; I have his number in my phone and we're both friends on facebook. We don't talk all that often as we have both moved on with our lives, but we're still friends.
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And that's it for post-coming-out-to-myself, pre-coming-out-to-other-people crushes.  Not sure where my coming out series will go from here, but it will go somewhere.

1 comments:

David said...
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