Internal Conflict #1

As I sit here watching Goal 2 and talking to my friend Mikey online, I am struggling to get the words out that I would like to express in this blog posting. Expressing myself has never been an easy task for me. Nevertheless, here I sit, trying my hardest to put my feelings and express my thoughts into this blog post. Here is my attempt to share one of my internal conflicts. More will follow in the next few weeks.

If you have been reading my blog on a regular base for the last few months, you will have read that I attended an anxiety and depression group. This group has since been canceled, so I now meet with the psychologist that was suppose to run this group on a one-on-one base. During the last meeting, I came to realize that one of the biggest obstacles in living the life I want to live is dealing with the conflicts in my life. What I mean by this is it seems that there are two sides in my life to several important issues and I have not yet concluded on which side I want to be. Sometimes it is one side, other times the other side seems to be winning.

Let us take being gay and Catholic my first internal conflict to discuss here. This issue has been one I have struggled with for a while and one of the main reasons I started this blog. This topic seems to come up every time I meet with the psychologist. Lately I have been trying to figure out where the issue is with this. I first started to question whether the issue was that I have not fully accepted my sexuality. After examining this for a while, I have decided this really is not where the issue is. I accepted who I am sexually and am not ashamed of it.

Next I looked at whether the issue was with me being Catholic. I have a strong faith in God and I do believe the Catholic Church teaches the truest meanings on most topics. However, there are still some issues that I need to resolve when it comes to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality. I do understand what the Church teaches on living a life as a gay Catholic, but what the Church teaches and what my heart says do not seem to align very well. I am not saying that I am looking to have sex with another male, but I would like to be in a relationship with somebody. I know the Church teaches you can have one of these types of relationships, but the problem is meeting someone else with the same values and belief on this topic matter as the Church teaches.

After exampling the Church issue, I started looking at being gay again. If I am comfortable with my sexuality, why then do I start to shake when I go to the local gay bar, get very nervous and over the last year and a half avoided going there by myself. When I first started going, I was nervous, but I would go by myself. It seems like as my confidence and acceptance of myself grows, my ability to interact with other gay people would improve as well. This does not seem to be the case when it comes to going to the local gay bar.

I started to recall how things went for me when I first started going. Things did not go well. Honestly, the only reason I would go back on a weekly bases was to see one guy that I had a crush on. He and I spoke a few times and the day we meet, he came up and started talking to me. After a few months of more of less just saying hi to each other, he decided to date someone else.

What I endured during those few months of attending the bar was not much fun. I would hang out with this guy I when to elementary school with. He was a bully back then and on more than one occasion, he would bring up how he picked on me when we were young. He did hit on me several times, which really made me feel crept out. Why someone who in one breath spoke of how he made one’s life more difficult and in another breath ask someone if they were interested in engaging in sexual acts with him would think someone would say yes to having sex.

I also remember one of the first times I was there, a group of lesbians started to make fun of me because I was sitting there by myself. Another time, a cute guy come over and started talking to me. He was interested in dating me, but I was leery of this guy because he told me he was there with some other guy that he had been dating for a week or two. This guy told me he didn’t want to date that guy anymore because that guy didn’t even know his name. I think it was the next week; this guy came up and started talking to me again. After kind of talking for a bit, he told me he thought I was strange because I am such a quiet person. (He is not the only person that has expressed this opinion of me at this bar either.)

Do not get me wrong, I have met a few nice people at the bar. It just seems to me that more of the encounters I had with others there have been negative ones, resulting in not really wanting to go to the one place in these town to meet other gay people.

Therefore, what I need to resolve would be how to live my life with being true to God and to my heart. I do hold out hope that someday I will meet a guy that I can spend the rest of my life with. I do feel that there has to be some way for two guys that are attracted to each other to have some form of an intimate relationship that God would find accepting. How that relationship is structured or where to meet someone that would accept that type of a relationship are things I just cannot answer. All I know is I am not going to give up hope on this.