Flaws and All

"Say one thing interesting about yourself." I hate this statement nor do I like being put on the spot. It makes me uneasy. Why? Because I'm not interesting. It's ok, I have come to terms with it, mostly because in Joshua's eyes I'm perfect and he's the only one whose opinion matters to me.  Then again, when I have to respond with nervous chuckle, "I have no idea." I feel defeated.

I recently went through my contacts and came to the horrifying realization that I stay in contact with only about a third of the people I know. Most of the people in my contacts are guys I dated or hooked up with in the past 13 years or so. Lots of first names with the word grindr or scruff in parenthesis at the end. Delete, delete. What does that say about me? I don't know. What I do know is that despite all these failed relationships, more than anything, it was just love and acceptance I was looking for, even if it was just for one night. That one nightstand, whoever he was, was with me and just me and I felt wanted. I've felt alone most of my life and I couldn't find many people who really got me. It's not for a lack of trying. There are times when I contemplate texting a friend just to say hi, even if I haven't seen or heard from them in a long time. What is the worst that could happen? then I just think they will find it very strange that I contacted them in the first place and so I think, what's the point. Better not to feel rejected. After all, I can't really call many people I know as "friends" but more acquaintances. My definition of a true friend eliminates a lot of people. I mean there's Facebook right. I hate Facebook. As a society, I feel as though we are losing all ability to truly connect with one another. I mean if it wasn't for Facebook I would have about 15 contacts in my phone. That's fucked up, but it's reality all the same. My reality. I just haven't made many connections at all. At least ones that have lasted.

I have never been one who could stand on my own in groups. I'm not witty, not an intellectual, maybe I can be funny at times, but you throw me in a crowd and I feel unvalued. I never feel as though I fit. I'm a giant square in a circle puzzle. It's as though I could be in the middle of a library and I could scream and no one would even flinch. I have had many groups of friends but not many have stuck. I see college friends maybe three or four times a year, but besides that my time is spent either alone or with Joshua who I don't get to see very often as I'd like, for now anyway. I hate that we don't live together. It's not that his company isn't enough for me, but I always think about the It's a Wonderful Life quote, "No man is a failure who has friends." Don't get the tissues out just yet, I have friends but when I think about how many people have passed through my life and how many have stuck it's a little disconcerting.

When you're gay and you spend your childhood feeling isolated for so long you yearn for acceptance in adulthood more so than if you grew up feeling accepted. You become more independent. Maybe that isn't necessarily true for everyone but for me it's pretty accurate. It lead to a lot of insecurity and I felt pretty worthless. I'm a loner. I spent most of my life grasping for people to hang with and they all slipped through my fingers. I spent so much money trying to keep up with friends who had more than me only to still be left with nothing. I was like a chameleon, changing myself to fit into my surroundings. I tried pouring my heart out, believing I could just be a "good friend" but no one seemed to notice. I've tried over and over jumping from one group of friends to the next thinking this time it will be different, but it always ended the same. I grow apart from them as they remain together and I'm back to square one. I'm just not an interesting person. I have a good heart with good intentions, but that never seemed enough for most gay men I knew. It's exhausting really, putting so much effort into trying to fit in to be let down over and over again. It's not healthy giving up on who you are to try and please others. One lesson I will tell my kids some day is to never lose sight of yourself. I did almost anything just to feel apart of something.

I hate to segregate my straight friends from any gay friends I know. Friends are friends despite sexual preference, but none of my straight friends ever made me feel worthless. There has only been one gay man I have truly connected with, my best friend Matthew. Besides him, the only people I hear from are my straight friends. Maybe that doesn't mean anything, but it's an observation I have made. The only few gay men I knew who used to stay in touch quickly dissapeared when I was taken off the market.  So there you have it. The dreams of having a group of friends like those in movies like Broken Hearts Club or shows like Queer as Folk are gone. It shouldn't matter, but it does to me because I have always been one who put a lot of faith and trust in friends. The one who would do just about anything for them. I just had high hopes is all.

It could all be in my head, mostly fears that are ingrained in me from bad memories from High School, but I feel like a scared teenager who won't be accepted every time I'm thrown into a group setting. It's terrifying and for a 32 year old to admit this, well I'm either humiliating myself right now or finally just admitting to myself that sometimes I feel alone even though I have the most amazing man I could ask for.

I had a cancer scare recently and the other day I had to have a colonoscopy. Fortunately they didn't find anything, but as I'm waiting to be wheeled into the room to have my procedure done, I noticed a man in scrubs walking around who of course I had slept with many years ago. At first I got really hot and my heart starting pounding and I thought OMG please don't tell me he's going to be the one to perform my procedure and oh god now my blood pressure is getting high. Then I thought this is so typical, I can't even have a procedure done where they are going to stick a camera up my ass, without running into someone I slept with. Then finally, after I gathered myself together, I was just sad. He was just another guy who took advantage of me and he's a doctor or a surgeon and I'm in just a decent job who may have cancer after I just met the person I want to spend my life with.

It's not really that I care what people think of me, but when you start to wonder if maybe there is something wrong with you and you begin to hate yourself it's hard to find your ground again. You start to believe your worthless and you can become depressed. You can be taken to a dark place that's very hard to crawl out of. I've been there a few times.

For me, that's the scariest part about loving someone and maybe why I sometimes sabotaged potential relationships in the past. When you feel as alone as I have so many times, giving your heart to someone who may not be there tomorrow is scarier than dying. When I decided to propose to Joshua that was when I finally decided to let all that go and give myself a chance to change my life. To begin to break bad habits. To be defeated by love and hope for the best. Getting on one knee as the sun was beginning to set over Aruba, it was as though I was finally saying goodbye to one person and welcoming a new hopefully improved Craig. With tears in my eyes, I asked him to marry me. I had such confidence up until that point. I was terrified. He brings out the best in me. He's an angel, really. He's so pure and good, sometimes I feel as though he deserves better. I fell in love with him because in this crazy cruel world that we live in, he is goodness and his goodness brings out all the best parts of me and despite my fear of losing him and the dark sides of myself he accepts me unconditionally. Flaws and all. I don't need to be funny, I don't need to be an intellectual, I don't need to be creative or wealthy or anything other than who I am. That's true love.

MSG

I just finished watching an extraordinary movie called The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. It isn't the first time I've seen it, but one of those movies I can watch over and over again. This time, however, I paid more attention to a lot of the themes in the movie and they struck me more so now than it had before. Possibly, because my job is unbearable at times and I have to constantly think about Joshua and my life with him before I walk out the door with my middle finger waving in the air. I want a simpler more meaningful way of living.

The movie is about a group of British men and women in retirement age who venture to a retirement community in India. Each of them searching for something different. For some, just a change of life and others to find something they thought they had lost back home. In any case, some find what they needed and for others they find unexpected things that makes them realize that maybe this isn't the end...but rather a new beginning for them. Now I'm clearly not any way close to retirement, but what I crave, dream of, and fear is change. Despite the fact that lots of changes are happening in my personal life, marriage, saving for a future I wasn't sure was in the cards for me, etc...I'm lacking real living. I go to work, workout, chat with my fiancé, have dinner, go to bed...Monday through Friday the same routine. I'm bored with life.

I want to experience life the way each one of us should experience life. That is by embracing things around us that are new and by not per say welcoming new experiences, but having the strength to acknowledge that new experiences, new ways of thinking, opening ourselves to the possibility of learning from other cultures...may indeed breathe new life in our beings. Accepting when things go awry and laughing at those moments, hoping that one bad experience won't deter us from experiencing more. The way I look at life is this...when something really bad happens to us, instead of closing ourselves off and letting our spirit wither away, let it enlighten us. Let it push us closer to whatever it is we search for. If things were always perfect we would just drift through life without ever bettering ourselves because we wouldn't know that we could.

There are times when I feel as though I'm alone in my way of thinking. As I write, I don't even know if I make any sense. There are times at work where I feel as though I must be speaking a different language. That what seems sensible to me does not to others. I fear one day I will lose my job because I'll allow my integrity to takeover and I'll say how I truly feel... to those who just love throwing people under busses and believe that I am more or less ignorant because I am younger than them. To those who are just rotten disrespectful people. I just want to take Joshua and runaway. Leave the country and accept new ways of living that are far less complicated than what we allow ourselves to experience.

This is not living. I want vibrant color and tantalizing flavor. Not gray and bland with a touch of MSG. I want to go to a place of work where people are respected, not made to feel like there opinion doesn't matter. I want to live a life where I'm making change. Where I'm making a difference in someone's life. Not where when I come to work my heart races and I feel like I may have a panic attack. I'm a dreamer. I've been this way since I was a child. I've never understood the true meaning of living. It sounds strange I suppose but we are given this precious gift of being alive, a gift that at any moment can be taken from us and yet most of us waltz through life with blinders on. Taking all that we have for granted. Say you get the opportunity at the end of your life to look back on it...don't you want to feel as though you did something in life that meant something?...I do.

It's all a facade. Is living proving to the world your worth something because of all you own? Because of the ladder you climbed, never minding the people you broke to get there? Why do we constantly have to prove ourselves to anyone? Prove something to yourself instead. Do more that does not just make you feel good but makes you a better person. Challenge yourself ...take a different road. Do something that betters the world. All our lives would be better if we start to walk away from everything that keeps us from what truly matters in this life.

Mixed Reviews

In an effort to form a better relationship with my brother and my mother's insistence that we become closer, I invited my brother out to lunch and also he owed me money and knew this was the best way for him to pay me, in person. We had a few drinks and talked about relationships. He was asking about Joshua, which I thought was really cool as I have always had a hard time talking about my relationships with anyone who was a straight male, especially those whom against my better judgment wanted in my life. It stems from all the years of being bullied by straight men and so afraid I will be treated differently. Just the other day, after work, I was having drinks with my coworkers and one of my straight male colleagues was inquiring about my trip to Aruba and the big news I had. I always get hot in the face when I talk about how I am in a relationship with a man. As if they will get weird and awkward and start thinking I am trying to hit on them or something. It's not as if I am ashamed, I just hate the way some people look at you after you explain to them, "Oh I'm in a relationship with a man, I'm gay" You can see it in their eyes...the judgment.

My brother and I were discussing relationships and how he was happy I finally met someone who made me happy and someone I have decided to stay with. He then told me about an ex he had who worked in the southend, in the restaurant business, and how she used to throw my name around. "Do you know someone named Craig Licchi?" I got red in the face and reluctantly asked him what she had to report. My brother told me his ex just looked at him and smirked and said, "Mixed Reviews" I was absolutely mortified. What does "mixed reviews" mean?! And who did she talk to?! I drove home envisioning all the faces of people I could think of who she may have spoken too. I shivered.  Did they say I was bad in bed? Good in bed? a bad person? Kind? A Jerk? Strange? Some comments I could deal with and others I had to make sure were corrected immediately.

Everyone knows it's nearly impossible to critique yourself the ways others do. We never see our faults the way others see them. Some things you may find completely rational may seem extremely strange to someone else. I mean right before I started writing this blog, I asked the barista to make me another latte and handed him the mug I drank the first one out of. The three people behind the counter gave me weird looks and started making comments. I was just trying make less dirty cups for them. I almost even asked the guy, "Is that weird?" I mean in a place like Somerville that is so earthy crunchy I thought this was normal behavior.

So anyway I thought well maybe she spoke to one of the many crazies I dated. Now I know I am sorta contradicting myself here. Maybe to me they were crazy, but to someone else completely normal. Either way when you breakup with someone, unless its completely mutual, they won't have nice things to say about you. Or maybe she spoke to people I casually dated and where the relationship just fizzled out. I hope I left a good impression. I can sit here and say I don't care what others think about me, but I'd be lying. I think most of us who say we don't care are lying to ourselves. I do care how others see me. What I can affirm, however, is that you can't please everyone. Not everyone is going to like you. You could be the kindest person in the world and some might say you are being fake or just find something to dislike about you.

Some might say, "You have Joshua now, he is all that matters." Well true he is the most important person in my life and yes, if I want anyone in this world to see me positively it's him. I mean I have never come across someone as kind and considerate as Joshua. All my priorities, once misguided and ruffled, have been sorted since I met him. All the monsters in my head from past relationships have been scared off from the unconditional love I am receiving from him. But with that being said, that doesn't mean I need to lose sight of all the other things in my life that are important to me. It's ok to share a life with someone without having to sacrifice the things that made you happy before that person came along. The trick is to find someone that understands and appreciates that.

Last weekend Joshua and I went through my photo albums. It seemed like every other album Josh would say, "Who is that?" and my response was always, "Oh we dated." I wasn't ashamed at all, nor did it make him uncomfortable. So I dated a lot, big deal. Sometimes I put all my eggs in one basket and other times I didn't. Now that I'm settled with him, I am glad I had all the experiences I had. I'm glad I cried all those tears, screamed all those profanities, had all that sex, and discovered my limits, my faults, and my strengths. I learned what true love was and how it could lead to pain, confusion, and how when you lose sight of yourself and give in to temptation it doesn't mean you love someone any less, just that you are human. As I looked at the faces of those I loved or cared about, some who I still care about, so many emotions were filling up inside me. If I was to run into any of these men, what would they have to say about me? Did I leave any mark on them? Everyone whom I have been with has left an impression on me. It's impossible to give out love without consuming feeling in return and then forgetting that feeling they have left on you. It always remains.

So, in the eyes of some men in Boston I could possibly seem like an odd duck. Unattractive. a terrible lover. In some maybe kind hearted, a great lover, sexy even. Smart or stupid. I'm all of those things. Perception is a very wicked and strange thing. I sometimes feel I'm ugly and sometimes I look in the mirror and think damn I am hot. Sometimes I am sweet and other times I'm a complete bitch. Sometimes I think I am clever and other times I think, "God I am dumb." At least I realize this and aim for the positive characteristics I know I possess. So I have decided that it's cool that people have mixed reviews of me, whether I just met you on the street or dated you...because I have mixed reviews about myself everyday.