There I said it

Birthday Reflections

Again, blatantly reposted from my other blog. BUT BUT BUT, this was my original reason for wanting to start a blog or put all my thoughts down on paper. It's also something that I've been terrified of doing because I hide a lot of myself from the bulk of the world. I wish I could be one of those people that didn't give a dam what others thought but I do. This is a huge step for me.

Well my original plan was to do this last night after I had a very deep conversation with my favorite snake. Alas, as happens quite often lately, I fell asleep. Let us hope that doesn't happen when I go visit her next month.

Today is my 35th birthday. I'm old. I dont generally look back on life too much cause there hasn't been a lot in the past to look to. I do remember the great times in college and shortly after college with all my buddies and how we were one big happy gang till the incest started and everyone started marrying each other and having kids. The great thing abuot those frienedships though is that you know even if you dont see or speak to the person for a year that the friendship is still there and just as strong. Friendships have been the basis of my existence for as long as I can remember. Love has always somewhat eluded me but with the great friends I've had I've never really got too depressed over not finding that special someone. All bullshit aside, I'd like to. Who wouldn't? Last night I was told that my current lifestyle (giggle) doesn't really allow for me to find what I say I'm looking for. Till now, my journal has been somewhat fluff filled with tales of my day and a few wild adventures. Well, that's not likely to change cause 1. I'm not a great writer and 2. It's in my psyche to be deathly afraid of what people think about me.

However today I'll share something deep, something that always comes out to people I'm close to eventually and may explain certain things or may mean nothing at all. I dont know what it really means and since it's been so long ago and it's a part of who I am I dont know what reflecting on it or trying to get help (as so many say) would really do. People that meet would never guess that I'm shy or that I have no confidence with women. Hell, though it still amazes me somewhat I've had more sex in the last year than in the first 5 years that I'd been sexually active combined. To a normal person, that might not seem odd but then again, I dont really know what normal is. That's the prize I've been searching for since I was a kid. I dont know when it started and I dont know that I ever really fought it but sometime between the age of 8-12 or maybe even earlier, I really dont know, I was molested. There I said it, big deal. It was my older brother and hell I dont know what was wrong with him. I dont even remember when it stopped. I coulda been 15 or 18. My parents found out I seem to recall. We had one of those talks where they asked if he did stuff to me but we were a very religous family (well at least they were), I guess prayer was supposeed to make it stop. I want to think that was somewhere around age 10-12. In retrospect, I dont think the molestation crap had so much to do with my intimidation when it came to women as much as the fact that I was a skinny, nerdy kid and prejudice, smedjudice. The black kids (especially women) were way meaner to me than the white kids. It was very strange, almost like I was growing up outside my skin. I didn't fit in with the black kids cause I wasnt cool enough and didn't fit in with the white kids cause I was black. If there's one thing that makes me sad, it's not that I was molested or became sexually hyperactive but that being an outsider to all made me uncomfortable in my own skin. I do have black friends but none that are really close and the only time I ever felt really comfortable in the presence of large crowds of my own people was in church. How fucked up is that? Over the years, it's gotten better but I lost something back in my youth that I doubt I can ever get back. My sense of identity as a black male.

See and you thought it was going to be all about the molestation and affect that it had on me. I hear and read in a lot of places that same sex experimentation and all of that jazz is somewhat normal. In my case, it definitely wasnt' normal because I was too young to know if I wanted to experiment or not. The trauma that I went through wasnt' so much the sex part but the physcological part because society says homosexuality is bad and some sort of disease. Well, I'm not homosexual but in order to keep me broken and powerless to really try to stop him, I was told many times that I was a faggot and wanted it and didn't want women and all kinds of other shit. The sex if you could call it that, didn't bother me too much, but the psychological mind-fuck got to me. I was already ostracized somewhat from the black community and had lots of white friends including females but no chance of dating any of them. That fucked me up I think. They say children that are molest either become hypersexual or lose all interest in sex. Wanna guess which one applied to me? So what do you do when you're hypersexual but have absolute 0 confidence to talk to women, are pretty much scared of women of your own race and have succumbed to the fact that you're ugly. I guess in retrospect I did what most teenage boys were doing anyway. I masturbated like crazy, I actually smile and laugh inside to think it was my brother who taught me how. That still didn't fix my problem (my perceived problem that is). I was a faggot, I didn't like women, I would never have sex with a woman. Well, I tell you there were times when it was hard not to believe that especially considering my inability to make any kinda move. I did have lots and lots of female friends though. I was always very good at listening and though I dont know why (maybe it's still buried somewhere), I always accepted friendship with the assumption that maybe it could turn into more later. That's one trait that I dont regret picking up and one that I still employ today even as in a lot of cases, it puts me out of the running for boyfriend or lover. But I digress...I get off track a lot because I write the way I think, things pop into my head and I switch to that for a bit and then sometimes, not always come back to my original thought or point. I had my first date at 22 and lost my virginity at 26. That was soo important to me, it was like I had to prove to myself that I wasn't all those things I had been told as a kid. Of course, I was still hypersexual yet at the same time hoping somehow that I could fuck myself out (does that make sense?). I always saw sex as a bad thing and something you did with people you didn't like. Yeah, I blame that on my brother. It was almost as if I made it my goal to take myself to a level where I had no interest in sex at all cause then I would be pure enough to find true love. Of course, that doesnt' mean I didn't or dont enjoy sex. I've come to enjoy it tremendously but I've still got issues and I'm still dealing with them and now maybe there will be a deeper understanding of my very different personalities. I'll always be the nice guy and slow moving conservative to an extent but underneath there is also a confused sexual freak who questions whether it's normal to enjoy sex with someone you love as opposed to the casual fling or friend.

Well this is getting long and I've got a class to teach so I guess I should get to the point if there is one. It took a lot of years but I eventually became more confident with myself and who I am. I'm still not so good with women on a first time real-time meeting basis. Internet relationships tend to work a little easier for me because I'm more confident in words than actions usually if I meet a woman in person first. In some ways I'm still looking for that thing that would make me "normal" like everyone else but the truth is , everyones got issues. Mine are no worse than anyone elses but they're mine and that's why I rack my brain trying to figure out where I went wrong and if there was something I could have done differently that would have made me "normal".