A Queer Life

Sometimes I feel deep shame about the amount of time I spend on YouTube, watching pointless shit and reading comments. I feel like I'm looking for something and I'm disappointed. Obviously some YouTubers and their videos are more fulfilling than others and sometimes I feel like watching a video is worthwhile. I will sit and watch a two hour video just staring at someone's face with rapt attention. I will regularly pause to read comments, to see if anyone has anything to add to the discourse. I have spent hours and hours and hours of my day doing this. Then I feel shame when I look up from my phone to see the house messy and my mind hazy and the kids hungry and I don't know what month it is.  I like watching creators who have interesting things to say, new points of view, or just funny points of view on anything. I find a channel and I think: "This is the one. This is my favorite YouTuber from now until the end of time." I have even contributed to the occasiona...

I'm back so soon. Blogging has been on the back burner of my mind, and the smell is finally getting to me.  Most of my life I have avoided having a voice. Some people call that being shy. I am shy, but I don't know if avoiding my own humanness and the space I take up, is part of that. But blogging is definitely a way to express myself in a way that is comfortable to me. Dare I even announce that I am considering doing a 30 day challenge to blog every day? I worry that once I announce it, I will run away and stop blogging for two years, or just abandon this blog and start another one where no one can find me. (I'm always doing that. I don't even remember all the random blogs I've started. But, like I said, I run when I know I'm being read. I run when I hear my own voice being echoed back to me through my audience. Making a difference terrifies me. Affecting people terrifies me. Hurting anyone terrifies me. I live in terror. I live in terror. But that's not wh...

I keep writing blogs and not posting them. Will I post this one? We shall see. My life keeps changing from moment to moment. Steve and I weren’t seeing each other and then we were, and planning an ongoing relationship, but within days he called it off again because he saw my failing marriage as a mine field, which it was/is.  Then, days later, I had a meltdown and realized I couldn’t live with Tyler one more day. My body is in a constant state of panic around him. So we had a stand off and then I left just because I had to, and then I came back and then I planned on moving out, but instead he found a place in town so I could stay in our house with the kids. But with him paying rent, that delays our plans to fix up the other house which is my longterm housing solution. That is the only reason we didn’t separate sooner.  I haven’t seen Charles in months and we barely text or talk anymore. We may never see each other again. Our tiny relationship ran its course and that is okay...

When paradise falls apart for one side of a couple, we find the other side never had paradise.  Tyler said our paradise began falling apart when I told him I might be gay. My paradise might have always been a lie.  “You can be anything you want!” Is one lie I believed.  I made myself into what I wanted. It never occurred to me that there was a “Me” inside who might not like the person I thought was ideal. But Me will not be silenced. Me will fight to be heard, throw tantrums, get depressed. Me will have panic attacks because Me is not getting its needs met. After a lifetime of not listening, I barely know how.  Even after listening, I want to impress people. I want to be liked. I fear losing love. I fear losing everything. I have built my life around so many lies. When I start telling the truth what will fall away? Will anything remain? I thought I wanted to be sexually liberated. I had sex with Charles and partnered with him. A new relationship has some fun...

There was a time when Tyler and I had been married about four years. Tyler told his coworker that he struck gold when he married me. Tyler and I shared everything. We could say it was paradise.   But something bothered me. Maybe it was our tenuous financial situation. Maybe because owning a home was a fantasy rather than a goal. Maybe I was overwhelmed by Tyler’s exwife taking us to court twice a year and the lawyer bills stacking up. So we moved two states away where we could afford a house, live cheaper, and his exwife would leave us alone. Everything would be better.  And it was true, we moved, bought a house, had more disposable income, and his exwife left us alone because we were so far away she couldn’t complain anymore. We even left Mormonism. We were essentially free. But something still bothered me and this time I wasn’t distracted like I was before. I began feeling homosexual desires. We toyed with polyamory and dated a little. And then we uncovered some dysfunc...