As stated in the very first entry in this blog my intention is to share about all aspects of my life, because I firmly believe they all work together in making me who I am. So this entry, as late as it is, will be about my experience of the Christmas and New Year holiday season.
I thought I had grown accustom to spending the Christmas holidays alone, I was used to the fact that my family of origin does not want me around, for reasons I really can't figure out, on Christmas or ever really. This year however it was different, not having someone to spend Christmas with was bothering me, I was depressed, I was angry, I was having a hard time keeping it together. I was actually feeling the feelings involved rather than staying numb to them. What I really wanted to do was to just get and stay drunk from mid afternoon on December 24th until the morning of December 26th. It turns out I did not even have one drink. My traditional church plans were not even exciting me, and that is very unusual for me.
Then something very unexpected happened; Wednesday December 20 I was at home feeling lonely and decided to take some action to at least try to change that; so I went to a weekly event that I had been telling myself for months that I was going to check out , and had not done so. The event is called bear coffee and it takes place at a coffee shop a couple of blocks from my home. I was nervous but went anyway, a big step for me.
I got to bear coffee, my friend Paul was there so I sat by him, there was an available chair that was easier to access at the other end of the table but I did not take it. I made eye contact with a man named Kevin, who I had chatted with on-line and by phone a bit a couple of years before that. Someone, I think it was Paul, suggested a group picture because it was the last meeting before Christmas, every body lined up, Kevin was behind me and ended up with his arms around me in the picture. Something was happening.
When it was time to leave, I walked out the door with Kevin, we chatted a bit, I kissed him, he kissed me back. I invited him over to my place however he had to say no because he had things he had to do in the morning. I gave him my card and asked him to give me a call sometime. We kissed again and parted ways. The next morning, there was a message from him asking for a rain check, I assured him my offer for him to come over was a standing offer.
I need to provide some background information at this point so the rest of the story has the intended impact.
Over the past several years I have been in one painful, dysfunctional, abusive relationship after another. This was because I had the belief that in order to count as being someone I needed to belong to a man, I needed to be in a relationship in order to prove my worth. While in the Journey program over the summer I realized that was not true, that I did not need to be in a relationship, so I had made the choice that I was not going to be in one. I had gone as far as to decide that I was going to live a life of celibacy.
Kevin and I had our first date on Saturday December 23rd. On my way home from the gym that morning I saw a man walking down the street wearing a Santa hat, I stopped him and said "Santa I know I am on the naughty list this year, in fact I am sort of proud to have made the list, but could you please bring me something anyway" he said " Consider it done". While Kevin and I were having dinner that night we talked about what we had planed for Christmas, neither of us had anything going on so we quickly figured out a dinner using things we each had at home. He came over on Christmas day and as much as it sounds like a Hallmark Christmas Special we have been dating ever since.
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