I have lived my life up to this point out of fear. Fear has been a great motivator. It has been a friend, companion, and enemy. Feat has given me solace. Fear has created who I am with comfort, sorrow, misfortune, and distress. It has wrapped me in its miserably warm blanket of forgiveness. Fear has bent all my other emotions to fit it. They all bow in its glory. They have become serfs in its feudalistic state. Fear rules with an iron fist. I do what I do out of fear. I know nothing different.
I can’t remember life before fear. I’m sure there must have been a time when I wasn’t afraid of something. A time when all was good, and by good I mean ignorant. I envision that time as a small infant, snuggled between my parents. Well fed and loved. A time when there was no judgement. How can one judge an infant? The vision is brief.
As far back as I can remember I have felt different. I am different. With difference comes fear. People fear difference. They fear what they don’t understand, or won’t understand. With that fear driven ignorance they cast out. They try to right what they believe is wrong. They use the fear that motivated them to do it. They create fear from fear. It is a powerful tool both in its damage as well as its produce. I am a production of that fear.
I am gay. I have know this since I was five, and found my father’s Hustler magazines. I was more interested in the men than the women. It is not a phase, this is who I am.
I wanted people to know me. So I told my parents. I was called horrible things and sent to a psychiatrist. I was five. My first taste of fear.
I learned quickly that me being different brought out the worst in people. People want others to be like them. It gives them a sense of belonging and purpose. I have been shaped by that. My every thought and action has been based on what will happen to me if I don’t act like everyone else.
I was still gay, I just didn’t tell anyone, let alone act like it. I lived a lie, a huge lie, that ate me alive like a great cancer. I pretended to have a girlfriend. I even went so far as to have sex with this girl to show I was like everyone else. So now this lie born of fear, infecting me, has affected someone else. She loved someone who wasn’t real or true and she got hurt. All this from fear.
My life could have been so different. I often wonder what it could have been like had I not lived out of fear. Would I have done something great? Could I have been famous?
Fear created enormous resentments. I had resentments towards everyone including my parents, siblings, the kids in school, teachers, humanity in general for letting this happen to me. I turned to drugs to dull the fear. It worked for a short time, but it wasn’t a cure. I needed something different.
Someone finally told me once to “let go”. I had to come to grips with my life and forgive. Forgive those who have wronged me, and most of all forgive myself. A thick fog cleared away and I could breathe. How simple, yet so hard to do. Just forgive.
I did. I made a list of all my resentments and the people I held them against. I read them out loud and said “I forgive you”. I ended it with forgiving myself.
Letting go has made me a much happier, healthier, more fulfilled person than I ever could have dreamed of being. I am now on my own path. My life is still driven by fear, but it is a fear of not being myself.