Four days

I am spending a few weeks on the Central Coast with Lala and Cal, so updates won’t be that forthcoming over the next few weeks, but I’ll try to get on now and then and do some posting. Here’s the last four days.

After the almost-perfect-Christmas, I was wrecked on Boxing Day (link included for the benefit of American-and-other-non-commonwealth-country readers).

When Liz moved away I inherited her technical support role with her parents, aunt and grandmother, so I spent the morning of the 27th, a Thursday, with Liz’s parents, fixing odd problems with their various pieces of technology around the home. After we were done they drove me to my doctor’s appointment, where I explained the new-and-fun back (and now chest) pains and answered “yes” and “no” dutifully when he asked “does it hurt when I do this?” He told me that if there has been no trauma to the area, which I’d have remembered anyway, then it is likely Bornholm Syndrome. This, he explained, was caused by a viral infection of Coxsackievirus in the chest wall which has inflamed it causing the strange pain I’ve been experiencing.


To rule out any trauma that may have slipped under my radar, x-rays were ordered. Because I was due to leave for the coast the next day, we rushed down to the radiographers for shoulder, lung and spine x-rays. Predictably, they showed nothing abnormal except for a slight “twist of the spine” (my doctor’s words). So I can now add Bornholm to my long list of ailments.

On Friday, Dad drove me halfway to the coast, where Lala met us in Cal’s ute. We’ve just been hanging out, watching movies, shopping and catching up with friends. We are preparing for a big party here tomorrow night for new years eve. Lots of people are expected, lots of alcohol is expected to be consumed, fun and merriment will be experienced by all.

I will do a better “catch up” post next week, when I’m feeling a little more coherent. Happy new year everyone.

¡Feliz Navidad!

Christmas is, by far, my favourite time of year. This year’s was the most perfect in a long time (except for one teensy incident which is a topic for another post, tomorrow).

During the week leading up to Christmas I was saying the age old mantra to myself—five sleeps till Christmas, four sleeps till Christmas, etc—and then it finally came!

My family celebrates on Christmas Eve. As a child this meant that I got my presents a full 12 hours before my friends at school. Now I see it as a celebration rich with family tradition and ritual. This year we had 25 people celebrating together at Grandma’s: my two grandparents, my parents, Sister, me, three aunts, two uncles, nine cousins and five partners-of-cousins.

Everyone arrived at Grandma’s, the doors to the dining and lounge rooms securely locked from the curious eyes of the little children, and we sat around and had a chat with drinks before dinner. As children we were not allowed into the room with the Christmas tree until the dinner bell was rung. Nowadays, most years Sister and I go down a few days before the 24th to set up the tree, the outdoor lights and the decorations, so some of the mystery has been lost for me, but the look of awe on the faces of the children makes it all worth it.

When the dinner bell sounded, we all assembled before the nativity, a fifty-odd piece scene carved and painted by my Grandfather, to pray. After the prayers everyone wished one another a Merry Christmas and my Grandfather read the Christmas story in Slovak, followed by the same reading in English by Rick. After this, everyone sat down to dinner, which was followed by the Opening of the Presents.

My baby (two and a half year old) cousin is a present opening machine. She opened every gift within her reach, whether addressed to her or not. We had a great night simply revelling in each other’s presence.

After dinner I called my seven year old nephew, Lance, to wish him a Merry Christmas. I explained that my family celebrates on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day, that we had 25 people here in the one house, all having fun and he asked "Are there any cute guys there?". I was stunned. Has his mother passed down a recessive fag-hag gene that we were unaware of? I answered that since everyone is my family I don’t look at them that way and quickly changed the subject. Of course, the truth is that yes, there were cute guys: Cal was there, of course, as was Bin’s boyfriend, Alex, who are both gorgeous; my cousin Ade has a rugged Latino look that is gorgeous too. And then there’s me. But apart from that, the men of my generation aren’t anything special in the looks department. Shallow, yes, but it was Lance who asked, not me, and he knows that there can be a disparity between outer appeal and true inner beauty.

Anyway, I went to bed slightly after midnight, feeling the luckiest guy around; even though I was in a lot of pain all night, on the constant (and sadly ever-increasing) drug carousel. Every four hours. I see the doctor on the 28th.

But I am one of the lucky ones with the gift of such a beautiful, if somewhat dysfunctional, family that I love dearly, despite its faults.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Less loaded

There are many things you shouldn’t do when you’ve consumed any sizable amount of pain killers. Writing emails is chief among them. I read through my sent items this morning and had a chuckle at the things I had said (and more often, how I’d said them) until I read one that made me gasp.

I remember writing it. I remember sending it. I remember it making sense at the time. There was even a follow up apologising for it (which I also remember writing) that, in the cold light of sobriety, doesn’t seem all that conciliatory. To that person I apologise unreservedly.

The others were funny; not only for the typing, a sample of which you can see in my previous post, but also in what was said. I asked a friend for their home number so that I wouldn’t have to pay postage on calling a mobile. I sent a semi-veiled rant to U2 about Sister, in reply to an email he had sent me.

But anyway I am feeling better today. The pain in my back seems to have taken the message and fucked off, although I seem to have “the jolts” from what I can only imagine to be the physical withdrawals from Zoloft. Usually I get them from taking too much anti-inflammatory meds but today I haven’t had any it. It feels like there’s a slight current of electricity below my skin, buzzing along, and then jolting me every time my foot falls as I walk.

But things seem to be looking up—touch wood—and there’s less than a week until Christmas. This time on Monday afternoon we’ll be leaving to Grandma’s place for Christmas. Yay!

Image pinched from Real Euphoria.

Drug dfucked

If you werre to see me now, you'd see my eyes all spaced out and heavy. If you were to hear me talk, you'd hear a slow derawl like a child who is unsure of whatt to say. If you were to chatt with me online, my typing would looki like this...lots of typos and half finnishedhed sententeces and badly formed words. When you make thismany misstakes, it itakes too much time to correct them.

I'm going to the doctortomorrow to try to work somethingout rabout the pain relief for my new-and-fun back pain. Now i dont take zoloft anymore i can take snother pain killer... we'll see. This is making me like a szolmbie. A zombie who can't sopell or think straight.

I just scome across so stupid... but i'm not studpid. I bgot distinctions in both my stubjects this semester. I'm athink.er not some fdrug fucked zombie.

I'm so getting over this very vquickly.

Loaded

Today is the first day in six years that I haven’t taken an anti-depressant. It wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought it would be, but then I won’t be out of my system completely until Tuesday. On Wednesday I start atriptyline/Endep. That means, by all accounts, I will probably sleep all day Thursday since everyone I’ve spoken to who has taken that particular drug has slept for like 24 hours when they started. As long as that particular side-effect has gone by Christmas I will be happy.

And tonight I am loaded. I have taken so many drugs tonight (some would say too many) that I am really floating high on a cloud of chemically induced bliss. This would be fun if I was in high school and it wasn’t precipitated by pain. I never did any drugs in high school…the irony of that is not lost on me. The reason is that for the last few days my upper back and chest have been in terrible pain, like a rubber band has been tightly wound around me, to the point where my chest is V shaped.

Well that’s it for me. I’m off to sleep, the sleep of the innocent. Sweet dreams.

Hoy me siento tan perdido...

...I feel so lost today.

Usually when I feel this way I write in a little notebook that lives beside my bed. It contains my deepest feelings, and only gets written in at the darkest of hours. Thankfully, it hasn’t been called upon for a while. I write in Spanish (hence the title); originally to stop any prying eyes from understanding the source of my angst—at the time it was being gay—but now its party habit and partly because its romance is cathartic. I decided to do it online this time.

I feel so lost right now. I feel so empty tonight. I don’t know why. I had a good day: I went to Chatswood to help out at the Society, had a lovely lunch with friends, but as I travelled home on the train at night my upper body was wracked with spasms and neural pain shooting from one shoulder to the other. It fucking hurt. Maybe SSRIs reduce neural pain too and this is just a part of the withdrawals? I hope so.

I snapped at my sister tonight. She was upset because I had made a mistake on the Christmas card list. She always treats me like such a child. I told her “use your fucken brain” and went to my room to sulk.

The last year I’ve rode the drug merry-go-round under the direction of Dr KHS, who I am fast loosing respect for, because it’s becoming increasingly clear that he doesn’t realise how serious this is becoming.

It struck me today that this is me, emotionally speaking at least, now that I am becoming anti-depressant free. Physically, too, this is me. Despite being under the influence of a cocktail of pain killers and other assorted bits and pieces, I feel this bad.

Imagine a me that was drug-free. It’s fucking depressing.

That’s all for now. I need to lie down to ease my back.

Questions and answers

Campbell posted this in response to my post about God, Religion and Being Gay.

Be patient to all that is unsolved in your heart
Try to love the questions themselves
Do not seek for answers that cannot be given
Because you would not be able to live them
And the point is to live everything
Live the questions now
Perhaps you will then
Gradually
Without knowing it
Live along some distant day
Into the answers

Thank you, Campbell, it meant more than you can know.

I trust in God, it’s as simple as that

This post has been a long time coming. I haven’t spoken about God, the Catholic Church or my faith much on this blog (partly because I know that many readers don’t share that faith, partly because it is so private, and partly because I am still figuring it all out), but in light of recent events and some things I’ve read recently, I guess now is the time. So. I am Catholic. This is part of the reason it took me so long to come to terms with being gay, I don’t deny it.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s start at the beginning. Sister and I were never dragged to church kicking and screaming as children like our parents were. We found God on our own. Despite not going to church as a child, I always considered myself Catholic, I just didn’t know what it entailed exactly.

Fast forward to 1999, the year I became ill, a year filled with uncertainty, depression and anxiety over my identity and place in the world. I was fifteen. I went to a lunch-time Christian group, ostensibly non-denominational but in practice fiercely Pentecostal (the friend I mentioned in the post “Insidious” also attended the group). One lunch time we were discussing differences between the denominations of Christianity and it turned into an open slather forum on what was wrong with Catholicism. As I didn’t know much about the church, I struggled to refute their accusations of heresy. My self-esteem and sense of self shattered, I decided to go to mass that weekend. At the mass there was an announcement about a weekend for youth that was being held at the parish in a month’s time. I put my name down. I went. I had a great time.

It was at this weekend that I “found God”. It wasn’t as glittery as Damascus, but it was sufficiently euphoric nonetheless. It was also at this weekend that I caught the flu, which ultimately lead to my ME/CFS.

Over the next two years, I went to mass and to the youth group and I learned about God, Jesus, Mary, John-Paul II and the whole crew. I was confirmed at 16 in 2000. It was around this time that the question of sexuality reared its ugly head. I knew I liked boys, I didn’t want to, but I did nonetheless. God knew I did, despite my best efforts to hide it from everyone, even Him. We were given a copy of the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which says this on the matter:

“Homosexuality refers to relations between men or between women who experience an exclusive or predominant sexual attraction toward persons of the same sex. It has taken a great variety of forms through the centuries and in different cultures. Its psychological genesis remains largely unexplained. Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered." They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved.” (CCC 2357)

At this point, I was really confused.

After the watershed, I stopped going to mass. I felt unwanted and unvalued. Four years later I finally admitted I was gay. But I still didn’t know where this fit in with my faith in God and religion, so I did my best to ignore it. It didn’t work. I finally worked out that they are two separate issues: faith is private, religion is public. Two years later I’m still working it out.

So where does that leave me? I believe in the God of love, yet my religion continues its campaign of hate against my gay, lesbian, bi, transgender and intersex brothers and sisters. I read a recent interview with Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu:

He said the Anglican Church had seemed “extraordinarily homophobic” in its handling of the issue, and that he had felt “saddened” and “ashamed” of his church at the time.
Asked if he still felt ashamed, he said: “If we are going to not welcome or invite people because of sexual orientation, yes.”
“If God, as they say, is homophobic, I wouldn’t worship that God.”

The Catholic Church is much the same, maybe even more so. I agree with what Archbishop Tutu says. I do not worship a homophobic God.

I still don’t know how it all fits together, to be honest, but that is what faith is: belief despite doubt or trouble. At the moment I’m waiting to be put in touch with a friend of Kate’s who is a gay pastor; I’m hoping he can help me connect the seemingly unending string of contradictory connect-the-dots. But, the way I see it, we mere mortals can’t blame God because there are other homophobic mortals working for him, purporting to speak for him. I often think “it must be nice to be so assured” when I hear Sister and the “unknowing homophobes” spout their rubbish and hate. But the point is I believe in God’s love more than I reject the church’s hate.

I trust in God, it’s as simple as that.

It’s good shit, but I hate it nonetheless

It’s been a rough weekend. I am coming off Zoloft (sertraline hydrochloride), slowly, slowly, and starting Endep (atriptyline) next week. It’s an antidepressant too, but it should, hopefully, block some of the pain signals. I’m concerned about stopping Zoloft because I am petrified about a relapse in depression. I’m also cutting down the codeine. Withdrawals are unpleasant. Yesterday I was hot, sweaty, lying in bed, feeling like death. My legs were killing me. I went to mass and sat down for the entire service, rather than standing, sitting, kneeling, standing with everyone else.

Last night the pain was bad. I took a lot of codeine and anti-inflammatories and doped myself into a nice floating state, just so I could sleep.

It’s good shit. But I hate it nonetheless.

Insidious

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend that I haven’t seen or contacted since the messy ending of high school. I’ve known her the longest of my friends, except Lala, since second grade in 1991.

It was interesting. Considering the length of silent time that had passed between us, and the circumstances of our last contact, I was a little nervous. Although the great watershed of 2001 didn’t involve her at all, I withdrew so totally from the world in 2002 that I didn’t contact her at all until facebook brought us back together. But then she didn’t contact me either, so I guess it’s a wash.

We met and hugged when we saw each other for the first time—and it was a real hug—and soon the conversation turned to my coming out. She didn’t make a big deal about it, saying only “Oh yes, I ran into Calla ages ago and she mentioned it” and asking how it went with my parents and Sister.

I explained how it happened and how “It” hasn’t been spoken about between Sister and I since then despite speaking of it loudly and often before I came out. “What kind of things did she say?” she asked. “Oh you know, always saying things like ‘the homosexuals want to get married, the homosexuals want to adopt, isn’t it awful’. Stuff like that.” She nodded in comprehension as I spoke. “I mean I don’t know what you believe about all this,” I added, thinking suddenly that I hate it when people talk to me about politics or religion and assume that I agree with them. The conversation progressed and I found myself asking her, “So what do you think about all this then?”

She paused before answering, choosing her words carefully. “Well,” she began, faltering. “Look,” I said, “tell me what you really think. Don’t worry about upsetting or offending me. Whatever you say you’re not going to change my mind, I’m not going to change yours, and we’re both old enough to agree to disagree.” She smiled and told me that, like Sister, she doesn’t believe same sex attraction to be sinful, but she does see same sex contact as sinful. I was expecting this so I rolled with the punches and asked her to continue. She admits she cannot fathom how difficult it must be, for which I thanked her, but that God knows what is best for us so just because humans can come up with logical conclusions and justifications, doesn’t mean it’s actually good for us. This, too, I was expecting. I had previously made the point that I don’t believe Christianity to hold the patent on marriage, since it existed before the time of Christ. To this she she responded that just because marriage existed before Christ doesn’t mean that it wasn’t created by God and revealed or explained through him. I had to agree but of course it could very well be that this is not the case, rather (as I feel) that it was created by God for loving couples, not genders or sexes.

The conversation progressed and mentioned that she had two friends who “had struggled with same sex attractions”. One, she said “doesn’t do anything with guys…for now” (she added the “for now” in as an afterthought, as if she didn’t think it would last for long), the other has overcome these desires and is now in a relationship with a girl. I fumed, but I said nothing. Since then I’ve thought of a million responses but I was totally lost for words upon this revelation.

On the way home I mulled over what had been said. I felt such sorrow for the poor boy who has deluded himself into thinking that being gay is something to be ashamed of or something to be corrected. As many of you know, acknowledging that one is gay is hard, accepting it harder still; I felt for the poor boys and girls, men and women out there who go from acknowledgement straight into correction and suppression mode. I felt for the men and women they get involved with in their quest for heterosexuality. I felt for the children that are born into these doomed relationships. I don’t deny it can be done, to a point, if one discounts the psychological damage done—self-denial with enough vehemence must surely work in some cases—but I absolutely reject the entire “ex-gay movement” ethos nonetheless.

I find it repugnant that so many powers-that-be in Christian churches advocate this kind of inhumane quasi-therapy from their exalted pulpits. I find it repugnant that many adherents to Christianity believe homosexuality to be a pathological problem, something that needs to be cured. They base their homophobia on the Bible, on science of anatomy, on reason, on anything they can find; and all so that they can hate and discriminate against queer folk with a clear conscience. Basic relationship recognition is dismissed as “special treatment” when they fail to recognise that the present system is the selective one, not the proposed amendments in which any two people marry.

So that’s it. There’s no need to write about it any further, I think I’ve made my stance clear. It just makes me so sad that such insidious homophobia exists, all without the person even knowing it.

I don't know how to let you go

Pop died early this morning in ward 11 of the aged care department at Concord Hospital amid the smell of shit and the cold hollow corridors. It is such an unjust end for such a brilliant man.

It’s been a year now since you were hear now
And I’ve been trying to heal inside
Dedications have all been placed
And I see your resemblance in my face
And on your birthday I said an extra wish for you

It’s been one year since I wrote those words. Today came and went like any other: I went to morning Mass, which was offered for Pop, then came home and had breakfast before cleaning my bedroom, culling my book collection in the process, and then I cooked dinner, ate. Nothing special happened. If anything, today was sublime for its banality. It wasn’t as hard as I expected.

What ravages of spirit conjured this tempestuous rage?
Created you a monster; broken by the rule of love.
Oh, and fate has led you through it,
You do what you have to do.
But I have the sense to recognise that I don’t know how to let you go.

There was a violent thunderstorm today. It was a bit of a catharsis to sit outside and just watch the rain fall on the ground, watching the complex system of rivers, ponds and tributaries form on the driveway. I saw the lightening flash majestically across the sky and jumped at the sound of thunder.

Every moment marked with apparitions of your soul.
I’m ever swiftly moving; trying to escape this desire.
Oh, the yearning to be near you,
I do what I have to do.
And I have the sense to recognise that I don’t know how to let you go.
I don’t know how to let you go.

Maybe my problem is that I don’t want to let go, not so much not knowing how to?

Good news

“Did you hear about what Brendan Nelson said this morning?” Amy asked me this morning.
“No? Am I going to be disgusted?” I replied.
“Well he said he wants to bring in same sex entitlements, but not marriage.”

Well this is wonderful news. The leader of the Liberal Party has come out on record supporting the removal of most of the 58 discriminatory laws. All, that is, except the Marriage Act (2004) and laws governing access to IVF for same-sex couples and adoption by same-sex couples (source).

To my mind, while I’m overjoyed at having “practical discriminations” in the areas of taxation, superannuation and social security, it’s a bit of a slap in the face that same-sex couples continue to be treated like second-class citizens. That said, I enough of a pragmatist to graciously accept the changes they are willing to make before fighting for the removal of remaining discriminatory laws.

Bring on the revolution!