From: vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams)
Subject: Re: Sufficiency (was Getting Something off My Chest)
Organization: Bradley University
Distribution: usa
Date: 23 Jul 92 22:33:48 GMT

anderson@macc.wisc.edu (Jess Anderson) writes:
>In article <vanyel.710698730@camelot>
>vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu (Alan Williams) writes:
>>Discovering my sexuality is easily the one of the worst
>>things that's happened to me.
>Alan somewhat softens this statement below, but it still
>strikes me as standing in fairly stark contrast to the more
>common kind of "finally coming out was, whatever the
>difficulties, one of the best things that every happened to
>me" testimonial.

Can't expect everyone's coming out stories to have happy endings, y'know.
8-)

>>For the past several years, I've been miserable as I keep
>>meeting all these people who are either happy with someone
>>else or who've had their fill of relationships for a while
>>and are taking a break.
>One of the issues seems to me to be one's age.  I take it as
>a given that there is a special intensity to the feelings
>one has when younger.  Over time, some of that intensity gets
>muted in part by falling into an expanding context.  

I should point out, too, that emotions are still relatively new to me, as I
had a tendency to forget I had them while growing up.  (BTW, I don't
consider my emotional state to be repression, because I simply didn't use
my emotions; it wasn't a case of bottling them up inside.)  I suppose what
best sums up my situation was just a desire to get to know *all* the
emotions *at once*, and the result was a burst dam flooding me with both
good and bad feelings.

>Another issue is ego strength, by which I don't mean the
>usually negative senses we associate with that; rather, the
>idea that we underestimate what we are or what we have or
>what we do while overestimating what others are or what they
>have or what they do.

People have accused me of that.  A lot.  They say I'm exceptionally harsh
on myself.  I can't really confirm or deny the situation, since I'm on the
inside looking out, but over time I *have* started to notice that a
considerable number of people say that, so maybe it's true.

I got a call from a dear friend of mine in Chicago a few days ago.  (Hi,
John!) When I said I must sound like an awfully boring person because
I think so much about myself and have essentially *no* social life in the
summer, John said that one of the reasons he likes to talk to me is because
I'm thoughtful and have an "honest" outlook on life.  In other words, he
put into positive terms two qualities about myself that I thought negative.

But I'm doing it again.  I'll shut up for a few more minutes.

>Yearning unsatisfied would be my candidate for one of the
>worst things going, like a black hole among the emotions,
>pulling everything into itself.  It's not hard to see what a
>trap this is, *unless* you're the one it's happening to --
>in that case, it asserts itself more and more into the
>emotional foreground, and pretty soon you're just what Alan
>called it: miserable.

Yeah, Jess, I think you kinda hit a sore spot there.  I think at least some
of my yearning came from a desire to just be like "everyone else"--happy,
busy, committed to something and/or someone, etc.  Over time I've finally
started to see that not everyone has that situation.

>>But I don't envy you much; as these past couple years at
>>graduate school have gone by, I've become more satisfied
>>with just "being" and less angry at not "being
>>something/someone." I've started to channel the kind of love
>>I get from my friends into the void created by a lack of the
>>kind of love people get from romantic relationships.
>This process starts redefining what one is and what one has,
>I think, all to the good.  But I think it's also important
>not to get acceptance mixed up with resignation, because
>resignation too easily veers back toward hopelessness.

The way I see it, resignation and acceptance are two sides of the same
coin.  Resignation can be a road to acceptance, because it means you
finally stop fighting against what you already are, and settle down to live
with yourself.  From there, I'd say the road splits down two paths--and
heaven forfend, I may have actually found the bright path. . . .  8-)

To Jess and all the others who've responded to my post: Thank you, every-
one.  Over the past couple weeks, thanks to your responses (private and
public) and the talks I've had with my friends about the subject, I feel
more whole than I have in years.  If I *did* have any lingering pain when I
posted the first time, it doesn't seem to bother me; and I can honestly say
that I feel a great degree more serene about this aspect of my life than I
had felt before.

Now if only my *money* problems would go away. . . .  8-)

--

 ________________ Alan Williams  vanyel@camelot.bradley.edu ___________________
 \/ A hypothetical paradox: What would happen in a battle between an         \/
    _Enterprise_ security team, who always get killed soon after appearing,
    and a squad of Imperial Stormtroopers, who can't hit the broad side of
    a planet?                 	--Tom Galloway
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