Pain's Gone
A Gay Opinion 3/31/02
by R. A. Melos
I have spent a great deal of time writing about the emotional pain caused me
by the actions of my ex-lover, in an effort to understand those actions and
give myself some peace of mind. After all this time, I have finally reached
a place of inner peace where this man is concerned. It wasn't through discovering
the answers to those why questions I have, but through the passing of time,
along with some deeply intense soul searching and some outside influences, which
allowed my intense feelings of longing and desire for him to die.
I was raised in a family where my mother has never remarried or even looked
for another husband since my father died, and both my grandmothers were widowed
for more than 30 years, never even considered remarrying, and held to their
beliefs of what truly good men their husbands had been. Never was I once witness
to anyone as intentionally cruel as the man who was, for all intensive purposes,
my first real love.
My pain, stemming from those unanswered why questions, centered around why he
used me, led me on, and then cut me out of his life abruptly and thoroughly
as if I had never existed. I was truly trying to understand how anyone could
treat another human being the way my ex-lover treated me, and, on another level,
trying to understand how I could still harbor feelings for him? After all, he
seemed to go on with his life as if having sex with someone and making them
believe you care for them is part of some game, and has no real importance.
My ex-lover and his second wife are my best examples of why heterosexuals, even
closeted homosexuals masquerading as heterosexuals, should not be allowed to
marry and breed. His actions, in my opinion, make a mockery of so-called holy
matrimony, which some groups are so desperately trying to hold on to as sacred
to heterosexuality alone.
My ex-lover forever altered my view of marriage, by his actions of infidelity
to both his wives with me and numerous others. He showed me, through his ability
to lie to his wives and to me, what levels of disregard he held for a right
so many are fighting to obtain.
So, how, after all of this, can I still believe in any sacred union between
two people?
I do believe marriage is a sacred bond, but not something to be denied anyone
based on their sexual orientation. Marriage is a bond, or a state of mind, shared
between two people, which results in those two people loving each other to the
point of fidelity and monogamy. It is an agreement, written or unwritten, existing
between two consenting adults, which is of great importance on a higher emotional
level, when we allow it to be important.
Perhaps I still believe in marriage because I was raised to believe in the goodness
in the man I choose to love. That reason alone is why I was so emotionally tortured
by my feelings for my ex-lover for so long after he intentionally hurt me. I
simply could not see what so many others could see in him. I saw the potential
of goodness, of honesty, in him, and perhaps would always have seen it, had
I not inadvertently discovered some recent truths about him from, shall we say,
a mutual acquaintance.
Had I not had revealed to me how little he has changed in his actions since
the time I was part of his life, I may have still seen the potential of goodness
in him and held on to the belief he was a person worthy of the level of love
I am capable of giving. However, thanks to those revelations of his actions,
I am finally free of the emotional pain I struggled with for the past few years.
No doubt I will always have some phantom twinge every now and again, where he
is concerned, but I can chalk those up to the fact he was my first real love
and we are taught by society to never really forget our first loves. Unlike
him, I will never deny his existence, or the way in which he touched my heart,
my soul and my life. However, I no longer see him through those ever popular
rose-colored glasses so many of us look through when viewing those we love.
And more importantly, I can no longer excuse his actions, or overlook them,
or accept him as he is, because harboring love for a man like him is a waste
of love which could be given to others.
I know there are others out there who experienced similar pain in their lives,
and many who are still going through that type of pain, and to you I won't simply
say "time heals all wounds." Time is only a part of the process which
helped to remove my pain. A loving and understanding family also helps, but
mostly real soul searching, digging into the pain itself and accepting it and
coming to terms with it as it is, for what it is, seeing the one who caused
the pain as they truly are and no longer being able to accept them as they are,
helped me to heal.
I had to tear down the image of my ex-lover I had created when falling in love
with him, and replace it with his real image. The facade of love now gone, I
let go of my idealized version of this man and saw him for what he truly was,
and simple could not accept the love I harbored within me for a person lacking
so much in the convictions in which I was raised to believe.
I am lucky in the fact I can still believe in the power of love, and know I
will someday be able to love another as I loved him. Only this time won't be
my first time, and I won't be as naive as I was in blindly trusting and believing
in someone because I want to believe in them. Now broken trust has new meaning
to me, just as does holy matrimony. Now my love is a commodity to be earned,
just as is my contempt.
I still advocate same-sex marriage, and hope to someday enter into one, in spite
of the so-called general population's view of marriage as a union only sacred
between a man and a woman. Now I will be more cautious as to whom I choose to
share my time and my life. If only more people, heterosexual as well as homosexual,
would use that same caution before entering into a marriage we might not have
as many divorces.
So with the exiting of my pain, I am now open to the many new possibilities
which lay before me. I no longer will just fill my life with work in an attempt
to pass the time, but now savor the time I spent and value it as I have not
done in the past. My outlook has changed, and the future has brightened. The
pain is gone.