It is never easy telling someone you love them when you know it is not a reciprocal feeling.
And yet there I was last night doing it. And still the most surprised person in the equation was me. When you´ve bottled up feelings for a long time for fear of exposure, and loss, letting them out publically seems a huge risk, fraught with issues, problems and danger. You start and as you take a breath, a long tunnel appears ahead, all flashing red lights in the darkness.
I think as gay men we are still very often inclined to perceive and view these things under a hetero-normative template. There are so many things a man loving a younger man is perceived to be potentially (although in this case the man is almost forty). So many names we can be called, so many disparaging remarks exist. And of course there are so many different forms of love. ´´What is love´´, as Haddaway sung and indeed the King himself once asked, many eons ago?
I think we sometimes forget though that one version of love, the one society asks us to associate with family, is still very possible outside of that structure. The love of a father for a son is much maligned and I went through a lot of bitter tears, confusion and self doubt decades ago when I was trying to come to terms with it, or perceived lack of it. ´´Don´t talk to me about love´´ is, even now all too often, still the response for a gay man when coming out to his parents, and especially his father. The palpable hurt of such rejection is strong for years, even decades after.
As a gay men with no children, it was not something I had ever experienced before, that particular incarnation of love. Even when it was ongoing, I still didn´t recognise it. I could not quite comprehend its nature. That feeling of warmth towards a person, of wanting to have a duty of care, to hold someone vulnerable simply in an embace of protection, of responsibility. Only after I had told someone the other evening that I thought there was love in my relationship with them, did I truly realise later, at 4am in the morning, what it really was and why it was. Ah! So that´s what it feels like to be a Dad. Salty tears fell for a time, as I processed that knowledge, neither of regret, fear or joy but more because finally I knew what it was, that feeling that was going on. Why there was an intensity of emotion around that person. I didn´t really think I had had that instinct bred into me, an instinct that parents (of all sexualities) perhaps feel, I accept very probably, to an even greater level.
But this is nevertheless a very big reveal, if that someone is not on that same page with you. I would imagine potentially quite a scary reveal at that. I´m not entirely sure how I would have coped with the notion if it had happened to me, say, three decades ago. I might well have run away, frightened off by the curious notion it presents in its raw form, which doesn’t really fit into any of the societal norms.
It would also be easy to assume or imagine that this love was somehow ‘tainted´ by physical notions of sexual attraction, and I can understand why. In this case especially, as it did start as an attraction, as yes, the person is quite beautiful. And then, after some, in fact many months, although that went away, a slowly developing love came along with an unwelcome helping of jealousy, when the person was attracted, both sexually and non sexually, to others or they to him. But then, suddenly, one day seemingly jealousy was gone. My heart lifted of that depressing, dull weight. It was a joy to be rid of it. I wanted to see the person engage with others, an internal letting go. And yet still that warmth remained. A need to care, to be supportive, to understand and yes, true, admire the beauty and yet not be burdened by consistent and constant desire for physical satiation within it.
As I realised this, in the middle of the night I felt very calm, a wave of positivity ran across me, of relief at understanding this strange feeling, that for me was quite a new one. I had not expected to feel anything so fundamentally new at my age, apart perhaps from more aches and pains. As I said, the surprise of understanding it took my breath away somewhat. However, it also made me realise that I indeed wanted some deeper connections again, of the form that I had really put aside for so many years. I had thought I could not cope with the pain that nearly always comes with a relationship, again, in its many forms. And yet now I think maybe, just maybe I can. I feel motivated to care for myself, for my body again after years of satiation with junk thoughts, feelings, food, even sex.
Perhaps it was prompted by the death recently of my close freind Amanda, through cancer, very rapidly, a few months from prognosis to her sad, untimely death at 61. I suddenly realised in the middle of the night that she used to call me a ´´gorgeous man´´, in fact as I lay awake I heard her saying it very clearly to me and I realised with a start that I had not really thought about what it meant or indeed if she really felt that but then as I heard her say it, realised yes, I did believe that she meant it.
I feel- finally- confident enough about myself to believe it and strong enough to think it was true. And several other female freinds have said similar things to me in the last few months, and thankyou so much for that, as you have given me back a confidence I really thought I had lost. In the process of ageing we all start to become more invisible to people, and in the process to doubt our own self worth anymore. I really do not think I am alone in feeling this by any means, in fact I think it is an endemic feeling in old age.
Our society (as least own consumer led western society) does not value our wisdom or ability to love, laugh, to make honest and truthful connections anymore, bombarded as we are by societies addiction to youth, beauty, fillers, six packs, botexes, tucks, nips and snips. But beauty comes in many forms and our bodies ability to cope with the demands we place on it throughout our lives is in itself a thing of great beauty, determination, perhaps a form of magic really, in its own way.
And so I am no great beauty anymore but inside I think there is a beating heart that cares deeply about other people, has still a great capacity to love other people, and, now again to love myself for what I am and what I can be. And if I can get there I think, I do suspect, others can too. It is about opening yourself up to the challenge of honesty. I took a risk in telling someone I loved them, as it could mean they will run, run run. But it was worth it just to allow myself to understand it, to admit it openly, to show the real me. To be able to breathe again. It feels good. And if they run, well it happened and at least I will feel I have told my story like it is, like it was. Like it will be. Love without end.
Amen.
