The Jon Blog

Depressed Blog Entry

This is turning out, as I write it, to be a long, sad, depressing blog entry. Read if it you like, but don't say I didn't warn you. After all, if I can't be honest in my blog, where the fuck can I?:

So I saw "The Normal Heart" again at the Public this evening. It's such an angry, powerful play. It makes me be mad at myself for all the stuff I haven't done.

It makes me angry at myself for how alone I am. It makes me depressed about the fact that I am alone. Yes, I have some friends, I have a lot more work "friends" than I have real friends. I can count the "real" ones on one hand, and have fingers left over.

Wow, can we see anyone typing in this room who needs therapy? I know I should seek it out, but I have a problem with it. I'm not 100% sure why. I mean, my dad is a psychiatrist, so I understand that there's not a stigma against therapy. I've been in therapy before, and I've been on Prozac. It wasn't terrible, aside from the fact that I'd be horny as hell and couldn't get hard to save my life. Not that I had anyone to worry about being horny with...

It's been over 2 years since I actually kissed someone I wanted to kiss. Yes, I've done the air kisses, and the kisses with a couple of "tricks" (pretty much in sex clubs. God forbid I should have the luck to actually pick someone up who would want to go home with me...) but it's not the same as kissing someone you care about; kissing someone you really want to be kissed by.

I'm not sure I've ever really been in love. I thought I was probably in love once, a long time ago. I was in college. I met this amazing guy and feel head over heels for him. Trouble is, it turned out he was seeing three or four other guys at the same time. He told me he was going to leave them all and be with me, but he didn't. I was so upset. And very naive, too. The thing that made it harder to deal with was the fact that about one month after our last conversation, his roommate (and another ex-lover) called me to tell me that he was dead; the memorial service would be held at blah blah blah church and so on. And the memorial service never talked about the guy I knew; the guy I loved. It was for him, but it was all about someone I'd never even met. You can bet that didn't help matters.

The next guy I dated seriously was a sweetheart; he was an undergrad, and I was in grad school at the time. We had a great time together. Great meals, fun conversations, awesome sex. I could have married him, I think. Trouble was, after a couple months he decided that he wasn't ready to be in a committed anything, didn't want to be tied down, wanted to play the field and the gay scene (he was relatively newly out of the closet.... learned that lesson). So I figured, well, what can I do? And I let him go. About a week after he left me, he started dating this other guy who he was with for four or five years. He's since left that guy and gotten married to another guy (who I met; he's really nice) and, last I heard, was moving to Tuscon.

Did these boyfriend-gone-bad situations help foster a fear of intimacy? I don't know. The last time I felt serious about a guy who appeared to feel serious back towards me, I flipped. Yes, this was a few years ago, too. He was nice, he was cute, he had a good job (he was an assistant artistic director of a local theatre company, how cool is that?). Trouble is, I flipped out. I decided that he had bad breath (I don't think he did; I really am not sure), and I used it as a fact to justify dumping him which I did shortly after (perhaps even on the train back from) a two or three day trip we had taken together to Washington. As far as I can tell, that's the only time I ever got to be the dump-er.

Then I started doing the gym thing hard core. I decided that the social pressures of the NYC gay scene were too much about having a body I didn't have. So I got it. Well, I never got the abs, but I got pretty damn close to being damn hot. And I could get laid really easily. And it was fun. A lot of fun. But no one ever wanted me for me. They just cared about the package. And that's no fun.

So I got burned out on the exercise and I've gained most if not all of the weight back. And I'm terribly depressed about that. And I'm one of those people who eats when he gets depressed, which doesn't help.

It's not that I'm shy. I'm pretty affable. I'm smart; I care about people a lot. I just can't let anyone in close. I don't know... I just feel like I have all this potential that I haven't lived up to, and even if they can't, I think that guys can sense it about me. And that it's got to be a turn-off. And when you combine that with the tummy, well... it's not a fun package at all.

Sometimes I have suicidal thoughts. I know that I would never act on these impulses, but sometimes they go through my brain. Tonight, after the play, depressed as hell, waiting on the subway platform, I thought, what's to stop me from jumping in front of the 6 train... I didn't, as you can see. I don't think it would be fair to my parents and my sisters and my co-workers. And there are things in life that I really enjoy and look forward to: fine dining, good theatre and opera, travel. It's just that when I was little, it never occurred to me that I'd be going to these things all my adult life on my own. Sure, from time to time I get to borrow someone else's husband, or I find an acquaintence who wants to come with, but I always thought I deserved to have a husband of my own.

I've dreamed about him for so long, but as each day goes by, I become less and less convinced that I'll ever get to meet him. And less and less convinced that anyone out there would actually want me. I don't know why; I have so much good stuff to offer. I guess there's just a lot of baggage that I'm not sure why anyone would want to have to carry it through the airport of life...

Posted by Jon at May 14, 2004 12:40 AM | TrackBack