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As\u00a0I have mentioned in a previous blog titled,” It\u2019s a battle every day”, I have grown up in a very little French northern NH community where they rolled the sidewalks up every evening at 8:00 PM sharp.\u00a0 It was exciting to watch the fire trucks roll by every so many\u00a0months with their lights on to rescue the neighbor\u2019s cat that was actually trying to end its life from boredom and really wasn’t stuck in a tree. \u00a0The\u00a0entertainment sources\u00a0consisted of Atari video games which I think are now displayed in the Smithsonian\u00a0and\u00a0a small single screen movie theater.\u00a0 We had our pedal bikes, big wheels and skateboards for our locomotion fun but our main source of entertainment was the relationships that you formed with your friends and peers from school and your siblings.\u00a0 Life was uncomplicated and simple back then.\u00a0 We played outside all day and didn’t come home till it was time for “supper”.\u00a0 Sometimes our parents didn’t even know where we were or what we\u2019re doing but it was all good and all safe in the community we lived in.\u00a0 We lived in neighborhoods which a groups of children that lived in those neighborhoods became “gangs” of friends to play outside with.\u00a0 We engaged in outside activities which involved various balls, bats, sticks and\u00a0pucks and snow and shovels with frozen handmade mittens in the winter.\u00a0 We also relied on our creativity and our imaginations to play games.\u00a0 Some of them that I can remember are…tag, hide & seek\u00a0and Simon says.\u00a0 We enjoyed our group of coed play activities.\u00a0 We at times would also break up into gender group activities as well.\u00a0 The girls would play Chinese jump rope as well as classic jump rope. The boys would play cops & robbers and cowboys & indians. Occasionally the boys\u00a0would let the girls into\u00a0our “boy” games and we would\u00a0occasionally jump rope.\u00a0\u00a0I was quite content enjoying activities with\u00a0both groups.\u00a0 But then we all had to start growing up.\u00a0\u00a0 Our gender group activities became more prominent as we got older and started getting out of grammar school and moved into junior high and high school.\u00a0 It was no longer cool for the boys and girls to play together and we had our gender behavior stereotypes that we had to follow.\u00a0 The boys had to carry their book in their hands and girls wrapped their arms around them.\u00a0 It was what was expected!\u00a0 There were rules you know.<\/p>\n
Because I lived in the community where you were expected to conform to societies expectations, I was expected to follow these rules or accept the consequences from your peers.\u00a0 The boys were expected to hang out with your “bros” and the girls hung out with their “girlfriends” at school.\u00a0\u00a0We did not look at sports and coed participation as we do today.\u00a0 There were “girl” sports – field hockey, soccer and basketball & cheerleading.\u00a0 There were “boy” sports – ice hockey, basketball, soccer & football.\u00a0 We did not have the liberty of having coed sports such as tennis, swimming\u00a0& track \/ field.\u00a0It was unthinkable to have a girl play ice hockey or a boy be on the field hockey team or cheer leading squad!<\/p>\n
Because my parents were not very open and communicative with my brother and I about anything except to give us harsh punishment and critiques, so\u00a0my brother and I kept\u00a0many\u00a0of our\u00a0thoughts and feelings to ourselves.\u00a0\u00a0 We did not have a lot of financial resources growing up since my parents were not college educated so we were not encouraged to participate in band, boy scouts or anything that would cost money other than that was required for our basic needs.\u00a0 So I did not many extracurricular activities.\u00a0 Even sports were out of the question due to the cost of registration.\u00a0\u00a0 I did not hang out with friends and go bowling or roller skating secondary to the costs so I spent a lot of time by myself outside of school.\u00a0 My friends did note this and started labeling me as odd or weird because I would go with them.\u00a0 I was frequently teased and was told, “Wayne can\u2019t go because he can\u2019t get permission from his mommy”.\u00a0 This would hurt and I started drifting away from my standard pack of friends.<\/p>\n
This led to me having a label as being different.\u00a0 I had to make a new group of friends which was extremely intimate.\u00a0 We were a group of 4-5 of us depending on the day.\u00a0 We did not spend money to do activities.\u00a0 We would just enjoy being with each other and usually just hang and talk.\u00a0 Because my new groups of friends were very unpopular kids, I inherited the title of geek.\u00a0 I struggled with this because I was at the age in my life that I was attempting to figure out “who I was”.\u00a0 Unfortunately I was then started to feel alone and did not want to hang out with my group of friends because I wanted to shed the image of being a geek.<\/p>\n
Being alone was ok with me in that time of my life.\u00a0 It gave me time to figure out, “who I was”.\u00a0\u00a0 Once\u00a0I figured out “who I was”, a new set of challenges started in my life.\u00a0 I realized that I was a gay teenage boy in a Catholic rural community and I could never be my “true” self out in the open.\u00a0 These feelings were not accepted in the community that I was growing up in.\u00a0 There were not any openly gay students in my high school.\u00a0 The next chapter in my life had started since I realized who I was but what do I do now?<\/p>\n
I have never felt more alone than I did when I realized what made me feel comfortable in my life would have made others feel uncomfortable.\u00a0 How was I going to deal with my personal feelings?\u00a0 Would I ever dare to attempt to engage in a relationship that would make me happy or would I have to compress and bury those feelings deep inside my core and keep them locked up there?<\/p>\n
I decided to bury those feelings that I had about how I felt.\u00a0 I finished high school never even considering dating a fellow female student.\u00a0 I basically kept to myself and complete high school to the best of my ability and then to go onto college.\u00a0 When it came to my senior year in high school, I wanted to experience senior festivities as I should.\u00a0 I invited a girl to go to the senior prom with me just so I could say I went to my senior prom.\u00a0 This was the first person that I have ever asked out on a date.\u00a0 Well, I use the term date loosely.\u00a0 I asked her to go with me because she didn\u2019t have a date and she was in several of my classes.\u00a0 We basically went as friends.\u00a0 I was very happy when that night was over\u2026it emptied my wallet and was uncomfortable for both of us.\u00a0 Slow dance\u2026not on your life!<\/p>\n
Once I graduated from high school it was off to nursing school.\u00a0 I was feeling like there was something missing in my life.\u00a0 I was correct.\u00a0 I was denying my true feelings because of the community that I lived in and the expected stereotypical life I was supposed to be living.\u00a0 I was a man and was expected to find a girlfriend, get married and have children.\u00a0 That\u2019s what my parents wanted and unfortunately that\u2019s what I did.\u00a0 Why did I not listen to the little voice in my head that said, \u201cdo what makes you happy\u201d.<\/p>\n
So I decided that I needed to start dating girls so that\u2019s what I did.\u00a0 Well, let\u2019s be honest.\u00a0 I dated 1 girl.\u00a0 I guess I followed my expected path that society planned for me and I got married and had 1 child.\u00a0 My son Ryan.\u00a0 I stayed married for 15 years.\u00a0 I was not happy internally for all that time.\u00a0 I struggled frequently with my decision to live the life I was living but I was a father.\u00a0 I had to be there for my son and for his well being, I stayed in the relationship till he was 13.\u00a0 I wanted him to get to know his father and enjoy his time with me.\u00a0 I knew that my wife at the time would not be happy if I wanted a divorce and she would do anything to make me miserable.\u00a0 I knew my son had to know me and love me before I made any decisions about my life.\u00a0 So there I was again, trying to decide what to do with my life.\u00a0 I then made the decision that I had to make.\u00a0 I was not happy and it was affecting my relationship with my wife back then.\u00a0 I then decided to do live my life happy and make decisions for me.<\/p>\n
Today, I am an openly gay man.\u00a0 I have a loving son, Ryan and a wonderful spouse Michael.\u00a0 I am happy every day of my life.\u00a0 I have a terrific life and ask myself today, \u201cWhy did it take you so long to get here\u201d?\u00a0 I learned a valuable lesson in life.\u00a0 You should never deny who you really are.\u00a0 You should live your life to the fullest because life is too short.\u00a0 Don\u2019t live your life by rules of other\u2019s expectations.\u00a0 We are in control or our future paths and we should always take the path that will make us holistically whole person to enhance our mental and emotional well being.<\/p>\n
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\u00a0 As\u00a0I have mentioned in a previous blog titled,” It\u2019s a battle every day”, I have grown up in a very little French northern NH community where they rolled the sidewalks up every evening at 8:00 PM sharp.\u00a0 It was exciting to watch the fire trucks roll by every so many\u00a0months with their lights […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[15,19,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-goals-and-motivation","category-mind-body-and-spirit","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6ZZxW-tc","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1810\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/hnetalk.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}