Two posts in limbo

Okay, so I began a post today at work and when saving it saw I had another draft from the other day.  Interestingly they say much the same thing.

Here is the first:

Options are, we think, a good thing.  One of my lives was a philosophy graduate student.  One of the discussions I remember clearly was over options.  The claim was that having options, even ones that one does not utilize, is a good thing.  So if one lives in a major city, e.g., NYC or Washington, DC, the large number of museums is a good thing, adds something to one's life even if unvisited.

The claim wasn't that it was good for the society as a whole, but that it was for the individual.  A sort of freedom - I can do A, B, C, . . . Z.  I only have time for 3 things, but that I can do 23 other things is still a positive thing even though 20 of those things are left on the table, indeed even if they MUST be left on the table.

I beg to differ.  At the time, I agreed even though the "good" of being able to do something when one will not in fact do it seems diminishingly small.  Here with being gay and married extra choices are not a good thing.  So on Monday I chatted for an hour or so with a guy who is gay, is married, is likely to remain married, is monogamous and asexual with his wife and says he is happy about it.

This presents another option - C and I remain together and chaste as "brother and sister" - shades of my Catholic upbringing.

Sarcasm aside, there is something to be said for this option.  C and I are generally good with and for each other.  We raise the kids well together, generally get along, and enjoy each other's company.  If I were too choose this option then I would not have to break C's heart.  I don't mean to overstate, but that is what I feel I will do.  Not that I am all that, but I have a distorted sense of all of this.  I think I exaggerate my efficacy to reuse that lovely word.

But while this seems a good option, experience speaks otherwise.  Multiple options are not always a good thing. 


And here is the second draft from earlier today:

Faith is a funny thing.  The quote at least some have heard is that "faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see."  

On its face that doesn't make a lot of sense.  I want assurance of things that I can't see - that are unseeable?

Really?  

That is indeed a tall order.  I'm not so sure about faith as we usually use the term, but I know that I am on the left side of the pictured cliff.  I cannot see/predict/know the road ahead.  I do not know if it is a good road, the right road or the best road.  I'm sounding like Thomas Merton or Robert Frost with my road talk here.  But I do know that I am at the cliff where I have been before.  I know that I don't want to leap.  I know that I am shutting down again - sex of any sort is not attractive which is never a good sign. I'm distracted at work and elsewhere.  The spice of life is fading.  I know I don't want to go forward and that there is no healthy alternative.  There is a darker steeper cliff on the other side.   

So I've hemmed and hawed for years.  I've procrastinated.  I've avoided.  But I keep coming back to the same cliff.  

The choices are always the same.   Stay where I am - married, gay, monogamous.  Or make the fucking jump.  

If I jump I might fall. 

If I don't I will just continue to shut down. 

There is only one truly viable option.

I know that when I find avenues to be gay, to be who I am, that I am content.  I am happy, joyous and free.  I got to hang around with a dozen or so gay guys tonight - chatting, joking around, sharing, no sex.  I felt whole.  I was not shut down.