In the end, after much hope and a lot of phone calls to my wife and the assessor [a child psychologist], I didn’t get to take my kids on vacation. P. (the assessor) tried to persuade her but [my wife] said I have poorly-defined sexual boundaries, which means she doesn’t want the kids to know I sleep with my boyfriend.
As my lawyer said when I talked to her last week: “She said she would abide by the conclusions of the assessor. Now if she isn’t going to listen to his recommendations, then why are we doing this?”...
...My spirit: I cannot fly today. My wings feel heavy. I watch the wind in the maples. It smells of autumn, reeks of death. Clouds huddle the sky, shut off the freshening blast of morning gold. The street lacks light and the light lacks warmth.
I must find a quiet place, a surrounding place, where boughs of asters close about me, feed me their blossoming heat. I want to wander in a place of thesun, where late summer seems less falling and dreary. Out along a country road, crickets sing in the dustladen grasses, leaves swell like factories and the earth burgeons with a storage of warmth.
12:20 a.m. Nowadays I usually fall asleep soon after I go to bed. But sometimes I feel so tense and full of thoughts that I must get up and work them off.
D has fallen asleep and I feel I must keep watch lest ghosts trouble his dreams....Now the twin spirits of guilt and worry ride his shoulder again.
His old friends believe he's running away from God, that like Jonah he has succombed to self-pity. And D feels the wrath of God upon him, has been taught to think that way. His God seems every bit as angry as his father.
Every good and perfect gift–guilt, anxiety, anger, bigotry. These are the gifts of the tiny, lonely egomaniac our churches teach us to understand as God.
Tonight I cradled D and kissed him as I tucked him in. I whispered that no one else in the world knows what he wants, feels or needs. No one has the right or capacity to analyze and tell what is wrong with him.
I want to give the kind of love that keeps on living even when D doesn't do what I want him to do. I want him to taste acceptance. I felt my own assurance from somewhere within, when most of my friends had turned their backs. I hope I can also give D what I felt.
But tonight I feel the old phantom of loneliness hovering around somewhere outside the dark windows. It is not here, but it is near. Today I felt lost, and perceived the world as indistinct.
Summer tastes cold and close to death. I know the familiar flavour of depression. Again I am glad for the medication that mutes the cloying sweetness.
Yesterday morning my depression was worse. I didn't feel like getting out of bed, let alone going to the farmers market. But I did go and set up my table. I sold only one card. I had enough money in my pocket to buy a cinnamon bun.
I kept thinking that I don't feel like I fit in anywhere. Whenever I get involved in any group—my old church, the choir, any place I have ever worked, even my family—I eventually start to feel like an outsider. It reminds me of the isolation I felt as a teenager when I felt I had to hide my sexuality from everyone.
All morning I battled suicidal thoughts. My back, arms and legs felt stiff and sore. I guess the despair stems from loneliness, a sense that I do not have inherent value apart from the people around me.
K from choir stopped by to say hi. She said she would call me to tell me whether the choir is singing at the GAYLA conference this Friday. I told her I had been thinking of not singing this fall but she encouraged me to. I appreciated it a lot.
I think that I need to get involved in a support group for depressive people. The counseling, my self-therapy and Dan's support help me a lot, but I need to talk to other people who have experienced the same unbearable feelings and destructive thoughts.
When I got home and hugged D I felt better. I was able to tell him about my feelings and he listened patiently.
All four of our kids were here during the afternoon. S and E are here for the weekend and I went over and picked up my girls after market. Brenna came running and hugged me tight for a long time....
In the afternoon we walked to McDonalds and got McFlurries, then went over to the playground for a couple hours. By the end of this time of romping my depression had dissipated. It is always best when I have activities to do. Even if I don't believe I have the energy, playing with the kids always cheers me up.
The air is full of autumn. The wind feels moist and golden. Marian and I spread our arms together and felt it blowing against us, through our hair. Brenna discovered blue chicory by the sidewalk so the girls started picking flowers. It's too early for this weather, but it feels wonderful....
...While I was cleaning up the mess of toys [Marian] kept hopping on my back and I would ask her to stop. Finally I lost patience.
"Marian, if you do that again I'll make you clean up this mess yourself," I snapped. "I don't mind doing it for you, but I don't appreciate you bothering me while I'm working."
Without a word she started helping me, putting things away, doing a far more thorough job than I would have done.
After a minute she said to me soberly, "You said it, Dad."
She is the most amazing five-year-old I know. When we were finished I picked her up and held her and we had some wonderful bonding time....
After D and I dropped the girls off we had some more serious talk....He wants to get on with making some plans for his life....
I tried to explain the intensity of pain I suffer when I am depressed. But I said it is not unreasonable for him to want more from a partner, that he needs to be happy, and that in the long term I don't want to be in love with someone who cannot accept me as I am....
Of course I am sad because I feel so happy when I am close to him. I do not want to lose him, but I also know I can't change my path right now to please him. This morning I feel dull and tired. The sky is drab again. My depression continues, but it is less intense than on Saturday.
Sunny is singing brightly in his cage and I am happy for his presence....
Last night K [my wife] was a benign presence in one of my dreams.
I think I was still living with her but we were deciding to seperate. The girls weren't around. K had two expensive-looking cars, one of them a vintage model. It was shiny red but one wheel was missing and it was up on a pile of concrete blocks.
The weather turned dark and we watched a funnel cloud touch down near the bottom of the hill on which our house was built. Then it split into two small twisters that raced down the road past the hill.
[Note added August 26. At first I thought these tornadoes might represent the twin turmoils of K's life and my life. But today I noted that the tornado image emerged in one of my meditations on May 3. I take a personal approach to interpreting dream symbolism, and for me it may indicate power and change, perhapsthrough suffering.]
Later in my dream I went for some piano lessons at a community college nearby. I arrived late, hoping the weather would provide an excuse for me. But I spent another 45 minutes wandering around the halls looking for the room where I was supposed to be. I didn't understand why I couldn't find it because in my dream I had been taking lessons in this place for over a year. Finally I asked a receptionist and she gave me directions, but the halls were convoluted and confusing.
As I tried to find my way I met a bunch of younnger students wreaking havoc in the hall. Two professors were with them, one a bearded man who reminded me to return two books I had borrowed from him. Apparently I was taking a creative writing course from him, and he had been very helpful. But his request for the books signalled his frustration with my lack of progress.
In the end I found the room where I was supposed to take my lesson but my teacher had left. A college orchestra had arrived and was practising.
The meaning of this dream is opaque to me. But it stirred up feelings of frustration with myself.
...Why are so many gay men bigoted and ruthless? Bitch queens, I call them. You would think that after suffering under society's prejudice, we would realize the importance of treating others with respect. Instead we learn how to act like charicatures of our oppressors....
Today the depression has lifted. I spent some time with The Intimacy and Solitude Workbook by Stephanie Dowrick. It is a companion to her Intimacy and Solitude, the most valuable self-help book I have read in the past two years. It has helped me to grow in a sense of the self within me, who is both independant and dependant on relationships with others.
In my meditation I sought an image for my "childhood experience of self." I ended up drawing a picture of a telescope. As a child I was always an observer, kept on the sidelines by my parents' protection and the ridicule and cliquism of my schoolmates. I could not partake in the pleasures of life around me.
The telescope also carries overtones of sexual deceit and guilt. I've been trying to think how I could break the instrument open, but then all I'd find would be air and lenses.
11 p.m. This afternoon I took a liesurely walk through the park along the river with Marian and Brenna. They hunted for frogs.
It was–at last–one of those deep and sultry August days. Cicadas droned in the tall trees. Clouds piled high into the summer sky. Bee balm, blazing star, purple coneflower and black-eyed susans crowded the swaths of streamside meadow reconstructed by the city. We bought ice cream cones and wandered across the covered bridge built several years ago, Guelph's rustic monument to a bygone era.
The Speed River's lazy ripples stroked silver reflections along the undersides of big maple boughs wherever they lounged over the banks. That shining light beneath the leaves stirred warm impressions deep in me; half-memories of childhood days when I felt wealthy with time.
I want to capture this picture in my mind for a draughty February night. Can I store the image of my two daughters, bowed together with their faces close to the shining surface among the arrowheads and sedges? We spent so much of the afternoon at odds with one another, me calling to them to come along or lecturing Marian for getting her new running shoes muddy. Yet I come away mostly with the impression of their fair heads and willowy hair under thick sunshine.
Will I remember this four months from now? Four decades? Perhaps that is part of the beauty and power of this journal–the assurance of recall....
Today is S's fourth birthday so D drove to Alliston after work. He will stay at his mother's place overnight.
He is feeling better now than earlier in the week, and more comfortable about our future.
Last night he commented that his mother still wouldn't want to acknowledge that we are sleeping together even though by November we will have been together one year. I asked him if that meant he expected us to make it until November and he said yes.
"I'm very happy to hear you say that," I said and we held each other tight. Tonight we sleep apart. At times like these I believe he misses me the most. I have learned to value my solitude.
...At Gay Fathers [of Toronto] I joined a group discussing the gay father as an outsider. My friend Peter Scargall led the discussion. I couldn't believe how well it addressed my current situation.
We talked about cliquism, our strong desires to be on the inside when really we need to accept that we cannot be, and about the maladaptive behaviours we develop to try and please other people. We agreed that gay culture is no more uniform, open or accepting than society overall....
Friday afternoon I helped my friend Dave Vervoort load boxes out of his basement apartment into his landlady's garage. Dave, his son and his artner, Rick, are moving into a townhouse condo tomorrow.
Dave is a gay dad like me, and is doing his thesis on the impact coming out has on children of the gay father. I originally met Dave through friends from Rainbow Church in Guelph, but he and I both sang in the Guelph Wellington Rainbow Chorus and he has started going to Gay Fathers in Toronto. So I see as much of him as any of my friends. Dave is outgoing and a little crazy, always fun to be with....
All written material and images are ©1997-2001 Van Waffle. This page updated Feb. 11, 2001.
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