Checking In

I had my I-Group meeting tonight again.  Some new faces and fresh perspectives.  I could have listened to these men tell their stories all night long.  The reason why is because these men are living life with their eyes wide open.  So they don't just tell you the facts, they tell you the meaning behind the facts and the impact of the events on them.  It's so refreshing to see people so... awake.

It prompted me to ask the men tonight if they wouldn't mind helping me to prepare mentally for my trip to Canada.  Some of them have travelled alone and seem to have had such amazing experiences that I'd love to get some tips on how to enjoy the solitude and chase away the fear of loneliness.  Three weeks is a long time and that part of it worries me much more than any physical challenge or accident.

I'm checking in with a little sorrow tonight, however.  Today was a mixed bag with Jesse.  I texted with him this morning and he seems to have finally come to the conclusion that the gay community is really shallow (surprise!).  While he used to enjoy that shallowness, I think he's starting to see it as a threat to his happiness if what he wants is something deeper with... say, me.  Hopefully, the way this translates is that the largest battle I was anticipating with him will not be a battle at all.  He'll see that, perhaps, more than half of the men on his "friend" list aren't really friends after all but are merely waiting in the wings for him to get weak or would be taking pot shots at me hoping we'd break up.  

This was very encouraging because it's one of those realizations many gay men have when they become ready to really get serious with someone.  So many of the adult men in the gay community are still boys wrapped in men's skin.  Still keeping things shallow so they can leap in and out of a relationship at a moment's notice.  Just like drug addicted friends bring drugs to your life, shallow men are not conducive to encouraging deep relationships of their friends.

The downside is that it's looking like Jesse may not be going through MKP now.  I take the blame for that, actually.  It occurred to me tonight that I've been doing a bit of disservice to Jesse by over-exposing him to too much "Sean" with MKP.  Tonight I heard four different men talk about their weekends and heard four different stories.  I think Jesse has a misconception that MKP turns out Sean clones and he feels like that's "not him".  In actuality, like a snowflake, I'm a unique result of the program as is every man that goes through it.  Oh sure, we may speak the same lingo, but we are all our individual selves before and after the weekend.  We just each have our fingers firmly on our own pulse.  What we do with that information is probably transformational, but not from who we were into someone new, just from who we were into a new version of that.  A version that feels more in control of fate, thoughts, feelings, etc.

The shame is that Jesse operates very much under the assumption that these are the cards he was dealt and he's at the mercy of his brain and thoughts when in fact, it's really the other way around.  Until you get good at controlling your thoughts, it doesn't seem like you can.  In Conversations With God, God puts it best when she says, "When what you think, what you do, and what you feel are in alignment, that is the highest level of creation."

That is exactly what is happening in my life right now and it's why things are going in my direction in almost every category.  I'm holding on for the ride because life has got some great things (and some challenging things) ahead of me.