Expectations

I have met a very nice and shy guy. He is even more inexperienced than me in relationships.
I like him very much, I said to him he bring me out, this is the only term I can use for the state I am when with him.

I need to learn how my feelings works. I love H, he is younger than me, we could grow and experience together and build something for us. Of course this is the whole picture if all the pieces were right. Experience tell me that it is possible but improbable. He is not really confident, I see him, as a good person in danger of getting hurt from this bloody jungle we live in. He is not stupid, he thread carefully, but this does not mean he is safe. Distant family and insecurities are something I can certainly relate to.

He say he is happy we found each other, as I am, we feel the connection between us, only difference is he is scared to follow his istincts. He restrain himself from even taking my hand, too scared of what people could think. I try to relax him, I say to him that we are in Brighton, we are together and I will look after him. But he is comfortable only in a bar or club, dim lights and drunk.

Later home he just clams up. To tell the truth for now I am content to just cuddle him and kissing him all over, I can even snatch the odd kiss, but I feel the restrain. He say he need to get slow, and that is very much fine, but then my insecurities comes into play, the fear that i am just too much for him.
I am Italian, my blood is boiling, I need to pleasure him, that is how I am, I always knew I am passionate, But he does not respond much. I touch his skin, give him little kisses all over, cuddle him, I keep him in my arms, and he does not respond. I know this is only my expectations to build a nice relationship, my long repressed love, but he is starting from a completely different distance. I understand I have to let him be, if he want just to be togheter, we can just be togheter.

I am tactile and passionate, that is the best way I know to love him, but I have to find another way.

I can care for him, I can look after him, but do I want a friend? We have not much in common that I can see, but we are good together. We can discover each other and please and compromise each oter, it would be actually beautiful, I do like him, but he is still not really responding to me.
The problem is that I want him, but I am not really sure he wants me. I guess I have too much baggage to be content with a couple of calls and a night out. In bed he does stop me to make him come, as afraid he is going to like it. And he do like it.

I do not know what make him so scared, if indeed he is scared, I want to learn how to pleasure him, and I feel I am too much for him because I ask him why he does not let me.
He says he does not know, I hope he let me help to understand.

I look at it from his point, and I can understand him,
I have to made him trust me, I feel he like me too, but we have to work on it.
I hope he is mature enough to work with me. He is such a great and gentle soul.

I am observing myself and my actions from a stable ground, I see my behaviour and I can control myself. This is very good news for me, I am taking responsabolity for what I do. It took me a long time, but I can see I can be content with my life, with no guilt shame and recrimination on myself.

It is amazing that I can think of someone. Whatever will happen with H, I am learning from him a great deal. I want to share it with him. I can only hope.

Friends.

Friends are a strange entity in my life. Friend is the magic word.

I had always counted on friendship, friends are my only support, and that is the truth.
After me I can only ask a friend when I am in deep water. Or at least that is my interpretation and expectation of it.
I guess I ask too much.

Actually I want to get it differently. I use to be completely dependant emotionally on friends, and I can see that was one of my major misjudgment.
It was definitely unfair on them. Obviously friends are friends, everyone have his life. I can be a part of that but not more than that. There was a time when I believed in friends, like in books, like in some kind of Stephen King story. Obviously it is not.
I believed in best friend too, You know, the one that stick with you, whatever the weather.Like Tom Saywer and Huckleberry Finn. Obviouly it is not.
I did never get it. My feelings, emotions, needs of exclusivity and belonging, the feeling of being important for someone, anyone, those feelings of anger and delusion, they just clouded the bigger picture.
To tell the truth I never looked at the bigger picture. I never knew there was a picture to look at. But i guess that come with experience. It does really make all sense.

I am realising the my epiphany. as someone called it in gaylife, was just the start of the whole process of discovery. I am looking back at my past to understand who i am today. I am retracing my steps, and where there were hazy memories, now I see facts and consequences. I am putting the words under the pictures.
To be fair on myself I did try before, but always failed to see the meaning of it all.
I do not if for the detox or my acceptance, I am now connecting the dots. I feel very very good about it. It is a great confidence booster.
In two weeks I met and talked to so many people, gay and straight, old and new, and I am foundinf that I am a chatty guy, I finally feel normal, what an irony.
I am a partecipant on the circus of life. I have gone from apathy to full head up attitude, and it is really working. I feel confident. .I can still mix and minge, like in my younger years.

From now i have to be able to rein my emotions and be really sensible with people around me. I was like a blood sucker. My expectations were always too high. I need to give time and space to everyone. I will unleash myself easily without drama. I will reserve my energy for the man that, I hope, will come into my life. I cannot pretend to be understood or loved from friends.
My passion and emotion I will leave for my lover.

For the sake of my future friends, I hope to get laid soon. Funny ah?!!?
Really I have to manage my feelings better. I do not want to waste my needs.

I have to try. Already I can see that with every person I meet or any cyber friend I get, I behave like a jerk. I feel that I have to get myself naked before I can be really comfortable. I need to talk about me, I need to tell my story;
I feel like I am justifyng myself for who I am. I fear of not being understood, so I give my soul out, thought by thought, word by word. I need to explain why i got to this point in this state.

But now I see better, I see what is happening and I am trying to behave. I guess more than depressed, I was simply repressed. I just hope that after those initial times I will come down. Writing my thoughts is certainly a focus, and seeing on a page make it real and I can understand it.

Still it is difficult to keep to the general chat. Now I have to follow some interest and than I will be able to play my part, no problem.

I have to try not to suffocate people that are getting near me.

Or maybe I can talk about myself without guilt. I do not have to get naked in front of "friends". I will let them strip me on their own pace, if they want at all.

Roots

A friend of mine send me a link of the city where he live, and it got me thinking. I have no roots.
I am completely without a place that I can call home. I mean I have been here in Brighton for seven years, lived in the same flat for almost three, and I like it very much, but unless I got involved in some group or I pursue some hobby or interest, I could be everywhere.

It is worrying that I always felt this way. I have moved a lot, I still remember how pissed I was with my bags in train stations, it really felt shit having to drag two or three bags full of my life. I took the conscious decision never to get a fig about stuff, just in case I had to move. I have no history, no photos of when I was a kid, no mementos even of later life, only because it was a struggle to keep them. I had no safe house were to put the important things in my life.

Now I have the prospect of a move to Greece for the summer season, I did not get the intervirw yet, so it is very early days, but my head is already in overdrive. I have to consider making this city my hometown. I guess I am thinking already too much.

My point is that I came to Brighton because it is a tourist spot, and with my job it is a bonus. Only now, courtesy of the credit crunch, jobs are scarce. With my infinite wisdom and luck I get myself out of a job and into a trip of self discovery. I knew I needed a holiday after non stop years of struggle, but I did not expect to be so dramatic to me. Thank God, I needed it all.

Anyway, I got now the chance to go and do the summer season in Greece, and after that the chance of winter season somewhere else. Season work is a great way of making money and suck up the surroundings and activities, in Italy on the Alps I used to go walking, beautiful scenery and ( almost ) peace of mind. I did love it.

The attraction for Greece is great, I can get a fresh start, no one knows me, I can be who I am, meet new people and form relationships, specially in a big hotel resort, with lot of other people around. It could be really good for me, I am feeling much better and I just need to jump in, it is a great chance.

More than that, I have become a recluse, with no interests, apart this computer, and it is not enough anymore. I need to really get out and do something I can enjoy and unwind with.
Free water activities are a perk of the job, I would love to dive or really learn to swim, I need to tone my body and get myself in good shape. I have never been a fanatic of fitness, but I really need to re- learn how to take care of my body.

I could start here with at least a daily run on the beach, but I am bloody lazy. I had never even been to the beach here, can you believe it? It is absolutely vile and disgraceful. Me, not the beach. The beach is beautiful. I liked to feel my body when I was younger, it gave me a nice boost of confidence. I felt sexy actually. Anyway, water sports is another good reason for me to go.

My only problem with all of this is my flat, it is small but cosy, I like it and it fits me. I would be sorry to lose it. In my early seasons, in between posts I used to mother's home, it was a good compromise on not having to live 24/7 with her. I got some respite. Now if I start again I should live on the go for long periods, in some rented room, and the idea is not really appealing. After months of hard work I 'll prefer somewhere more homely.

I was thinking of keeping this, I could manage no problem, keys in my pocket, security of sort.
Or I can just get with the flow and see what happen, without parachute, I did it in the past and I always landed, somehow, on my feet. But I feel I am too old for it. I need to know where is my place. Moving life again, that is a thought. I feel fine here, I have a small safety net if something happen.

This will be probably my next big decision of this new life, see where I have to put roots. I do not mind if it is going to be here, but I would like to check if there are other places where I could really go and finish my days, happy with myself, hobbies and relationships. I like the outdoors of New Zealand, or Australia. Maybe I should look for a job over there. Why not?

My point exactly.

I promised to myself tomorrow morning I'll go running.

Mistakes

I am happy to be gay, finally I feel comfortable.

I got over the nagging thought I had that maybe I was not. Only reason I thought of it is because while I see the signals every gay man give out, I do not see them in myself.
Luckily I have been able to relax a bit with new friends and it made me loose. I can be lovely and wonderful and funny and bitchy and very gay indeed if I just let me.

I am learning, it is early days, but I see me and I like me.

I realised that I need to be in contact with others, I know it is a truth of life, but I never felt able to. At work everybody needed something, specially as I led a team of people. As a junkie the only people I met were to get the next score.So no real contact, only opportunism of some kind.

I got so used to it that I lost the ability, the naturality to relate to others without an agenda of sort. I just locked my better and sensitive part, scared of anyone having an opionion of me. It really got me. Only now that I am writing these words I can see how much it cost me the mistake of not knowing what I was doing when I first got to see me.

I got so scared that I lost complete contact with reality and others.

I first discovered that there was the chance I could really be gay at 16. Until then my experiences with Andrea at college were nice at the moment, but I hated them later. I did put that down to perversion, as was in the parameter of my upbringing.

When I entered the working world, I started to see the diversity of it all, peoples and lifestyles presented to me and I was happy to try and find the best people that fitted me. I was looking for my place; the family one was lost long before, with the ties still there. I tried to be myself.

What really puzzle me is the reaction I got from the family. My whole life no one cared what I was doing and feeling, and when I looked out in the world I got kicked down again. I should have lied to them from the start, the problem is that I never understood myself and what I was seeing.

I mean when I met a girl that had gay friends and had a "label" as easy and dubbing with drugs, no one explained to me why it was wrong for me to be friend with her. Elena was really the start of my "problems". Of course she was the manifestation of them.

She was older, had a bi husband ( he worked with me), and smoked some weed. Oh, and she had gay friends. All in all bad company, or that is what mother and brother thought.
Instead of making me reflect why I was attract to her, they just cut my privileges and locked me. I could only go to work, possibly on a different shift than Elena husband.

My reaction to it was to believe that my attraction to her was because I liked her as a woman.
I know that she gave me my first fuck at 17. After that she knew I was gay. She told me. She made meet other gays.
I knew she was right because her husband gave me a blow job, plus my past experiences at school and the perverts I met. but I had no courage to admit it. Elena was simply trying to help me because she saw that I was not happy. Mother could help,maybe, but I was in no position to express my feelngs to her. The mistake of my life is that I did not give mother a chance to see me. But my experience with her was not a good one. Elena was bringing me out, in all senses, she taught me to be open to my feelings. I took that teaching and used it on mother. I told her I felt distant from her. She reacted mentally, and that was what i saw then.

I lost the support of Elena because of mother and because i was not able to communicate with her. I will always regret that.

The truth is that after that I felt that I was alone. Elena tried to should me who I was, but she did not have the time. We got separated and I kept thinking I was wrong, feeling how I felt. Believing I was wrong did not give me the confidence to go to mother for help. It was not good to be on the wrong side of anything with her. When I told her I felt distant from her, I was honest. But I did not said I was not loving her. I guess that is what she understood, though.

After Elena it was a constant battle, my teenage rebellious phase became a struggle for life. My only way of not get emotionally crushed was drugs. What I needed was some friends, and when I realized I had none, I started my junkie career. It was too late to go back, and mother was getting even more distant because of my weaknesses. I do blame her for not taking me into her arms and making me understand. I know she could have done so, if it was not for her own depression. Still, we did not find a way to meet. I can only say that I tried several times, but I was met only with her depression. I tried to understand her, but there was no common ground. Only hate and anger.

When I got hooked on drugs, I slowly retired into the cocoon I was building for me, I needed love and needed to be loved. Friends where good, but not good enough. I needed more than friendship, I tried to convince myself differently, but it only made it worst. Drugs get me to believe nothing was important. I thought I did not need anyone. Just get fixed and you will OK. I did believe my own lies.

In the process I lost my social skills. I did not have any good time if I was not on drugs. So first I did get stoned, and after I did not need anyone, I did not like to be with anyone, I could not fit.

And now I am looking back and I can see it all. I made so many mistakes. I ruined my life because I did not know how to handle the situations.

I am trying to see the bigger picture. I feel I should find mother and ask for forgiveness, but it is too late, as everything it would made no difference to me. And to her would be probably an opening of old wounds. I hope she can feel my love and my sorrow, though.