Category Archives: Memories

Remembrance

31 October 2011 Jarred 1 Comment

Given that this is the season to honor and remember loved ones who have passed from this world, I thought I would make today’s blog post a more personal one and talk about a beloved relative, my paternal grandmother.

I forget my exact age, by Grandma Harris passed away when I was very young, before I began school, if memory serves. The past several years of her life, she battled cancer. I vaguely remember many nights where my sister and I would sit in the hospital waiting room with one of my parents while the other one would go upstairs to visit Grandma during her latest hospitalization. I cannot think of Grandma without thinking of memories of her failing health because I never knew her before her battle began.

I am told that Grandma was a caring and strong woman all of her life. I’m inclined to believe that because of the strength, grace, and dignity with which she faced her fading health in her final years. Anyone can be strong and loving in the best of times. However, it takes a special person — like Grandma Harris — to be strong in sir darkest hours.

One of my most cherished memories is of a day I spent alone with my grandparents. Grandma Harris gave me a peanut butter cookie¹ and I laid on one of the couches in my grandparents’ single-wide trailer munching on it. Now, like any preschooler, I was a messy eater. And peanut butter cookies are prone to leaving lots of crumbs. By the time I was done, both I and the couch were covered in crumbs. My grandparents saw it.

Grandpa Harris — who had a much harder edge than his wife — started to get upset and critical. But Grandma Harris calmed him and told him that these things happens. Besides, Grandma Harris had a solution. She told Grandpa to go get the old vacuum cleaner. He did and Grandmother began to vacuum up all the crumbs, both those on the couch and those on me. Grandma Harris was a rather practical woman.²

When I think about the kind of person I want to be, I often think of Grandma Harris. If I manage to embody half the love, strength, and no-nonsense approach to living that she did, I think I’ll have done a great job. And I’d like to think she’d be pleased with the man that little boy grew up to be.

[1] Grandma Harris loved making peanut butter cookies, and they are forever intwined with memories of her in my mind. If you asked me for an honest evaluation of which cookies I thought tasted the best, I would likely say chocolate chip cookies. But if you ask me what my favorite cookie is, I will still tell you “peanut butter” cookies more than three decades later. It’s not about how they taste, it’s about the fact that they are the cookies Grandma Harris used to make.

[2] Plus it gave me countless opportunities to watch people’s reactions whenever I mention in passing that I got hovered by my own grandmother.

Memories, Meta-Blogging, Religion

Guest-blogging, Day Three

25 October 2011 Jarred Leave a comment

My final day of guest-blogging at Confessions of a Former Conservative is being met with My enemy’s pawn is still just a pawn to me. Here’s the teaser:

Of course, I told myself that I didn’t hate these Pagan people.
After all, they ultimately were not the enemy, and I was no Jack Chick.
I understood that these poor peers of mine were mere dupes of Satan,
pawns of the enemy that were being used. I didn’t hate them. I did not
spew venom at them directly, but at their invisible masters, of whom
they were completely unaware.

Gender and Sexuality, Memories

The Path Left Behind

31 March 2011 Jarred 4 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

I came out to myself and my best friend at the time on Monday, 1 April 1996. Today, 1 April 2011 marks the fifteenth anniversary of that event. In honor of that, I’ve decided to do a series of posts on the topic. This is the second one.

As I said in my previous post, the night I came out to Merion in that little alcove was the beginning of a new journey to self-acceptance and personal discovery. However, the start of that journey meant the end of a different, darker journey. The journey that ended that night, the journey towards “freedom from unwanted same-sex attractions,” was a painful and self-destructive one and one I’m glad I left behind. And yet, this anniversary would not be complete without talking about it at least a little.

Truth be told, I can’t cover that journey — which lasted for roughly eight years — in a single blog post. I hope to restart A Journey to Queerdom soon, and I will explore it more fully there. For this post, I hope to tell just enough to capture a glimpse of the emotional chaos that overshadowed me as I came to that fateful April Fool’s Day night.

At the end of my sophomore year in college, I had finally admitted that my feelings for other guys was more than “just a phase.” It was a very real part of my psychological makeup and it was there to stay unless I took some drastic measures. So I started trying to turn myself straight. Granted, I didn’t go to any sort of therapy or ex-gay ministry — fortunately, I wouldn’t have known where to find such help in Selinsgrove of the surrounding area. So instead, I simply tried to go through the process of praying for healing on my own and asking friends I could trust to also pray for me.*

Asking for friends’ help actually created a cycle of increasing frustration. I would admit my “struggle” to each of them separately — a frightening prospect in itself each time, as I was never sure how they might react to the experience and there’s a lot of shame in admitting you like members of your own sex in evangelical and fundamentalist circles, even if you make it clear that you don’t want them. They’d pray with me and for me, and I’d feel better. I’d get an emotional boost and would feel like I could take on the world.

But the emotional high would eventually wear off while the feelings of attraction would persist. My frustrations and sense of shame over feeling the way I felt would return, often magnified by the sense of added failure that somehow I had ~~lost~~ forfeited the “spiritual help” I had gotten and failed yet again. So I’d decide that I needed more help, and that meant telling another friend and seeking further support and help. And there, the cycle would begin all over.

The thing is, dealing with one’s feelings is ultimately something one has to do alone. No one can feel those feelings for you. No one can take them away from you. No one can do anything other than support you through it all, and no one can give that support 24/7. I found that late at night, laying in my bed, I was left all alone to either face my desire for love and intimacy with another man alone or repress it alone. It was my burden to carry, and the more I fought it, the heavier that burden got.

One of the things that drove me to the breaking point on Saturday night, 30 March 1996** was the fact that my loneliness was driven home when my closest friends and my biggest supporters all ended up spending that night with their respective female love interests. I realized that night that this really was my burden to carry, because when push comes to shove, they got to go to their God- and church-approved girlfriends (or potential girlfriends) and find some degree of intimacy and the promise of full intimacy sometime down the road. That realization, and their unintentional acts of rubbing it in my face, pushed me into a full tailspin that night. I spent over half an hour considering and even planning to end my own life.

I’m not going to describe that night. I think I’ve described it well enough elsewhere. But what I will say is that in that night, I wanted to die because I realized that I could never “beat” my sexual feelings and romantic desires. There was no going straight for me. I had tried and failed. If I continued down that path, the only thing waiting for me was depression, loneliness, and shame. And I couldn’t face that path. If that path was my only choice, I knew it would be better to end my life. So I seriously contemplated it.

And at some point, that realization horrified me. So two nights later, I chose to walk another path.

—

* Given the number of ex-gays who talk about going to therapy, support groups, or even residency programs, I felt out of place at first. I was quite relieved when I discovered that the bXg community had an entire group for people who went through self-guided attempts at becoming ex-gay.

** I’ve searched every aspect of my memory, and everything convinces me that the truly terrifying dark night was two nights before I came out on April Fool’s Day. Curiously, this means I surived in some sort of in-between state for a full day on Sunday. I have no idea what that day was like or how I managed to survive and not find myself with the same dark thoughts that night as I had entertained the night before.

Memories

Memories of Guilt

30 March 2011 Jarred 7 Comments

Back when I was a kid, I thought I had to ask for forgiveness of every little sin in order to be forgiven and get into heaven. I’m not really sure where I got this idea. I know when I was a teenager, Harry did introduce me to the idea and explained the theology behind it. He taught it to his junior high Sunday school class (which I took over for him when he left our church to join New Covenant).

But I know that my belief in this idea predated Harry’s teaching. I remember being a little kid (I’d say eight or nine) lying in bed, worried that I’d forgotten to tell Jesus I was sorry about something. I’d be trying to fall asleep and a pattern would emerge. I’d ask Jesus to forgive me for something sin I thought I had committed. Then I’d suddenly have a thought and realize that the thought I just had was probably sinful too (and it was usually some silly little thought, though I can’t think of any examples). So I’d quickly whisper a quick “please forgive me, Jesus” to cover the new thought. And the cycle would continue.

I think that carried with me right through to the day that I finally decided to make a break from Christianity. I think it’s one of the reasons I made that break. It was just too much pressure for me, a pressure that convinced me that I was constantly in a state of sin, constantly rotten, and even constantly worthless. This idea that you have constantly monitor everything and ask for forgiveness is hell on one’s self esteem and sense of worth.

In some ways, I think it contributed to the codependency I’m currently seeking help for. My codependency was a way to show myself that I wasn’t that bad and there was good in me. I was redeemable. Of course, I told myself when I left Christianity that those days were over. I no longer had to prove myself or be “good enough.”

But I think some part of my unconscious didn’t get that memo back then. Because I still set out to be the best person I can be. Don’t get me wrong, being the best person you can be is a good thing. But putting yourself under all the pressure because you have to be the best person you can be in order to be “good enough” or “worth something” is self-destructive.

So as I think about this, I feel like I’m coming back and relearning that lesson now. I have value. It’s good to do good and care about and for others, but it’s not something I have to do to be worthy of love, respect, or human dignity. It’s as if that lesson is taking deeper root, that I’m learning it on a whole different level, and that feels great.

Dating, Emotions, Love, Memories, Music

Music, Memories, and Emotions

11 August 2010 Jarred 8 Comments

The other day, I was listening to the radio while driving, and “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” by Aerosmith came on. I absolutely love that song and want to include it here. So thanks to YouTube, enjoy a nice rendition with lyrics, no less:

I actually have an emotional history associated with this song. The song was quite popular on the radio back in 1998, thanks to Armageddon. At the time, I was also involved with a young man name Zech. It was actually my first relationship, providing you don’t count the friend I experimented with in high school. The song meant a lot to me back then. Every time I heard it, I thought of Zech.

The other day when I heard the same song, it made me think of another guy. I’ll call this guy D (until he tells me he’s ready for me to talk about him by name. D and I have been talking, hanging out, and otherwise enjoying each other’s company. We’re not actually dating, though I hope that changes some day in the not-too-distant future.

What I find interesting is that while similar, the reaction the song evokes in me regarding D now and the reaction I had back when I was involved with Zech. In both cases, the theme of the song — the desire to be with that special someone as much as possible — resonated deeply with me. However, the emotional undercurrents are worlds apart.

As I mentioned, Zech was my first boyfriend (though come to think of it, we never officially dated). We were both young and immature, and I was only recently out (I had only finally accepted my sexuality two years earlier). This meant that I was going through a lot of emotional turmoil, and tended to cling to Zech in a sense of desperation. And that desperation came through back then as I’d listen to the song. I didn’t want to miss a thing, because I was terrified that things would end. Part of me wanted to squeeze as much out of the relationship before the horrible ending came, and part of me foolishly believed that simply by being ever-present, ever-vigilant, and ever-suffocating, I could actually prevent the horrible ending from coming.

I’ve grown up a great deal in the intervening twelve years, and I now listen to that song again with a new guy in mind. And once again, I find myself nodding along with the song. But rather than a nagging sense of desperation, my heart is filled with a sense of peace and contentment.

The funny thing is, there area few parallels. There’s no guarantee that things will work out between D and I. (Is there ever really any such guarantee?) I don’t know how long I have with him or even if we’ll ever become a couple like I’m hoping for. I think it’s likely though.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter. I have this time now, and I want to make the most of it. Not out of fear or desperation, but out of hope and joy.

People often talk about how music can evoke powerful emotions and we can associate specific memories and feelings with a song. However, I sometimes think that people forget that new connections and associations can be made with old songs that replace or overpower the old ones. I know from personal experience that this is true, because I enjoy “Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” far more today than I did back in 1998.

In fact, I think I’m going to go listen to it again.

Memories, Writing

Entering a writing contest and reminiscing about roleplaying

10 January 2010 Jarred Leave a comment

Image by churl via Flickr

I’ve spent the past several days playing around with Writing.com (WDC). It’s been good for me, as it’s helped get me motivated again to actually write. And I’ve enjoyed the feedback I’ve gotten from some truly skilled writers over there. Tonight, I decided to further participate in the site by joining my first writing contest. I chose to submit an entry to the Character Creation Contest. I figure I’m pretty good at character creation, so it’s a good place to get my feet wet. I’ll move on to more challenging contests — one that force me to work on my weak points — as time goes by. So I put together a character profile for Hargath, a dark priest.

Hargath is actually a recreated and edited version of a character I played in an online freeform roleplaying campaign. The way I came up with him always amused me.

When the group on the BBS decided to set up the room for the campaign, I hadn’t decided if I was going to participate yet. So I sat back as people started making posts introducing their characters. I noticed that everyone was creating noticeably good — as in morally upright — characters. As I watched the party form up, I realized that this was looking like it would be a campaign where the players worked together perfectly well.

Now, perhaps it’s because one of my favorite roleplaying games (though I never got to actually play it) was Paranoia, but that state of affairs didn’t sit well with me. I felt that like good storytelling, good role-playing (I’m also of the opinion that the difference between the two is almost negligible) required some conflict between characters. It wasn’t enough to just have to overcome the obstacles of the NPC’s. There needed to be some obstacles to teamwork that needed to be overcome as well.

So I decided to introduce a dark priest. I forget what his name was, and I don’t think I described him quite as well as I’ve described Hargath. But he was definitely the dark cloud looming over the party. And his presence did make for some interesting role-playing.

Shortly before the campaign fell apart (those of us involve simply found ourselves with not enough time to continue it), I remember an exchange between my priest and the mage that my friend, Ben played. At one point, the party came up against a particularly nasty captain we had to get rid of. The party agreed that assassination was the best course of action, and my priest volunteered to do the dirty work. The mage decided that my priest needed a disguise in order to get close enough. The mage happily helped out in that department obliged, by transforming my priest into a woman!

Of course, my priest got his revenge. His new disguise allowed him to get the captain in private and dispatch the captain in a formal ritual sacrifice to the dark goddess. And the mage’s spell further enabled my priest to psychically link said mage to the victim. The end result, the mage experienced everything done to the captain as if it was happening to him. Ben thought the whole idea was a hoot. In fact, he wrote the entire scene for me because I didn’t have time.

Of course, my choice of characters did create problems between me and at least one other player. Another friend, Jared, played a Druid. Jared was interested in Druidism himself at the time. And my priest character did a couple things (like steal the soul of a horse so that it would bend to his will) that freaked Jared out. Note that I said it freaked Jared out rather than his character. Jared was mad at me for days. That much was unfortunate. But as I explained to him, part of role-playing and fiction is allowing some characters to do things we wouldn’t dream of doing in real life. After all, if all characters were the goody-two-shoes most of us try to be, our games and stories wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.

And I admit that playing an evil character helped me write such characters much better.

Friends, Memories, Personal Development

A Bad Leadership Fit

21 December 2009 Jarred 1 Comment

I remember how frustrated Diane, our old IVCF staff worker, used to get with me my sophomore year in college. I had decided to get involved in IVCF leadership that year and had taken a position on the chapter’s executive board. It quickly became apparent that I was not well suited or that kind of leadership. My outlook was simply more relational.

The scene played out several times, varying only in details. The day of a meeting would roll around, and I’d be talking to someone. The conversation would be deep and personal, as I was never good at small talk and people tend to spill their guts around me anyway. I’d note the time and decide that continuing the conversation was important than getting to my meeting on time. Often, I wouldn’t make it to the meeting at all. This would frustrate Diane to no end, adn she’d try to get me to understand that while relationships were important, always breaking my other commitments for the sake of a conversation wasn’t entirely right either. I don’t think she ever got very far with me on that score. Eventualy, we agreed to muddle through the rest of the year. We also agreed that I’d take a role the following year that would be better suited to my nature.

I’ve grown a lot in the fifteen years that have passed since then. As a more mature person, I can now more readily see Diane’s point more clearly. And I’m more likely to judge a relational need more carefully these days, taking into account how immediate the need is, how serious my other commitments are, and other such factors. Today, there’s a real possibility that I’ll say, “This is important. I care and I want to be there for you. But can we talk about it in a couple of hours?”

But I’m still mainly relationally oriented. I’ll keep my commitments to activities like meetings to a minimum. The difference, however, is that I’m less likely to take on sucha commitment in the first place, rather than taking it on and then breakign it later. Because I’d rather have my time free so I can listen to people. I understand that now. And I allow for that preference reponsibly.

Geeky, Memories

Confessions of a Reformed Command Line Snob

24 September 2009 Jarred 14 Comments

Image via Wikipedia

Adam Gonnerman wrote an insightful post about how showing the average user the Linux command line (or the DOS command shell on a Windows box, for that matter) can create a sense of fear and intimidation. It’s an interesting piece and I highly recommend reading it as well as the conversation in comments.

As I look at my own comments in that discussion, I’m reminded of how much my thinking about computers has changed over the years. When I was in college, I was a total command line snob. I looked down at GUI’s in general and thought they were the road to making every computer user stupid.

I think this was a common mentality for a lot of us who were into computers back when I was in college and before. After all, when I first started college in the Fall of 1992, Windows was still something you started from the DOS command line after you booted the machine. And the computers in the college’s computer labs were set up under Novell. You’d enter your login credentials, get dumped to the DOS prompt, and type “win” if you wanted to start that stupid GUI.

Even Linux distributions tended to treat XWindows as an afterthought at the time. That same freshman year, I loaded Slackware Linux onto my IBM XT clone (I will admit that I was nowhere near the cutting edge in terms of the computer I personally owned). It involved downloading a couple dozen images and burning them onto 3.5″ floppies and then using a special boot disk to install the system on the computer. XFree86 was an optional install and the distribution was — again — set up to have you log into a command prompt and then start XWindows from there. And since trying to get XWindows to work on your particular configuration was no easy task back then, it struck me as mostly a waste of time.

So I came through a time when using a computer meant you had to be a wizard with a command prompt. It wasn’t optional. You learned all the magic commands and you lerned how to use them extremely well or you were hopelessly lost. It was a glorious time, especially for those of us who loved the challenge. So to me at the time, the growing popularity of GUI’s (by my senior year, all the computers in the lab were running NT 3.5) and the ease of access they offered was destroying the challenge. It was making computers something useful for anyone rather than the playground of the geeky elite. And I was just enough of a snob (and had just enough of my self-worth invested in my geekiness) that this upset me.

So what changed? To be honest, I changed. I quit keeping up to date on computers. I became the average computer user myself, and I found that I liked being an average computer user. So I let go of my elitism.

I suppose a few readers may be surprised to hear me refer to myself as an average computer user. After all, how can a software engineer — someone who is well versed in programming computers — be merely an average computer user? Well, the answer to that is that I’m an embedded software engineer. And that’s a rather different kind of computer programming.

I’m currently developing the software for a very unusual device. It’s a computer, but you won’t see it sitting on anyone’s desk. It has no keyboard, mouse or monitor. In fact, if you look at it, all you see is a big metal box with a bunch of cables coming out of it.

Inside, there is a bunch of analog-to-digital converters and I/O expanders that allow the processor to read or assert logic levels on various signals on the circuit boards inside that box. My job is to develop the software that accesses those ADC’s and those I/O expanders with all the signals, do stuff with the data read, and assert certain signals based on that data. I spent most of this afternoon making sure I could communicate with the ADC’s and I/O expanders. Tomorrow, I’ll spend a significant amount of my time making sure that the readings I’m getting from the ADC’s are valid and mean what I think they mean. I’ll also spend time making sure that I can read and control the logic signals from the I/O expanders as I expected.

This is a typical programming project for me. I spend most of my time looking over data sheets for devices like ADC’s, I/O expanders, microprocessors/microcontrollers, EEPROM’s, and power management chips. I also read schematics and hardware design specifications that explain how these devices are configured and are supposed to work on the system I’m currently working with. I’ve learned to write assembly code for PowerPC‘s, ARM processors, Blackfin processors, and a few others I’ve probably forgotten about.

Quite frankly, after I’ve spent all that time learning about the stuff I need to know to work with the devices I program, I don’t want to learn about the computer sitting on my desk anymore. I just want it to work and work relatively well. I’ll let someone else worry about making sure all my programs work correctly and that my computer is secure and safe from viruses. After all, the computer on my desktop is just a tool to me now, and tools are good if they’re easy to use. It gives me more time to focus on all that embedded stuff that’s part of my job.

So I quit being a command line snob.

Family, Memories, Pets

Tribute to a Dog

25 August 2009 Jarred 1 Comment

This week, my sister and her family had a bit of a scare. They’re fifteen year old beagle mix, Tasslehoff Burrfoot (Tas for short), had a bit of a medical scare. They took her to the vet, expecting the worst. Fortunately, the vet gave Tas a happy diagnosis and a promising prognosis. So everyone’s relieved to know that we have at least a little longer to enjoy her company, at least when she’s not too busy sleeping.

When Stephanie first gave everyone the initial news, I began to think about what I wanted to say about Tas. I wanted to give her something of a tribute like I did with Saddle when I heard he had passed. So having thought about it, I’ve decided that even though it looks like Tas is going to be with us for a while longer, I figured I’d go ahead and offer my tribute anyway. After all, why wait until a loved one is gone before expressing how much we love and value them?

For those who may be wondering, Tas’s comes from a character in the Dragonlance Chronicals by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman. My brother-in-law, Bill, was a huge fan of the whole Dragonlance series at the time he and Stephanie took Tas into their homes as a little puppy. Bill decided the name fit Tas as she was always friendly and high-spirited. And of course, the day that Tas was sleeping on Bill’s lap and he suddenly realized she had somehow managed to snake her front paw into the pocket of his jeans just cinched the whole deal.

When I thik of Tas, I most often think of her younger years, before she started facing the health issues of getting older. I remember the highly energetic pup who loved to be chased through Bill and Stephanie’s apartment in Rome, NY. I still laugh when I think of how she would run up the couch at an angle, shift her body just enough to push off the wall behind the couch with her legs — I always joked that her legs were longer than the average beagle’s legs so they could fit the springs inside them — and run back down the couch on a new trajectory. I also remember the day that I had to stop in total amazement as I watched her leap from a total stopped position over the back of the couch (it had been moved so it was in the middle of the room rather than against a wall) and landed on the seat cushion. I never understood how such a small dog could clear that height from a velocity of zero.

The other great thing about Tas was that as Bill and Stephanie began to have kids, she proved to be one of the best family dogs I’ve ever seen. She was quite protective and nurturing of each as the kids when they were born, often expressing distress if the adults around allowed one of them to cry or fuss for to long. (To Tas, thirty seconds often seemed to qualify as too long.) And then there was the day my sister and I watched as Tas managed to retrieve her paw from my then-infant nephew’s death-grip simply by licking his hand until he let go.

The years have worn on Tas. She’s not quite as energetic as she used to be, though the last time I saw her I still saw the occasional glimmer of that old fire in her eyes. She’s taken more to sleeping and her days of flying around the house or chasing rabbits in the yard are mostly to a close. But she’s still a sweet old girl and everyone who has known her can attest that she’s probably one of the best furry family members anyone could ever ask for. And I’m thankful we all have a little more time to spend with her.

Deep Thoughts, Friends, Memories

Sometimes, there’s only so much you can do

13 August 2009 Jarred 7 Comments

One of the things that I have learned over the past few years is that there are certain consequences to having a blog under your real name and a visible presence on social networking sites. Namely, people from your past suddenly start finding you again. This can be both a pleasant surprise and an unpleasant experience. This is especially true when said friends last associated with you when you were a completely different person — say an evangelical Christian who identified as heterosexual.

In most cases, I’ve been very fortunate when people from my past pop up. They either don’t comment on how I’ve changed (though I suspect some of my old high school classmates might actually be pleased to learn I’ve loosened up since leaving Williamson) or they’ve expressed curiosity and a desire to understand how I got to where I am today, given my starting point.

This week, I had one of the — fortunately rare in my cases — less pleasant experiences. A friend from my first two years in college decided to contact me expressing a strong desire to rebuild our friendship. She also expressed remorse for how badly a prior attempt to rebuild our friendship turned out. That previous attempt was extremely short-lived, so much that I never revealed any of the changes I had undergone. It simply became clear that a friendship was not possible — at least not the kind that was being sought.

So when Lynn apologized and asked again to rebuild a friendship, I did so with some hesitancy. I still got the impression she had expectations for what the friendship was going to be like — expectations based on the person I was in 1993 and which would not be met by the strong, self-loving person with a decent sense of boundaries that I am today. But I’m also the kind of person that wants to give people the benefit of the doubt. So I told Lynn that I’m willing to be friends, but that she needed to understand the kind of friendship I could offer due to the changes I’ve gone through in my life. To give her an idea, I gave her the address to my website so she could learn about me again.

Alas, it would seem Lynn can’t deal with the person I’ve become. I’m not entirely surprised by that, though I had hoped that things may change. So she’s decided to let me go, though she promises to be there for me and be my strongest supporter if I should ever choose to “leave these lifestyle choices.”

To that I say, “Bah, humbug.” I tried the good little straight boy routine before and it almost cost me my life. I simply have neither the desire nor a compelling reason to return to that nightmare. And if it means that I will have to struggle on without Lynn’s support and friendship…well, let’s be honest here. I’ve thrived without her support and friendship since around 1994, and I’m pretty sure I can maintain that trend indefinitely. After all, I wasn’t the one who sought to renew our friendship after all this time.

In the end, I think that’s what bothers me most about this experience. Lynn came to me looking for something. She talked about how she had missed me and wanted me back in her life. But the moment she realized I no longer met her expectations based on her recollections that are over a decade old, she suddenly decided that wasn’t possible anymore. Not only that, then she started acting as if I would eventually be the one that needed her. That’s just not the way things work in the world I know and understand.

In the end, I’m a bit sad. I don’t like realizing that there are just some people I can’t maintain a friendship with. And in some ways, I’m sad that Lynn is unable to maintain a friendship with someone who doesn’t meet her expectations and is apparently even unwilling to understand what happened in the sixteen years she’s been absent from my life. It tells me that blessing I offered her is still need of fulfillment: that she finds the healing her soul needs.

The sad irony is that she now probably thinks it’s my soul that needs healing. If only she took the time to learn the truth.

Musings of a Wyrd-Worker