In observing the relationships of those around me, I've found that there are people who will never be single. There will always be another boyfriend/ girlfriend as one relationship ends and another begins. Their in-a-relationship status is like the beating heart: it doesn't skip a beat, there's a seamless transition from one significant other to the next significant other, version 2.0. Or 3.0, 4.0, etc. Sure there's the appropriate time to mourn and grieve but let's get real - we all know you've been talking to someone else even before the relationship officially ended... You get no sympathy points from me.
Then there's the rest of us: the ones who seem destined to be unlucky in love. We are the ones forever stuck in the friend zone because we were burned one too many times in the past. We are the ones who have cried ourselves to sleep from the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing burden of knowing the perfect person we want to be with either (a) doesn't feel the same or (b) barely acknowledges the amount of effort you've put into what has turned out to be a parasitic, twisted, toxic relationship.
I'm tired of feeling like Charlotte York when she was perpetually meandering, waiting for fictitious Mr. Right to come along. Have I become so bitter that I've internalized my parents' blind allegiance to their religiosity that I feel I'm somehow unworthy of happiness?
I'm baffled and equally frustrated by how difficult this has been. I'm 24, openly gay, and a practicing Catholic. I've had years to grapple with the internal turmoil and conflict between my faith and who I'm attracted to. I usually feel like I have everything figured out and I've somehow come up with a conceptual framework that makes everything work. But lately, it seems like nothing makes sense and it feels like I'm a 12 year old coming out of the closet [Side note: I knew I was gay in first grade... I went to a private Catholic school no less.]
In any case, to reveal your true feelings to another friend is not an easy decision to make. It will end in one of two ways:
Option 1: The friendship is effectively ruined at worst.
Option 2: The friendship becomes painfully awkward at best... leading to eventual termination
[i.e. Option 1].
I guess there hypothetically could be Option 3: Your friend feels the same way but was too afraid to make the first move.
Living in another country not knowing definitively where the two of you stand is just as torturous as outright rejection. The anxiety and not knowing is absolutely unbearable, intolerable, simply unacceptable.
But it is a risk I'm willing to take. Call me a masochist. I would put it all on the line for just the possibility. We all simply want to love, and to be loved. I could be safe from the pain by holding my tongue and pretending I feel nothing. But I would be haunted by the "What If..." scenario.
What's the saying?
"I do not regret the things I've done, but those I did not do."
Here goes nothing...
