Ramblings of An Aging Gay Guy

  When he was doing it he whispered in my ear "watching you bleed so much really turns me on". I have been watching this Cornell rape case very closely, because this exact scenario is one I found myself in (well, minus the group sex) on November 29, 2025...the day I was raped. Like Jane Doe, I withdrew my consent when things took a turn. What started out as one thing quickly & violently... ...turned into an intense physical struggle where I did not win. He held me down & did what he did, in a very violent and damaging manner. When he was doing it he whispered in my ear "watching you bleed so much really turns me on". When it was finally over and I saw the sheer volume of blood everywhere—on the mattress, on the wall—my vision began to narrow, bringing me to the brink of passing out. I couldn't tell if the bloody handprint on the wall was mine or his. I just remember praying for the Uber to arrive faster. I didn't have the luxury to break do...

There was a time when I was happy, healthy, whole, and fun-loving. Before domestic abuse, I had hope. Even during the hardest times, even while living with HIV, I believed there would always be a brighter day ahead. Fifteen years of abuse left me a shell of who I once was, and I grieve that person every day. Undoing the damage and conditioning he inflicted has been incredibly difficult. I tried to numb the pain through drug use, but that only created another problem. I am now in intensive outpatient therapy for CPTSD and addiction, and it is helping. I highly encourage IOP to anyone who can access it.   For 15 years, I minimized what was happening. The abuse was a gradual process of grooming and control. Before I realized it, I was financially trapped with someone who monitored and controlled nearly every part of my life. He followed me to work, put up cameras in the house and outside the house. After my parents died, that trap felt inescapable.  Eventually, the ab...

So I am starting up my blog again. I feel like it is the best way to present myself to the world authentically. Social media has become a cesspool of influencers and people who chase clout and clicks and likes and popularity. I have no wish to be involved in any of that rat race, and I have found social media to be lacking in connection or authenticity. I write for myself, mostly. I use writing as a tool to explore myself, my thoughts, my feelings, my hopes, my dissapointments. Whether or not that is "viral-worthy" or not, well, I just don't care about that. So welcome, or welcome back. Either way, this is a work in progress, as am I. Have a great day! Here are my cats:

I can not believe it has been so long since I’ve last written! A lot has happened since then and yet...everything seems to remain the same. No, that isn’t really true. I think when change occurs we tend to really only pay attention to that which causes us negative stress. That is, things that we consider to be “bad”. Things that cause us harm or worry. We obsess over it, spend too many resources in worrying about the situation. But sometimes change can be neutral, sometimes it can be good. I believe that anything that occurs that takes us slightly closer to our peaceful place is a good thing. Often good things come in tiny increments so they can go unnoticed and only definable in retrospect. Anyway, I am taking this semester off from college. The university placed me on financial aid suspension because I dropped two classes last fall when I had pneumonia. This setback, however, has made me question whether college is the right place for me. I wanted to go back to prove ...

I have been thinking about mom a lot lately and I don't know why.  I miss her.  I feel her presence sometimes, not in the spiritual sense, but more like in a memory, as if a big what-if is speaking to me from far away.  I wonder if she can hear me too, or if my sadness just goes out into the void.  I find it unfathomable to believe that she is gone, even now, 4 years later. I have had some bouts of self-doubt lately so maybe that is why she is on my mind.  She was always my sounding board, my conscious, my wisdom.  Now that I have to rely on myself things feel tougher than they ever have been before.  I do not have the confidence to rely on myself or on my own judgement.  I am prone to rash decisions and not-good decisions, so I worry all the time 24/7 if I am doing the right thing, if I am doing enough. Going back to school has required much more from me than I ever realized.  The halcyon memories I have of college from the first go aro...

So it has been about 6 weeks since I have last shared anything, not that anyone ever reads these posts, haha.  Anyway, the semester is almost over and I am exhausted.  I have two finals next week and then I am finished for the semester.  It has been a crazy hard semester, not because of the course material but because there has been so many changes and health challenges.  When I got pneumonia it really put me behind and I had to drop some classes.  I felt like a failure for a little while but I eventually got over it.  Things happen, you change course, and then you get back up on the horse and do the best you can.  That is really all anyone can do, right? But at least I am DOING something.  At least I am working towards a goal - to finish school.  I will at least feel proud about that.  I feel proud that I am still going strong with school a year and half after starting this crazy endeavor.  School is the one area in my life th...

So about 2 months ago I went off of my HIV meds.  I had a lapse in insurance coverage and when my coverage was active I simply did not find the time to sit down and get on the phone to get my Stribild prescription moved over to the new specialty pharmacy.  Sadly, it takes a lot of phone calls to get started with a new insurance or pharmacy provider.  Most insurances will not let you pick up your HIV meds at your local CVS or Walgreens; the insurance companies prefer you to go through multiple layers of red tape to obtain your prescription.  I work full-time and, at the time, was in school full-time as well.  I was in school or at work from 8 AM until 8 PM Monday through Friday.  Long story short, I did not make the time to prioritize my health. About 3 weeks ago I began to get sick.  It started as a sneeze, a sore throat, and fatigue.  I chalked it up to bad allergies or a cold and figured I was fatigued because of the heavy school/work load ...

Do you ever wonder why it is we look at ourselves and our world in the way that we do?  I am not sure how or when I became a bitter, angry person.  It seems to correlate though that the worse I feel about myself then the worse I tend to view the world and those around me.  Nothing I do seems to be good or right or pleasurable or long-lasting.  Why is it this way? I can not remember when it was that I last felt good or happy.  I literally can't remember.  Everything feels so strained.  Everything feels like a root canal.  I am not sure I would even know where or how to feel good about life again.  I am not sure how I can get back to feeling good about myself again.  It seems like I am just circling the drain, waiting on that last gurgle before all the water is gone, rushing down the pipes toward the septic tank.  That is my life.  That is what my soul feels like.  Torture.  I feel so far outside of everything that I ...

I think I am having a string of bad luck lately and it is becoming too much to deal with.  I think it is because I have stretched myself too thin, working too many hours at work.  And yet I feel trapped, financially, because I have to work so much in order to pay for everything.  I have the house payment, the cell phone bill, electricity, tuition, food, everything.  I am overwhelmed in every area of my life and I do not see a way out.  If I work less then something goes unpaid.  Cell phones get turned off.  Tuition is late.  If I work too much then I fail at school because I have no time or energy or waking hours with which to study.  It is a no-win situation and I can't see how to fix everything.  I feel cornered or like a bear in one of those bear traps; I understand why animals gnaw off their leg to get out of such a trap.  When you are already in this much pain, gnawing off a part of you is nothing.  And bad things keep s...

I have had a lot of feelings pop up lately about a variety of things.  I am going through a time of many changes and I think they are all starting to get to me.  School begins again soon; I am leaving the job I have had for years because I am no longer valuable to them.  I am starting a new job and with that comes a certain amount of anxiety, especially since it is in a completely different field of work than what I have done for the last decade or so.  I will be making less money but I will have greater flexibility and less stress so that is a good trade-off.   Mostly what I am feeling is fear and worthlessness. And anger. Anger at homophobia, anger at racism, anger at injustice, anger at the president. I fear what the future will hold for all of us, both in the short-term and in the long-term. Every day at work I feel on display, I feel judged and hated and it wears on me. It is an environment where crass white heteronormative values are held up on...

So I have been thinking a lot lately about mortality, death, and what my death will be like.  Maybe it is a mid-life crisis, maybe it is because Mom will have been dead for 3 years come this Thursday.  Maybe it is because I see the cardiologist on that same mom-death-day, to explore an issue that has cropped up.  Maybe it is because it was an arrhythmia that began my mom's decline towards death all of those years ago.  Maybe it is because my biological father has had a heart attack awhile back.  I don't know what has caused this rumination that I find myself mired in.   Or is it maybe the situation we find ourselves in, with the country flipping a finger off to it's citizens when it comes to the future of healthcare.  The future seems uncertain on so many levels. I thought it was bad enough when I was diagnosed with HIV.  I thought HIV would be insurmountable and difficult.  When my diagnosis of HIV happened, I remember it being inconcei...

Tomorrow will mark one year since the shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.  It will be one year ago that all of us in the LGBTQ community saw the direct result of an intersection between unchecked access to guns, mental illness, religion, and homophobia.  It was a year ago that all of us within the community felt a little piece of ourselves die. The shooting did not occur in a vacuum.  We live in a country that is supposedly great and awesome and better than all other countries.  At least that is what we are indoctrinated to believe as we grow up.  As a child I remember we used to say the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at the start of school. But that pledge is a lie told to everyone ever forced to say it... One Nation Under God We are NOT one nation.  We are a divided nation, both politically, socially, economically, and religiously.  There are elements within this country...the Religious Right, the Republicans....

So...I have deleted my Facebook account.  It was time.  It was a waste of time.  I received no benefit from it.  When I caught myself feeling worse and worse about myself every time I logged on then I knew Facebook needed to go away.  I even found myself getting upset when I would get very little likes, comments, or interactions from my posts.  Oh there were always a few of those interactions here and there, but overall I felt invisible.  Worse, I felt bad about myself for feeling invisible.  Then I was mad at myself for feeling that way.  In the end Facebook caused too many negative emotions inside me. It is funny, because it has been 24 hours since I deleted it and nobody has even noticed.  Nobody has reached out.  But that's ok.  Facebook is NOT life.  It is a fantasy, a billboard on which people advertise their half-truths and their bright, beautiful, perfect lives.  Instead, I have chosen to engage i...

I never understood why Mom died.  More specifically, I did not understand why she signed a do-not-resuscitate (DNR) order.  I could not understand why she would choose to die while there was still chances that she may live.  "But what if we tried this? What if we tried that?" is what kept going through my mind while it was all happening.  I wonder if I was grasping at straws in order to deny the inevitable, or if she had simply just gave up.  Part of my was so angry when she decided to unplug her life-support machines.  I could not understand why she wouldn't just wait it out a little longer; what if there was hope just around the corner but she never got to it?  But then I realized two things.  These realizations are recent, because it is only with time and distance I can even think about those horrible days.  She was tired.  She had been battling so many things the past few years of her life.  First, and probably the c...

It has been almost 2 weeks since this sickness began and I am still not at 100%.  Isn't it funny how sickness or illness happens in the most inopportune time?  For me, this illness has been a huge setback, both for school and in life.  I have had to take time to rest, in an attempt to hasten recovery. And yet it seems recovery is not happening quickly enough.  I feel like everyone expects me to brush it all off, to jump back into being the same old me, and that is not happening.  I have not been this sick in years.  It has fundamentally changed me.  I feel closer to my mortality, closer to death, than I have ever felt.  Maybe I am a crappy sick person.  Maybe I am a pessimist.  Maybe I am just weak from it all and everything looks like doom and gloom. All I know for sure is that I am exhausted and afraid.  I am afraid of falling behind in school, with only a few more weeks left of the semester.  I am afraid of getting in...

Where is all of the world's water going?  You would think that in a closed system, such as the global climate system of water evaporation and precipitation, there would be a set point of available water.  But we are seeing that is not the case.  Droughts are occurring globally.  Glaciers are melting, the sea level is rising.  The rising of the sea level will cause a contamination of fresh water sources, causing that water to be unusable by humans and wildlife.   The increase in surface area to the oceans will cause a warming of the oceans, further fueling wild and chaotic weather patterns - more hurricanes, more typhoons, bigger hurricanes, a longer hurricane season, etc.  The reduced salinity, caused by the influx of freshwater into the salty ocean water, will affect biodiversity, culminating in an increase in algae blooms and to the death of barrier reefs. Already deep aquifers are running dry globally.  The human population obtains about 3...