It's been a while, hasn't it...?

I haven't posted a new blog in a while.  Not because there haven't been some exciting things happening, but because for the first time in a while I didn't have that burning need writers get to write down.  While I don't consider myself a writer, I love writing.  It practices not only my vocabulary (which I don't get to use much at the shop), but also my handwriting.  One of my hobbies, and especially for my assignments, is Calligraphy - can you imagine what a bad name I'd be giving myself with ugly calligraphy??

What got me thinking about this post is one I read originally on Single Dad Laughing.  I'm not re-linking the page, so Google it, or go digging in one of my previous blogs ("Read My Stuff!" much?).  And I hereby apologise if it's something I've spoken about before, but I feel I need to write about it.

Although I'm not a screaming queen, I am gay.  I'm the "passive" partner, and that's all I'm saying about it.  I like to date slightly older guys (even if it's only a few weeks or months) and I have been in a relationship with J for almost five years now.  He's eight years my senior.

When I came out, things were a bit more difficult.  It was still in the lower half of the early 2000s and we lived at that stage in a little town in the middle of frikking nowhere (almost literally - the only way to find it on a map is to look for Umtata and then follow the line of the R56 to the west).  Amma was the manager at the local Pep at that point and as such saw most of the townspeople regularly.

in 2001 we came to Cape Town to visit my uncle and his family.  While we were here I opened up to my cousins about being gay (I'd told my mom a few months before that I was bisexual - a sad thing is that most gay teens say this to try and make it better, myself included.  I mean, you're still loving someone of the opposite sex, aren't you?).  Anyway, at some point before my mother was appointed I posted in a pen-pals request to the People magazine, and then almost immediately I forgot about it.

Again, if I've blogged about this before, please ignore this post.

A few months later, completely out of the blue, my mother storms into my room and asks me, "WTF??"  Apparently, People Magazine HADN'T forgotten about my posting and had published it in that week's issue.  If the neighbouring shop's owner, Adie, hadn't asked her about it, and if she hadn't gotten an odd phone call about it, she'd have been clueless a while longer.  Anyway, they new it was me by the name I'd used (my middle name) and the post box.  Silly me, I'd thought nobody read the People and that I'd be safe a little bitty longer.  Anyway, she gave me the number left by the caller, and Adie seemed OK with it, and then other people asked and such and such.  I didn't deny, I just kept deflecting the attention.

Amma spoke to Appa about it not long after that.  I asked her to tell him because I'd seen how he went on when gays came up on TV.  There was a fight.  The "pastor" was called in not long after that.  It became a little bit of a joke.

What I'm trying to get at is how much lighter I felt having been "exposed" like that.  Now people knew about me in one way or the other, and I didn't have to carry such a weight anymore.  No, Appa didn't like it one little bit, and there was a point where we couldn't have a decent conversation with each other.  No, no fighting, really, just a bland, empty series of conversations that never did anything to our relationship.  But we made up after I'd been in the cape a few years, where we got to the point of actually being able to say to each other that we love each other.  It's amazing to me how much better he and I get along now than we did when I was at home, in those years when children and their parents are usually supposed to be closer to each other.

I'm grateful for it, and will always be.  With all the ups and downs, being gay is probably the best thing that could have happened to me.

How to learn things; or, Just let it Frikking Happen!

As shocking as it may seem to people, I am not a very happy person.  Or maybe it isn't so shocking.  I'm not sure.

I stress and I worry, nine times out of ten for no reason than the possibility of danger.  I get so caught up in what MIGHT happen that I forget that, nine times out of ten, nothing actually happens.

So, that said, I have been working on latting myself be more positive.  It hasn't been easy, and I want to sit here and blame my childhood and all the moving around that we did and where we stayed and and and.  In fact, I made my 37th move two weeks ago and the stress has been killing me.  Up until the move I was making stupid mistakes in the shop, my memory's been shot to scheisse and I haven't slept properly, as in, waking up feeling fully rested.  Add that to how quiet the shop has been and increased travelling costs and all in all, you have one VERY stressed out Leo.

But you know what?  I have a roof over my head.  I have the means to get to and from work.  I have clothes to wear for my work, and I work.  I earn the money doing something.  As it were.

It's difficult to explain exactly how the change started happening, the "happy" one, I mean.  I tried the Secret approach for a while and nothing happend; I took Postulancy classes, and yes, they helped a little bit, but not as much as I'd hoped.  Rephrase:  not too well on their own ( I'll explain lower down ). My cards, and using them to help others, were always a huge help, but even they stopped helping.  Or rather, Life, real life, this long, terrible, boring thing in which we work for peanuts, terrible bosses ( or just terribly disorganised bosses ), odd hours of the day and in some cases little to show for it, got in my way.  The corporate world, in so many ways, is just one big giant leech to make other people, often people you've never heard of, rich.

And, by Goddess, I let that get in my way?

Well, forget that.

My name is Dieter.  It comes, by slight change, from the 5th Century Germanic Theodoric.  Do you know what it means?  Ruler of the people.  And by the Mother, I will be a ruler of people.  Mayhap not a literal ruler, but I will lead by example and try to improve the world around me with smiles, real ones, not the ones you wear when your world crumbles.  I've been wrestling with my emotions for a while, and I'm making the concsious decision to be more upbeat about life in general, more trusting in the ways that matter, and more open to happiness.

I say all of this because it took a random tarot reading to get me to see what was wrong.  The long and short of it is that I have to let go of the old ideas I have aobut myself.  I have to shake off those bonds and let myself rise like the Phoenix does and burn my way forward.  I'll Transcribe the reading as soon as my line at home is up and running, but suffice it to say it really made sense.

I asked the Reader, a proper tarot witch, what I had to do to get started on that path, and she flat out told me, I need to be more confident in myself.  Time I am, eh, what?

So:  SMILE, BITCHES!!  It gives your face something to do and will affect your mood for a while.