sad

Posted by Kabby on Friday, September 8 2000 at 11:32:46am

A little piece of my heart broke again today. I was forced to relive the humiliations of my childhood over again, how often and cruelly this happens as if one childhood is not quite enough to store up the lifetime of sadness...

What caused this in itself is not so significant but what it triggered was that awful loss again. But let me explain myself better. Maybe a little history will assist if you can bear to read a sad old man's reflections on a life of disappointment.

I returned to this place after a very long absence, and was surprised when I was welcomed home with love and laughter. I had never felt needed, and this had helped me become colder shutting away my warmth and hope of happiness here.

The welcome lasted for weeks. I melted gradually and fused once again into an ancient unity with brothers and sisters and their children, but always felt a strange tension within. I was scared that they would see in all this light that dark shadow in my soul.

I began to feel lonely first. All the friends hard-forged through many encounters, tears and challenges are remote from me right now. I left them behind when I started the journey back. I stepped back almost alone into a memory of a childhood enriched by magic and tormented by rejection.

After the loneliness came depression. Little signs began to become clearer to me. The prozac-induced haze that giddies me through most of my days palls just enough for me to see shapes in the mist. I shrugged them off. I know these demons well. I determined to keep smiling and cheerful. Nature itself seemed to conspire against me. The beautiful landscape of my childhood paradise was devastated by furious mountain fires and the golden garden became grey sand and rock and black swirling ash. The stink of the fire is everywhere.

I started losing the warmth after the fires. Sensing a little distance I stepped away from loved ones. Shivered myself back into my shell like a snail. Then realising what I was doing I thrust myself back into the world.

I went to visit but there was no-one there. I sat on the swing seat in the garden and soaked up the warmth of the sun but like all late afternoon light it seemed to be weary and sad and made me feel uncomfortable after a while. The house itself seemed forlorn. It had never looked so empty. I had thought they were all away maybe at the beach or doing some late friday shopping. As I drove out their neighbour halted in his car to tell me that they were out. Back soon? I asked... no, away for the weekend. Their faces betrayed unease more than just sheepishness. They drove away.

All weekend the loneliness crashed down on me like an avalanche. I fought back, fighting for air and light but still the cold clammy weight descended again drowning me in ancient misery.

I went out in the car, drove around the city and then out along the coast through the nature reserve but all the time there were tears there wetting my face. I drove for an hour without seeing another car. In the wilderness I was internally desolate.

Today I became busy and it helped. I showered, tidied the place and went shopping. I chatted to the cute little street boy begging by my car, like all the urchins he was "ten years old, today" and needed money for bread. He was a smart little fellow and to keep him there like a hungry chick I fed him small coins while he thought of ways to get even more from me. I needed him then standing there in his wise baby face with his tattered teeshirt blessing me with glimpses of his vitality and beauty.

Then I called on the weekend trippers. Everyone was speaking too loudly. The children seemed withdrawn and silent. I was feeling much better and more anxious than they were to draw it to a close and stop myself hurting but in the barrage of words feelings emerged, too much was being said for the lack of a phone call. I was confused and alarmed. To gain some space I went upstairs to the computer and saw on the wallchart that the weekend had been planned probably a month before with the guests, all from my close family listed and the neighbour in his car and it wasn't just something that blew up out of nowhere. When I went downstairs they avoided my gaze and no-one tried to stop me as I made polite excuses to leave. I felt like a piece of orange peel. Squeezed out and discarded. Feelings from my boyhood awoken in me, cold ugly feelings that block up the throat.

So here I am at 4 am. Sleepless I suppose. Feeling strangely empty and aloof. I know the role depression plays in my life and will never give in to its agenda. Loneliness is a cold meal to eat every day.

A lifetime's self-condemnation has been set to one side. Growing up as a paedophile was never easy to accept for all the reasons you know so well and I didn't really expect to survive 50 years. But I did. Being even a small and remote part of an online boylover community has helped me in ways I cannot begin to account,

This paedophile is gut sick of rejection in any of its forms. To the point where I cry out against it, shout silently from the rooftops that I will not let it back into my life and then nurse again the little piece of my heart that has been broken all over again. Howl silently in the night that I am tired of this pain, tired of a lifetime where I have never truly been able to get the things for myself that other people take for granted. It now seems too late. My life is 3/4 over possibly more. Old age beckons from its place up there on the stairs. I have to go soon and wait there.

Tomorrow whether or not I sleep tonight I will go and do what paedophiles and other lonely and outcast people do when the inner pain becomes so great. I will offer myself to others. Maybe not to the bright-eyed street children (or not just yet) but there is a vast army of poor, downtrodden and disadvantaged out there in this city and I know that there are things that I can do in some little way to help them and even if it takes another twenty or maybe 50 years carry on loving unconditionally because I also believe that somewhere that love is waiting to come back to me. And after all what else is there to do?

Writing this strange sad little post is probably part of this process, and it is offered with love.



(first posted to BoyChat on 1st February, 2000)