Redefining Romance. (This one's for you, Mike Odd!)

I am...erratic. I have fallen out of touch with the people around me (both those in physical proximity and those near in heart but far in body) and I'm not much of a conversationalist these days. Maybe I'm self-absorbed lately, or maybe I'm just adrift. At any rate, here I am blogging to you, B, instead of having what passes for a real conversation on the internet.

This post (as yours are wont to do) got me thinking. I've had my share of "cuddle buddies" with mixed results. In thinking about the past, I started to think that the only "safe" cuddle buddies I had were gay boys, but then I remembered an article I'd read and the discussion that had followed about romance.

I had a friend once. I still think of him as a friend, even though we haven't spoken in ages and he forgot my birthday this year. Life gets in the way, I get it. It doesn't make him any less dear to me, nor does it tarnish the memories we made together.

For one weekend, we were almost in love. We definitely loved each other; we said as much. We walked around holding hands, or arm in arm. We ate together, played together, laughed together, had long conversations about grammar while I was in the shower. Late at night we'd curl up on the floor together and talk: about his girlfriend, about the man I was in love with but couldn't be with, about our jobs and our families and anything and everything. It was love. It was romance. It was fun and exciting and sweet and intimate. What it wasn't, remotely, was sexual. We didn't so much as kiss; if he wanted to, he never let on, and it never even crossed my mind.

Did I have a point to this? I don't even know. Maybe it's just that you're not so strange, B :)

Tired.

I'm so tired of people.

Almost all of them.

Tired of false friends who cut me out of their lives because of a choice I made - a choice they couldn't even be bothered to ask me about.

Tired of coworkers who can't show me the same respect they show to others, presumably because I'm not a good enough Christian by their standards. (I say this because I felt perfectly welcome here...until I voiced my support for gay marriage, started living with a man to whom I'm not married, and referenced my sister and her girlfriend in casual conversation.)

Tired of being lied to by people I thought I could trust.

I wish I could work from home, safely insulated from all this bullshit. But since I can't, I must learn to be strong, to fill my heart with enough love to combat all this hate.