Like wading through treacle

I'm going to try and be rational here, but I've got the feeling that this is going to be a difficult post to write. I tried yesterday evening, but I struggled to make any sense, even to myself, perhaps feeling the after effects of too much travelling and too little sleep on top of everything else, so I've deleted that draft, and I'm going to make another attempt, both to sum up how I feel now, and to try and answer some of the comments people have kindly left on the various posts I've written in the last couple of days.
The place in my life where I find myself just now isn't something that's appeared suddenly out of the proverbial 'clear blue sky'. It is, as far as I can assess from the inside, a result of the steady accumulation of pressure from various directions over several years. More or less everyone has issues in their lives which they have to deal with - I guess there might be a lucky few who are totally happy with everything, all the time, but I would imagine such people are pretty thin on the ground - and I make no claim that I should be entitled to a trouble-free life. Many of my problems are self-inflicted, too, the result of poor decisions I've made in my life, exacerbated by what I would claim is a more than fair share of bad luck, particularly in housing and financial matters. Again, most people's lives are characterised by a series of interconnected decisions, about, for example, what you choose to do for a living, where you live, who you share your life with, what your aspirations are. The background to those decisions might include who you feel you are, what your capabilities are, what your preferences are. Judging from a sample of one, i.e. myself, if the background and the decisions you make as result of that background are too far out of kilter, the tensions that arise will eventually lead to a situation where either things break, or you live in a constant state of expectation of that kind of breakdown. I think that latter case is where I find myself at the moment. To be as low as I have been in recent days, I would have expected some major disaster to have befallen me, but no such big incident has taken place. I've been at home for most of the last week and a half, much of that time has been pretty relaxed, no new problems have reared their heads. But still, I've found myself slipping lower and lower, to the point over the weekend where I've seriously wondered what the point is to it all. The human instinct for survival is a strong one and it takes a pretty strong disconnection from your 'normal' life situation, either physical or mental, I believe, to overcome it, and, being as dispassionate as I can, I'll admit I haven't been that close to overcoming it myself in recent days. I can, though, envisage a set of circumstances, not too far removed from where I am now, where I really might struggle to convince myself to carry on.
I know I've written about this next element a good deal, probably too much, in the history of my blog, but it is, in some ways, the raison d'être for my presence in cyberspace, and that's the fundamental difference between my personal, emotional circumstances, and who and what I 'really' am, of what I would choose for myself in some mythical, ideal world, and the oceans of frustration I suffer as a result. In this area, as in many others, I know I'm far from being unique. There are, I have no doubt, myriad gay men and lesbian women who have, through the pressures and expectations of society, family and even from within themselves, decided that they have to suppress what they really want, their real selves, to be able to live anything resembling a 'normal' life. It's a sad indictment of modern society that people should have to live their lives in hiding to be accepted, and while, as Micky said in his comment, things are easier, certainly in the UK, for gays to be themselves than it ever has been (but still not that easy, given the sort of bigoted attitudes I encounter on an almost daily basis at work), there are certain types of person who are still way beyond the pale. And I, of course, have the misfortune to be one of those people. Even many of those who are relatively tolerant of gays, indeed, even many gay people themselves, hate boylovers with an intensity that makes even rational discussion of the issue impossible. I know, because I'm married to someone who falls into that category, an intelligent, compassionate, people-oriented woman who had a number of gay friends in her nursing days, but who can't read one of the deluge of 'paedo' stories with which the British press seems to be awash without some epithet like 'bastards' passing her lips. I don't, for a moment, condone anyone who forces another, child or adult, into unwanted sexual contact, and what I'm going to say next will probably just be seen as my trying to defend the indefensible, but I don't believe that any and every sexual interaction between an 'adult' and a 'child' is necessarily damaging, if there is consent. I know what the law says, and society reinforces, that 15 years 364 days makes you a 'paedophile', whereas the next day, everything is miraculously different, but I'm afraid that I just don't believe it. The realities of my situation are, though, that because I am attracted to those law and social mores say should be sacrosanct, I have to spend my whole life pretending to something, someone, I'm just not. And that dichotomy, that pretence is the biggest single issue in making my life as difficult to bear as it has become. Tony left a comment to the effect that honesty is the best way to go, and, in many ways, I agree with that assessment, but the problem is that for me to be honest, either with those closest to me (with the exception of my daughter, who does know the truth) or the world at large would take more courage than I possess. That's really been the problem, always, going right back to when I first realised I was 'different' to my peers, when I was in my early teens. Even admitting it, properly and fully, to myself took about 35 years, and didn't really come about until I came to terms with the fact that I'd fallen in love, at something like 48 years of age, with an 11 or 12 year old boy. Not that I did anything about it, again because of that fear, the fear of exposure, the fear of losing all the trappings of a 'normal' life - I couldn't even bring myself to speak to him, but just how much he came to mean to me, even at a distance, as it were, was underlined by the ill-conceived trip to my former workplace last week. I should have known how difficult it would be, whether I'd seen him, or whether, as was the case, I didn't, but I couldn't help myself, and I think that trip was the initial trigger for what became such a painful weekend for me. In my calmer times, I can look at my sexuality rationally and say that I pretty much know I'm never going to be able to become involved in the sort of relationship I most want, for all sorts of reasons, but that knowledge can't stop the wanting, can't change who I am, can't make me anything other than the boylover who is me. As I said in a blog post a few months back, that word 'never' is a very, very scary one for me. When I'm down, and that word comes into my mind, that's when I really struggle. Again, without wanting to seem to be wallowing in self-pity, if you accept that you're never going to get what you most desire, under any circumstances, why bother, really, to carry on? It could be said, and has been by some of you who comment, that there are other things I could pursue that could act as a 'displacement activity', a 'consolation prize', as I might see it, and it's hard to argue rationally that such suggestions are wrong, except to say that I know what's in my head, I know what I want, and sometimes, I even come close to knowing why, and, by the same token, I know that the consolation prize wouldn't console, because the knowledge of what I really want would always be there, implacable.
I've got a feeling that this is starting to ramble somewhat, so I think I'll draw it to a close. What I would like to do, though, is to thank everyone who's read my blog in recent days for your patience, and, in particular, those who have taken the time and trouble to try and help me with their comments and feedback. I value your support and friendship a great deal, and I think that I can find things here in Blogland that are inaccessible in 'real life', whatever that cipher means. Thank you all very much.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B