Schism

It's absolutely fine, making an intellectual decision about the 'right' thing to do, but real life doesn't let you off so easily. Despite my saying 'never, never, never' the other day, it doesn't make the wanting go away. And when the 'ghosts' cross my path, day in, day out - there's one sitting a handful of paces away from me, right now - the possibility of succumbing to temptation is always there, more or less in the background, dependent on circumstances. I know all about self-denial, self-control, if I didn't after forty-odd years, I'd be pretty damn oblivious, but all those years don't make it any easier. But, as I've said often enough before, why should I expect anything to be easy?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

50/50

So, there's a 50/50 situation. Which way, from my perspective, do you think it would fall? If you guessed 'positive', I'm afraid you're mistaken. When I left work at lunchtime today, there was the possibility, a fair possibility, of my getting to meet a super-cute little blond-haired teddy bear this evening. It hasn't happened. Why am I not surprised?

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Elucidated by a little darkness

Yesterday's posts, needless to say, reflected my mood, which was rather dark. Darkness can illuminate sometimes, though, in this case perhaps in prompting me to accept something I've known from the start, but didn't want to believe. Namely that the word, that word, I've found so scary for so long has to be embraced, because if I don't, I could well end up ruining someone else's life. Knowing that what I want the most is always going to be out of reach is so difficult to contend with, but it has to be that way. There will never, can never be a boy in my life. Never.

1330 edit: And, with soul-destroying predictability, little more than half an hour after I'd written this post, not one, but two cuties, rubbing salt into the wound, completely inadvertently, of course, close enough to touch, but always, always out of reach.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Then and now

More reflections on the 13 year old me, and what I've become. I wish, I wish so much, I could've been braver, dared to be myself. Maybe, then, I wouldn't have completely screwed three lives up, mine, my ex's and my daughter's. The child who never should have been, had I not been such a fucking coward.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Time machine

I read something earlier this morning, a story of a 'coming of age' experience, which initially had the old clichés about 'if I had my time over', 'if I knew then what I know now', and the like, springing to mind. But I quickly realised that I almost certainly wouldn't do it differently, even if I could cheat the laws of physics and find myself a time machine to take me back to being 13. Because the boy who sat in a cubicle in my school toilets literally shaking with fear at the consequences of anyone finding out he liked boys and not girls is still living in my head today, and that same scared boy has made more or less all of the decisions in my emotional life in the intervening forty-odd years. Fear and happiness are pretty much mutually exclusive.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Untermensch?

Not long after I'd left work at lunchtime, I found myself on a bus, sitting opposite a delightful little boy - and little is the operative word, he was only 4 or 5 - pretty, blond hair, cheeky smile, full of life, chattering away nineteen to the dozen to his mother. The only thing is, the chatter was in some Eastern European language (Polish, I think). Given their current triumphalism after the European elections, it made me wonder what Farage and his bunch of fascist xenophobes would have made of the little guy - probably would have wanted to have him and his mother summarily deported, given half a chance, after Farage's comments about Romanians in the runup to the elections. What these people seem blissfully unaware of (or maybe deliberately choose to ignore) is that everyone in this country is, ultimately, of immigrant stock, given that Britain was effectively uninhabited at the end of the last Ice Age, and the vast majority of those immigrants came here for what can be called 'economic' reasons, to try and build a better life for themselves and their families. As I said to K when I phoned her a short while ago, if UKIP and their ilk ever come to power, it will be time to leave the country.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B

Life is full of new experiences

Nothing too mindblowing, but new, nonetheless. I've spent the past three-quarters of an hour in my local, listening to my favourite album of all time on YouTube, namely The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by Pink Floyd. I can't remember ever listening to a complete album on YouTube before, and certainly not in the pub. No doubt there was some kind of copyright infraction involved, but I do own two copies of the album, so I don't feel like too much of a criminal!
I arrived here a couple of hours ago, looking for a lift of some sort, given that I wasn't feeling all that cheerful - I have to admit that I was hoping to see 'smiling boy', but that was never a realistic option - but losing myself in music has been a reasonable 'second best'. Whatever gets you through the day can't be all bad.

Love & best wishes to all
Sammy B