Loneliness, Married Moho Style

I'd venture a guess that every Moho has felt an almost unbearable loneliness. I'm talking depths-of-despair loneliness. It seems to be a common theme. It involves fear, self-isolation, reliance on impossible promises and well-built facades. For me, it keeps coming back, despite the fact that I have some really amazing and supportive people in my life who I appreciate and love and who I know appreciate and love me too.

Even though I've made huge strides in dealing with my feelings of loneliness and in reaching out to others with openness and honesty, I still feel dreadfully alone. I still use my facade, which only adds to the loneliness because the people around me are led to believe everything is fine. I still fall into patterns of withholding information. I still fear being rejected. I still fear being treated as a sub-human freak for being gay. Although it took me years to escape all the denial and finally come to terms with all the aspects of who I am, to this day I beat myself up about what a selfish jerk I am for putting my wife through the emotional trauma that comes along with being married to a gay man and for the anguish she and my kids would go through if we ever separated.

This will sound really stupid, but it's the best description I can come up with at the moment: Remember near the end of the movie "The Little Mermaid" when Ursula becomes a giant, stirs up a whirlpool and traps Ariel at the sea floor at the bottom of the whirlpool? Ursula starts shooting lightning bolts at Ariel. Too often, I feel like Ariel dodging lightning bolts. I'm alone at the bottom of the sea and, though surrounded by water, can't even swim to safety. I can breathe and see some of what's going on around me, but I'm confined and scared.

But hey, it's my pity party, and I can cry if I want to, right? I know I'll feel better and more optimistic soon, but the seemingly never ending back-and-forth really sucks. I'm glad it's Friday.