It Get's Better - Formerly in a Straight Marriage With Children and Gay

It will be ten years ago this fall that I told my former wife that I was gay. In the wake of that revelation, my entire world as I had known it began to collapse with the consequences ranging from a horrible divorce to being fired for being gay to two suicide attempts. Along the way I began this blog to tell my story and vent my feelings of loneliness and often despair as a form of therapy. Since then much has changed - and for the better, including my wonderful relationship with my partner and acceptance by and reconciliation with my children.

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But there are still many, many gays out there across America (and some I know locally) who are still struggling to achieve a level of peace with who they are and at the same time fighting the sense that they have failed their families somehow for merely being who God made them to be and by having tried albeit unsuccessfully to live up to family and societal expectations. If anyone doubts me, peruse some blogs such as Conflicting Clarity; A Journey By Myself; Too Late for Regrets; New Day, New Life, where the author said this:
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My situation is like the snow. I can push it aside and move it around all I want, but it is still there. Push enough of it together and it becomes a bigger pile. Add the lying, cheating, and guilt and the pile grows bigger and bigger until you have an immovable mountain of snow. It never really goes away until the sun melts it. The only way to bring light to this snow pile to possibly melt it down is.....?
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The pain and heartache is palpable. And you will not find any truly selfish or self-centered motivations. Only the desire to tell and live the truth - doing the least harm to others as possible. Living a life of secret hell and self-loathing is exhausting. I've been there and done that. And if there are victims in these scenarios, it is both the gay individual and their straight spouse, not to mention the children involved. And who are the ones responsible for these damaged and conflicted lives? Folks like Pope Benedict XVI, Maggie Gallagher, Bryan Fischer and leaders of "ex-gay" ministries who deliberately spread a message of homophobia and the myth that sexuality is a choice.

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The good news for the writers of these blogs is that life can and will get better. It won't be an easy path as I know all too well. But things will get better. Looking back on how I once lived and how I always felt an actor on a stage playing a role scripted for me by someone else, I could never go back to it. That's not to say all of the past was bad because it wasn't. I'm just saying that it could have been better if I had lived more honestly both with myself and others far earlier.

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I hope that the authors of the blogs mentioned and the countless other individuals out there struggling down the path toward self acceptance and living honestly don't loose sight of the fact that it does get better. It may seem like an eternity at the time, but it will get better. I'm proof that is does.