Wednesday, 24 January 2001
I am sick of being sick -- which, I am not really sure it is 'sickness.' It could very well simply be sinus and all that stuff related to how dry it is at work. I missed Monday again -- I even had a slight fever over the weekend. My nephew (the cutest 3 1/2 year old in the world) got his tonsils and adenoids (consider I have no idea how to spell either of those!) out on Monday. Poor little guy! He is in worse shape then I am right now. He is really too young to appreciated being able to eat all the ice-cream he could stomach, which is certainly too bad!!! :-)

So, I went to work yesterday and felt terrible by the end of the day. The humidity in the place hovers around 22 - 27 percent, which I've been told is not very good. Ended up not going to FrontRunners again last night because I was just so wiped out, even though the weather was near spring like. This will go down as the worst couple of winter months for illness in my life.

Two days in a row, I have had intense dreams about former relationships. Two days ago it was J., last night it was N. (For those of you who don't know why I use initials instead of names, well this being an almost public venue they probably would not appreciate me using their names, so I use initials that may or may not be their actual initial.) The dream I had of J. just depressed me. I wrote in my QuietTime entry a couple days ago that the dream set J. in an experience that was not very positive. I woke up quite sad and did the only think I know -- prayed for him (which he may not have needed?). The dream I had of N. wasn't sad at all, except it brought back memories and caused a bit of a pang of regret.

It really makes me wonder what the passing of people through my life has done to me and them. I know I would have much rather entered a relationship and stayed there. I've only had a few relationships and don't believe it is good or healthy to jump from relationship to relationship just for the sake of being in a relationship. I'm just not interested in that. Why did N. pass into and out of my life as he did? We are at very, very different places in our lives, I suspect. About 8 years ago after his wife discovered he was gay, he burned all the bridges to any people in his past that smacked of homosexuality. He married as the answer to not being able to reconcile his orientation with his faith (or general expectations of proper life) and was found out a few years later -- found out in the sense that he was gay (or had been according to him) and had a relationship with me (it was an odd one because both of us considered it to be very wrong and sinful at the time. Even though it was my first love, it was obviously destined to fail.) (Timeline: fall of '83 - '84 we struggle through the temptation of relationship, then another 2 years trying to sustain a platonic friendship. '86 he as married. '87 I left for Kent. '91, when I got back from Germany, he called to get together to tell me his predicament.)

I wonder how he is doing now. He remains married, as far as I know. When last we met around 8 or 9 years ago after his wife found out he was gay, it was to tell me he will never have contact with me again. Burning bridges is part of the ex-gay method of keeping one from temptation and reinforcing old ways of thinking and acting, etc. I came across his e-mail address around a year or so ago and e-mailed him just to furtively say hi and see how he was doing. He responded. I wrote back wondering whether we might have contact at this point, just to keep up with how we are doing. He said no. There you go. Does he still struggle? Is he happy or miserable? I still pray for him and his family -- if there ever truly were to be someone God changed, I pray it might be him. He has chosen to stay married and I can respect that, but I still want him to be happy.

Anyway, I just wonder how he changed my life in the ways I don't see within myself and how I might have changed his. I know I can identify changes in attitudes and thoughts because of J., but maybe N. was just too long ago and I was just too young. What is the impact other's have on me? It saddens me to think that I in some way will never really know what comes of the lives of N. and J. I don't know the future and that could all change, but as of right now if all things remain the same, I will not. I may pray for them, but unless God gives me insight, I will not know. They were such an important part of my life for a sort while (years, actually), it just seems odd and sad that the piece of me they still hold will not know how their lives progress and change.


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