You have a new quest!

I share my personal self-reflections from time to time, because it’s nice to have a record of how I’ve changed, and because I hope these ideas can help other people.

Recently I have been thinking about all my baggage (all that relationships/sex/intimacy/fear business that I keep blogging about).

After talking to a good buddy of mine from college, I concluded that I should sort myself out as a gay man–and, eventually, come out to my family–before I try to form any sort of relationship.

And a big key to all of this, I’m finding, is the shame running through all aspects of my life. Shame about my appearance, about personal shortcomings, about my shame itself, and most of all, about my sexuality. To identify as gay, as a social label–that doesn’t bother me. But nothing makes me more nervous than to acknowledge that, yes, I have sexual desires.

I borrowed a book from the library: Coming Out of Shame by Gershen Kaufman and Lev Raphael. I can’t put it down — there is so much insight packed into this book.

Facial gazing is crucial to the fundamental interpersonal need for identification. When that need becomes primarily or exclusively directed toward your own sex, then a second source of specifically lesbian and gay shame emerges.
….
What happens? Men and women who dimly sense their essential difference, their attraction to their own sex, now hide their looking at other men or other women because it has become shameful to look—and even more shameful to be seen looking.

So my new quest is to improve my acceptance of myself and quit feeling embarrassed by everything I do. And perhaps even feel proud of myself. Like Elmo here: