Old Ghost

In less than ten days I'll be a married man, and, truth be told, there is a reason loneliness, isolation and forsakenness have been a recurring theme in my blog lately. This is an issue that's become prominent in my life all of a sudden, and I've been doing my best to avoid it. Silly me.

I have never been able to talk to any of my old people. My father, poor old man, is a plain loser in life. Spent many nights of his adult and elderly years and much of his physical health playing cards with Rotarians and Freemasons, but was never invited into their closed spaces and feast in the top of the social Pyramid. His only advice to me ever was, "nobody needs you, and you need these people who make you feel so miserable". In these exact words, albeit in Portuguese, repeated over and over again, even when it didn't apply. My mother has always had the maturity of Paris Hilton's chihuahua, and anything I let slip to her, she'd spread around the very toxic neighbourhood we used to live in, and in three days, my life was nightmare. Once, I was living on my own for a few months and I made the mistake of letting her know over the phone that I had got a cold. She immediately air-mailed to me a list of blood tests her gynecologist prescribed to me, and I had four bottles of blood drawn from me early in the morning, with nothing in my stomach and a heavy headache. Because I had a cold and was in perfect health, my body naturally raised the defenses. The following week, the news in Rio were that I had Leukemia. No wonder my social life has always been one nightmare after another, and lately, the ultimate challenge for me.

We all know how the story goes, and here is how the story went: I got engaged to a guy who's been trying to change me from day one I stepped into HIS country, HIS house, HIS social circle, HIS life, all to fit HIS tastes. And then he convinces me I'm too arrogant to admit I'm wrong. I've given up everything I could afford to give up already, and I'm fine with it, but I really couldn't get back to eating meat again, and now he's determined to make me feel miserable, really miserable, and of course guilty, too, everytime we go out and there's anything food ever mentioned.

His evolution has been very positive, very impressive and very welcome. I'm thankful that now he doesn't make a scene when I want to caress him during the day anymore. But I can't help feeling stifled sometimes, when I tell him, for instance, that I am hungry, and he with a flicker and a flash and a heavy whiff of ash suddenly thrusts, shrouded in the smoke he keeps making: "You see, if you were more flexible..." And then he talks about Morocco and some other muslim, homophobic shithole I don't have the money, the papers or the wits to visit anytime soon.

I swear I only went to the meeting with his gang tonight because I was too lonely here in the flat, and none of the new friends I've made here was available for a walk or something. And my webfriends weren't online to talk to me.

In moments like these, unresolved ghosts from the past resurface. And I'm exhausted of dealing with them all by myself by now. I know it was a stupid move to quit the gay therapy group since they came back from the Summer, but I need to cull the projects that currently cost money, and that was the next in the list of nice-with-a-price. But I need to address this issue. I need to fix myself and be able to actually have a social life outside the Internet.

Image: "Loneliness 7", by Karol Petres.