Another day

First of all - my team did not do well at darts last night. That is an understatement, but we had fun, and that's what it's all about. I play on the league to get out of the house and out of my head. It helps. Little things like that keep life fun.

The day begins with the coconut milk / supplement mixture, followed a half hour later by water soluable supplements. I get cleaned up and try to look a little more human than the creature that drags itself out of bed. Check the e-mails, line up the work for the day and look around the house to see what cleaning needs to be done.

How is it that one person living by themselves can possibly create this much mess? I am not a tornado that goes whipping through my living space, but I am amazed sometimes at how fast clutter accumulates. I will have to do something about that today as well. I will be traveling next week for my job - and I hate coming home to a messy living space.

Bored yet? It's the mundane day to day chores and tasks that won't go away regardless of whether or not I am HIV positive. I don't know if I expected that day to day living would change in some fundamental way or what. Certainly - life is different now - but the differences are subtle. Some things have been added, some things have been taken away - and I am sorry - but the trade off, while not major at this point - doesn't seem worth it. I get to add supplements, but lose my peace of mind - at least to some degree.

And what about the prospect of a relationship? It's not like I can go blindly into seeing someone now - even if I were up for that. I have to consider how 3 letters and one 3 syllable word is going to affect whoever comes into my life - if they are even willing... I want to think that I will spend my life with someone, but man - it is so hard. Why is that? Straight people seem to do it all the time. And yes - I know that they aren't that successul at it - but they seem to do a better job of it than gay men in many ways. I think about this and I tend to simplify the issue, but I think that there is this tendency of gay men to romanticize every aspect of a relationship. Romance is certainly an important part - and in the beginning it's a huge part - but after a while together, other things come to center stage. And they are the mundane day-to-day tasks that can be such a pain. What happens when the relationship is suddently less exciting?

My neice - love her so much - just got divorced from her husband. His reason for wanting out, was that he was restless and bored. What I am told is that he would go to work, come home, eat, sleep, and go back to work the next day. His question was - "Is that all there is?" Well - the answer is yes... to a point. If a person is bored and not having fun in their life, then it is their responsibility to put those aspects that are missing back into life where possible. But what seems to happen all to often, is that one or both partners, blame their relationship for the lack of excitement in life. Suddenly - being single seems like a great solution to making life an adventure again.

The problem is - most people grow up and realize that love is more than adventure and fun. It's about mutual respect, communication, empathy, selflessness, mutual support coupled with mutual indepenence (if that makes sense) and many other things. Hopefully those things include some amount of fun, laughter, holding hands and the like. BUT those other things can also include arguments, paying the bills, differences of all kinds. Loving someone is about appreciating those differences, and how conflict is resolved, and how the money is managed. Mundane - but true.

In my experience - men, and many gay men in particular (at least many of the ones I have dated) give up once the newness has worn off. When it comes time to do the real work the interest suddently wanes. Why bother? There is something or someone more exciting out there, so why not take advantage of it? The communication stops, the distance increases and then... nothing. One person is invariably left hurting while the other one goes out to find what they think will bring them happiness. And the cycle repeats. And we get older. And the prospects aren't quite as plentiful as they were a couple years ago. We feel young inside, so many of us chase men younger and increasingly more attractive than ourselves - because that is exciting. The relationships get shorter and shorter as we get older and we see our youth escaping. Far too many of us end up alone because of all of this BS.

I blame Hollywood and President Bush... ;)