This Too Shall Pass

The thing that gives me hope is the easygoing attitude that some elderly people manage to cultivate. This is the year I turn 50, so I'm aiming for that attitude.

Right now, I live in Merced, CA, and I don't like it, but it's all I can afford. However, once I'm 60, and in some cases 55, I'll be eligible for subsidized apartments for the elderly. I want to move to maybe Portland or Seattle when I can get into one of those places. Seattle and Portland are urban and liberal. They have large, active LGBT communities. They have great public transportation. (I don't drive.) And forests and nature are close by.

I, like many, mourn for my youth. And I feel robbed because the culture was so inhospitable and homophobic when I was in my teens and twenties. I wish I could have been more carefree. I wish other boys like me could have been more carefree, too. But we weren’t carefree. We were scared, and rightly so. And we were full of self-doubts because we were constantly being told that we were freaks. I still have a strong attraction for sweet, slender young men, but I know that most of them won't find a middle aged, overweight, disabled guy with no money appealing. And I don't blame them. So I try to enjoy admiring them from afar. Most of the time that works, and maybe one day, one will want to be with me for an hour or two, or a day or two. Who knows?

I try to hang on to my reasonable dreams. I try to hang on to hope. But I have my dark moods. Hardly a day goes by that I don't feel profound desperation at some point.

My mental health was a lot less stable when I was younger. It's not that I don't still experience serious depression, mood swings and crippling anxiety. I still do, but I've learned to manage them better. And by that, I mean I realize that the dark moments will pass, and I try to refrain from doing foolish things that I'll regret when I'm no longer in those dark places. I tell myself to hold on like you do when you swing around a sharp curve in the road.

After being in the hospital for depression several times in my 20s, I wrote out the adage "this too shall pass" and taped it to my refrigerator to remind myself that the darkness is only temporary. It helped. When you're young, it's sometimes hard to believe that the pain will pass because you don't have the experience. It's easier to believe it when you're older.