Exhausted

I've had a whole night of panic attacks and no sleep. I'm supposed to be going to canada today to see PD, but I feel sooo shit I can't be arsed to move

Running

this evening i feel like i just want to curl up and die. I'm emotionally out of gas.

My man is coming home

So after 3 weeks of waiting he’s coming home and I’m sooooooooo excited. I don’t know why, but I haven’t really blogged about just how much I miss him. And actually in hindsight, I should have waited for him to come back before coming out to my parents; it would had been sensible to have my support structure in the same city as me lol.

But I have dearly dearly missed him. It’s been hard for both of us but I think as a couple it’s made us stronger. I also think that this has proved that we’re not in the fluffy, smiley, everything’s glowing, Hollywood type of love. But we’re actually in real love, the one where you wade through shit together, the one where the easiest option is to runaway but you stay, the one where you’ll move planets for the other person just to make them smile, the one where you don’t score up brownie points, the one that’s selfless. And through our time apart that is what I’ve been clinging onto. My mind keeps on going back to the night before he was ill where we went out for dinner and were so happy, it was a really special night.

So my man is coming home YAY.

A meeting of the minds

A got a text on Friday from Blueyedboy saying he was coming through London and would I like to do coffee.
So on Sunday we met at waterloo and had a few beers and sent him on his way.

It was really cool to put a face to the name (and msn lol). This means I can confirm, no he’s not dead and yes, he will update his blog at some point :-P

The song mentioned 2 posts before

Boomp3.com

Closet bungy jumping

You know the way that you're shit scared of a roller-coaster but once you've ridden it the first time your just gagging for another run? That whats "comming out" has become to me. It's almost an addiction. Now that my parents are done it's like the worlds my oyster.

This weekend I'm on the verge of dealing with my best friends, which for me is a huge miles stone.


Some time people don't look outside the box. Let me expand. You don't see teenage boys going round having really heavy conversations with their parents saying " mum, dad, I've got something to tell you............I dont know how to say this.......I'm a heterosexual". LMAO. So why the hell did I have to go through all the stress of telling my rents that I was gay. Just a side thought.

We live in a world of predefined standards and, if we want to buck those we have to explain ourselves.
And for me, my bag-of-balls bucks all the trends in the book. Gay and christian. You may as well say I was born on the isle of sheppy LMAO.

Face the music and dance.

I'm writing this on the way back to Bristol on a very packed train.
I went to the pastors house this evening after work to talk about my role in the church and their stance on homosexuality etc etc.

Pastor Trev is what we're gna call him for the rest of the blog (or PT for short).
We chatted for quite sometime and ate dinner.



This is the conclusion of the discussion.
Now to be fair to him, he had done his research and read up alot after I said I was gna chat to him about it.


The first thing he was very clear about is that whether you're hetro or homo, sex outside of marriage is wrong. Which to be fair is my point of view.

The second was that we are all sinners and no-one has more of a right than someone else to lead etc as we are all sinners.

The third is that the bible dose not condone homosexuality.

Now 2 of these I agree with and the third not so. But there you go, agreeing to disagree is what I'm gna be doing with a lot of people. And this message wasn't at all delivered in a condemning way at all, it was delivered with love, compassion and humility.

The conclusion of all of this was to give it time, he had to work out where he stood on me being in the leadership, and when he does he needs to be very sure of himself so he can support me.

He was very clear that he had not made a decision yet.


So what do I take away from this. The first is that I'm fully welcome in this church, I can call it home and become part of a thriving congregation.
The second is that, if its gods will, then I will continue to be involved with, and potentially return to, leading worship.
So I'm just gna pray that God will be in this all and that his will is made clear. And that if God no longer wants to be a worship leader that I walk away with good memories and no bitterness in my heart.

So get praying chaps and chapets.

I think the song that somes it up for me is Surrender.
Click here to have a listen.

New York part 2

The flight left ontime but due to strong head winds arrived on hour late. After getting off the plane we were the flight left into Newark but it still took us an hour and a half to get through immigration. It was bollarks.

Now I don’t mean to offended my American readers (cause there’s quite a few of you) but I need to vent a little rant (don’t read it if you easily offend).
Why the hell cant you manage immigration queues properly, I thought heathrow was crap but Newark and JFK take it to a new level. It’s security paranoia and to be honest, I think in the states the terrorist have won. The reason I say this is that I had my bag and shoes scanned just to get on a ferry, what the hell is that about its paranoia on another level. My apologies if I offended anyone but land of the free my ass. (pop up to Canada and see how they do it)
Rant over.

We got out of Newark about 12:30am and jump into a cab to the hotel. It took us about an hour 30 to get there cause various tunnels where closed and our hotel was on Wall Street.
Checked in at about 2am and hit the sack.

Woke up really really early cause of the time zone thing and so had an early breakfast and headed down to the ferry to see the statue of liberty. (I’m not gna go on about the security checks). To be fair the statue looks wicked, you own the French big time :-P

I like it

7 days and counting

I forgot to say, its 7 days till Mr C finally comes home. I miss him sooooo sooooo soooo much.

New york new york- Part one

Well after a couple of pretty traumatic weeks I made a mad decision at 3pm on Friday afternoon, that me and my sis where gna go to newyork for the weekend. So I looked at flights and got a pair with Virgin Atlantic that evening for £300 each. I just booked them flying at 20:30 that evening. I rushed home from work at 16:10 packed like a nutter and booked a hotel room all in 10 mins……. and ran for the tube. In the mean time my sister was powering down the country from the midlands. We both hit the tube at about 5pm (except she was on the other side of London). The tube was packed all the way out to Heathrow. I was the first arrive at about 18:30 and I stood their waiting for half an hour, she finally surfaced at 19:00.
By this point it was turning a episode of “challenge Anoka “ (or Rat race for you yanks :-P ) running round the airport and getting stuck in security.

Eventually we boarded the plane and sat down. Suddenly the sense of realisation came over me and my sis, “we going to newyork” me and my sis started squealing LMAO (like a pair of 12 year old school girls)



Well that’s the end of part one.
I’ll write some more later.

Monday’s ambush

Sorry for the lack of update, it’s been a little busy (as you can expect).
So after the weekend I got a call from mum and dad on Monday at work “we’re coming up to London for a chat”. :-S
Now just to give you a bit of context, it costs £50 return each ($100) to get to London and my parents are not made of money, so they obviously meant business. After feeling a little jittery all afternoon at work I left and caught the tube to Paddington and met them under the clock.

We left the station and headed towards the canal and a small café on the water front. We sat down and started to talk. We spoke about loads of stuff, they kept on asking questions and I kept on asking. We spoke about my suicidal moment I went through and everything, as I said, they asked the questions and I answered. They did keep on asking the question “are you sure?”.

Dad then asked me if I would be willing to give it 6months before coming out to make sure. I advised him that I had been through that already and that I wouldn’t have come out to my parents if I hadn’t.
They then said if I want to jack in my job and come home then I could. It was if they where trying to save me. Dad then said that you don’t need to deny your orientation, but you can chose not to act on it. When he said this the mist started to descend, I managed to keep a cool head “so dad are you asking me to be celibate for the rest of my life?”. With that came silence “I suppose I am”. Again staying calm “unfortunately dad I can’t do that, A: I don’t believe being an active homosexual is wrong and B: I need a relationship, I’m like a lost ship without one”.
In a firm way, but not rude, or unloving, or petulant way I said to them both “I think the understanding we need to come to is that we are coming from completely fundamental different places and therefore we will disagree”. They both agreed and repeated that they’ll love me what ever.
After that they gave me some name of some councillors that I could see, which to be fair is a good idea my is tres messed up at the best of times. (We’ll come back to those councillors later)
And with that we said goodbye and walked our separate ways.

I then headed to PingPong a Chinese restaurant with Stephe and got completely hammered of Sake.

The next morning I looked at the counselling services they had found, they where all “fix my gay son” services, I was a little offended to be honest. I know that all their doing is what they think is best for me and that its all done out of love but I still feels like their not accepting me. I think when it comes down to it, as manxxman said on my other post, I just need to give it a good lump of time.

Out i come

So what a weekend. I’m still in shock now and disbelief, it sort of doesn’t feel real.

So this is how it went.

Friday I went to work and threw-up (vomited) 3 or 4 times cause I was just a bag of nerves. Strait after work (in London) I headed the station to go back to Bristol (where my parents lived). When I got to buying a ticket my hands where shacking so much I couldn’t press the buttons on the machine. I sat on the train and just listened to my iPod praying and trying to clear my head. By the time I got to Bristol I was on another planet of panic.

Once got home at 7pm I found out that my mum had gone climbing (my parents weren’t expecting me home) so I had to sit with my dad watching TV trying to look normal. Luckily my brother had gone to his friends for the night to watch films. About 9pm my mum finally got back. We sat there in the living room watch some crappy TV program and in my head I was freaking out. I was saying in my head “I cant do this, I cant do this, what if they reject me”.

I suddenly just blurted out “we need to have a serious chat”, all at once I thought I was g’na pass out, so I gave them the letter and said “you need to read this”. I started to cry I couldn’t take the pressure anymore, it had all built up way to much. As mum read it she just came over hugged me, as did Dad when he had finally read it.
“There is nothing in the world that you could do to stop us loving you”. (by this point I was balling my eyes out).

And so we sat there for about 2 and a half hours just speaking about everything; about the last year, about Mr C, about my faith.

The next morning I went into my parent’s room and sat on the end of their bed. Me and Mum got into the nitty gritty of the biblical side of things and by the end of our conversation came to a mutual understanding that we don’t agree with each other, but that’s fair enough.

So with my parents there is one outstanding issue, they keep on saying the word choice, when actually its not a choice at all. But I think that will just take time.



Saturday morning it was time for my brother. I sat him down and explained that I had a boyfriend and that I was gay. He just sat there and said “well its your choice” and then went to have a shower. I get the feeling he’s in denial about it.



Sunday night I phoned up my sister (she lives on the other end of the country). She was great, she basically didn’t care (not in a rude way, but it made no difference to her) and she wanted to add him on face book.

So that in a nutshell is my coming out to my family. I seriously cannot complain at God about how it went.

Im out

I'm out to my parents. It happened in friday night. It went well. I'll write more tomorrow. I AM EXHAUSTED

The whites of my eyes (its coming out time)

So I’m going home tonight to come out to my parents and to say I’m shitting myself is a mild and massive understatement.
To be frankly honest I’ve never been so scared in my whole life, its 10am, I’m in work and my heart is already going.

I’ve decided that I’m g’na give them the letter and let them read it with me there, I think if I try to say it I’ll just pass out.
All last night and this morning I’ve let the outcome play around in my head (trust me I’m trying to stop it, but its hard), I’m just trying to keep positive.
And then after I’ve done this there are so many friends to tell. My God parents, extended family.
Do I tell them all individually in person or by email, or do I just tell a few and let the rumour mill do its job, or do I just update facebook and let it run wild. The thing is I don’t want to offend people by not telling them in person, but I can’t take the stress of it.

Anyway here’s the letter.

Dear Mum and Dad,

I’m not sure where to start (or even where to
finish).

So the first thing I want to say is that I love you
both, you both mean the world to me and I couldn’t ask for better parents. You
are both real role modals and I’m always proud that I’m Chris Smith’s or Louise
Smith’s son.

What I’m about to tell you may be a real shock to the
system and I completely understand if you don’t agree or if you just need space.

I’m gay.

I have a boy friend who I love dearly.

And before you ask no, its not PD.

Since last august
life has been hell. The combination of coming out to myself, moving to London
away from my support structure, and trying to reconcile my faith has nearly
killed me.

I now have a boyfriend, Mr C, who I have been seeing
for 3 - 4 months and I love him dearly.

I can completely
understand that this is a lot to deal with and take in, and there’s a lot more
to explain, but lets just do this one step at a time.

I don’t know
what else to say really.

I completely understand if you don’t want
to talk to me for a while, or ever. But I will always love you and I’m always so
thankful that you are and have been my parents.

If you need any
counselling organised or want any reading material then just say and I’ll get it
organised.

If you have any questions then just ask me, I won’t be
offended by anything you ask me.

Love Dave

Looks like I possibly have a church, maybe, ish.

There’s a church I’ve been to 3 times in London now and I’m really starting to enjoy it, an old friend from school introduced me to it. So I decided that before I get too involved and attached that I come out to her and find out A: what their take on things were and B: what level of inclusiveness is involved.

So last night I took her out to Nanado’s for “the chat”.
I start to explain stuff and she really paid attention and gave very fair answers. She herself was still unsure on where she come from with being Gay and being Christian but she still believed that everyone is welcome. And this is the score as she sore it:- A: Yes I would be completely welcome to join the church, they have a lesbian couple there already. B: She wasn’t shore weather I could actually become involved in leading as they’ve never really discussed the issue and suggested that I speak with the senior pastor.

So it looks like I have a place to be. A place to lead is another issue all together but we’ll see how that goes.

Germany

Again,

Sorry I havn’t blogged for ages. Iv’e been a little busy with life and work.

As you know I went to Germany to see my nan this weekend and it was really good. Shes looking well and slowly recovering.
When we finally arrived in Germany I picked up the hire car and got a 3.0TDi Audi A4 and, as many of you know the german highways have no speed limit. So I took that as an opportunity to drive as fast as I could (safely) and managed 210kph WOOT WOOT. I might be gay but I still have testosterone LMAO.

There’s not a lot more to say at the moment. Apart from I’m thinking of coming out to my parents this weekend, but I’ll see how the mood is.

Flat Spin

Why are we so human.
I don’t know If you’ve heard of the term flat spin, but its when a plane stalls and then spins on its centre axis, so the plane sort of turns into a giant helicopter blade. They can happen at anytime in a stall and have a tendency to uncontrollable and very hard to get out of.

The saying flat spin comes from that aircraft term, the idea being that we to such a point of shitness that we loose control.

This happened to me yesterday. I think every thing got to me. Mr C in hospital, Gran in Hospital, coming out, not being out, living in London, my job being crap and the weather topped it off.

I got home last night and just lost it. My plane stalled and the spin began. I just lay on my bed and started to cry. I think I’ve been bottling a lot of stress and crap up, and at some point that had to be let out. And if im honest with myself I’m pretty messed up at the moment and I should really find someone to talk to. I found Samaritans centre in central London so I may go and see them.

I think there are two things getting me down, actually theres shit loads getting me down, but the two main things are Mr C being in hospital and my so-called life in London.
Mr C being in hospital is obviously not his fault and it not him that I’m getting at, I just really miss him. I miss the hugs the kisses, I miss us arguing about stupid stuff like the number of horizontal pixels in 1080i HDTV (its 1920 by the way, he thinks it 1440 lol), I miss him.
And my life in London isn’t helping. I’m struggling to make close friends, I know it takes time, but I miss my crew.

So that’s me the endless rollercoaster of emotions. 90% I control them, but sometimes I just want to let it all go.

I’m off to Germany to see gran on Friday.