So it's been two years since I've had this livejournal account, and just about as long since I've updated it. Oh well. A lot has happened since I was wallowing in self-indulgent, self-centered sappiness.

I'm happier, even if I do have down days. I'm trying to challenge myself in ways I never thought possible, and I'm at a point in my life when I can almost plot a new direction and figure out what exactly I want from life without worrying about the consequences. In five months, a dark period of my life will be over. A debt I was saddled with simply for trying to help another person will be erased. I can put that chapter of my life behind me, and that pleases me.

So, I guess the question is, what do I want?

Current Mood: contemplative
Current Music: Listening to the repairman fix my furnace.

Common lore is that when you get your heart broken, one of the things you need to do is step back and figure out what you learned from the experience.

My boyfriend broke up with me yesterday for all the usual reasons -- he needs to settle issues from his past; it's not me, it's him -- in other words, all complete bullshit cliche cop-outs. After telling me he loves me, he tells me he needs a break. I've been numb. And when I've not been numb, I've felt like my guts have been torn out. Interesting that I've said cliche. It seems like everything I'm feeling now is right out of a Patsy Cline song. It's an age-old song, and I've just got to get used to it.

Since our first date, not a day has gone by when he and I haven't spoken, talked, seen each other, what have you. I felt like I met the man of my dreams, and I was ready to accept him for who he is -- everything. The financial problems, the personal habits, the everything. Suddenly, he is not prepared to do the same.

Do I regret it? No. As usual, I am surprised and delighted that I am able to love. And I was able to tell someone I loved him, and I meant it. Maybe it'll happen again. But as I get nearer and nearer to 40, the chances look slim.

So, what I've learned: I'm capable of loving.

I also recognized throughout our relationship that I was at times anxious, nervous and at times scared and unsure about his feelings toward me. I felt these feelings crowd out other aspects of my life. It couldn't have been healthy.

So, what I've learned: I cannot allow someone else to dictate every aspect of my life. I need to have the certainty that my life is good on its own. And it is. And, it's getting better. My life was on a great patch before Joe came along. It will be again.

I also need to talk about this. One thing I'm learning is that I can't deal with anything alone.

I am really hurting right now. And logically, I know that the pain will go away. And I know that as I process what happened, I'll be better, stronger and wiser. But now, I'm just hurting.

Current Mood: sad

It's amazing. Three years ago, when same-sex marriage became legal in Massachusetts, only 50 legislators were in favor of it. Yesterday, 150 legislators were in favor of it. Time is on our side, and marriage equality is here to stay. Love has won out. And now we can all move on to really important things.

Kris Mineau is an asshole! The hatemonger and bully should just crawl under the rock wence he came. And he should take that shithead Mitt Romney with him. You do NOT put the rights of the minority up to a vote by the majority. It's WRONG! And for all they say about the democratic process, the democratic process in Massachusetts worked yesterday. They're just pissed it didn't work in their bigoted favor. I hope I don't sound petty or meanspirited, but really. He's picking on people who are doing him absolutely NO harm at all. Kris Mineau is just a first-class jerk. Period. His marriage must be in really rough straits if he thinks it's under attack by two committed, loving people who just happen to be of the same sex.

Current Mood: jubilant

Today's the day the Massachusetts Legislature either will stand up for what is right and affirm the inherent worth and dignity of everyone -- or else they will allow a hate-filled anti-gay marriage amendment to go forward. It isn’t even noon and already I have had a day crowded with incident!

It sounds like the beginning of a really corny joke, but a priest, a minister and a rabbi — indeed, representatives from 23 faith traditions — sang, prayed and celebrated as the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry marched in force from St. Paul’s Cathedral to the steps of the State House. There were about 175 in our number, and when we joined the throng of pro-equal marriage demonstrators, we outnumbered the somewhat anemic showing of pro-discrimination protestors by at least three to one. I was with about a dozen guys from the Chorus, and we sang a rendition of “Down by the Riverside” that got everybody’s blood pumping — both at St. Paul’s and on the steps

It was such a wonderful, affirming, enriching and strengthening morning. At St. Paul’s, various ministers and clergy members in turn trounced Bible-based arguments against gay marriage by pointing to the vast number of chapters and verses that speak of loving and caring. One of the speakers asked if there was anything more important we could be doing. There were homeless people outside on the steps. There is a criminal, senseless war in Iraq. Our planet is slowly and surely fading. The answer was a resounding no. There was nothing more important we could be doing, because what we were doing was bearing witness to the inherent dignity of everyone, of all aspects of God’s creation and all manifestations of God’s imagination and curiosity. The speakers ended with Episcopal Bishop Thomas Shaw saying that gay marriage exists everywhere, in every town and in every state, where people of the same sex create loving bonds and support loving homes.

Then the chorus sang Down by the Riverside and our group began marching across the common to the State House. The cheers and clapping that greeted us was amazing. We sang, we prayed and our group kept getting bigger.

Going by what they say on the news, it’s going to be extremely, tensely close. But no matter what happens, I feel like we stood up and bore witness to justice. St. Paul’s, by the way, is going to be open all day and will have a special mass at about 6:30 tonight. I’m going to try to go.

Current Mood: hopeful

Did anyone else see this? Or are we too busy following Paris Hilton to care??

Indiana Hate Crime Ignored as Killers Prepare 'Gay Panic' Defense

It's a crime that seems to have been virtually ignored by the media. It took place on April 12th in Crothersville, Indiana, a small town halfway between Indianapolis and Lousiville.

DailyKos reports: "Two young men in Jackson County Indiana said they were so freaked out when 'propositioned' by Aaron Hall on April 12th, that they proceeded to beat the 100 pound, 5'4 man for hours, using their fists, boots, dragging him down a staircase while his head slammed into each step, and then throwing him in a ditch and leaving. Aaron managed to crawl out of the ditch and out into a nearby field, where he died, alone and naked."

The sole paper to report on the crime, The Bloomington Alternative, reported that "[19-year-old Garrett] Gray (in stripes, behind), [18-year-old] Coleman [King] (center) and others, including 21-year-old Robert Hendricks and uncharged co-conspirator John Hodge, told police remarkably similar stories about a violent reaction to a homosexual advance in Gray's Crothersville home, according to court documents filed by police in the case."

The paper also notes the media's deafening silence:

"According to the local paper, The Crothersville Times, a witness said 19-year-old Garrett Gray, upon learning that Hall was dead, 'began vomiting and making statements of what his dad would say when he found out about this incident.' The fact that this tale has received almost no media attention outside Jackson County, Monroe's far southeast-corner neighbor, is but one of its bizarre twists. Another is the suggestion that Hall made no sexual advance on 18-year-old Coleman King, the other accused, that he and Gray made up the story as an excuse for murder. There's a legal theory for their argument. It's called the 'gay panic defense,' and it suggests that temporary insanity from exposure to homosexuality is a defense against murder. Matthew Shepard's killers tried to use it."

Indiana Bloggers are questioning the media's inaction as well.

Give the Bloomington Alternative piece a read. This story needs more

Current Mood: enraged

Unbelievable! Unbe-freaking-LEAVABLE. It seems our president isn't satisfied with destabilizing the Middle East -- an area of the world with which he has shown frighteningly little understanding -- he's now trying to get our longstanding European allies to hate us, as well. It seems he's going out of his way to be a first-class asshole. I'm waiting for the day when Canada declares war against us. LORD! I just want this monster to go away!!! Check out this from BBC. The latest in an all-too-long line of missteps that point to the idiocy and arrogance of the Bush administration.

I repeat: I JUST WANT THEM TO GO AWAY!!!!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6728303.stm

Current Mood: pissed off

I told my boyfriend I loved him today. I laid my heart out on the sidewalk for him to walk on. We'll see what happens ...

Current Mood: quixotic

Oh. My. Goodness. Weddings, I'm coming to find, bring out some adorable attributes in their attendees. This weekend I attended a wedding, and one of the singers could have been the love child of Liza Minnelli and Sally Struthers -- it was the type of performance for which YouTube was created. Her emoting, right down to the (was it?) calculated step forward on the modulation in the song, made jaws drop. I hope I'm not being nasty, here. I could draw quite the picture of this woman based on what I saw. But I shan't. 

I also heard the most unnerving factoid this weekend. The typical wedding costs tens of thousands of dollars, and people are mortgaging their homes for their marriages, because bigger is better, and their respective weddings have to be bigger than everyone elses. So much wasted money for a day, the details of which precious few people are ever going to remember. If I ever get married, the prospects of which are getting iffier and iffier as the years slough away, it'll be as simple as can be.

Current Mood: pensive

It's amazing the gems you find in your own backyard. Yesterday I went to the Boston Harbor Islands, a wonderful resource that, inexplicably, few people in Boston seem to know about. For $10 you buy a wonderful round-trip boat ride and can range hither and yon on islands and enjoy the most exquisite ocean views. Then again, maybe it's a good thing that the islands are still somewhat of a secret -- I'd be terrible to see them crowded like shopping malls.

Current Mood: content

Well, after years of trolling other LiveJournal entries, I've decided to create my own. No telling what I'll actually end up doing with it, but I'll cross that bridge later. It is now 10:30 in the morning and while nearly everyone else I know is slaving away in their little warrens, I'm sitting here in my pajamas and slurping on just-getting-cold coffee. We find our little pieces of heaven wherever we can.

Current Mood: calm
Current Music: The Supremes, "Ain't That Good News"