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Fraud

I�ve been thinking a lot about the word "fraud" lately. I don�t like it. I don�t like being associated with it, even though I think it describes me pretty accurately. At least, it has for the past several years, despite every effort to change that.

When I went to college, I met a great guy. He was 28, but still very innocent and childlike. He had grown up in Long Island, gone to college in NY, graduate school in Boston, but he had so much still to learn. For 28 years, he moved around the country, met people, got degrees and good jobs, but because of his insecurities in his own appearance, he never allowed himself to approach another human being to tell them he was gay and that he found them attractive. He was confident and capable in everything else in his life, but he was approaching 30 and had never kissed, so strong was his fear of rejection.

When he moved to Texas, he met this scrappy, long-haired 18 year old from Colorado with a big mouth and a deeply protective shell that made him look confident on the outside, but underneath lay an entire nest of insecurities that threatened to unleash their destruction at any given moment. For a long time, he believed the kid�s shell was real, and he found himself intimidated, as usual. He refused to admit to his growing infatuation. But when the kid�s own secretive insecurities and faults presented themselves over a long talk and several mugs of hot cocoa, he took a chance. He rescued the kid. They rescued each other, with a simple and comforting touch, mere fingertips that were surprisingly not brushed away that expressed everything the two of them wanted and everything they feared.

Our love was intense, not only because of its elements of lost innocence, but because of its shameless sincerity, and the virginal expression of that sincerity. The insecurities and doubts that had shackled us both throughout our lives dissolved in the face of a common relief to have found genuine love; a love that no longer required apologizing for shortcomings.

As we grew together, we found that one of us was at the end of a journey, a long road of searching and waiting patiently for desires to present opportunities. Another was at the very beginning of a journey, a more torrid path of exploration and self-discovery. I didn�t want to hurt him, but I broke his heart. I didn�t know how to handle leaving someone, especially someone I still loved. I stayed for him. I stayed until I resented him. I stayed, but grew so emotionally distant that he cried because of the loneliness anyway.

We remained friends, and in the year that followed our eventual break-up, the story of what happened came out slowly, through many delicate steps. In the end, we realized that I had lost myself in suppressing what I wanted in order to keep from hurting him. I wanted to do the right thing, but made every wrong move until I didn�t even know why I was doing what I did. I ignored my desires, and I spent so long pretending to be everything I wasn�t that I forgot who I really was. When I no longer needed to pretend, I didn�t recognize who I had become and couldn�t find the person I had once been, so I became someone else. I pretended to be confident like I once was. I pretended to be unapologetic for my appearance like I knew I should be. I pretended to be a person that wasn�t so ashamed of the pain I�d caused another. I pretended to be what I wasn�t. I became a fraud.

Subsequent experiences sent me further into pretending away the realities of my life, and, as a result, I find myself today unable to feel like I know who I am. I feel like an actor, in stage clothes that fit only well enough to fool the audience. But they don�t fool me anymore, and they haven�t fooled SP in a long time. It�s time to shed the costume, and find what truly does fit. I owe it to SP, and to myself, and to us.

I don�t want this name to fit anymore. I don�t want to be a fraud, I want to be me. I want to be PatrickG.Diaryland.com.