May and December have never been so lovely. Beautiful, extremely moving and just plain wonderful, Touchwood is the kind of story that is both deep and mature and makes you wish you could find someone like Louisa in real life.

It can be a bit frustrating at times when Louisa and Rayann fail to effectively communicate with each other, especially in the beginning, but it's also 100% believable.

As a complete softie for May/December romances, I love the dynamics between the two main characters and how much each woman cares for the other. Even the love scenes are nicer and more touching than in most lesfic: "You have my heart and just about every inch of my body.” Rayann smiled slightly. “I think the little toe on my left foot is the only part of me you haven’t left an indelible impression on.”

 

There's a group called Pure Bathing Culture that does a really dreamy cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Dreams." I love it more than the original, almost. 

I think of it as literally "dreamy," because it's far more wispy and surreal than the original (though Stevie's voice just can't be beat.) Listening to it, I feel like I'm inside a very pleasant dream:

http://purebathingculture.bandcamp.com/track/dreams-fleetwood-mac-cover

I was listening to my copy of Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon on the way into work today and, as always, sighed a bit at the last line of "Love."

Love is real , real is love
Love is feeling , feeling love
Love is wanting to be loved

Love is touch, touch is love
Love is reaching, reaching love
Love is asking to be loved

Love is you
You and me
Love is knowing
we can be

Love is free, free is love
Love is living, living love
Love is needed to be loved 

Of all human needs, love may be the absolute strongest. 

Physically, it may not be as dire as the need for food, but for me it's always been the most intense. If I didn't have to eat to survive, I'd gladly trade all the food in the world for love.

The only time I really enjoy food is when I'm sharing it with people I like. One of the hardest things about being single is finding the interest to cook just for me.  Cooking is always most joyous when you're doing it for someone else.

The truth is, except for reading, most things are better when experienced with someone else...and even reading can be enhanced when you discover how others feel about what you've recently read.

At some points in my life, the need for love has been so strong, and the isolation so overwhelming, it's like a tree falling in an empty forest. This is most bad during the middle of the night, when things are so quiet where I live, I feel like I'm the last person on Earth.

Never having found someone to love who loves you back can wreck havoc with how you feel about yourself. Friends and family (especially friends who tend to be more unconditional with their love, if you ask me) help a lot, but there's something so appealing about growing old with someone special that I've never been able to shake off completely.

As I often do I Googled for ways to feel better about this: 

"Just because no one loves you today (or you perceive life that way) doesn't mean someone won't love you in the future. Be loveable and love will find you"-Yahoo Answers

“We can’t hate ourselves into a version of ourselves we can love.” ~Lori Deschene

The rest of the article this quote appears in can be linked here:

http://tinybuddha.com/blog/7-things-to-remember-when-you-think-youre-not-good-enough/

Kindle Highlights...

Back in bed she folded the sheet tightly across her chest to give herself a feeling of being held…

I highlighted that quote in a favorite book because I thought I was the only one who did that on particularly challenging nights and the words soothed my heart. I'd read the novel before, but that particular night I remember pressing a button on my Kindle that showed me several other people had highlighted that passage as well...which made me feel less lonely, less freakish.

Sometimes I mark passages that are the exact opposite of my personal experience, but still deeply affect me...this is what I would think of as a fantastical dream speech that I always wished my mom had given when I tried to come out twenty three years ago. In this part of Touchwood (by Karin Kallmaker), the main character's mother is apologizing for not embracing her more in the beginning:

“I’m glad. It was hard…hard to go inside, but once I was there and I looked around at all the gay people I found myself thinking of them as different. And then it came to me that while I was there I was the one who was different. I knew then, how you—all of you must feel. Made to feel different everywhere you go. And I felt so terrible."

She pauses, then looks at her daughter with tears in her eyes (both of them are crying, actually):
 

"I don’t care about who you spend your life with as long as the person’s good to you."

My parents, especially my mom, did not react well when I tried to tell them about me decades ago. They were so upset, so full of harsh words and non-acceptance, that I grew scared and, after a week of their continuing to tell me I'd end up out of the family and go to Hell when I died, I gave in and told me I had been "mistaken."

I've tried again over the years to explain to them that I am gay, that I'm not going through a "phrase" (a twenty three year long one?) but they still believe it's a sin and say if I bring up this "nonsense" one more time they don't want to see me anymore.

When I read the scene above I started wondering if parental acceptance of adult gay children is the norm or the wonderful exception. I hear all the time about other gays and lesbians who find warm reception when they come out to their families, but I also still hear the horror stories...those whose parents tell them such horrific things as "I'd rather you were dead."

I thought all my recent misery was coming from the feelings I have for someone I shouldn't. But I realize that, even though it still hurts sometimes, it is going to get better with time and I can certainly understand and accept she cannot ever like me.

But knowing my parents are never going to change their minds and that I feel honor-bound to not be who I truly am so that I can be part of their lives..well that both saddens and weighs me down, not like my cozy comforter I sometimes pretend is one big hug, but like the anvil Wild E. Coyote was always trying to drop on Road Runner.

In the meantime I clutch to those Kindle highlights, not the ones I make as much as the ones I see underlined when I'm pausing at the same passage. Another marked section perfectly sums up the frustration and pain of unrequited love: 

Why can't I be happy just knowing her? Why do I have to want more?

Knowing there others are out there who feel the same is better than nothing...and is almost sometimes something.

It's important for us to reach out to people...we just need a little bit more kindness and empathy for each other.-Shaun Robinson, CNN


As Pat O'Brien and CNN anchor Shaun Robinson discussed suicide in relation to Robin Williams last night, each made remarks hard to forget. O'Brien called depression something "that wants to get you alone in a dark room." A few minutes later Robinson talked about how the world needs more kindness and empathy.

Both statements hit hard. I can't help but think of how many people on this earth need more kindness in their lives...and more empathy. I hear thoughtless comments about suicide (even now in 2014 when we should be more enlightened about its causes and less vocal with our judgments) and get so frustrated. 

You can't "snap out of it" when you're truly depressed and it's not "selfish" when someone truly suffering sees suicide as his or her only out. They need help, not hurtful attitudes.