one of the biggest (but well-meaning, I am sure) lies ever perpetuated in tv shows and movies...

Not being able to sleep plus loneliness plus watching something unbelievably heartfelt and genuine yet still hard to swallow equals pure misery...and may lead to a cynically-infused post like this one.

Up very late and catching an episode of "How I Met Your Mother" that I never have seen before I can not help but painfully remember why I stopped watching the show. Its main character's unbelievably steadfast and goofy and adorable belief in "the one" was just too much for me sometimes.

I do not think I ever stopped watching a show before because I liked it TOO much, but that is why I stopped watching HIMYM. And the goodness and the happiness and its unshakable conviction that true love does exist just eventually became too much for me and much too painful to believe in.

Maybe it is easy to still hold to such beautiful sentiment as this in your 20s and 30s but by 45...not so much. By 45 if you are single (no matter whether you are gay or straight) and still holding on to thoughts like these, you either waited for something that never happened or your "one" was not the one who felt the same.

Lovely and magical and sincere, yet somehow still more a fairy tale than not, these words strike me as actually almost harmful to one's sanity to believe...because if you go through your whole life thinking this is an absolute then you may be in for some really, really heartbreaking and devastating disappointment when it does not happen or the one you feel this way about is not the "one" for you...

Klaus:Victoria is wunderbar, but she is not my "Lebenslanger Schicksalsschatz." She’s my "Beinahe-Leidenschaftsgegenstand"… It means the thing that is almost the thing that you want, but it’s not quite. That is Victoria to me.
	Ted:	How do you know she’s not "Lebenslanger Schicksalsschatz?" Maybe as the years go by she’ll get "Lebenslanger Schicksalsschatz…ier?"
Klaus:	"Lebenslanger Schicksalsschatz" is not something that develops over time. It is something that happens instantaneously. It courses through you like the water of a   river after a storm, filling you and emptying you all at once. You feel it throughout your body, in your hands, in your heart, in your stomach, in your skin… Have you ever felt this way about someone?
Ted:	…I think so.
	Klaus:	If you have to think about it, you have not felt it.
Ted:	And you’re absolutely sure you’ll find that someday?
	Klaus:	Of course. Everyone does eventually… You just never know when or where it will happen.

unrequited feels like unrelenting...

...or her

I was reading on my iPhone last night and saw this and though it is directed to straight women, this advice (good advice, I think), of course, can apply to anyone who has one-way feelings for someone. I am really, really thinking about seeking therapy because how I feel has gone on far too long and having to be around someone you like so much on such a regular basis can be extremely difficult and painful sometimes...

I was looking up information on an author for a science fiction class I am taking through work and I discovered that the writer killed herself, in part because she struggled much of her life with having feelings for other women. I guess maybe this hit too close to home for me and I have been overcome with such sadness, more than is probably reasonable or that I can even explain, given that I was much worse off with struggling when I was younger than I am now.

I really do not know many people in my own life who know the despair of struggling with being gay. The only other lesbian I know (and with whom I am not close friends with, but I have had conversations with about all kinds of topics) was warmly accepted by her parents when she came out to them. 

A couple of months back at work I helped a young lady find young adult novels on coming out. I guess she was about sixteen or seventeen. She quietly said thanks and, afterwards, I could not help but notice that the young lady went over to a woman and called her mom and that as she showed her the books, the woman hugged her to her side and told her it was going to be okay. I was so happy for the girl, I truly, truly was, but after that I excused myself from the reference desk and went to the bathroom where I ended up crying for a little bit.

It has been more than a quarter of a century since I first told my parents I am gay and they still will not accept who I am. It may be the 21st century, but some people are still living in the 19th. I am so, so happy for anyone whose parents and other loved ones in their lives wholeheartedly accept them, but I also hope they know how blessed they are to have this.

...

A recent issue of a science fiction magazine I like devoted its main topic to LGBTQ characters and stories, something that just really jumped out at me because science fiction is not always warm and friendly to gay and lesbians (think Orson Scott Card). These two passages are ones I really, really relate to:

There are a lot of theories used both for and against gays and lesbians in trying to 'figure' out why one might be gay.



 
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-cross/cross-gaychange.html
 

Music is the place I go to get away from me. And this is one of my favorite pictures of how I'd like to escape, its aura is so peaceful and lovely. I mean I know it's a picture of Batgirl, but I am still transfixed by the look on her face and the starkness of the backdrop...not to mention that she's finding tranquility so high up off the ground (for me that's truly amazing since I have a huge fear of heights.)

Every once in a while I want to let go and be saved by someone, but then I feel childish. We to have to be our own superheroes...no one else is going to swoop in and take me away from this world on those days that are particularly trying...besides there are more and more days lately when I'd rather be saving someone or something...doing so much more than I am right now with my life and finding a real purpose beyond just existing.