Coming Out Authentic

Honesty is nice in theory, but not everyone can handle total, brutal honesty. In my life, I have spent too much time trying to get a good read on people before being brutally honest with them. I have decided for them that they cannot handle my whole truth, so I never gave it to them. I sugar coated it. That may sound like ti did so for their sake, but the truth of it is I gave the world an impression of me I thought could be lived into and dealt with. Little of it was authentic. Did I love others authentically? Absolutely yes. Did others know me authentically? No or at least not all of me.

What does it mean to be authentic? Forget what others think about how you should be identified - what does David being authentic mean to David?

I think this is the question I have been asking myself for years. For so many decades prior to my asking this question, I was always concerned with how other perceived me rather than being "found out". I could not allow my feminine side to come out else someone might humiliate me.

So, authenticity to me minus anyone else's input looks like this - whatever makes me happy is fair game. To be clear, I am a loving person who wants what is best for everyone I come in contact with, so the idea of 'whatever makes me happy' does not come at the expense of another.

Pushing into this sense of personal happiness... When I see a woman that takes a great deal of time to express her utmost beauty, I am so envious of her. I see a woman in makeup as someone who is accentuating her already beautiful features. That's not to say that I don't see beauty in a woman that is without makeup; that just brings up pure jealousy of her beauty. What I love about a woman's features is her ability to choose. When a woman paints her toenails and then takes her beautiful nails and walks on the beach, to me it's like expressing a beauty for herself and then having fun with it.

Back to authenticity for me... I feel happy when my nails are long and made to be as pretty as possible.

I feel most authentic when I am able to express how I feel rather than how i think others would experience me. That may be a misuse of the word authentic.

When I feel authentic, today, I feel I can express myself in ways that may shock some, because I have spent decades developing a facade that covers up my true self.

I think my true authentic self is what brought my professional photography. In my photography I strive to see the extraordinary in the ordinary by looking past everyday clutter and anger in search of beauty.

I look back at my photography and don't see anyone else's work being emulated or copied. I see myself seeking out beauty in whatever the subject is in front of me. Aside from my grandchildren, I so desperately love photographing flowers. Flowers are soft and colorful. They never act like a tree or bush, they just remain beautiful.

I don't know anyone like me.

I have never felt i was a follower, but in my hiding of my true self, I have been one to emulate other male figures in my past. I felt a need to present as masculine as often as possible and I didn't know how to do it instinctually, so I looked to the example of other men.

I'm not completely sure how to express my true self other than to just be. I'm quite fond of a t- shirt I purchased recently that said 'Be You' under a rainbow. I get all warm and fuzzy inside when I think about just being me.

So my authentic self can will be be. If people don't like that, tough shit. __

I have changed jobs every 2-3 years for my entire career. I'm 59. I have worked post-college for 17 different organizations. For a non-math person, that's roughly 2-3 years per gig.

I don't get bored. I'm not really interested in a new company, ever. Rarely have I ever felt a grass-is-greener when leaving one company for another. But it seems every two to three years, I need a change.

I think the problem is within me.

I value authenticity, but after doing a great deal of inward focus and questioning, I find myself wondering if I authenticity so much, how is it that I couldn’t live an authentic life.

Before entering the ministry, all candidates to become pastors enter into a covenant with a group that will walk alongside the candidate during their process. In my case it was a committee within the presbytery. As part of this covenant, we are asked to meet with a psychological counselor. I met Bob in St. Petersburg, FL. Bob asked me to take hours worth of exams on a computer in a building where he and I were the only ones present. It was a bit creepy. When I was done, things got creepier, because Bob interpreted the data and proceeded to tell me everything I ever knew about myself. How he got that from true/false questions about favorite colors and other assorted multiple choice questions is beyond me, but Bob was incredibly accurate. As I said, it was creepy.

One of the things he mentioned to me was my appreciation of authenticity. So there it was. Raw. Untested. After hearing all about my life, from my abuse to difficulties with relationships to other instabilities, it was this love for authenticity that I so appreciated. It shocked me more than meeting a man that knew everything about me.

Why was this so shocking? I guess sixteen years later, I am realizing that I never really ferreted out why authenticity was so important to me and why it didn’t play a role in how I lived my life.

I do love meeting authentic people. I admire authentic people.

We live in a world that seems to wear masks hiding their true selves when out and about. As I sit here writing, perhaps that's how I see the world rather than an observations as to how others are acting. I mean, if I'm being honest with myself, how would I know that others aren't being authentic when we meet. I'm pretty sure I project my inner insecurities onto others when we meet.

This is why I sat down to write. Truth is, I couldn't care less if anyone ever reads this, but I think I need to write down what I am processing so that at least I feel the words come through my finger tips; so that I taste the words when I read them over and over.

I'm insecure.

The first step that seems to make sense is to try to determine why I feel insecure. I have spent my adult life trying to come across as feeling confident and self-assured. It's been an exhausting act. I'm tired.

So if I assume it's true that I am insecure, then how far back can I trace it? I don't think my insecurity was caused by any event. I was raped by two young men when I was 10 years old, but I think my insecurities go back farther than that.

When I was young, I often wanted to run away. I recall I had a grandiose plan to run away to our friend Betty's house. She lived all of two blocks away, but I had a little green suit case packed with a couple of comic books, a couple of matchbox cars. I couldn't pack my hot wheels cars, because they were only allowed to be used on the track or their wheels would warp and I couldn't pack the track and certainly didn't want them to lose any speed during my transition. I must have been three or four. We lived on Elm street, so I know I wasn't in school yet.

When I wasn't contemplating running away, I hid. I would hide in the dog house of a huge Saint Bernard dog down the alley from where we lived. I can't recall his name, but he was okay with me leaning against him in his dog house while I rested.

I would go further down the alley across the street and hide under the porch of a friend's house. When I think of this house, I think of the Munsters as it was creepy cool. Even my friend looked like the kid on the show. I can't really say much about how we played or what we did, but when I knew he was gone, I would crawl under his porch and hide.

Our house on Elm was a nice two story house with a full basement. In this basement was on of those monster furnaces that breathed fire. I kid you not, you could open a grill on the front and get a clear picture of what hell looked like. That's how I thought about it anyway. I'm not really sure why, because I don't recall learning anything positive from my experiences at the church we attended. In this basement, after getting past the sprawling furnace, was a back store room. We had boxes in there. I built a private fort in the top of the boxes where only I knew where it was and would hang out alone. I hid.

My favorite room place to play was in my closet. My brother and I were in the room at the end of the hall with the door immediately to the left when you entered the room. This closet was so deep. Building up a box wall, it made for a pretty good place to play. The only problem with playing in this beautiful closet was light, so the door had to remain open.

Why do I so vividly recall my hiding places? I don't remember who or what I was hiding from, so it makes no sense to me.

I recall a couple of things happening that affect my feelings. The first was when I was playing with my sister. I had two brothers and one sister. I remember sitting with her and having so much fun playing dress up and barbies with her. I was cloaked in a dress and a boa as was the barbie I was playing with and yet life was good at that moment. My dad came around the corner with my brother and shamed me into going out and paying ball with the boys. I don't recall the shaming being the worst feeling at the time, but it was definitely present. The worst feeling was the fun and sense of peace I was experiencing while playing with my sister and now she would be playing alone.

The other event I recall so well was when we were all playing out in the yard. We were in the backyard and my Dad called out from the window to come over. When I did, be tossed some water at me as it was the window to the kitchen. I thought this was awesome fun.

Later, as I wanted to have fun too, I was inside and tried to toss water out the window at my Dad while he was in the backyard. It didn't work out so well. My mother had some strawberries in the window thawing or something. As I think back, she must have frozen them, but was thawing them in the window to be ready for our strawberry shortcake desert after dinner. I knocked the strawberries over onto the ground when I tossed the water out the window.

My Dad was furious and beat me with a belt until I had welts on my back, bottom and on the back of my legs.

All I know is that I was less than five years old, because I wasn't in school yet. As I think back, I can't imagine why a pre-schooler needed such a beating for knocking some berries in the dirt when the place they were grown was next to the dirt in the first place.

A little water would wash off those berries and they would look new. The marks left on me for days if not weeks, when I was a so young, have hurt me for life.

I've long forgiven my Dad for the whipping.

It's only recently that I thought about being shamed for the way I was playing with my sister that I realized that I attached the same level of unfairness as to when I was beaten for spilling strawberries on the sidewalk.

I have just realized that the emotional damage I felt from the whipping is the same as the shaming for playing with girl things as a boy.

How is that possible? Perhaps it's a theme for me.

How does all this tie back to changing jobs every two years? I'm wondering if the change that needs to take place is within me and not outside of me. It's easy to change a job or change a house or focus attention on changes that require no internal changes.

I'm beginning to wonder if I have fled my life so far and the authentic me can't come out, because it has been stifled for so long and changing back to the real me hasn't been possible, so changing everything else is the bandaid to the inner or emotional change the needs to take place.

I’m gay.

Okay, I finally wrote it.

I’m gay. At least that’s what I told my wife.

I was so sure that such an announcement would call for a full band and parade of some sort. Nope, just crawling skin due to the fear of hurting someone I love.

What in the fuck do I do with this now?