Will You Still Love Me When I Am No Longer Young and Beautiful?

Friday, June 20, 2014

This was the question a Facebook friend posted today.  I have never met this friend in person.  I connected with him online because of our common interest in leather.  He is currently the Mr. Iowa Leather titleholder.  He has an adorable smile and a smoldering energy about him.  I’ve never actually been to Iowa.  It’s one of the few states I have never set foot in.  I’d be willing to travel there just to meet him.

So will I still be loved when I am no longer young and beautiful?  This is a thought that has been on my mind a lot lately.  Perhaps it has been on my mind a little too much.  And it pains me that it is on my mind so much as of late.  The fellow I referenced, Mr. Iowa Leather, is still in his twenties.  Upon turning forty last year I must admit that my twenties almost feel like a distant memory.  And it saddens me that throughout my twenties I was still seeing the world through eyes clouded by the impact of early life trauma I simply had no power to escape.  The scales finally fell from my eyes last year.  And what a resounding sound they made when they did so.  I am still adjusting to the transformation that has unfolded in my life in the last twelve months.  It has not been an easy process.  But it has been a rewarding one.  Sometimes the most rewarding experiences are also the most grueling.

As I think about this question that Drew posed I cannot help but again think about this picture of myself I have recently been looking at.  It was taken in Jaunary, 1999 in Chicago.  I was only twenty-five years old.  I am standing near the shore of Lake Michigan.  I was clad in a jacket.  The weak winter sunlight was glinting off the snow behind me.  You might never guess form looking at my smiling face that I had suffered so much in my life already.  It’s been difficult to simply learn how to live a life in which I am consistently happy.  But then again I didn’t have the best modeling of how to create such a life. 

Four months after the picture was taken I left Loyola University, Chicago and the Jesuit order and embarked on a new life in California.  I can still recall taking a week to drive across the United States to ultimately arrive in San Francisco, California.  I still recall the day I arrived.  It was May 25, 1999.  I saw parts of the United States I had never seen before.  I dreamed of having a life as exciting as some of the plot elements in the book Takes of the City written by Armistead Maupin.

My life in California did prove to be quite interesting.  At some points I could even describe it as eventful.  I met many interesting people.  I learned a lot.  I went to graduate school twice.  But the undertow of my earliest years of life was still dragging me down.  I just didn’t know it.  My lack of understanding of the impact of those earliest years of my life just compounded the original harm.  Sometimes we do harm to ourselves and do not even realize what we are doing.  Such can be the truth of our earlier years of life.

When I look at that picture of myself from January, 1999 I sometimes wish I could travel back to that time (just like I have found myself wishing I could have traveled back to the summer of 1982 and decisively change the future course of my life) and change the future of my life.  I feel grief that I still wasn’t really awake when I moved to California.  I wasn’t truly and fully aware of my own beauty…inside and out.  I saw the world dimly.  Now I look at the smile I showed to the world then and wonder how I could have perceived myself so incorrectly.

Will I still be loved when I am no longer young and beautiful?  Certain moments (like turning forty) have a way of prompting a person to think about these sorts of questions.  I now appreciate my beauty in a way I never did earlier in my life.  But I do wonder how long I will be considered handsome.  Will I ever find real and abiding love in my life?  Will I find the love I had hoped to find when I moved to San Francisco partly motivated by the dream of finding big, gay love?  I don’t know.  I hope I will.

As for now I am continuing my journey of healing.  And I am aware every day how precious my remaining time is.  These days I find myself so aware of the ponderous grief inside me.  There must be some way for me to exorcise my grief.  I find myself often unconsciously praying for guidance to lead me to a good future path for myself.  I want to believe I will find my way.  I have worked too hard throughout my life to not ultimately succeed and create a quality life for myself.

But when will my dreams finally come to fruition?  When will my patience be rewarded with more than a greater ability…to be patient?