The Circle of Life

A famed author and poet once stated, "A circle is a reflection of eternity, it has no beginning and it has no end, and eventually at some point we will be right back where we've been in our life."  This statement could be hold no more truth than the place where I am right now in life.

It's the circle of life... As the oldest of 3 boys my mother has always strived to be the best she could be even though, she always claimed that she didn't know what she was doing as a parent, because no one ever taught her.  Every family has it's dysfunction, and if I were to take a survey, everyone's family would be more dysfunctional than then next.  I remember as a young boy growing up in a single parent home, one night in particular, as I got my bath and got out to dry off, I burst into a song and a dance, "It's In His Kiss."  No I had never kissed a boy, but there was something that propelled me to sing and dance to this tune.  Maybe it was the fact that I had saw it on television, and I just couldn't get it out of my head.  Or maybe there was something deeper...  As i went into the chorus, my mother burst through the bathroom door and said, "Oh really are you that way?" Her loud and stern tone seemed to echo and reverberate into my being, and struck a cord of fear as if to say yes would send her into a frantic butt-whooping, as she usually did when we (my brothers and I stood in need of discipline)  Standing there dripping and naked, i quietly said, No No No i was just singing.  She responded loudly, "better not be, now get dried off and put on your pajamas!!"  She slammed the door, and suddenly it felt like I was alone and misunderstood and afraid.

Why I so quickly felt the need to cover up my feelings that night and tell my mother, my attraction for boys, was beyond me.  I had always told the truth and never lied to my mother, but something in her voice told me that she wouldn't understand.  After all i was only 13 years old, new to high school and was already trying to find my place in life, to add another burden would be completely irrational.

It would be a year or later, when my mother would find an "XY Magazine" that I had bought with a friend/cousin, we'll call him Jamison, who i spent the night with.  He lived in my hometown but would often travel to Charlotte to stay with his mother.  One weekend after we had gotten our licenses, we went to Charlotte and went to a bookstore and bought the magazines.  I took one home with me to look at the eye candy, and would hide it under the bed, out of investigating and nosey eyes of my mother, or so I thought.  One day, i went to look for the magazine and it was gone.  Frantically i turned my room upside down looking for it.  Wondering whether my mother had found it snuck in her room, and saw that she had the magazine sitting on her vanity underneath her bible.  I thought, "Oh shit, I'm in trouble now".  Well that night she came into my room and threw the magazine on my bedroom floor and began the tirade of Are you this way!  God is not pleased!  You need to be delivered!!  Why do you have this magazine!?  Ashamed, I lied and said, "its not mine, it belongs to Jamison!  He told me to look at it but when I saw it I knew you would be mad so I hit it! I lied and lied for seemed like an eternity until she retreated, apologized, and told me to throw that filth away!!

Hence the circle of life... Seeing the disappointment in my mother's eyes on just those two isolated occasions threw me into a whirlwind of lies, deceit, and my own self-destruction.  It's funny how in this circle of life, it seems as if you end up doing the same things, over and over again.  Unfortunately, this time its not my mother, its my wife that's discovered things about me, emails, pics, etc.  Strangely enough, although the circumstances were different the responses were the same lies, apologies, and cover-ups.  Fearful of my wife's hurt, disappointment, and shame, I have made it my business to protect a fabrication.  I've come to the realization, that for so long I've lied and denied things for the sake of protecting other's opinions and perceptions of me, all the while not realizing, that I have all too many times denied my own happiness.  I'm in a situation now, where I have to make a decision to break the circle and decide my own destiny.  At this point it's not about being down low or wanting to experience multiple sex partners, it's about determining what makes me happy and being confident and comfortable enough to embrace what makes me happy without worrying about other's opinions

The circle of life is tricky, but eventually we are bound to repeat the circle in some form or fashion.  Might now be the exact situation or people, but in some form we are destined to repeat, until we decide to break the circle and color outside the lines.