TNG reader Mark brings us this post.

Photo by Mike Hicks

This weekend, I’m traveling home for my Dad’s wedding. Even being gay, it seems that there’d be way more normalcy in my parents attending a commitment ceremony for me than the other way around. It’s an odd mix of emotions, without a clear trajectory for how its all “supposed” to feel.

Backing up a bit, my parents divorced a handful of years ago after more than 30 years of marriage. During the first 25 years they were together – including my childhood and early 20’s – it was a happy and stable union, and impossible to think that my nuclear family would ever be anything other than what it was.

But then the unthinkable happened, as it is so often does. Slowly and painfully for everyone involved, their relationship soured and ended. My siblings and I made the awkward transition from thinking of “Mom and Dad” to a different model of family in which Mom is one sentence. Dad is another.

I won’t go into the causes of the break up, which were bountiful and awful, and something that no child could pretend to be impartial about. The more important piece of the story is simply that it now is what it is. Time has passed and we are all moving on and learning a new normal.

This type of Zen detachment was not my understanding of the situation five years ago. At the time the presence of the loss was so potent that the words “we’re getting a divorce” took the wind from my lungs with such force that I had to sit down.

And because the Universe tends to teach big lessons all at once, the end of my parents’ marriage coincided almost to the day with my own break up with my ex. He and I had loved each other deeply, but ultimately, it was one of those relationships that was always stormy and mercurial. Again, I cannot write about it objectively even now, but will simply say that on the way out the door (and we left each other multiple times), we hurt each other badly, even as we each in our way contorted and twisted to try and make it work again and again.

Time doesn’t necessarily heal all wounds as cleanly as we’re led to believe, but it does calm the waters a bit. What was once red hot and searing pain – both when I thought of the shattering of my family unit, and of the nest I’d tried to build for myself – has been replaced slowly over time with a different kind of sensation: equal parts wistful for what was, grudgingly grateful for the many lessons that have followed and for the weird and occasionally wonderful new realities that spring from the ash.

Now, in my circle of friends – my own urban family – we tend to play a little rough. A few weeks ago a dear friend of mine asked me casually as we walked home from a night of cocktails and merriment “So, your Dad’s getting married for the second time, and you haven’t even gotten married once yet – what’s that like?” (I won’t name names as to which friend dropped that particular little morsel in my lap, but suffice it to say I plan to sneak into his apartment one day when he least expects it and leave a small poisonous snake in his bed. Payback is a motherfucker).

But what was meant as a quip between friends has become a thought that I haven’t quite been able to shrug off. It’s now been more than four years since my break up, and my parent’s divorce. Over the last year in particular I’ve been dating. Not just going on first-dates, not just having random hook-ups with new men in bars followed by polite brunch the next day (“So, do you have a last name?”). But, actually going through the exercise of trying people on over a period of time. There have been dinners, trips to museums, movies, nights on the couch doing crosswords with goblets of wine and candles, and so on.

As yet, none of these try-ons has taken root into an actual relationship. Part of that is clearly beyond my control, we all know it happens when it happens and kissing frogs is part of the journey to finding that prince. And yet one night a couple of months ago, as I chatted with a cute doctor (my mother would be thrilled) over an assortment of olives, hummus and other guppie fare, I caught a voice in the back of my head say something that I’m not entirely sure my conscious self was meant to hear.

“This guy’s nice, but I’m not sure he’s going to be The One. And frankly, if he ain’t the real deal we oughtta cut a loss soon and avoid getting hurt later.”

This was news to me – to the point that I actually excused myself and went to the bathroom for a moment to get my game face back on. (It’s perhaps worth acknowledging here that I work in public relations, and while the ability to stay on message is handy at work, it doesn’t always make me a whiz at real life).

Obviously, there’re two sides to this coin. If someone ain’t a fit, accepting that, and even stating it gently and honestly is best for all involved. But that sonofabitch voice in the back of my head wasn’t saying that. The scared and wounded message being transmitted from within was, “Don’t take the risk. Getting hurt again – and you will get hurt again – will cost too much, and we’re just not going to go down that path, even for a cute doctor. Unless it’s 110% clear that it’s a fit, it’s best to call it a day now.”

The rational part of me, elusive as it can be, knows that this is no way to live, or find genuine, lasting connection — which I claim to crave. Relationships are not a science; they are a messy art that is necessarily practiced with the occasional cream pie in the face. If anything, my parents’ divorce has taught me that lesson as clearly as anything else. Yet my response to it has been to hold a decidedly defensive crouch. What’s more irksome is that my own father – who was as wounded and battered as anyone in my family’s sad debacle – has found a way to pick up the pieces and move on.

Marriage is increasingly possible as a legal reality for me in the not-so-distant future. A lasting relationship, a lifelong promise to try and love, and be loved by, someone else and one day having a couple of adopted (and adorably dressed) children are on the mantel in my mind’s eye, a goal that I carry and am hungry for. Yet – to be completely honest – I just don’t know that I can really have that for myself.

As I write this morning, I’m sitting in Big Bear, a crunchy independent coffee shop that is not at all typical of DC’s regular chain stores. They just played a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” that I hadn’t heard before. The singer gently crooned “Well maybe there’s a God above, but all I ever learned from love was how to shoot somebody who out drew ya….Hallelujah.” Jeff Buckley’s version of the song is an old friend in my iTunes that gets a decent amount of airtime in my earbuds. But I don’t think I ever understood it as clearly and succinctly as I do today.

As I said, I still don’t know exactly what I believe I can – or even want – to have in this life; but I hope this is simply the next big life lesson I’m going to learn from my Dad, who has taught me so much. My Dad, who said when I came out, “I just want you to be happy.” My Dad, who – according to my siblings – has been smiling more than ever lately.