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Are You Silently In Love?
The crushing feeling of being in love with someone that you cannot express your feelings for is a tough spot, and one which many people find themselves trapped in. It could be a co-worker, friend, or even someone who is a big part of your life – like a best friend. Whatever the scenerio, being in love without being able to express it is emotionally draining, and has caused many a night with me in front of my iTunes making depressing playlists and writing in my journal.
Ok, well maybe not anymore – consider that I have been with my partner for seven years now and wouldn’t trade him for the world, and ok – yeah I am no longer lusting after people I can’t have, but at one time I did. Well, a few times I did. Yeah, ok so it wasn’t iTunes playlists that I made full of depressing music, but I certainly made a lot of mix tapes, and I still have the pages of journals that I kept (this is back when people wrote on actual notebook paper to keep their thoughts) which reflect my innocence. I wish someone would have put caution tape all over the place, wrapped me in my lustful bubble wrap, and shoved me back in the closet until I was good and matured…. but, that isn’t living.
Everyone has a secret crush, or someone that they secretly wish would hold them in their arms late at night and love them forever. Everyone has the dream, the fairy tale, the beat all to end all – which can go two ways …. it can become a seriously loving relationship, or it can cause hurt and pain – jealousy, and sometimes even serious depression. There is a fine line between love and hate, and neither lines are clear – most are jaded and skewed with thoughts of “what if they noticed” or “what if they told me they loved me?” Either way, these thoughts are fantasy – mixed in with a variance of small facts, clues, or hints which may entitle one to believe that their crush actually wants to be with them. For all intensive purposes, I hope that all dreams come true – but that normally isn’t the case.
The silence of not being able to express emotion for a human being is equal to suffering, almost torture – because one’s ability to overcome the release of the emotion can only be expressed by “ending the silence.” That isn’t easy, because of several factors:
1. The secret crush could be a member of the same sex.
2. The secret crush could be a friend, classmate, or roommate which creates a fear of loss if expressed.
3. The secret crush may already be involved in another relationship, and/or married.
Regardless of the expectations, a person who is silently in love does not see the reality, or the big picture. The eye is on the prize, so to speak, and love becomes a working challenge, one to which can either be obtained through a miraculous twist of fate – or end with a sad let down.
So how do you deal when you are silently in love? In my past experiences, I have done about every option. I have told the person I was silently in love with my feelings, and lost them as a friend. I have told them about my feelings, and was brushed off as if I was a joke. I have told them about my feelings, and I was able to obtain a one night stand – only to be torn to pieces later when the one night stand was “just sex” for them, and more than “just sex” to me.
Then I woke up. Then I realized that there was more to life than just wasting away dreaming on a cloud about one person, and that in order for me to LOVE someone else, I had to love MYSELF enough to be honest with everything. I had to know who I was, and everyone else had to be clear about who I was as well. Being silently in love isn’t fair to a person, and so in order to break the silence – you have to start talking. You have to start telling yourself, “I have feelings for ____.” The feelings may not be mutual, but you are telling YOURSELF – not anyone else, and you should then convey that self worth and pride to others.
I don’t mean run around screaming “I love _____” to others, but the fact that you are in love, or that you have strong emotional feelings – you can even say, “you may not know this, but I am swirling with love and emotion right now.” If anyone asks “who,” then just communicate – “it’s my secret.” Until your ready to fully say it with all of your self, and be proud of the fact that you have faced your feelings and are commited to the results – no matter how devistating they may be, your silence will only create a unhealthy obsession which over time will create a wound that will not heal.
The void can be filled by loving yourself, and then by doing so – you will find love, because that is what happened to me. [After all, it has been 7 years with my partner and I could not be happier!]
SINcerely,
Jake A. Wheat
The Dos Hombres “Pen Pal” Experiment
Dos Hombres “Pen Pal” is an application on the iPhone that I discovered a few months ago while browsing through the multitude of applications in the iTunes app catalog. It’s basically a pen pal application, where you compose a message and then flip the envelope into the sky (literally) when you are ready to send it – and it lands where it lands.
The algorithm of how it lands is a mystery to me, but one thing I started to notice was that I was getting a multitude of messages from people with short messages like “I like to talk dirty to girls, hit me up if you are a girl and like to talk dirty” or “send me ur nekkid pix!” That disturbed me, considering that I have written several messages and “flipped them into the sky” only to end up talking to a teenager from Germany, or a 30+ Interior Designer from New Jersey. Regardless, I found it odd that the system did not regulate itself in order to protect minors, and there was no settings on the application to state you wanted “adult” conversation only.
The question that I proposed in my experiment was, if this is a “Pen Pal” application and it was being used to solicit heterosexual adult conversation, would homosexual conversation (in a non-adult approach) receive responses? If so, would they be welcomed or would they receive angry responses? Since the application reaches a global audience, is homophobia global on my iPhone?
So I caved. I sent out approximately 50+ messages (flipping them into the unknown by composing the message, and then flicking the envelope off of the screen – the app is symbolic, much like casting a bottle into the ocean…) anyway, so my message went something like:
“My name is Jake, and I am a 36 year old gay guy who lives in Kentucky. I’m a writer, Producer, Director, and a blogger who loves muscular tattooed (lol) guys who have “secrets!” I have lots of girl and guy friends, love to chat, and I can keep a secret! Let’s be friends! You can learn more about me at (I gave them this URL), and chat with me here! Remember, if you are a tattooed hottie dude …. then make my day! Chat soon?”
Ok, so that was my message that I flicked into the sky – my thought process was that I would implement several key words into my message to see if it used an algorithm to match my message to people with OTHER messages that had the same key words – in theory, that would make sense. I used “muscular, tattoo, gay, 36, chat, day, secrets, and chat.” What did I get back?
Of the 50+ messages that I copied and pasted into the app and sent out, I received eight messages back this morning, three girls and five guys. One girl I had already been chatting with about life in general, the other girl was from California and wanted to be friends “even though she wasn’t a muscular guy” and then there were two very interesting “haters.” The rest were gay or bisexual men who just wanted to chat with me, and most of them were from overseas.
Homophobia is a global epidemic, and while my message was about liking muscular guys – it wasn’t dirty, crass, or controversial in a sense that it asked for anything dirty or nasty. The keywords were “gay, muscular, tattoos, chat, etc…” not “send me pics, lets fuck, lets get crunk, I do hard drugs…” whatever. Anyway, one guy from Ireland sent me a nice long message that read something along the lines of:
“You disgusting faggot, if you went to the gym more often then maybe you would not have to spend all your fat ass time on your iPhone trying to hook up with other guys. Why do you faggots always turn something innocent into something disgusting? Fat ass!”
Seriously? First of all this is coming from a guy with a profile picture in the app who is bulbous and obese himself, and hails from Ireland (home of nothing but gay icons, all I kept thinking of was little green leprechauns and green clovers…. damn, now my fat ass wants Lucky Charms) Indeed, homophobia is Global, my letter into the sky landed into the lap of a bigoted Irishman all the way across the Globe, who replied to my message with a barrage of insults. I was confused by the insult, considering that I had received numerous messages much MUCH worse than mine in my inbox from heterosexuals who indeed were much more forward, and the only thing I did in my message was hyperextend the association between gay, muscular, and tattoos – to downplay anything feminine. I may have introduced implications to chat with these types of guys, but I never stated I wanted to do anything nasty or perverted – nor did I request “nekkid pix.”
Another hater was a guy named Brian from Long Beach, Florida – who’s profile picture was that of a cheeky fellow that looked like he got his haircut from a old woman forced his head under a Tupperware bowl. He stated to me that “I was disgusting, a fatty, and that I was something that God shit out.” He went on to preach that he “hated gay people, and that I made him sick.”
He was the only hater I wrote back, and my reply was simple and honest…. “Nice hair, Froto.”
Then I received other emails from across the Globe from guys who were gay and lived in Germany, Turkey, Iceland, and in the USA – all of which were so amazingly charming! Some guys were quick to point out that they were not so muscular, but had a couple tattoos – and the one guy from Germany was a gay punk who had facial piercings and loved hardcore music.
So what does this say about my experiment? I sent out 50 messages, and got 8 replies. 7 of them counted as legitimate responses to my “test” message, and one of them was a previous response from an earlier non-test message. 2 of the messages contained hateful bigoted responses, and were from people claiming that I was disgusting and all that blabber…. and yet, their messages were much more offensive and derogatory than mine! So what does this tell you?
Hate is disgusting and offensive. When individuals, regardless of implication, utilize the masculine verbiage along side of the word gay, it immediately offends those who are easily aroused by their own internal anger. Hetero-acceptable people are accepting, and gay or bisexual men are more apt to respond.
I could have been an obese teenager on the brink of suicide from not being accepted by my peers, and a hate message like that from an anonymous person could have set me over the edge. Words can kill, especially the young and impressionable – all things considered. Of course I was never more honored in my life to have had two messages of hate come in my direction, because it meant that while they ultimately read my message and were quick to reply with something to try to hurt me, it made them have to think for a moment about themselves – and apparently they didn’t like what they saw.
And for YOU……Brian in Long Beach – I understand why you don’t like what you see! I will literally cut you a check to go to a salon and get rid of that Three Stooges ” haircut that makes you look like a cheese making monk.
SINcerely,
Jake A. Wheat
