If Love Exists, It will Prevail This Year

Why was I so depressed in Jr. High and High School?  It was because, thanks to Uncle Jack, my sexuality was confused, and I was wanting other boys.  But still, I wanted to love and be loved. However, if I pursued that, I would be so ashamed I could not face my family again.  I imagined I would have to run away, because I couldn’t face my Mom and Dad like that.  I also didn’t like imagining growing old with another man.  I wanted love, but it was tainted.  I felt I could never be happy, no matter which direction I went.  It’s a common theme that has more than once kept me frozen in place and depressed.

Through college, I had no idea how to talk to women.  If I found one I really liked, or even loved in a way, she never loved me back.  I was a mess, and I didn’t even know what I should be looking for in a woman.  I had always imagined that I’d find the right one in college.  However, I was too unusual and awkward.

I was heartbroken and convinced that my personality was unloveable, so I gave up.  I figured I’d try doing what I think God wants, and started reading and going to church.

Right when I went searching for God, it seemed like he made Cara appear. I thought ‘Cara and Matt’ was what God wanted.  Surely it had to be, because no girl previously ever gave me a chance.  I quieted the voices in my head.  However, I saw signs that it was a mistake even while engaged, but I dismissed them. I figured, ‘nobody is perfect, and I just have to LEARN how to love this person.’  In reality,  I just didn’t know what love really was.  I also had no clue of what I should be looking for in a partner.

So I got married anyways, because after all, it had to have been God; right?  I was terrified and knew I was stuck.  I used drugs to try and quiet my sorrow and fear.  I sought out wild things because I just wanted to feel again.  I thought it was maybe normal to feel terrified and think that you might’ve made the worst mistake of your life. I thought that something was just wrong with me; not appreciating what I had. After all, she was Christian, and this was what God wanted, right?

Then one day, many many years later, I metaphorically woke up, and I realized that I had never actually known what love was.  I knew, without a doubt, that it was the literal only thing I ever wanted to experience in life.  It explained why I could care less about travelling the world.  It explained why I tried filling the hole with buying unnecessary things or drugs.  It explained why I had become emotionally dead.

I had God, I knew I was here to help others, but was I really to give up on the only thing I ever wanted?  Was my whole life to be spent watching other people chase after their dreams, while I run around making them happy?  Or could I, maybe, have the one life experience I yearned for since I was 12 years old?

Did you know that I had not shed a tear in over 5 years?   I had myself perfectly numb so that I could finish life while feeling as little heartache as possible.

So I was slaving away for money.  I was with a woman that I would have near panic attacks if there was going to be something physical with her.  I would freak out at the thought of her possibly getting pregnant. Valentine’s Day, birthdays, and Anniversaries were a nightmare of trying to avoid the bedroom. I couldn’t even pretend.

I didn’t want that to be the rest of my life.  I did get along well enough with Cara and cared for her; like a little sister or more like a child.  So, like I had off and on through the years many times, I went online to pursue an affair; a cheap substitute for love.  I never even find that.  I figured I was just not good at talking that way with women, or more likely, I’m too old now.  I waited too long, and I beat myself up for missing out.  I wrestled with how I was going to try to make myself happy; take up computer gaming?

So one night, after finally being convinced that I was too old, I went into a live chat room; depressed.  She asked me how I was doing, and I said, “to be honest, I’m lonely.”

She said, “me too.”  As I chatted openly, the real me inside, the one that had bottled up and denied, finally got to speak.  I talked for hours that night.

After a few months, that was when it finally broke in me.  I realized that I had never really felt love before.  For the first time in at least five years, a tear came out.  It was such a shock to me, that I took a picture:

It felt amazing to have a heart again.  I had been pretending for so long, trying to be someone, something, that I was “supposed” to be, and not even doing a very good job at it.  Maybe, I thought, it isn’t too late for me after all.  Just four months before that photo, I had been getting rid of things, organizing things, gathering papers, and trying to decide which way I was going to kill myself while making it look like an accident.  I literally had written a note already and wrote detailed instructions for Cara, “in case something was to ever happen to me.”

But I was encouraged to not give up.  I was encouraged to never do that under any circumstance.  I was assured that I could be happy again.  I was torn because, again, I was in a situation that seemed like it had no happy ending.  Stay and go back to living like a zombie, or go and hurt people I cared about; making a massive mess.

I finally took the leap of faith, because I knew that, if I were Cara, I wouldn’t want to be with me if I knew how I was feeling.  She deserved to have love, too, and I knew that was something I could never offer her.  So I left.

I took an honest look at what went wrong and what I should’ve been looking for in a partner.  I studied relationships and personality types.  It also gave me time to deal with the emotions and logistics of breaking up.  It was fascinating to me anyways, but through the process, a very clear picture emerged of what partner could make me a better person, and I for her.  It seemed so obvious, and it was clear that Cara and I were not meant to be partners!

I had not been used to having to balance a budget as strictly, but money was still coming as it always had.  I felt free and myself again; a sort of sad Euphoria.  I decorated my apartment and reinvented my wardrobe; things I now very much wish I hadn’t taken the liberty to do.  I even helped people in poverty, people that didn’t ask for it, but I was being blessed, and I thought God wanted me to bless others.  I figured it was the least I could do after they helped me to not kill myself.  Of course now, I realize that God was not compelling me to help anyone, and I should’ve saved for what I didn’t know was coming.

But then, I wanted to get out there a little.  I chose to chat online because looks, while a factor, is not the most important.  I wanted to hear from a person’s soul, not a façade.  I started with people nearby, but every one of them just did not click or were ugly inside.

Then I thought, I’m not just looking for someone, I am looking for THE one. If I am going to spend the rest of what little life I have left with somebody, they should literally be the best in the world.  After all, people always say that there’s “many fish in the sea!”  So I spoke with people from Russia, Ukraine, Africa, Spain, UK, Italy, Mexico, Phillipenes, Canada, France, New York, Florida, California, Sweden, and several places in South America.  So, I know very well what the fish in the murky sea look like.

Things were still going okay with work, when, one day, I found somebody.  It was somebody that inspired me, that I respected, that was bringing me back in-tune with God.  From the first day we spoke, we were on the same wavelength.  We were different in personality, but we understood each other well.  She had qualities I wish I had, that I was specifically looking for; level-headed, not guided by emotions, disciplined with money, and focused.  I fell in love unexpectedly, and it was every bit as beautiful as I’d always hoped.

After 6 months of daily talks, meeting her mother, her son, and her grandma, she had gotten to know the emotional roller coaster I could be.  We spoke so often, that no masks could stay on, and we knew each other’s good and bad.

Then my company changed, they completely flipped my commission plan over, they changed the org structure, and suddenly I received literally zero new leads as they all went to the other reps; unfairly.  I was in way over my head and was caught completely unprepared.  If that weren’t enough, over the next 8 months, 70% of my long-time, most reliable customers suddenly started leaving me and going with competition.  It was an absolute catastrophe; literally like my career’s version of the Stock Market crash of the 1920’s.

I have never seen anything like it.  Of course, I would think of going back to Cara to live with economic security, but that would mean giving up on my one reason that I keep on living.  It feels like selling my soul.  It put me on a deep, deep depression.  How I could be so close to love only to see it be ripped away?  I beat myself up like only I am able to; and I promise you, you don’t even fully grasp how horribly I can beat myself up.  I daily beat myself to a bloody pulp.

I keep thinking: I’m MC Hammer or one of those lottery winners that had thought things would last, and then end up homeless from their own stupidity.  I’m ashamed, and feel there is no coming back this time.  I thought I was with God, but I don’t know why God had orchestrated so many compounding, horrible factors.

Now I have to practically start all over with work, and it seems insurmountable.  I didn’t want to.  It isn’t fair!

Despite 2024 being the worst in my career, somebody kept me going.  She spoke just the right words with just the right tone.  I kept going, despite being broke and just wanting to give up. I kept thinking, kill myself, and get the insurance money to the kids.  It was the hope of her that gets me out of bed most days.  My kids are fantastic and I love them with all my heart.  They’ll have their own lives, and I’d get to be a supporting character in their stories.  But this search for somebody predates them; it has been my one singular ask of God for myself.

Its taken a while to even get started again, and I’m working long hours.  Now, I just want to make enough.  I care about nothing else but survival and provide for my kids.  And her.

I had thought that love had no boundaries.  I had thought that those things mattered to God. The thought that I will die without ever being with someone I love is something that seems more real than ever before.  I age even faster by the day.  My teeth break and fall out.  But if I had a spare dollar, it would go towards love. I can’t make somebody wait longer; especially when they deserve better than me.

So, this is the year. I’m going to work hard and give my best effort.  I’m selling everything I can.  I can’t get rid of things fast enough.  God will see that it means more to me than anything I’ve ever done.  At the end, if it doesn’t work out for me, then I truly believe God wants me to never have that experience.

I have nobody on my side.  Everyone doesn’t understand and will think I am crazy.  So why bother talking about what’s going on in my life.  People just want me to look good on the outside; like I always did.  Have the house, the kids, the successful job, and the pretty wife.  Stay in my lane. Stop swinging for the fences.  Don’t take any risks while trying to shoot for the stars.  That’s how it feels, at least.

Perhaps I did sign away my chance at happiness the moment I said “I do,” and that it was one of those choices one can never go back on.  Its like driving drunk and killing somebody; prison for life, so just make the best of it.  Perhaps the only people we should ever talk to are the ones in our vicinity, lest we find somebody that’s a challenge to get to.

Don’t go fight the dragon to save the princess, just pick a girl up the street and pretend she’s a Princess.

Or, maybe love and finding your perfect match is just a massive lie and we’re all hamsters on a wheel.  Maybe my Mom finding my Dad wasn’t actually anything magical or meant to be, and she could’ve found 100 others.  Perhaps their lifelong romance was the same thing that I had with Cara, but it was painted a bunch of pretty colors to look good on the outside.

This is exactly what I am going to find out.  If love between man & woman is simply a social construct that has no spiritual or eternal significance, then I can move on. I’ll know that relationships are just meant to be a trap to give babies the highest chances of survival; to carry on the species.  It’ll mean that, she wasn’t a miracle, nor were all the things that happened that made it appear to be miraculous to have found her.

Or some miracle will happen.  Perhaps God will orchestrate a year where things actually go right.  How great it would be to learn that talking to somebody all day, every day for two years had a purpose. What’s more, this deep sense of purpose I’ve had all my life will have had meaning.  It would mean its true that, if I have love, I could live under a bridge and shunned from society and still be happy.  I promise you that, if something could be powerful enough to make me unafraid of these bills, there really could be something significant about it.

And if it turns out that God is in the mood to hand out miracles, maybe I’d even find somebody who could be happy for me.  Maybe there could be somebody who reads this, and really HEARS it, instead of making mental notes on all the errors and faults they find along the way.  Instead of groaning and pitying a disillusioned soul, they could fathom this concept of an incredibly miraculous romance that was “meant to be.”

I’m open-minded at least.  I can say, “perhaps it is foolish and wreckless.”  It’s the only time I’ve every been intellectually, spiritually, emotionally, and physically attracted to somebody where they felt the same for me.  I haven’t found that before in my 44 years here, but perhaps someone that has been here longer could set me straight.    They’d tell me that I could keep going along until I find another, then another, and then another; might as well just pick one that’s the easiest to make happen.

Its like, had my parents decided to not take in Anton from Russia, they later could’ve just taken in some kid from Compton.  He would’ve been just as special.  And as for  Anton, he could’ve just made the best of his country, maybe learn to take up sewing or prostitution.

Considering the decades I’ve spent searching for it and all that I’ve been through to get to this point, if this one is meaningless and foolish, then there is literally no purpose in seeking it ever.

Many days, I am discouraged.  It took so, so long to find somebody that was everything that I should’ve been looking for before I jumped at the first available.

And if I am not with her, it is only because of money.  My heart will be forever taken, and my mind will forever be stuck in the “what if” loop.  Besides, I just don’t have the energy to go meeting new people again.

I could just break her heart and stop talking to her or pretend to be a jerk so that she could move on nicely.  Then I suppose I could get friendships for companionship, masturbation for sex, and get a pet for cuddling.

Maybe the Bible is all I need, and God wants me to take a vow of celibacy.

My mistake of going after the façade of love got me into this mess, and perhaps finding true love will get me out.  Its already saved my life a few times in the past two years, at least.