My Gut

It is so my bed time. But I've had an interesting day that started out more or less with an unknown nervousness settling into my gut and causing some, shall we say, intestinal objections.

This deep, nervous feeling settled in once before. It was about 10 years ago when I first realized, or acknowledged, that I was same-sex attracted and I was off to a conference for LDS (and other) folks who were also gay/SSA but trying to overcome it. I had my mom with me. I had just spilled the beans to her not long before. This was all so new to me. So scary. So uncertain. My whole life I thought I was probably the only person in the entire world to have these feelings but not want to act on them. How weird to be going to a conference with hundreds of other people who more or less felt the same way.

This was huge for me. Everything was still so new. And I was deeply nervous to be going. It felt like a huge "outing" to me. After trying to make these feelings go away for so long, and then hiding them for so long, to suddenly be going to a place where I would be totally exposed was absolutely terrifying to me. And so my gut and bowels reacted.

Kind of like they did this morning...and still kind of are as I type this.

I am starting a new job tomorrow. Well, essentially the same job just in a new location. So initially I figured it was just about that. But the more I looked at it, considered it, weighed it, I found that I'm not really that nervous to be starting this new venture. So there must be something else causing this nervous, unsettled feeling.

I don't know that I've totally figured it out, but it feels like it has to do with my last post, and a need/desire to share more with more people. How, who and in what setting I'm not sure. But when I think about this idea, my gut-ache kind of subsides. There is a change of some kind coming - not sure exactly what or how, but it makes me nervous.