A Night for Broken Hearts

Fuck.

Tonight my heart is broken.

And it’s broken by someone I’m not allowed to talk about. Not really. Not in any meaningful way. Because sometimes that’s how life works. Sometimes the people and situations that cut the deepest are also the ones you can’t openly discuss without causing damage far beyond your own pain.

So instead, I’ll just say this.

I came out of the closet over twenty years ago. I didn’t step out gracefully either. I clawed my way out. Back then it wasn’t fashionable to be different. It wasn’t celebrated. It wasn’t safe.

I was called slurs while walking down the street in the town where I worked. I was surrounded by people looking for a reason to justify a beating. I was pushed out of positions and quietly “reassigned” to roles with softer titles. Neighbors suddenly didn’t want their kids playing with mine.

I’ve been followed. Taunted. Jeered at. Stared at. Laughed at.

And through all of that, I kept my dignity.

I kept my head held high.

But here’s the thing about love. Sometimes love convinces you to walk backward into the very place you once fought so hard to escape.

And sometimes that place is a closet.

I put my heart into something for a very long time. Longer than most people would probably believe if I told them. I believed in loyalty. I believed in patience. I believed that commitment and love and integrity would eventually win out.

Turns out life doesn’t work that way.

Tonight that illusion finally cracked. And the worst part is how familiar the feeling is.

It takes me back to the first time I ever truly trusted someone with who I was. I was barely an adult, stationed far from home, and I invited the person I loved to come see me. We spent a weekend pretending the world was simple. On a beach one night, under a quiet sky, I told the truth about myself for the first time.

It was the hardest thing I had ever done.

She stopped writing not long after.

Eventually I learned she had chosen a life that looked more… acceptable.

Lesson learned, right?

Except life has a funny way of circling back around and testing the same wounds again. So here I am tonight, staring at a familiar ache and asking myself the same questions I asked decades ago: How could I have been so naïve? How could I have believed that love alone was enough?

Don’t get me wrong. I know I’m strong. I know I’ll survive this. I always do. Life has thrown enough at me that survival is practically muscle memory at this point.

But strength doesn’t mean you don’t bleed. It just means you keep walking while you do.

And that brings me to something I don’t talk about much: God.

Some of you know this about me. Some of you don’t. But I know God exists. That’s not faith speaking, that’s experience. I’ve seen too much, lived through too much, to believe otherwise.

And lately I find myself asking Him a lot of questions.

Why keep testing me? Why keep placing my heart on the anvil? Why keep throwing challenge after challenge into my path?

In the last few years alone I’ve faced death more than once. I’ve watched my life change in ways I never expected. I’ve rebuilt myself piece by piece.

And now this.

Sometimes I wonder if the lesson is humility. Sometimes I wonder if the lesson is endurance. Sometimes I wonder if the lesson is simply learning to kneel.

Because I will, God!

If that’s what you want from me, I’ll kneel. I’ll pray morning and night. I’ll bear my soul and ask for guidance.

But I’ll admit something tonight that I don’t say easily: Even the strongest people have a breaking point. And tonight I feel closer to mine than I’d like.

Still… tomorrow morning I’ll get up. I’ll put one foot in front of the other. I always do.

Because that’s the only way forward.