PART 2: Passing on the street

Thanks brothers for your empathy and sympathy and suggestions following my last post. As I had to go to bed I didn’t end up writing all the things I wanted to on that topic, so here goes the rest.

God has felt so distant lately. I can’t get into prayer or bible reading. I can barely get excited when I listen to Matt Chandler teaching like the pro he is. I haven’t really mentioned this to anyone much ’cause I’m the first to say ‘you can’t trust your feelings.’ But he does feel distant even though I know he isn’t. At the same time I’m apathetic about Him being distant. I’m not running around crazily going ‘come back, come back’ or reading the Bible or praying or worshiping to find Him. He’s just not near and I’m acting like that’s okay.
Also I got up to about 110 days masturbation free and then at the start of August things went awry for a while on that front. So I guess this guy was filling a hole. On one hand my feelings of distance from God were creating a vacuum in my heart and then I was teaching myself to sexualize guys through masturbation and then I see this guy a few times and he goes into that place in my heart that wants to feel something.

So. Following the passing on the street event of my last blog this guy was in my thoughts and I guess I thought that this highlighted my idolatry. If Christ was truly my treasure a near-stranger on the street isn’t going to rock my world. So I see my sin; the problem is I enjoy my sin. It’s so exciting to wonder if a guy is gay and interested in me. And, yeah, there was this time when he served me in the supermarket and looked at me expectantly, or we were in the same shop and he kept looking in my direction or when we passed on the street he looked at me expectantly again and I saw this as I pretended not to look at him.

So I say, “Chris, if he is gay; what’s going to happen?”
“Nothing, you might talk some and set boundaries and then when you knew him you wouldn’t want him anymore.”
“That doesn’t sound very exciting.”
“Exactly, if you had what you thought you wanted you wouldn’t want it, so you shouldn’t want it so desperately when you don’t have it.” 
“Well, actually self, I’m one step ahead of you. I don’t look at him when he looks at me just in case we ended up sharing words via eye contact and I had ‘what I wanted’ and my fantasizing was ruined.”
“You’re being an idiot. You whine about not wanting to want him while all actions say that’s exactly what you want. Come on you can’t have it both ways.”
“Fine, I’m convicted what should I do?”
“Call it sin. Then own your sin. Talk about it with a couple of people. Renew your mind out of fantasizing. Don’t go to the supermarket every night to see if he is there, so you can look at him while you look like you’re not. Don’t avoid him. Know that there is brokenness, as well as sin, in you that makes you want him so bad. Own your brokenness. Go to God with the sin and brokenness; He’s for you and He knows.”

So I’ve done those things off and on over the past week or so and you know what? The curse of the infatuation is breaking down a bit. It’s still there, but less desperate and therefore more reasonable. Part of me is a bit upset at this though; it wants the excitement only illicit desires can bring.

Lately, the past five weekends, I’ve been taking photos of soccer on Sunday afternoons. It gives me a reason to leave the house after church and is really enjoyable. So the problem with this guy basically started four weeks ago when he was playing in a game I was photographing. Today I was up to his team again and part of me didn’t want to go, because I didn’t want to see him and part of me wanted to go because I did want to see him. I went and I felt fine doing that because if he wasn’t a factor I definitely would have gone. But I was pretty nervous driving into the sports ground and waiting for the match to start and seeing the warm up.

A few thoughts. Just from watching what he says and how he acts on the soccer field if I knew him, well I definitely wouldn’t be infatuated with him, haha. Intense individual. I wasn’t tempted to look at him unreasonably and this showed it was a mild interest when he is actually right in front of me. The problem is when I’m alone with my thoughts. It’s kind of funny the person who he is, isn’t whom I actually like. It’s a created person in my mind who I attach to his body and a few of the things he does.

Anyway it seems he is going traveling somewhere for a while. So this little problem will dissolve itself naturally in due course. God is too good to me sometimes. A lot in this past year.

Passing on the street

I’VE started this post a couple of times now, but after so long not writing here didn’t know where to begin and got distracted.

So, yeah, where to start. Hmmmm.

So last Thursday. (It’s been 10 minutes since I wrote those three words; this is going to take a while) So, last Thursday. Last Thursday at lunchtime I went for a walk with the girl. It was amazing. She was happy; I was happy. We had a great conversation and I thought this is going to go somewhere. If I could capture that half hour and bottle it people would pay big money for it. I walked back into the office with a sense of a man who’d been successful in life and love. I visioned joyful things.

And then. And then it was about 3.45pm and I had to leave work to take a picture of a swimmer at a beach town about 25 minutes away. So I grabbed a camera and my stuff to take home and walked out of the office and around the corner with car keys in my hand. And walked about 10m and there he was. (This is going really badly; I’ve written 187 words in an hour and a half). And I was nervous as hell and my face fell almost by itself. And then it was as if a pleasant lunchtime walk meant nothing as thoughts of this guy bombarded me for the rest of the night.

Rewind almost three weeks. I saw this guy about seven times in two weeks after not seeing him for a couple of months. I’d found him attractive before for some reason and about four months ago he had been serving at the supermarket check-out and I’d desperately, irrationally wanted to go through his aisle. So, yeah, he was in my head and I wasn’t really fighting it as the first pleasure of infatuation was appealing. But when you’re walking down the street and your stomach jumps because you’ve sighted his dark hair you know something’s gone awry. It annoyed me because I was okay with the infatuation as it was a person I don’t see often and it seemed quite minor.

So yeah. I wanted to want the girl more than him too, but I didn’t.