As I awoke from the fall, I felt pain everywhere. I looked around the battlefield. The pawns of God and Lucifer were strewn about the battlefield, but I couldn’t tell who fought for good and who fought for evil…that is, except for one. To my right lay the angel who helped me on the mountain, coughing up blood and moaning from pain. Pierced in the chest with a sword, the angel was dying.
Sometimes it feels like goodness is losing the battle within me. My heart has hardened substantially and my emotional walls are built stronger than ever. The more good I do, the less good I feel…and I remain trapped in my own purgatory. I work so hard to find atonement and happiness, but I can feel myself becoming more jaded and protected by the day. Even if goodness is not gone, it is becoming harder to access and I rely almost exclusively on other motivators. I’m not proud of any of this, but it is important for me to recognize and analyze. For the most part, this began with a man named Matthew Power…
As I pulled myself up, I looked around for the fallen monster. Within seconds, the ground shook as the infernal creature kicked the ground not 10 feet from where I stood. He faced me with a snarl and our eyes locked. I looked into his dark, red eyes and a peculiar sense of familiarity rushed over me.
When I fell in love with him, I had already been struggling with the ideas of love, monogamy, marriage, romance, optimism and hope. After years of studying sociology, my first failed love with Ryan, and my short-lived experience with Peter, I no longer believed in fairy tales. When I recruited the Superman-esque beauty onto the No on 8 Campaign in October 2008, I had no idea he’d rekindle that side of me. Unfortunately, my feelings were subconsciously and shallowly based on his perfect image and embodiment of wealth, fame, fashion, and beauty—everything a gay boy with Hollywood dreams could ever hope to have or be. He was intoxicatingly beautiful and I mistakenly and shamefully overlooked the signs of a rotten interior.
Without warning, the beast burst into a sprint and I instinctively reached for the sword inside the fallen angel. I pulled the blade from my friend and winced as he howled in agony. I raised the sharp edge to the level of my chest and ran directly towards the monster.
Not only did he turn out to be (what I can only assume was) a compulsive liar with severe depression and an eating disorder, but also an extremely selfish man who couldn’t acknowledge his own faults. Playing victim until the end, Matthew took years of abuse out on me and resented every bit of good fortune I had in my life. He made me feel gut-wrenchingly guilty about everything I had (and everything he didn’t) through verbal abuse, insane communication, lies and manipulation. The relationship did not last long, but it ripped my heart and mind to shreds. To this day I don’t know how many of his stories were lies or how broken he really was, but he certainly made me doubt everything I ever knew about the world and myself.
I screamed and clashed my sword against the hard, burning flesh of the Devil. He roared and grabbed my neck. For the first time, he spoke to me with a deep hiss, “You will die.”
Matthew genuinely made me feel like a bad person. After dating him, I felt guilty for any love in my life and spiraled downward into self-loathing, fear, anxiety, and insecurity. But eventually heartbreak and guilt turned to rage, and I was consumed by hate. As the negativity bound itself to the residual frustration from the passage of Proposition 8 and the inadequacies of my past, I found great power in anger and I used it to fuel my actions. I compensated for my guilt by becoming a savior, and I did so with a vengeance. Every weight at the gym, every bite of food I didn’t eat, every flag I waived, every volunteer I recruited…I did it to beat my enemies. My actions and my entire being were driven by revenge, loneliness and anger. All these things became my fire and I became a firebomb.
I continued to slash at the monster, but the sword could not break through his exterior. My arms began to tire and I fell into his grip. His eyes met mine once again, and my stomach dropped. I could see my own reflection in his burning red pupils, and I instantly recognized the demon as the manifestation of my own sins.
Matthew was a beautiful, deceptive monster but I allowed myself to be poisoned by the hate he carried. I became Glinda the Good, but I used darkness to fight my enemies. This worked well against the Yes on 8 voters, against the National Organization for Marriage, against all the people who wanted to see my LGBT brothers and sisters fail. To my friends and to myself, however, I was just as much a monster. When one of my best friends decided that our tactics and motivations seemed too different and he could no longer be my friend, I felt the most profound loss of all. Carlos Marquez is far from perfect, but he was right that I had lost sight of my truly good side. While I was not yet the total fame monster he accused me of being, I had indeed forgotten who I was and why I was really fighting.
Lucifer bit my sword with his fangs, and in one fell swoop, shattered it to pieces. “You are powerless,” he laughed and then pushed me onto the ground towards the angel. I looked on helplessly at the now still body. My eyes watered and I turned around to face my evil. It was about damn time…
In this universe the monsters and angels look and dress the same and so as we go on living many times we deal with the monsters/demonds that come our way, we have to remember they all dress the same. Luckily you are the smart cookie in the cookie jar so it does not take long for you to recognize the medicocre from the perfect, the ugly from the beautiful, the mean from the nice, and the fake from the real.
It is important to look back and see how something might have affected you, but it is just as importart to keep walking and stay focused on how you want to be now, right now, and in the future.
All I see is your good side!!
[...] But the armor came back on as quickly as it came off, and mere days later on New Year’s Eve, after he revealed more of his tragic past, our communication and differences broke us apart forever. The next day, our mutual friend admitted to having paid for my Christmas gift. Suddenly my only Quantum of Solace was no longer genuine and I was left even more confused, hurt and devastated. As I’ve told before, the heartbreak and rage ate me alive and I became a monster. The rest is h… [...]