I don't know why I'm posting this here other than I just need a place to vent, and maybe some of you toxic people can learn something from this story. Well that and I've been having odd issues with sleep lately and it's making me go a bit funny. It's probably why I woke up this morning and in a half asleep state started thinking of my first ex.

We dated nearly 14 years ago. This was shortly after I accepted I was into guys, but I was still in a phase of denial when I told myself I was just "bi". (My apologies to actual bi guys, anti-bi ignorance in the gay community was a big thing back then, and I feel like I fed into one of the big stereotypes that bi guys are really gay but too afraid to admit it.)

I was still in the closet to other people at that time of my life. I was a Catholic back then and had a Catholic family. (Thank God I left that really backwards shit show church that was trying to be really left wing but also really conservative, it was a bizarre time.) During this time when I had accepted who I was but stayed in the closet I was hooking up a lot. In many ways actually, I had a lot more fun being in the closet, the sexy "forbidden" encounters in the back seats of cars and so on was so hot. But then I met my ex. He was gay, and he also came from a Catholic family so he was in the closet too. I'm not sure if all these years later he is still in the closet or not, so I'll just refer to him as K.

K and I met on Adam4Adam (does anybody even use that anymore), and even though we were originally just going to hook up we really hit it off. I think a lot of it was our similar situations in terms of family. We hung out for hours before I took him back to my grandmother's house (I was 21 and living with her at the time), and we had sex for the first time. K was the first person I ever went bareback with, and the first versatile guy I was with (that's another thing we had in common), so the sex was amazing. But what really stood out is he was the first guy I actually brought home, and the first guy to stay and cuddle after we had sex.

And in that way we started seeing each other pretty regularly and began dating. My grandmother thought he was just my "friend" staying over for sleepovers. And if you think I'm an asshole for fucking in my sweet old granny's basement, keep in mind that she actually really hates me. She is a very devoted Democrat and also a very big homophobe so I can't tell whether she hates me more for being a Republican or for liking cock, but years later when I did come out to the family and she got real shitty I had the great pleasure of explaining to her what activities K and I did on our sleepovers. ;)

But I'm kinda veering off subject here with that fantastic little tidbit about evil granny getting the vapors over her gay grandson's creampies.

Anyway, K and I spent a lot of time with each other, but the relationship did not last long. We both had a lot of shit going on in our lives. I was fighting a BS criminal case against me, which sadly ended in me pleading guilty because the aforementioned homophobic relative threatened to kick me out if I didn't take the guilty plea. She then threw me out anyway after I did and I ended up homeless for a month. What I didn't know at the time is that K also had troubles. He was getting kicked out of school because his university found his roommate's pot and he got blamed for it. It wasn't his first time getting caught with drugs on campus (although he was being wrongly accused this time) so they were expelling him.

I can't remember which one of us chose to end the relationship at the time, but with me homeless and him returning home to his family there really wasn't a future for us. I probably should have worked this into the story sooner, but while we met in Maryland he was here from New Jersey for college. With both of us being in the closet, one of us being homeless, there was just no way forward. But there was more going on in the background too.

A year after we first broke up K texted me. I was in a better place then, I had found a new place to live, and I wanted to start things back up. That's when I found out about him being in NJ again though and the pot and all. I was a bit hurt but even then we parted amicably.

Time went on, I fell in love with a shitty guy from California who was in DC for school (what is with early 20's me and falling in love with all these guys from out of state), and I finally accepted I was gay and came out. But that relationship was a dumpster fire and I kinda wasted time and emotions on an absolute piece of shit.

More time passed on from that relationship, and a few years after the dumpster fire ex, I thought of K again. I Googled him (yes, I know that was creepy in hindsight.), and this is where more of the pieces of the puzzle came into place. I'll never be 100% sure this was him, but I read an article about someone with his same name who got into a DUI with the side of a train. He survived and got help apparently. But as far as I can figure, after getting kicked out of school he probably got really depressed and was in a bad place.

That's when I realized something, the reason he didn't want to pick up where we left off when he called me a year after we broke up was most likely because he was going through all of these issues with depression and substance abuse, and he didn't want to burden me with his issues as I still had issues of my own to deal with.

Maybe that's a naive way to look at it of course. It could have been the other way around and that he had enough of his own issues that he didn't want to deal with mine. But I don't really think it was that, not with K. The last time we talked he seemed more concerned about me and more guilty he hadn't talked to me in a year. He actually seemed to care about my feelings more than anything. I wish I had asked about what he was going through back then. I wish I had thought about seeing what was going on in his life.

Anyway, as of this November it will have been 14 years since we dated, 13 years since we last talked. I haven't heard from him at all since then. I really hope he is doing okay. Seriously, in 14 years since I stared dating men, there is only one other guy I dated who actually cared about me, although we just didn't work out because of differences in age and location. (I was 28 when we met, he was 18. He also lives in Texas. We still talk though, he is a sweet guy.) But of course I say K is the one who got away and not my Texas ex bcause if things had gone differently for me and K we might have had a future together.

Then again maybe I'm just naive and idealizing the relationship and where it could have gone. But even if I am, he was still special since he is the only ex that still crosses my mind once in a while and leaves me feeling sad that things ended but happy that I met him instead of angry that I wasted time and emotions and regretful I met them. K was special, the kind of person you meet once in a lifetime. We just met each other at the wrong time in our lives.