Blue Guy in Red Land

Today started normally enough.  Of course, I made the unwise choice to sleep in a bit later rather than carry my chunky butt to the gym like I should at 6am in the morning.  But that’s more common than I’d like to admit.  Evenings suck b/c I have activities planned most nights, and I’m not about to give up my political activities.

Even work was par for the course.  Then came lunch.  Today is National Coming Out Day, and for that event, the LGBT group at CDC had a "brown bag" lunch discussion.  The topic was LGBT families, since they appear to be under attack again soon by the Grumpy Old Puritans controlling the GA General Assembly.  It was a good discussion, but it made me feel bad.  Here I am 30 and single, and everyone around the table was discussing their same sex spouses of at least 10 yrs each, and the children they have together.

Which makes me wonder…will I *EVER* have that?  I thought at one point that I might, and that I’d found the guy I could build that life with.  But he turned out to have a secret called AIDS.  So the one guy I do pick ends up having a disease for which there is no cure and which is a permanent block to adoption…and he pretended he didn’t have it, so he couldn’t have to face it.  Of course, that meant no testing for him, which I didn’t know until we’d been together 2 years.  And yes, I’m fine.  Enough time has passed that my negative status has been affirmed.  But it doesn’t make me any less alone now.

Anyway, those old demons of self-doubt, which have been buried for a few years, started creeping back after that lunch.  Then I come back to find out that I’d been ruled "unqualified" for an immunization project officer job assigned to one of the states.  Now I work in Global Immunizations now, and I’ve been to Africa three times on missions.  If I really wanted to push, I could likely get assigned to Zimbabwe next year.  But I don’t want that.  First, it would be giving up 4 prime dating years.  Even if I were interested in dating Africans, US policy on gay people would basically mean I’d never be able to come back if I met someone.  Also, the odds of finding someone with HIV are huge in southern Africa, and if I wanted that, I’d have stayed with the guy I had.  Anyway, being told I was unqualified was kind of a slap in the face.  I’m trying to find out why I was deemed "unqualified".  Not that I want to leave Atlanta, mind you.  It’s just an ego blow, especially when I friggin’ WORK in immunizations and have for the past two years!

So it’s been one of those "blah" days, and I’m looking forward to just going home.

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