I have decided to open this blog because I am no longer the person I was a month ago, and I need a place where I can chart my journey into self-(re)discovery. I have been keeping another friends-only blog elsewhere for 4 years but don't feel like going into too much detail in it. Some stuff might just be TMI there, while it would find its natural place here.

So here goes the background info about myself, pretty much copied and modified from my About me page: I started accepting myself as gay when I was 18. I almost worked up the courage to tell my family but since I wasn't in a relationship I never felt compelled to do it. Shortly after, I met a gorgeous and absolutely amazing girl (I'll call her "B" here). We became friends very quickly and I came out to her. But by that time she had already fallen in love with me, and over the course of the next few months she successfully pulled me to the dark straight side. We spent 12 fantastic years together. I had put my gay inclinations back into their closet but was absolutely fine with that. It was simply a non-issue, as love filled every need I might have had. As couples go, we were extremely close, always together, whether working or having fun. We were going to expand our little family when cancer decided otherwise and, after two years, took her away from me. This was now more than two years ago, two years of grief and pain. But time works relentlessly and pain slowly made way for deep sadness. Before she died, she had made me promise to try and find love again, and I now need to hold this promise.

Now I know how this might sound weird, opening a gay blog to pay tribute to my lovely wife. But there is simply no way I can do otherwise. She was just truly amazing and had she lived, I honestly believe we would have gone on as a couple until old age.

I came upon GA at the end of January. I read a couple of stories, then cleaned my history and cache, and closed my browser, not expecting to return. Yes, I still felt guilty about going on a gay site, as if I were cheating on my wife (even though she had always been fine with me being Bi). But I must admit that the stories were so enthralling that I came back. And then I realised that I kept going back to the coming out stories. I dug up my diary from when I was 18/19 and tried to figure out why I hadn't come out to my parents then, although I had made plans to do so on my 19th birthday. I looked at how things are different now from what they were then and I realised that, contrary to what I thought, my gay feelings are indeed different today. I had left things where they were when I was 21 and I thought that all those years the object of my lust had not altered, in the sense that it meant nothing more than my teenage fantasies for another teenager. Lust, not love.

My recent awakening is that it CAN be love and not just lust. And so the idea of a long-term relationship with a man suddenly has stopped looking utterly preposterous but instead become a distinct possibility.

My gay experience is so pitiful it doesn't even qualify as experience if I am to believe what I read on some forums. But I won't deny the attraction anymore. As far as sexuality is concerned, I am aware that only B's love kept these gay leanings in the closet. In my current situation, they have been resurfacing and I have decided that it's time they leave that closet. I cannot ignore who I am, and I won't maintain a facade. I don't think I could start another relationship with a woman by pretending to be straight. If I tell her how I feel and she's fine with it, then we may have a shot at it. Same goes with a man.

That's why a few weeks ago I decided to come out to people around me. From there, things seem to have gone very quickly, even though at times I wanted to speed them up even more. I came out to my best friend on March 10th. It went fine, just as I knew it would. She's a happily-married mother-of-two but we have a few colleagues who are openly gay and she was always fine with them.

Then a week later I came out to another friend/colleague. She's a lesbian so I knew she would be sympathetic to my situation. We had never discussed intimate stuff before, but of course this discussion brought us much closer.

Last week, I came out onto my other blog. My friends there have been amazingly understanding as well. They are online friends that I met through a forum, totally unrelated to the gay universe I should add. I have met some of them in real life, though, when I travelled to the UK and the US. All of them are female and they were as much my wife's friends as mine.

So after all this I'm feeling quite relieved with the way things have been going forward. I'm planning on coming out to my siblings this Easter week-end. I already breached the subject with my sister back in 1996 when I had been with B for a short time. But we never discussed it further. I'm not expecting any difficulties from my brothers either. I can't say the same from my parents and extended family, though