My Comedy of Errors

This week has been the strangest week of my life. But the pieces of the puzzle are beginning to fall into place. All my life I've known there was something about me that was different. I had something that set me apart from the rest of the pack. But because of how society conditions us, we like to all stay the same and I denied my gift for the sake of my sense of feeling that I needed to belong. Like zebra we take comfort in numbers. We don't want to stand out from the crowd. What I've realised now is that I am being guided by spirits/angels/guardians...I have always been. But I was not acknowledging or being thankful to them for all they are providing me. Everything I am enduring I am going through for a purpose. In the back of my mind I knew this, I just could not acknowledge it for fear of being shunned.

I'm living quite a life! I had a hard childhood, but like everything I survived and came out of it normal. I never look back at it with regret for it made me who I am today. Everything that happens in your life prepares you for what is to come. Being a child though, this fact escapes you. You are focused on the now, not the future. You're preoccupied with your coming to terms with sexuality, your sense of belonging and acceptance to friends and family and the pressure to show your peers that you will perform well in the future. You are competing for your place in the sun so you can shine. 

After school is when you actually get a chance to start determining you own path. Before that your parents have decided, on the most part, which school you attended, and  the school  mostly decides everything else. Out of school your options open. Which college, technical college or university to attend? Do you continue studying at all? Take a sabbatical and travel for a year? Find employment immediately? Everyone of us has a calling that will determine where you will end up. A specific need requires a specific solution. For example in a movie like "Pretty Woman", Julia Robert's was outstanding in that movie. Now would it have been such a hit if the cast was different from what it was. The magic to the movie would have been less had anyone else other than those who starred in it not been cast. A specific need requires a specific solution. She was born to play that specific role, and many other's. Your calling in life may come to you early or late, but whatever you do, know that you were meant to be there at that specific time.

I did start studying after school like most of my friends. I  decided on doing a BComm through UNISA and passed my first year. Barely! Like a child taking it's first steps and not being constrained by a walking ring, I wanted to explore my world. My new found freedom became overwhelming and after 12 years of studying it was actually the last thing I wanted to do. So I let loose in a big way. I failed my second year and decided that I would begin working instead. I had a great job, manager of a bar, and life was great. Had money, bought a car...I was at the top of my game. Or so I thought. I got a little too big for my shoes and The Universe decided to teach me a lesson. I lost it all...except for my car. I went from managing a very cool bar back to waitering. Life began to get stressful for me. One day at a farewell party of a friend who was relocating to Johannesburg, I was still living in Durban at the a time, a girl who I'd never met walked up to me and said "You are different than the rest here. I can feel your energy." I looked at her a little shocked but not surprised for I knew of what she spoke. This was the first time someone had vocalised to me something I knew intuitively within myself but did not want believe. She told me that my energies needed to be given the freedom to expand and that would best be achieved close to mountains, however when I started to succeed again she said I needed to tell other's the reason for my success. She told me she had a book in her car she wanted me to read as it would change my life and explain what she was saying. The book she gave me was "The Celestine Phrophecy" by James Redfield. I still have that book. It was like my eyes were opened for the first time. I read it over and over. I had never read something like that which I felt spoke to me on a personal  and spiritual level. I knew that it meant I needed to make a huge change in my life so I started searching....

I was around 22 at this time, still in the restaurant business and knew change was coming. I thought that maybe it was time to travel so using my experience I could get into Hotels and again begin living the high life. I was not schooled properly in hotel management, so knew that I would first have to do my time in a hotel on the pimple on the ass end of the world, where no one else wanted to work, for long enough so as so get experienced to move to a more glamourous place. That pimple turned out to be Potgietersrus. I was appointed Assistant Food and Beverage  Manager. I'd never been outside of my province and had to look on a map where it was. It was a shock to all around me that this is where I choose to go, but I knew I had to. So I packed my clothes in my car and drove and drove and drove some more until I reached the town. What struck me about Potgierersus, now Mokopane, is the fact that it's nestled within a MOUNTAIN range. The Waterberg Mountain's are a beautiful feature of this side of the world and I immediately felt a surge of energy within me. The words of the anonymous girl from the party echoed in my ears. 

Again my star began to rise. Within a year I was promoted and my success was raging. Everything in my life was going the way I wanted. I was approached by a financier and given the opportunity to start my own business, which I did. I was 24!!!!! By 26 I'd established two businesses from the ground up. I met a stunning girl from an established and well known family and was having the time of my life. I was THE man, I was THE SHIT...MR POPULAR!!!! Again I made the mistake of letting it all go to my head, and I had all but forgotten about what the anonymous girl back at the party in Durban had told me. I had not learned to remain humble and share, so the Universe decided again to remind me of how small I am!!!

I have always had issues with trying to fit in. I knew I was gay and different from a young age. I tried to please everyone around me by being someone I was not. The Universe decided it time for me to face up to this fact and try teach me the error of my ways. The day my wife and I landed from honeymoon(we'd  been to the Maldives), my gay side decided it time to "come out" and play. My life was about to get complicated very quickly again. I entered a very confused and traumatic time. I am not very proud of what transpired, but know now why I had to go through it. I carried guilt with me for many years to come. In the mean time my life fell apart and I basically lost the plot and everything in it! 

It took two years for me to find myself. Coming out of a divorce and not knowing who I was, where I was or what I wanted anymore left me broken. It took time to pick up the pieces of my "straight" self and add them to the personality of my "gay" self who I actually knew nothing about. I was now 30 and looking at my life with doubt. I had never lived a "gay" lifestyle and had no fucking clue how my life would be from here on "out". That's when I met my first long-term same sex partner. And I was very fortunate that I met him. He taught me so much, we fought every step of the way, but that's what made his lesson's stick with me. He bought a house and we moved in together. I was still reeling from what had happened to me for the last couple years, and being in Johannesburg for the first time was definitely struck with the Bright Lights Big City Syndrome. I wanted the power and prestige I had when I was in Mokopane. But that was not to be for I had not learned enough yet. The Universe decided to teach me the value of relationships, so I had my "Clash of the Titan's" and "Wrath of the Gods" episodes. The Universe has also shown me it will give me what I want when I want it, but it will also take it all away again....it is that POWERFUL!!!!

So the forces at work in my life have made themselves known to me this week in a BIG way. The Mothership has landed!!! I've been bitch slapped and told to wake the fuck up or else loose everything forever. Where I go to from here is up to me, you will be kept in the loop though with every step I take. Timing is everything....and everything happens for a reason! I've learned my lessons in a specific order for a specific reason... and that reason is YOU! ;-)