During my summer holiday, I persevered with a book* which at its climax had an unhappy ending (in my opinion).

I had sensed this would be the case as I continued to read through the hundreds of pages of print.

At the end a catalogue of unfortunate circumstances, which conspired to work against a happy climax, and yet I had this overwhelming sense that a re-write from 5 or 10 pages back from its end could have delivered what I had most hoped for.

I sense this in the daily management of my self and the longings of my heart which are tearing me apart.

I have worked so hard to be happy, and yet the deeply unfulfilled aspect of self and the consequences of holding this anguish in my heart for so long makes my strength to maintain and nurture everything else which is good in my life unbearable.

I want there to be a happy ending to my story, but I fear that to succumb to the needs of self, would deliver the exact opposite.

I am trapped in a situation where having done everything in my power to live my life for others, the alternative in living my life for my self would be totally incompatible with my desire to be happy.

My gay self competes in my heart, body, mind and soul for recognition and fulfillment alongside my strong desire to be a loving and faithful husband to my wife.

As with the book with the unhappy ending, the author has to make a choice over the destiny of its main protagonists, and so with a sense of loss and a deep awareness of the alternative, I must also maintain my choice to put the needs of others first.

Apparently, I am destined for a reward in the afterlife – an afterlife which I struggle to believe in, and yet, its promise has a hold upon me because it too has a place within the complex psyche of my thinking which refuses to dismiss aspects of thought which i do not fully understand.

My story is not at its end, it has few more chapters to run, my feelings ebb and flow like the incoming and outgoing tide which attended to me whilst I was reading. The ending is unknown, and like the author of the book, I ultimately will decide on the upcoming pages of my life.

William Defoe

*Beware of Pity by Stefan Zweig