Just short of five years have passed since I told my wife that I was gay.

My faithfulness to her throughout the twenty years of my struggle and isolation, enabled us to find a way through the difficulty of our situation to stay married.

I knew, even at the moment of my telling her of my feelings for my own sex, which had been locked in and suppressed, that I needed to find some way to express my self to the world in ways which would honour our vows and my truth.

I also sensed that in telling her the truth about my feelings, she would leave me, which she did not, and that my sense of isolation would end, and it did not do so.

My feelings are in constant flux, on the one hand I want to stay married to my wife of thirty years and honour the vows I made to her, but I have struggled to bring into my life a process for honouring my truth.

My coaching sessions have over the years enlightened me on a vastly increased capacity to think things through.

I have honoured my need to be seen in my truth by releasing old fears about how I am perceived by others, and by adopting many daily routines to connect my physical, mental emotional and spiritual capacities in the pursuit of self hood and being present, through running, writing and being coached.

I have healed as far as is possible within my current capacity, the relationships with my parents and siblings and my children which had been damaged by my anger, my unpredictability and my controlling behaviour.

I am a much calmer individual, a man who lives in a much more balanced way in which my perspectives on the needs of myself, and the needs of those close to me, are viewed and understood with more compassion and understanding and a greater acceptance of how things are.

I have been concerned recently with the observation of the changing nature of my isolation.

On my journey to know and love self, I have turned to various means to address my unacknowledged sexuality (without breaking my vows!) but which have tended towards visual attempts to satisfy my curiosity and investment in infatuations and longings which cannot be fulfilled.

In recent months, having sensed that these methods are potentially destructive,  I have been successful, in pushing further into my own understanding of what it is that would satisfy my need to be seen in the fullness of my nature.

I have recognised a need for an intellectual connection with the gay community rather than a physical connection because of my desire to stay married, so that I can interact at the level of conversational and emotional understanding with men who know I am gay and whom are wired like me.

My next blog will be: Pebbles and Shells

William Defoe

On 22 June, I woke up with a very sore throat.

Today is the 18th July and excepting for a brief couple of days in early July I have not been at work since, and nor will I be so for a while.

I have been to all intents and purposes, Stricken!

My illness has hospitalized me most unexpectedly, and it has forced me to submit to its hold over me so that for the first time in many years, I have had to succumb and be ill.

This stricken state has afforded me the opportunity to consider what is important in my life, and although the anticipated cliche is  – well its your health stupid, and its your family, my main concern has been around my prolonged absence from work.

I am well read, nowadays on the deathbed eulogies of people who say, I should have worked less and played more, but I have encountered a strange tension within me which says, “William you have responsibilities, at work and at home,” and my fervent wish is to maintain that balance until I retire.

In recent days as the infection has submitted itself to powerful antibiotics and I have overcome feelings of soreness, tiredness, nausea and dizziness, I have started to re-build that work-home balance by slowly accessing emails and conversations and relationships so as to keep a sense of momentum which I can build on when I eventually return.

The easy part of the illness was when I was too ill to do anything, I had no sense of guilt and yet those around me were lavishing me with there love and concern and secret fears that the illness was something more serious and life changing.

I was able to experience that love and connect strongly with how I have taken being well for granted, perhaps this is a wake up call to take more care, to rest more fully when I have the opportunity to do so, and to create a new work ethic in which I am less intense, more open and able to express my limitations than hitherto I was able to do.

My next blog will be: The Changing Nature of Isolation 

William Defoe

We recently acquired a companion seat for our garden.

A companion seat is a wooden bench-like structure with two seats which point in towards each other connected by a table.

I was keen to assemble the new structure and once I had built it, I called my wife to come out and look at it.

We sat on some other chairs looking at our new “companion seat” and I felt very pleased with my assembly skills and the finished product.

After a short while, something about the structure of the companion seat made me feel uneasy.

The two seats were facing out from each other and not inwards.

I pointed out the defect in my workmanship to my wife.

Her response was to say, leave it as it is, it will be just perfect for the times we are not on speaking terms.

My response was to hope for a less volatile future. I set to work to re-assemble the seats so they faced in towards each other, as designed.

If only we could make our relationship as resolutely fixed so as to face in rather than face out.

Perhaps when the difficulties arise in the future, a good place to sit will be on our new companion seat which places our bodies towards each other, designed for us to look at each other, hold hands, laugh, talk and cry, but above all to connect and love.

My next blog will be: Death of a Friend

William Defoe

This is the time of year, which I enjoy the most, and a particular favourite pastime of mine, is watering my garden flowers on a summer evening.

The water seems to bounce off the heads of the flowers, as if they are taking a shower, before it falls to the soil to nourish the roots.

This year, my inner peace and reverie at this pleasant moment has been dampened, quite literally, by a small flow of water onto my legs from a hole in my watering can.

It means of course that the function of this plastic water holding device is compromised and it cannot fulfill its function as effectively as I ought to expect it to, and therefore the implement will have to be replaced.

In the meantime, however, it does still perform its function quite adequately, and although there is the small amount of wasted water, in the grand scheme of things this is not a waste of environmental proportions worth worrying about.

The hole in my watering can teaches me that despite the less than perfect delivery, the water does still reach and nourish my flowers and I still do enjoy the moments I have with the colour and array of the blooms, particularly my roses which I have named after female family members including my mother, mother-in-law, and grandma (deceased).

The small trickle of water on my legs, in some ways, enables me to feel into the experience that I am giving the flowers, and I sense that all I can do in life, is bring the best I have at any given time and that this will fluctuate day by day.

Safe to say, I am not emotionally attached to my watering can with a hole in it, so I will replace it, but:-

Bravo, I say, for keeping going, despite your wounds;

Bravo, I say, for keeping going despite your impending doom;

Bravo, I say, for having been a provider of life and sustenance to my flowers despite your own weakness.

My next blog will be: “Murray Mint”

William Defoe

One of the pitfalls of laying around on a sunbed all day on the Costa Del Sol (Spain) is the constant interruption from various people who plod the beach offering holidaymakers various goods and services.

It has the potential to be irritating, and I have in the past felt irritated by the interruptions, which take no account of whether you are awake or asleep, or holding a conversation, or reading or painting or just being quiet in your own thoughts.

This year I was resolved to be polite on every single occasion, uttering a polite “no thank you” with a smile.

I was interested to observe some women of Chinese origins selling personal massages for a few euro’s, calling out gently as a question “masajes?”

I considered it in my mind, even though my mouth said “no thank you” with a smile.

During the holiday, I occasionally had to ask my wife to apply sun cream to those parts of my anatomy on which the sun rarely shines, namely the back of my legs and back.

As her hand traversed quickly and smoothly up the inside of my legs to the areas where I had no need for sun cream, I screamed and riddled at the strange and intimate sensation of her hands in unfamiliar places!

The fear, I had was that I would have a similar, wriggling, giggling, tense experience in the hands of a stranger if I was to agree to masajes, and that seemed an even worse potential experience than I could face.

I can’t help wondering though, now I have arrived home, what it would have taken for me to trust myself to the hands of a stranger, to submit to her skills and her touch, because those whom I saw having masajes, seemed calm, relaxed and comfortable throughout with absolutely no indication of the drama which I had been unable to overcome.

My next blog will be:  Arriving and Departing

William Defoe

On the rare occasions that I fly on an aircraft, I like to sit by the window and look out of it onto the land and sea below.

As we flew back from Spain last week, and approached the English Coast over Devon, the view of the ground was suddenly obscured by a covering of cloud.

I felt a tad disappointed because I wanted to see the coast and the rolling hills of Devon and South Wales, and so after a short while I decided to read my book.

As preparations were made inside the cabin to begin our descent, my eyes were drawn to the thick white cloud  below, a cotton wool landscape of pristine whiteness below me as far as the eye could see.

Above the clouds there was a beautiful clear blue and green sky which was deep and rich and endless.

Is this heaven?

Is this the firmament?

I wonder!

In recent years, I have strongly questioned a notion of the after-life.

However, I haven’t quite come out against the concept of an after-life, because I think that to emphatically state that either there is, or there is not an after-life, is to deny even the possibility of it’s existence.

I think that being less emphatic in respect of matters of faith has been a good development within me.

This is because the uncertainty and the questioning has allowed me to find some space to wonder, to question, to recognise my faith as being something precious, something delicate, something I don’t want to lose.

Above the clouds, my soul caught a glimpse of heaven, like it might have done at the top of a high mountain; or in an act of worship; or some inspired oratory or writing;  or in the face of a loved one.

Above the clouds, I had this sense of awe and wonder, this prodding of the spirit, this release of tension, which if it wasn’t heaven, in those few moments it certainly felt like it could have been.

My next blog will be: Masajes

William Defoe