Missing the Big Picture by Donovan, Luke (great book club books txt) 📕

snoop around someone’s personal belongings, but I never thought I would have random sex with strangers. I’d already broken one belief, so why not break another? From the medications and my work as a nurse, I strongly suspected that he was HIV positive.

Pat came back into the room, and we made a mutual decision that I would leave. The next day I saw Pat again on Craigslist, posting an ad. In the ad he said he was HIV negative. Then somebody posted another personal directly near it that said Pat had been HIV positive for years and was lying about it.

I didn’t tell anybody about that story. I had a lot of gay friends, but I wouldn’t tell them that story because I thought they would be more judgmental than my straight friends.

Despite my hookup horror stories, I would still sometimes find myself online. One of the main reasons why I was so ashamed that I was gay was because I was Catholic. As a child, I read the Albany Catholic Diocese newspaper, The Evangelist, and I’m pretty sure I was one of the few people under the age of seventy-five to do so. There are many people who don’t believe you can be gay and religious at the same time. Since I’ve been on the gay scene, going to gay bars and meeting people from the Internet, I’ve become more empathetic to people and their issues. In college, I often followed who was dating who and used the terms whore, slut, and douchebag loosely. I think that if I had been heterosexual, I might have continued to be judgmental. But I feel empathetic to people who sleep around with multiple sex partners. Life is difficult, and there are too many judgmental people out there just making it harder for everyone. I still love God and Jesus, and I believe that they would rather have me be empathetic than judgmental.

I can say that after all of these experiences, I’m content and happy with my life now. I went from being only an inch away from killing myself when I was eighteen to graduating college, working as a registered nurse, and doing stand-up comedy. I met a lot of people during my life, and some people I wish I hadn’t met at all. I didn’t write this book out of anger; I wrote it to help make people more aware of mental health issues, bullying, abusive and controlling adolescent relationships, and the health risks of casual sex. I wrote it to help make the world a safer place for those people who, like me, hear voices in their minds, get bullied and don’t see a way out, or feel trapped by labels or stereotypes that doesn’t fit them.

Comedian Mike Irwin had a line in his act making fun of people who think the world is coming to an end because it’s so corrupt. He would joke, “I don’t think women showing some muffin tops and some Internet porn is enough to damn the world to hell.” In fact, if Jesus was around today, I think he would think we’re too hard on one another, and that the lack of compassion and disregard that people have for one another is the world’s greatest sin.

EPILOGUE

So what is my life like today? My mother married Jeremy in 2011 after eight years of co-habitation. I now have a stepbrother, a stepsister, their spouses, two wonderful nephews, and an adorable niece. I try to do stand-up comedy on a weekly basis, whether it’s a small paid gig or at an open mic. In 2011, I beat out close to forty Albany, New York, comics to win the first ever Capital District Last Comic Standing competition. I’ve done comedy in front of a small crowd of ten people to a crowd of over five hundred people. I’m Facebook friends with a lot of my old friends/enemies from high school and now encourage them to attend my shows. Some of my former classmates have seen my shows, and they were shocked that I could change from being the quietest kid in the school to doing perverted stand-up comedy. I did see Eric a few months ago at a local bar. He is now a great father to a little boy. He doesn’t remember throwing me in a box when I was thirteen or any of the other times he was mean to me. Unfortunately, I still do. I actually had a great time talking to him, as he’s a good person and still one of the funniest people I know. I was lucky this time that I wasn’t the butt of his jokes.

My grandmother lives alone in an assisted-living apartment building, and I see her once a week. I still love my grandmother. My mother and aunt still attend to all of her needs, and I help them out when I can. Although she is still very anxious and obsessive at times, it was nice to see her on Christmas be able to watch her great-grandchildren open up toys that say “Fisher-Price” and she was calm and not agitated at all.

I am lucky in the fact that I haven’t heard any voices in my mind since college. I stopped taking psychotropic drugs and going to my psychiatry appointments in 2003.

In other aspects, I’m still very much a work in progress. It wasn’t until recently that I told my aunt, mother, and stepfather that I was gay. Thankfully, they were supportive. I’ve never actually had anyone yet reject me because I am gay. I still haven’t found myself in a healthy relationship, but maybe someday I will be. I’m just glad that the one person I know who I could never imagine accepting my sexual orientation finally does; that person is me. After fourteen years, I realized there was no way out of this, so I just better live the life that I was meant to live and be proud of it.

The best