The Three Loves of My Life — What I Know Now

By Ben Haynes

When I was six years old, I made my parents’ lives a living hell for a solid month as the December holidays approached. It’s easy to surmise that I was probably begging and pleading for some flashy toy for Christmas, but this would prove incorrect.

Instead, I demanded they take me to the movie theater to see Titanic.

Though they did what they could to reason with me, I heard none of it. I ranted about how I’d read a few of those “I Can Read” types of books about the sunken ship, and therefore, I knew everything there was to know about it. I was a child obsessed and determined to succeed in my endeavors.

Eventually, I made their lives so miserable that my mother essentially took the car keys, threw them at my father, and demanded that he get me out of the house and go to the next showing to shut me up for good. We took my older brother with us, as I’m sure my mother needed some quiet time to rethink her life choices.

A lesser child would’ve likely fallen asleep from boredom during the three-and-a-half-hour epic, but after everything I’d done to get there, I was in it for the long haul. My eyes were glued to the screen the entire time, but it wasn’t just the visual effects I was captivated by.

It was the love.

At the ripe age of six, I fell in love with love. The depth of love the fictitious Jack and Rose developed for one another in that damn movie resonated so intricately with me, and just like that, a hopeless romantic was born. I was enamored. Those two characters loved each other so profoundly that they would throw everything away (and even jump back onto a literal sinking ship) if it meant being with one another for even a few more moments.

My way forward in life was clear. I wanted love. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to give love, and I knew that someday, somewhere…I’d find it.

My name is Benjamin Haynes, but you can call me Ben. I’m thirty-two years old and live in sunny Phoenix, Arizona, where I teach fifth grade. A lot has happened since that snowy December afternoon in the small town of Dickinson, North Dakota. While I’d like to tell you that the same person who was once glued to the movie screen quickly found the love of his life, married, and lived happily ever after…this would make me something of a liar.

As it turns out, love isn’t the simple, straightforward path my six-year-old self thought it would be as I emerged from the dark theater, hysterically sobbing that the movie was over and we now had to go home.

Like any gay man, my journey with love has been complicated. More than once, I thought I’d found the man I’d spend forever with, only to find myself once again sobbing on the floor, feeling as though I was dying from a broken heart.

The small, conservative North Dakota town I grew up in was hailed as a great place to raise a family and know that your children were safe. People basked in the comfort of knowing that this little place wasn’t affected by what happened in the big, bad outside world. Anybody who has ever spent more than five minutes in a small town such as this knows that it’s the type of place where everyone knows everything about everyone, and we cling to the idea that “this is the way it’s always been, so we shouldn’t change anything.”

I grew up knowing I was different from everyone else around me. I felt as though no matter what I did, I always caught the disapproving attention of my peers and several adults. I never understood it, but they sure did. After all, when you’re a young boy obsessed with Titanic and worship the ground Britney Spears walks upon, it’s a little more than obvious what’s going on. Obvious to everyone except myself, that is.

I never really considered that I was gay until high school when I had my first few experiences of intimacy with other guys. Of course, it was all very hush-hush and only ever done in absolute secrecy. I remember those stolen moments so vividly, locking my bedroom door and willing myself to be silent as my friend ran his hands over every square inch of my teenage body. It felt scandalous but so electric, so incredibly sexy.

But the excitement of secrecy also came with a hefty price tag, and eventually, the bill came due. The problem with feeling the need to hide such an integral part of what makes you innately yourself at such a young, impressionable age is that it instills a notion in your brain that what you’re doing is wrong and, therefore, that you are a problem.

It can also lead to destructive habits, such as allowing grown men to take advantage of you when you’re very young, knowingly and willingly falling victim to substance abuse, and subconsciously believing that you deserve emotional manipulation, neglect, and abuse from the people you give your heart to.

That’s not to say that there weren’t great things that eventually came my way. I finally came to accept myself for who I am and came out of the closet at the age of 18. Any gay man probably looks back on his coming out years as something of an awkward rebirth period in his life, and I see it as just the same. I was still the version of myself I’d always known, but now I didn’t feel the incessant need to hide so many things away from the light of day.

I began to date openly. I met the First Love during that first year of being out of the closet, and he swept me off my feet in under an instant. He was tall and athletic, a member of the local university’s track and field team on scholarship from Jamaica. He was somewhere along the lines of teetering in and out of the closet, so most of our “relationship” was spent behind closed doors and out of sight of just about anyone else.

It was the worst kept secret on campus, as everyone knew damn well what was going on. Still, we acted like nothing was happening, and there was a predominantly “don’t ask, don’t tell” vibe in the community at the time. Though 2009 was much better than ten or twenty years before, we still had a way to go.

Of course, this love fell apart as quickly as it materialized, bringing on a fresh wave of shame. Yet again, I learned that my love needed to be hidden, and as though the way I experienced love for another was unacceptable…was too much and needed to be silenced.

I made my way through college, earning my degree in Elementary Education and starting my teaching career shortly thereafter. I stayed focused on the prize of being the best teacher I could be. I gave my fifth graders my blood, sweat, and tears and loved every second of it.

And then the Second Love came around. This time, I was a few years older, and I felt more prepared and more understanding of how to give my heart to another. He was so handsome and so charming. My friends loved him, my mom loved him, and I really, really loved him too.

But not only was my love once again not received, it was belittled, mocked, and taken for granted.

It came in waves, and usually when too many drinks had been involved or drugs had been snorted and swallowed. Waves, such as catching him in a dark room with someone whom I’d considered a friend, which led to the mother of the bride whose wedding reception we’d just ruined driving me home in my car while I sobbed from the passenger seat. Waves such as him hiding behind doors with the guy he knew made me uncomfortable and scared. Waves, such as putting me in sexual situations with multiple men neither of us knew when he knew that he was the only one I wanted. Waves, such as him opening his heart about the abuse he’d endured at his ex-boyfriend’s hands, only to run back to him after the months of damage he’d inflicted upon me was done.

Trauma left untreated acts like drops of water. It starts simply enough, with one drop creating little ripples here and there. But eventually, it causes a flood, making tidal waves in the lives of those closest. After years of thinking my love would never be enough for another, I finally believed it.

I uprooted my life, moved across the country to Arizona, and began a two-year crusade of being the biggest, baddest mess of a man I could possibly become. I tripled my sexual partner count, making myself vulnerable to countless STIs. I drank myself stupid, took drugs from strangers, and missed just about every opportunity to better myself and become something more.

…and then, finally, there he was.

The Third Love came seemingly out of nowhere, bright and early on the morning of my 27th birthday. He had gentle hands and a soft voice, and he saw me for who and what I was from the moment he first laid eyes on me. I’d finally found the man I’d always dreamed of and knew that this was what I’d been searching for since I’d understood my longing for love all those years ago in that dark movie theater.

Five years later, I’m alone once again. Though I had vowed never to be to someone what the Second Love was to me, I can’t say I was entirely successful in that endeavor. Like I said, untreated trauma does terrible things. Although I never was unfaithful to my love or threw substances or abuse at him, my inability to be honest with myself about who I was and what I wanted from life did the damage it was always going to do.

In the weeks following my departure from the home the Third Love and I shared, collapsing to the floor in heaving, body-shaking sobs became a daily occurrence. One particularly cold and rainy December afternoon found me screaming into the bathroom rug of the little casita I lived in for two hours. I’m not sure how the friends I was living with didn’t hear me from their side of the wall, but I channeled my inner teenager and willed myself to be as quiet as possible so no one would hear.

At some point, I found the strength to grab hold of the countertop and pull myself up. I caught sight of my reflection in the large mirror, and I looked myself in the eye for what felt like the first time in years.

It was reminiscent of the morning after the Second Love had left me behind for good when I looked into the mirror and didn’t recognize the man who looked back. The same thing happened now: I stood there in the little casita bathroom, not knowing what I was seeing or how I’d found myself here- not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

I’m unsure what came over me, but I found a dry-erase marker nearby that I’d accidentally brought home from my classroom. I removed the cap and leaned into the mirror to write the words “I love you” on the glass, right next to where my reflection would typically stand. I stood back and stared at those words for a very, very long time.

All at once, it became clear that I’d done it: I found the very thing I had longed for so desperately since I was a naive and hopeless six-year-old boy. The love I was hunting and wishing and hoping for had been here every day, every step of the way.

I was the person I needed to love all along.

Though I wasn’t immediately sure I believed what I had written in the mirror, I left it there for a long time. I allowed myself to believe it to be true more and more every time I looked at it.

A year later, I’m happy to report it’s still true. It’s incredible to think about, but we spend so much time and energy shaking hands with others and learning about their lives that we completely forget to have that same dialogue with ourselves. Why are we so comfortable finding out more information about other people but never ourselves?

I was so obsessed with finding another person to love that I completely forgot the one person who always needed and deserved my love most: myself. It’s corny and completely cliché, but it’s also 100% true. The relationship you have (or, in many cases, don’t have) with yourself is a direct window into how your relationships with others will flow.

I finally love the person I am and have forgiven myself for the transgressions I’ve committed against others, especially the ones who loved me the most. I’ve also forgiven those who’ve wronged me along the way. I now understand that they, too, were on their own journey of learning to love themselves.

What that six-year-old in the Titanic movie theater couldn’t have known at the time was that love doesn’t start with the person whose hand you hold hardest or whose lips you kiss the softest. Instead, it begins by accepting yourself through and through for who you are at your core and never letting go of the love you have for yourself and all that makes you…you.

With love,

Ben
(He/Him/His)
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