village loss anxiety

I'm frustrated with being lonely. Every Sunday after my school intensive I come away excited about life and the potential I have to change the world based on the verbal, intellectual and tactile reinforcement and encouragement I get constantly for 4 days. Communal meals, shared housing and common purpose with diversity that spans age, income, geography, primary language, race, gender, sexual identity, mobility, politics, religion, family structure and even intentions around the common purpose of sustainable business. It is a temporary village and I think it is how we are meant to live.

So coming from this exhilarating, if exhausting, time I return to a cold, dark and drafty apartment alone with no prospect of a mate in sight and every possible method of finding a mate in this city exhausted. I tried listing the many ways spanning from volunteering to bars to online to asking friends, but that list was too long for this blog. My persistence has failed as I realize that love is not something that can be scheduled, and for a gay man, I have an added handicap. There are few role models beyond being A. shallow and slutty and very pretty B. funny and rich and nonthreatening. I still could not ask a guy out on the street for fear of violence. I still need to watch my openness in anything career related, only partly because gay men are paid about 20% less than straight men (both higher than women) and Real Estate development is still largely a good ol boys club.

I'm tired and want to find that love I know is real. It's great that I'm most of my friends token gay friend, but that isn't helping me find a partner. I'm sad that for reasons of societal oppression and a generally broken system that I feel I don't have role models for what dating, companionship and marriage is like. Maybe my parents prayers that I stay single forever are making an impact, maybe I have more to grow as a person before I'm ready to date, maybe there are other factors I do not know. Whatever it is, this issue weighs on me, trumping all others. I now see this as a symptom of a broken system, a lack of true community that I cannot even visualize yet.