This little boy had an absent father who left when he was born, and felt it was his fault. I remember standing in the hall looking at a photo of me with a man's shadow in it. I thought it was my father taking the photo, having been told he left when I was 3 years old. And I remember thinking "what did I do wrong to make him leave?"

Then there were the various boyfriends of my mother. There for a year or two. Playing, laughing, thinking they cared for me. Then they were gone and never seen again. And of course many of us as gay men share the wound of being rejected by the males in our childhood world as they picked up there was something different about us. 

What did this little boy make of this? What decisions did he make? "It's not safe to love a man, they will always leave?", perhaps, certainly that was the unspoken message I got from my mother with her experiences with boyfriends and my dad. Right now I just feel a tightness in my belly, a pain in my chest and constricted breathing and if I let that go and breathe into that, tears. 

So now I'm looking for a therapist to start feeling and holding all of this (recommendations welcome). It hurts meeting men I want to go deeper with but always finding they are unavailable. Or of feeling scared and overwhelmed if they are available. As soon as a man is interested the child wants to cling to him and never let him go and at the same time run away. Not very attractive to an adult man to feel this neediness from a potential partner! It's time to hold what is here in awareness and see if this can allow a shift of how I look out at the world and the life patterns that play themselves out on this stage of existence. And perhaps he can bring some of his freedom and joy into the present.

Welcome little boy, come, talk to me, tell me what you want to say. I'm here for you. I love you.