EVENT: September PFLAG Meeting

[Note: This entry is WAAAY ATF.]
At tonight's PFLAG meeting, there was a special guest Mike, an openly gay firefighter in Melbourne who also goes around the community with a Q&A-type presentation about his GLBT experiences (growing up, coming out, etc...). He gave the same presentation to our group, which gave us the opportunity to hear some of the questions that previous groups had submitted to him, many of which are the standard GLBT 101 fare.

Anyways, the point of this post is not so much the speaker (that's the what happened), but that this was my third meeting, and I was really hoping to be able to share my own coming out story with the group. I was too nervous the first meeting, and at the second meeting, there were a couple other people who shared stories their own (definitely more critical) situations, and I felt as though my personal epiphanies were very trivial in comparison.

But this third meeting, I was ready - this was something that I wanted to do, had to do... but every time I start, I got cut off, and my stomach wasn't feeling well, so my will to contribute dissipated and I bolted once the meeting was over. My friend Lisa, who introduced me to the [start-up] group, had recently left the group due to 'irreconcilable circumstances' and though I don't know exactly why, I have a hint of perhaps why... (differences in personalities and goals).

So I left for home with a sure sense that it's an opportunity lost but not muchly missed. I've experienced so many disappointment with local GLBT groups that I've lost much of the will to try. I'll just continue to head over to Orlando and to live the established gay everyday-life I have there. I hate to say it but Melbourne, for the time I expect to be here, may be a lost cause.