It Begins

May 1, 2014. 

Today is Day 1 of a particular journey in my life, one I've decided to chronicle in detail here.  For what reason?  Well, I guess the reasons will appear throughout my journey, as reasons are wont to do. 

As I write this, May 1, 2014, it's my 39th birthday, which means I have now completed 39 years of life on Earth, and am beginning my 40th year.  And though "40" is still happily a year ahead of me, it means I have one year left now until that momentous occasion.  So as a writer, I thought it would be fitting to blog about it.  You know, just flesh out various thoughts as they come to me throughout the year.  It may be ambitious of me to plan on blogging every single day, but it's not impossible, so we'll see what happens!

First, a few quick thoughts on where I've come from.  These are by no means a summary of my life, just a few matters worth highlighting.

1.  I was born way back in 1975, which really does feel like a long, long time ago.  I'm totally not a 70s type of guy, as I hope my loved ones would agree, but the 80s were definitely the bulk of what I consider my childhood.

2.  In the 80s and 90s, being gay was still very much taboo, and not spoken about at all.  How far we've come!  For me, I realized I liked boys and girls in 7th grade (scared the frickin' hell out of me), and this feeling toward guys only grew as I got older. 

3.  I was always very interested in religion and spirituality, loved being an altar boy and Bishop's Server at St. Agnes Cathedral on Long Island, and I was really fascinated with the appearances of Mary to people in the 19th and 20th centuries.  In high school, I began talking more and more with the Marianist Brothers who ran my high school, and at the end of my senior year, I joined their monastery and became Brother Sean.  I spent two years in the Novitiate there before taking vows, and stayed another two years after that.

4.  1997 was a pivotal year in my life.  On January 1, 1997, shortly after midnight, I said the words, "I'm gay" out loud for the very first time to another person, and to myself.  For the next seven months, I suffered silently with clinical depression.  I was diagnosed in January, but my religious superiors told me not to tell anyone, to just say I was going to our sister community if anyone ever asked.  That spring, Ellen DeGeneres came out on her TV show and in real life.  I watched the episode the night it aired in the bedroom of one of the other Brothers, and one other Brother who I knew to be gay was there too.  That summer, the Brothers told me I should leave the religious life, and they told me to do it that day.  I wasn't able to say goodbye to anyone.  I wrote dozens of letters to various people there in the years since, and they've almost all gone completely unanswered.  A sentence or two in response from two people.  A little more from one who was no longer there, but that's it.  During the summer of 1997, the movie In & Out was released, and it gave me the courage to tell more of my family and friends.  Princess Diana was killed in the car crash that summer too.  I mention this last just to demonstrate how everything in my world and the world at large seemed to change that year.  It was like the Earth tilted a bit on its axis, and we all wobbled for a bit.

5.  I met my partner Andy in December of 2001.  He has brought me more joy and love than I can even explain, and I am so grateful to him for the absolute blessing he has been for me.  I pray I continue to bring him the joy and love that he very much deserves as well.  No doubt, Andy will make several appearances in the reflections ahead!

6.  I'm a writer.  I've been a writer for many years now, and I absolutely love it!  But until last year, I had never fully realized my book-writing dreams.  I'd had an idea for a book, a series of books really, for a long time, and spent about 10 years slowly pulling it together.  In April of 2013, I finally published Book 1 of what will be a 3-book series about Heaven revealing itself to Earth.  In March of 2014, Book 2 was released, and by my 40th birthday next year, my third book will join the others, and close the series.  I also write poetry, blogs like this one, and reflections of all sorts throughout the year.  I am a writer, and I truly love expressing myself this way. 

7.  I'm a soul.  I am a child of God.  I used to be afraid of saying this, not because I didn't believe it, but because the only people I ever heard talk about God so much were religious nuts.  Over time, I came to see that spirituality had been hijacked by one faction of the larger world community I belonged to.  And I learned to see God and spirituality as fully accessible to me, a direct connection if you will.  No book or group to belong to, no meetings to attend once a week, nothing.  Just me and my Creator, walking hand in hand, down the beach, down the hallway at work, or down the street in quiet reflection.

All of this is who I am and where I've been.  It is by no means the full story of who Sean Patrick Brennan is, only an introduction by way of notes.  But I certainly hope to fill in more and more blanks over this next year.  Most importantly, I hope you'll learn along with me on this next leg of my journey. 

I am 39 years old today, and now begin my 40th year of life on Earth.  Walk with me a while, and let's see what comes our way.