First, I want to thank my dear friend

for sharing the New York Times article that sparked this reflection.
Mark, your thoughtfulness — your way of offering exactly the right breadcrumb at exactly the right moment — never ceases to inspire me.
This piece is a conversation that grew out of your gift. Thank you.

For most of my life, I believed happiness was something to achieve — a prize waiting at the top of a ladder.

I chased what I now call Goal Line Joy:
The belief that if I could just reach the right career, the right relationship, the right societal approval, I’d finally feel lovable.

I thought a man’s love would be the final proof.
That if a man loved me, the world would declare me worthy.

The hunger was endless.
It felt like a pit in my stomach — a craving, an addiction, an ache rooted in fear and lack.

And no matter how fiercely I was loved, it was never enough.
Because I was still looking outside myself for the answer.

The years of chasing external validation left me exhausted, lonely, and lost.

I sought out the people who seemed most loved and tried to become like them — losing myself in the process.

After my first divorce, I reentered dating with a battered, hopeful heart — only to be betrayed by someone who stole my money, my belongings, and most painfully, my hope.

Desperate not to be alone, I married again — to someone I knew wasn’t right for me.

But love, the kind that would finally make me feel whole, never came from those places.

Because it couldn’t.

Queer joy required a different leap.
A leap inward.

It meant letting go of the fantasy that someone else’s love would be my salvation.
It meant accepting that this is who I am — messy, queer, sensitive, tender-hearted — and that this is good.

It meant being willing to risk rejection by my church, my community, and my family.
It meant trusting my heart to guide me, even when it led me to places society said were wrong.

Queer joy starts not with achieving, but with accepting.
Not with earning love, but with loving myself.

I want to be clear:
It’s not that queer love is “better” or “more real” than other love.
It’s that for me, this is the love that called me home.

In queer spaces, I found people who had to let go of chasing universal acceptance in order to choose themselves — and that shared courage changes everything.

For me, queer love invited me to stop performing, stop competing, stop trying to fit a mold.

It invited me to simply be.

Before, my longing for love was rooted in desperation — a hunger to be seen, picked, deemed enough.
It was a fear-driven energy, the way so many spaces (including social media) seem to thrive:
Competition. Posturing. Trying to earn love.

Now, because I belong to myself, I come into spaces with curiosity instead of craving.

I no longer walk into rooms silently screaming, “Do you see me?”
I walk in asking, “Who are you? What is your beautiful, wild, sacred story?”

This shift — from seeking validation to offering presence — has changed everything.

It’s no longer about competition.
It’s about connection.
It’s about being.

Joy has never come easily for me.
After decades of suicidal depression, joy often felt like a mirage — something wispy, impossible to hold.

Because it was so elusive, so fought for, it is now sacred to me.

I am beyond grateful for the love of my life, my wife Kelly.
I am grateful not because it was easy, but because it was hard.
Because I spent decades learning what love isn’t, I recognize now what love is.

Because joy arrived late, it feels deeper, richer, more fiercely alive inside me.

At a recent yoga retreat led by the amazing Avery, Kelly and I sat in a room full of queer couples — and it was the most accepting space I’d ever experienced.

No one was competing.
No one was judging.
No one was fighting for love.

We were just being — fully seen, fully held.

In queer company, it’s easier for me to love myself.
There’s a real curiosity — a genuine desire to see each other’s truth, not to gain something, but to connect.

I don’t stay in that space all the time.
It’s a practice.
It’s a return, over and over again.

But now I know it’s possible.
Now I know it’s real.
And that changes everything.

If you are still climbing the ladder, still believing that happiness lives at the top rung or in someone else’s hands:
I see you.
I honor the courage it takes to want love so badly.

But hear me, sweet one:

You are what you are looking for.
Your heart is already home.
Your joy was never lost — it was just waiting for you to come back.

May we all find the wild, fierce, untamed joy of belonging to ourselves.
May we all, finally, come home

.

My visual representation of queer love.

A love that is a call
to love myself.

A love that whispers,
That thing you always thought you needed to hide?
I love that, the most.

I love your low-rise jeans,
your peach-fuzz facial hair,
your sensitive heart,
your singing out loud,
unafraid.

This love calls me forward—
bold and bright.

“Be more you,” it shouts.
“Be braver. Be louder. Show us all of you,”
it beckons.

And so I do.
In this love,
in this joy,
I come home.