I knew there was something different about me starting around age eight. I just did not know what it was until the year after my Sunday school confirmation.

At age 14 I started having boy crushes and man crushes. When they didn’t subside, I started praying that God would fix me or give me a sign that it was ok.

I was raised Catholic and even though my particular church never got all fire and brimstone about homosexuality, I still prayed very hard to be normal.

Over the next couple of years my day dreaming about men – mostly muscle bear types – grew more advanced. I wondered what it would feel like to be held tightly, to be on top of or underneath.

It seemed the more I prayed, the more I fantasized and the more guilt I felt.

The year I turned 16, things changed. I was in a bookstore and in the aisle with me was a guy I did not even notice. I reached for a book. As he reached for the one next to it, our hands brushed each other. We both said ‘excuse me’ while blushing. Our eyes met and that was my sign from God.

Jeff was also raised Catholic. He also asked for God’s help in the same way as me.

He was not my type. He was a swimmer in college, handsome in a pretty way, instead of ruggedly handsome like all those Tom of Finland muscle bear types I had fantasized about.

He was toned and naturally smooth. He could go a week before getting a hint of a 5 o’clock shadow, and has a total of nine chest hairs. He was actually more boyish than me, but because he was four years older than me, we waited.

Jeff and I spent as much time as two people could without living together. But I still did not admit to being gay until my great-grandmother told me my friend and I were in love.

It scared me she had me figured it out. She was my best friend and the most Catholic person I knew. She pointed out God only inspired the Bible, he did not write it. She said to look at the core beliefs that tell you how to be a good person and worthy of all the love God has to give.

My great-grandmother told my grandmother, who then told my other grandparents who all decided it would be my choice when to tell everyone else.

Jeff came out to his mother shortly after that. He took me up to see her one weekend. In the middle of dinner he announced that he was gay and that he hoped she would be OK with it.

His stepfather spoke before she opened her mouth, telling him he would not have faggots in his house.

His mother shot him down and told Jeff: ‘After dinner, while your stepdad packs, you can put your boyfriend’s thing in your room. Your father and I bought this house I won’t be told who is welcome in it.’

Jeff and I had an amazing first year together. His mother was more maternal to me than my own mother ever was. We never fought and we made gay friends volunteering with an AIDS hospice after Jeff joined the campus gay group his final year of school.

Jeff took summer classes and finished his four year degree in three. He was getting really good job offers from everywhere. But the best one came from the other side of the state.

I made the hardest decision I ever made, and told him to take it. That as much as I loved him, we were too young to be in a relationship with so many miles between us.

He was devastated, and I felt like shit, but I helped him move and we kept in touch.

When his mom heard the news she reamed me out, but before hanging the phone up. She said she knew why I did it and hoped this would not end up as the biggest mistake of both our lives.

That summer ended with a bang, literally. Labor Day weekend was cut short by my getting hit by a tractor trailer on my way home.

My family was down at the beach, but the police found my address book in the glove compartment of my car.

When I woke up, Jeff was sitting in the chair next to my hospital bed, with his head resting on the bed and his hand holding mine.

His mom showed up a couple hours later. She said I had told her that I prayed to God for a sign it was ok to be gay – this was me second sign, my second chance.

The next couple years were hard. I had eight surgeries on my back and leg and had to learn to walk again.

But I had Jeff and the second family I found volunteering with the gay campus group at the AIDS hospice.

I went from being one of those guys who could eat everything to gaining 100 pounds from being laid up so much. Jeff didn’t care.

When I was able to walk again without crutches, canes or assistance we had a ceremony on our fourth anniversary, 10 June 1997 in his mother’s rose garden.

I still hadn’t come out to my parents. Mere mentions of gay friends prompted my mother to say she’d kill herself if any of her kids were gay, and she was the one I thought would be the good parent.

Our not legally wedded bliss was short lived however.

A few weeks after our ceremony, my best friend, who was like a little brother to me, committed suicide.

His note said it was the loss of his boyfriend in a car accident at Thanksgiving and his parents’ reaction to him coming out that made him do it. He just turned 18 and didn’t want to be a burden on his friends.

Shortly after that, we tricked Jeff into going to the doctors because he was so tired and I noticed he had been bruising easy. He had a fear of doctors and hospitals that he got over while I was going through my car accident recovery.

The blood work led to a bone marrow test which confirmed leukemia. They estimated he had it for at least a couple years. I was what took his father at 40 and his twin brother at seven.

They tried but it was so far progressed there was little they could do. He died on 10 October 1997. We would have been together four years and four months exactly, if I hadn’t been a total ass that one summer.

My dad gave me a hug, when he found out why I was taking some time off school. My mother still has a problem with it, and I’m still not over it, but I am still close with Jeff’s mom, she tries to play matchmaker.

She is the last one who remembers Jeff and I together, the rest have scattered across the country or have passed on.

What I’ve learned is you have to be open. If you’re not, you may miss out on a soul mate because of some ideal you had about who or what kind of person you want to be with.

Don’t rush things, not all relationships that start with an instant connection are meant to end in marriage. Sometimes it becomes a friendship that lasts a lifetime.