Waiting outside my apartment before dawn this morning for Supershuttle, it was so quiet. The sense of the beginning of a great adventure was upon me. My bags lay beside me; somehow I'd squeezed 180 lbs of clothes, toiletries, electronics, costumes, shoes, protein bars and not to mention protein powder and a blender, into just two large check-in bags, one very large carry-on, and my backpack. So after a mad week of preparation, there was nothing left to do except wait in the quiet darkness.

Now, half way to Boston, I'm reflecting on the reading I've done recently. Since I've struggled so much, of late, to master feelings and emotions I've not felt in a decade, I've devoted considerable time to self-education. I've consumed large parts of three different books on relationships. What was remarkable was the wholly different personalities that each book ascribed to relationships. In "Towards Committment", a book my therapist lent me, a couple who've been married for forty years dialogue through the most important issues they'd faced: money, parenting, independence etc. It made relationships seem like a dry battle between spiky corporations; there was very little in it of the joy of love. Are my expectations so out of whack that I'm the only person to expect love to retain a sense of romance even after years? My parents still held hands lovingly after forty years, so that's my model.

"Insecure Relationships", the book I got into the most rapidly, and discarded less than half read, talked of those romantic attributes we most identify with as if they were symptoms of a disorder. Of the three books, the one I identified with most is the one I'm reading on the plane: "Long Distance Relationships: the Complete Guide" It has a bouncy, perky approach to relationships, acknowledging both the magic they work in our hearts while not underestimating the difficulties. In taking some of the tests in the book, I've realized that Ben and I have an almost perfect profile for a successful long-distance relationship, in that we have control over our schedules, and the time and means to be together often, both in the flesh and electronically. The book also underlines what I already knew; that the biggest obstacle to our relationship surviving is my insecurity and my tendency for depression, all of which makes me yet more intent to work on these issues with my therapist (whom I haven't seen in weeks now, due to either my travel plans, or hers).

Since falling in love with Ben, I've been so awestricken by the depths of feelings that true, open-hearted love can inspire that I've almost come to believe in miracles. It's made me want to understand love from a philosophical/ physiological standpoint. So I'm supplementing my reading by dipping into "The Philosophy of Romantic Love", probably the biggest compendium of centuries of thinking on the subject ever compiled. Heavy going at times, but I'm beginning to think I might get more from this book than from all the others combined, because you learn by assimilation, much in the same way as a great novel can teach you about life without instructing you.

As I eat my breakfast in First Class, I find I'm in a great mood. Well, who wouldn't be when about to begin the vacation of a life time with the new found love of their life? Yet a couple of days ago, I felt so down that I was worried I'd start off the vacation feeling flat. At the worst part of it, I finally wrote to my Dad to tell him I'd met someone very special.

Since coming out of the closet to my Dad sixteen years ago, the subject of my gayness has only been mentioned once between us, even despite the last few years during my mother's illness and after her death, when we talked more frequently. That one single time I brought up the subject in an extremely oblique way, in a letter to my Dad, and he was apparently ill for a week afterwards. But I think he's changed since then, through the experience of losing his beloved wife, my mother. Although my brother has never officially come out to my Dad, he's introduced his boyfriend Simon to him without, seemingly, any drama ensuing.

For the past few weeks I've been unable to call my Dad because I feel I can't just have our usual conversation about my work, football or politics when the central thing in my mind is my new life with Ben. Moreover, I'll be moving down to LA at some point, and don't want to lie to him about the reason for the move. We've never, ever had an emotional conversation together, and we don't know how to start doing that now. So finally, yesterday, I took time out from packing to write him. I started off by telling him something I'd long wanted to say to him, that the way he'd cared for my mother when she'd been sick and dying, had filled me with love and respect for him. I then told him the reason I hadn't called in so long, that I'd met someone I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, and that I couldn't call him and pretend that wasn't happening. I didn't even tell my Dad Ben's name, nor anything else about him. I'm going to leave it to my Dad to tell me how much, if anything, he wants to know.

I felt tearful after finishing this letter, and felt the urge to write Ben an email about what I'd done. He wrote back shortly and told me how it made him feel. He said he'd been saving various love letters to old flings over the years, and all of a sudden, he threw them out, feeling he didn't need them any more. He said it was very freeing. And that's how I felt about writing to my Dad. I remain a little anxious about how he will react to the letter, but I don't think it's a coincidence that I haven't felt even a touch of depression since writing it.