Letter to My First Therapist

 Dear Brother Redacted, 

In the year 2000 my mission president sent me to visit you after I told him I was worried I might be gay.  We met in your office at Southern Virginia University. I write concerning my memories of the visits and how it affected me. 

I remember you asking a list of questions designed to determine If I was a homosexual. I don’t remember all the questions, but it took a long time to go through the list. At the end of the meeting you told me I was not gay because I had never had sex with a man, and I had these feelings because I was committing the sin of ingratitude for the body God had given me. We frequently described these feelings as “warped” and “unnatural.” You promised I could overcome the feelings. Part of the prescription from you and my mission president included fasting every Sunday.  

I recently found my mission journal and searched for any mentions of our visits.  I have been trying to recreate what happened.  While my mission was difficult, I noticed a marked change after our visits began. I was suppressing everything about me.  I got very anxious. I refused to discuss anything with my companions that wasn’t related to missionary work. Perfect and strict obedience were the only way to overcome this.  I remember driving down a holler during a powerful wind storm, thinking I’m going to die.  I’m going to hell.  

And why was I going to hell. Because I was preoccupied with men. I had never even kissed a guy. I had attractions.  I had natural physical reactions.  But our visits made me feel unclean, unworthy and broken. Broken is perhaps the worst of these. I kept thinking I could do something to fix myself.  Ironically, I wrote down your address, so I could send you a wedding announcement. 

You were the second person I ever told about my feelings, my mission president being the first. After two years I came home from the mission, and went to school.  I was still depressed and broken. And I didn’t even know why. Obviously I wasn’t gay, but what was going on inside of me. I would spend months feeling guilty for walking down aisles at the Wal Mart.  I would confess these to my bishops.  I would go to the temple. I would get so nervous during the day I often would kneel and pray in the handicap stall in the campus library. I struggled mightily to form friendships with men or women. I treated my attractions like OCD. I did go to other therapists, always making sure they were safe.  But you were my first. 

I did graduate college, but I was unable to even apply for jobs.  I moved back into my parents’ house and worked on a farm.  Then I got a job as an on call substitute teacher. 

Why didn’t you tell me I was not the only person like this?  Why did you not tell me my attractions were natural?  Why did you make me feel so broken, so alone, and offer a false hope that still has not come to pass?  You did not have to tell me to leave the church. But I was damaged by our encounter. It took me over a decade to admit this was part of who I was. I went to conversion therapy. I was so confused. Do I blame all of this on you?  No.  but you were there, at the beginning. And the path I chose was based on the counsel of you and my mission president. He was a medical doctor.  You were a licensed therapist. You should have helped me be comfortable with who I am, not leave me damaged and seeking after a unclear path with vague promises.

Electing

 I don’t know how many times I vomited late at night when I was young.  I remember in my drowsy stupor lurching down the hall to the bathroom.  Too many times, I didn’t make it to the toilet; many times, the carpet in the hallway was the ill-fated receptacle.

I never cleaned that up. My mom would somehow be at my side, soothing me, at 3 am.  Helping me find new pajamas, and making the vomit disappear. She was a healing angel those nights. 

But now people call her ignorant, hater, monster, worse than Hitler.

I was scared.  Now an adult I sat in a dark parking lot with a friend.  I cried.  This is how we met, our own homes could not hear our secret.  Struggling to figure out how to be human, when people say you’re an abnormality—when you might believe them.

He told me I was good.  He poured caring salve into the deep wounds in my soul.  He walked me back from the abyss, and helped me feel ok.  For a few moments, he was the mute button of my brain, silencing the anxious reverb. 

But people say he is evil, unnatural, ungodly.

Both these people are angels to me. Their lives seek to make others better.

But, two old politicians decided they wanted power. 

 One angel chose one, the other chose the other.

And now a chorus of voices proclaims one or the other despicable, devilish, deviant.

They are not without flaws—these Samaritans—but they are none of those derisive things. 

The chorus can pound sand.  I will not hate or forsake these good people.

Out Coming

Why do I want you to know I’m gay?

It’s not the overarching facet of my life. 

But it’s also not a minuscule fact.

It’s something I notice many times every day. 

I like men.  I’m attracted to them.  About half my world is like, so what.  That’s cool  NBD or no big deal.

And that’s what I want.  I want it to be no big deal.

So I want to make jokes about it.  I want to bring it up when I’m hanging with the guys and they say “dude, that chick is on fire”

When I’m with guys doing that I feel so normal.  And normalcy is not something I’ve experienced much.

For years, I told no one.  For years my mind would cycle over and over like some high speed carnival ride, each rotation included “you’re gay, such a queer, faggot.  If people knew they wouldn’t like you”

Those were the messages I had internalized.

Happily the messages of rejection are false.  I have been accepted by so many friends.  And it feels good.

So that is why I want to come out to you.  I want you to know this part of me.  I want you to see who I am.  And I want to once again know for sure I am safe to be me around you.

I want you to know, because my mind wants to get back on that nightmarish ride.  It wants to tell me you would reject me.  And well, I don’t think you would.  But even if you did, I’d rather it happen just once instead of a repetitive mental process.

So yeah. I’m gay.  Now what game should we play

Best Friend's Girl

You make him so happy. But now you leave and as strong as the sting has been seeing him less, the way you animate his soul makes me wish you would not leave. I gladly give up time with my friend, for his time with you. 

Not that I have much choice in the matter. Twelve times out of ten he’d pick you. As he should.

Short Poem

I laugh and I smile, 
But all the while, 
I’m a creature most vile
There is no denial
My love is on trial

U In?

I only dare write this anonymously. In college i had a strange infatuation with prank wars. i would spend hours day dreaming about the perfect toilet papering or filling someones house with rabid goats.

somehow i got the idea.... and i really don't know what possessed me. Somehow i got the idea that the ultimate prank would involve urine.

at this point i should mention somehow i didn't realize the purpose of prank wars was to get a girl to pay attention to you. seeing how i had not attraction to them, but didn't' know it. i thought the purpose of a prank war was to inflict distress.

anyway. I had a dream. a dream of filling the tub in some poor girls' apartment with urine. Wouldn't that just be the best prank ever? really? i mean they come in and they find 50 gallons of urine dumped into the tub.

yeah......... i don't think there are enough "."s to show how long that pause should be.

so i started saving. gallons and gallons of urine stored in milk jugs. In the bathroom. and while my depravity is certain, someone should also question why my roommates let me. why did they not stop me. if you see someone going down a destructive path, why do you not stop them

so, i became quite fond of my urine collection. It got chunky. i showed it off. I was such a dumb freshman.

one day, after i had amassed 40 gallons of urine, my roommate came to his senses. he begged me not to do this horrible thing. not to destroy these girls tender souls.

i looked at my chunky urine, and realized they did not deserve it. they didn't understand what i'd been through to create the urine.

so I hauled the gallons out to the dumpster.

gentle reader, i apologize for not having a story that ended with the urine being dumped in a tub, or accidentally spilling in my own house. but for 2 months, i had urine stored in my bathroom. i'm not proud of it........... but i am also not ashamed. 

Darkness in the rear view mirror.

Years ago I looked over the railing. Was any of this worth it. Was the pain, loneliness, being so different ever going to lessen. Why was I so different. Why was I so alone. Why can’t I change things for the better.

It was the same railing that today someone else jumped.

And I weep for them.

Their future looked so cloudy. Their pain so great. Why? I do not know their story. Was it the stress of schooling? Was it the pressure of unmet expectations? Was it illness? Did they also feel like an interloper?

When you consider suicide it’s like your life is a merry go round of misery. You can’t find anyway off it. The same repetitive stresses hit you again and again and again. It sucks. And then something happens that makes it too hard to bare. And you think the only exit is death. It becomes a fixation. Each rotation you come back to that thought, “the only way off is to die”

It isn’t.

If i jumped all those years ago i would have missed so much. New friends. New acceptance. New self love. Pains that had stayed with me for decades erased. Phantoms of misery finally vanquished. Had I jumped I never would have known dancing, improv, dungeons and dragons.

Friendships would have never formed.

And lives would have been devastated .

Pain multiplied across the all who new me. From moments of sadness and regret to heart suffocating spasms that want to rip the soul apart. Friends. Families. Always with a dark scar.

Please don’t do it. Don’t jump. You are good. It does get better. I promise. Get help. There are many paths to happiness. Many solutions to puzzles. And more joy that will slay the pain.

Don’t jump. Get help. You don’t have to do it alone. And in future years when you are sitting by a warm fire either with loved ones or just loving your self you will know that it has gotten better. And the way you felt on that lonely bridge will seems foreign.

There are a million paths for you. And joy is in many of them.

It gets better. As long as you stick around.