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.