Here's the thing-- I don't want to be gay. I don't want to at all. Tonight I was talking to one of my roommates, just a normal conversation, and afterwards I was pondering... I feel so normal when I'm just interacting with him, and with other people. But then when I'm by myself, or just lost in my own thoughts, it's like I enter another word entirely. In the real world, I have positive interactions with people. In my head, they all are looking for excuses to reject me. And I reject myself. I reject myself so deeply, because I don't want to be who I am. And that's the problem.

I read once on a blog the experience a man had when he came out to a pastor, and the pastor told him it was okay to be gay, and how that hadn't been comforting at all. I had a similar experience. While I was in Europe, I ended up talking to one of my professors, whom I trust deeply. And she told me exactly what I didn't want to hear: that it was okay. She told me that "things have a nasty tendency of turning out all right in the end." And she ultimately told me that it was perfectly okay for me to be gay. That was not at all what I wanted to hear. What I wanted to hear was someone who would tell me how to fix it. I wanted someone to see me in pain and give me the cure. I wish so badly that someone could just come to me and give me a way to be attracted to women so that I can be like my family, like my friends, and like everything I've ever learned has told me I should be. But it never happens, and it never will. I know that ultimately the power to change my perspective is in my own hands, but how do I go about wielding it? How do I actually change the way I see the world?

Yesterday as I was thinking about the title of my blog and what I said about it, I thought of a metaphorical counter argument. While my blog is about the uncarved block, and my purpose is to try to discover who I am, haven't I been taught my whole life that I'm like clay in the potter's hand? If the natural man is an enemy to God, then why am I trying to seek my natural self? Shouldn't I be focused less on who I "am" and more on who I want to choose to be?

I don't know. But part of what I mean by the uncarved block is truth as it is, unfettered by man's perceptions. I want to find the truth for my life. If that truth is Mormonism and the life of celibacy I will probably have to lead to stay with in it, then so be it. If the truth brings me down a different path, then so be it. Because ultimately, I am tired of acting out of fear. I am tired of being a slave to my circumstance. I am tired of hating myself for something I never chose. What I am experiencing most days is pain. And to me, that's a signal that there is something wrong. I need to discover what exactly that is and how I can go about fixing it. I need to find the uncarved block.

And so, for now, I'm going to continue posting here to myself. Maybe someday some people will start reading it. Maybe I'll use it as a tool when I start "coming out" to friends and family, so that they can see my thought process for themselves. I have this deeply selfish desire for people to know my pain, and especially my family and close friends. I just wish I could show it to them, and let them become a part of it. But I can't, because I'm far too scared of the repercussions.

Becoming the Uncarved Block

In the past two weeks I have busied myself devouring the blogs of gay Mormons, Mormons questioning their faith, and faithful Mormons whose perspectives differ from the mainstream. It has been an incredible outlet for me, seeing people who have been going through the same things as me and knowing that I am not alone.

My purpose in starting this blog is primarily to think through my life and express myself. I don't even know that many people will ever see it or read it. But I hope that someday the things I say here might help someone else as much as the blogs I've read have helped me. It just feels so much better to know that you're not alone, and to read someone else thinking through the same thoughts that are bothering you.

First I'll introduce myself and the situation in which I find myself at the present moment.

I have been a life-long member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I returned from a mission in Australia almost a year ago, and it was a very positive experience. I genuinely loved it. I have a great, loving, very active family, and my parents raised me in the typical Mormon manner, with plenty of family prayer and scriptures and weekly family home evenings. I'm a very happy, positive person for the most part, and I've learned over time how to hide my inner struggles from certain people, like my parents.

I remember the first time I ever used the word "gay." It was when I was six or seven years old. I remember I was standing in the bathroom in our home in St. George, Utah. I had heard the word used a few days previously, and figured it meant something along the lines of "stupid." So when my sister did something that made me angry, I shouted at her and called her gay. She was shocked, not like when I usually called her stupid or annoying. And then she told me that if I knew what that meant, I wouldn't have called her that. Because to be gay, she explained, was something really evil. My mom was nearby, and she told me I could never call my sisters, or anyone else, gay. She explained to me that gay meant when two boys or two girls loved each other like a boyfriend and girlfriend do, but that it was something really, really bad. I never used the word again, and avoided everything to do with it.

You can imagine how terrifying it must have been when I first started feeling sexually attracted to boys. All I could think of was how awful, terrible, and evil it was. The first time I really noticed was at my first scout camp. There were lifeguards that were a lot older than us, and they would stand by the water in only their swimming trunks all day. Whenever we went to swim, I would steal glances at them. Looking at them made me feel good. It was like a warm feeling inside, and it made me want to be closer to them. At first I didn't think anything of it, but the more I looked at them, the more I realized something was weird about it. It wasn't until a few months later, however, that I first connected those feelings to sexual attraction. It was close to the beginning of eighth grade, and I had met a boy in my band class that gave me those same feelings. Then Tuesday night for scouts, we went swimming at the local swimming pool. That boy was there. Seeing him swimming through the water, and feeling those feelings all over again, it dawned on me what I was feeling. This was how I was supposed to be feeling for girls. Tears came to my eyes, and I began in my head the silent mantra of "I'm not gay. I'm not gay. I'm not gay." I couldn't be gay. Because to me, these feelings were evil. It was bad to be gay.

Fast forward ten years. I've now been back from my mission for nearly a year. In the first six months of being home, I tried so hard to have crushes. I tried liking and dating girls. It all came crashing down on me one Sunday as I was on a train ride with a good friend, traveling from Beijing to Qingdao in China. I was reading my scriptures, and I started to think again about the all-too-familiar topic of my attractions to men. I felt hopeless, and that hopelessness overwhelmed me. The next night, I sitting on the beach side, I talked with my friend about it all. I was more open with her than I had ever been with anyone up to that point. It was refreshing, but frightening. Suddenly the world of my inner mind and the real world crashed together, synthesizing by the words escaping from my mouth. As I talked about my attractions to men, it almost felt false. Like I was making it up. It was just so weird to actually say it and verbalize what I had kept inside for nearly my entire life. But it was so utterly relieving to have someone understand and care about the deep pain and dissonance I was experiencing.

The next day, I started watching the BYU It Gets Better videos, and as one of them talked about praying and telling God that he was gay and about the peace and acceptance he felt, I was overwhelmed. I burst out into tears, and I felt the Holy Spirit confirming to me that God loved and accepted me for who I was. I knew then that denying my sexuality was not productive, and it was not what God wanted for me. And so I decided to accept myself as I was. I finally realized that the long-awaited day when I would finally be attracted to girls, able to date, and marry in the temple would probably never come. And that it was okay. I called my friend up (we had parted ways at that point). The previous night I had told her that though I had those feelings, I most definitely was not gay. But when I called her, I told her that I had accepted it. That I was gay. It was the first time I had ever referred to myself as gay. It felt so wrong. It felt like I was calling myself stupid, bad, or evil. And I felt so, utterly ashamed to actually say it.

Things didn't get much better after that. A week later I had a complete breakdown while I was by myself in a hotel room. I started to tell people, random people at the periphery of my life. I met an amazing new friend in Guangzhou who I spilled my heart to, and she listened and cared. But I was still deeply depressed. Going home from China, I felt better, but not for long.

Five weeks into the new semester, I left with my classmates on a four week trip to Europe. The entire time, I felt a deeper despair than I had ever felt before. It was constant, and weighed so deeply on me. My biggest fear was that if these people around me knew who I was, they would hate me. Three of my roommates were with me on that trip, and I was so afraid. What if they knew? What if they all knew? What if my parents knew? The thought of rejection was too much, and I began to really, truly hate myself. I wanted so badly for it to be gone. I just wanted to be normal. I just wanted to be like everyone else. Watching the other guys flirt with girls, and seeing them cuddle and rub each others' backs was tortuous. They were unknowingly slapping me in the face with all I could never be. Luckily I was able to confide in a few people, and towards the end of the trip I began to realize more than ever that the problem was in my own perspective.

And so here I am. I will have been home from Europe for a week tomorrow. In this last week, I've been reading and re reading blog after blog. I don't know what I believe any more. I don't know who I am or what I want from life. I've titled this blog "the uncarved block." I want to use this blog as a journey to think through my life and my views and to discover my authentic self. I love Daoism. In Daoism, the uncarved block represents the concept of nature before the imprint of culture, or, as I'm using it here, the authentic or true self. I want to rediscover and become the uncarved block-- my true and authentic self. I feel like right now I'm fragmented. There's the part of me that believes deeply in Mormonism and wants to get married to a   woman and have a family. There's the part of me that believes strongly in Christ, and would be comfortable remaining Christian and abandoning Mormonism. There's the part of me that is extremely attracted to men. Part of me hates that, and the other embraces it. And then there's the part of me that's a Daoist, and just wants to enjoy the beauties of the present moment. I hope that in writing, I can find a synthesis. I want to overcome this fragmentation, and discover what I really, truly believe. And hopefully I'll be able to find and connect with people along the way that are experiencing the same struggles and dissonance as myself.

That's who I am and what I'm doing here.