Coming out to myself

One day in the MTC, I was sitting on a chair outside of my dorm room. When the door of the room next to me opened, I glanced over and was greeted by the sight of a rather attractive Elder in my district completely naked, fixing his hair in the mirror (why someone cares about their hair when they're not even clothed, I have yet to understand). I hesitated before looking away, but then promptly returned to my room to sulk in the misery of my predicament. I felt completely ashamed and utterly alone.

In my first area, I made a decision. I figured that the reason it was so hard for me was because I had made it a secret. I decided that if I gave my secret away to God, everything would be okay, and so I wrote this poem to signify this new decision:

In years gone by I've held you here,
Secret of my heart,
But now at last in freedom's breath
From thee I will depart
And flying free through open skies
Where mercy's arms extend
I'll sing of my Redeemer's love
From now until the end

And I felt that. For most of my mission, my feelings of attraction for men were diminished, but they never left completely, and at moments, I was overwhelmed by them. At that point in time, I had accepted that I "struggled" with same sex attraction, but I could never admit, even to myself, of actually having feelings for any specific person. In retrospect, however, I definitely had a few crushes on some of the Elders in my districts. Neve my companions, though.

About nine months into my mission, one of my best friends from high school, who was writing me weekly, admitted to liking me...a lot (to be fair, it was because I insisted on her telling me the object of a love poem she had once written and shared with me). That letter made me so happy. I read it over and over throughout my mission. It became the symbol of my life-long hope that I could someday fall in love with a girl and live the Mormon dream. I guess I should say, too, that I have never had a girlfriend or kissed, cuddled, or held hands (in any way that I count, at least). Being alarmingly unattracted to girls, I blamed my lack of feelings on my own apparent unatractiveness and convinced myself that no girl could ever like me. My friend's letter was a ray of heterosexual hope in my homosexual nightmare.

I wrote her back and told her that I was interested in her, too, and that we would see what happened when I got home.

In the weeks and months after getting back, I realized that the "secret of my heart" was anything but "flying free." It was right there inside of me where it had been all along.

I went on one date with my friend. One. It didn't even last the whole night. As the semester progressed and I began, against my will, to develop feelings for a guy in one of my classes, I realized that I would have to be honest with her, and tell her about my lack of feelings.

It was hard for me, and mostly for her. I felt like a liar and a jerk.

But for the first time, I felt myself acknowledging my feelings for another man- not just feelings of sexual attraction, but intellectual and emotional attraction as well. The feelings were powerful, an dwarfed any feigns of interest I had in my friend. Being honest with her was difficult, but an important step for me.

As time went on, I found my feelings for this guy in my class deepening, and with them, my feelings of dissonance. I wrote this poem to express the paradox I found myself in:

The simple, sickly sweet surprise
I find when looking in your eyes
Supplies a satisfaction
That only e'er dissatisfies

I never want to see the day
When thoughts of you are gone away
But every morning when I wake
I pray that they'll put at bay

Sordidly seducing me
These images I ever see
Dancing through my crowded mind
Of me with you, and you with me

I know not which I want to seek,
To be free, or to be meek
Wanting what I don't desire,
I yearn for both, yet both are bleak


And that's where I found myself when I left for my trip to China. I was finally acknowledging my feelings for a man, and giving up on ballooning my feelings for girls into something more than they were. But with this acknowledgment came a new depth of pain, which resulted in the conversation with another friend in Qingdao, which I mentioned in my first post.

And that's the gist of the journey I took in coming out to myself. I left on my mission in denial, and here I am now with a truth I can't make sense of. Not yet, anyway. Writing this all out is helpful, though.