Hello everyone,
I've debated for almost two years now whether or not to even write this. On the one hand, it's not necessarily anybody's business and chances are many of you won't even care. On the other hand, isn't part of being an adult being honest about who you are? I'm almost 30 (yikes...hadn't written that out loud before). Shouldn't I be honest with people, no matter what they may think? Because, what other people think about me is not much my business either, nor should it necessarily control what I do. But hey, I'm only human. I do care what people think about me. I want people to think well of me - to like me, especially those I care about. That only takes you so far, however, and so, in an attempt at "adulting" (or whatever), here goes nothing. For those of you who don't know me, I guess this is your introduction to a specific part of who I am. For those of you who do know me, I suppose you can consider this a re-introduction.
For my Lansing-area friends, this may seem a tad over-dramatic and be a bit confusing. I haven't really hid anything about myself from you and I'm definitely not ashamed of who I am. Not anymore, anyway. Many of my friends I made before moving here have a somewhat different picture of me, however.
I don’t think of myself as a liar (that said, I don't think I could blame anyone after reading this for calling me one). However, I am a very GOOD liar. I’ve known it for a long time. I guess that's one of the reasons why acting is so appealing to me. One time at a scout camp as our leaders were teaching us poker (yep, you read that right), the bishop (a leader in my church at the time) commented to me that he was almost worried for my soul, based on the impressive bluffing I was pulling off. That, of course, doesn’t mean a whole lot on its own. I was facing a circle of woefully inexperienced poker players, mostly made up of 13-year-olds. However, other similar instances have given me an idea of how good of a liar I am. I'm also a rather committed liar. For example, I have been perpetrating two rather large lies for about two decades now. I don’t want to do it anymore. Okay? Okay. Here goes (you know, adulting).
The first lie is strange, because to be completely honest, it changes everything and absolutely nothing at the same time. I have suspected since elementary school and been certain since high school that I am bisexual. It changes everything because it informs my view of the world and, I assume, as it comes out, it will change how others see me. It changes nothing because I’m the same person, doing the same things that I always have, with a few exceptions. I love my wife and my daughters more than anything in this or any world and I have no intention of changing or jeopardizing what I have and love nor any impulse to do so. I’m still me.
The other lie is more far-reaching and affects many more people in my life. For those of you who don't know me well, I was born into a family that was very active in The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, otherwise know as the LDS Church or Mormon Church. I was an active member of the church for most of my life. One of the main tenets of the church is the claim that the veracity of the message they share can be discovered by each individual person through prayer and the Holy Ghost. I have read the Book of Mormon (a book the church claims is a record of the ancient peoples of the Americas, translated by a modern-day prophet by the name of Joseph Smith, and held up by the church along with the Bible as the word of God) an average of once every 2 years since I was baptized into the church at age 8, sometimes more frequently. At the end of each reading, and several times in between I have knelt and I have asked God for confirmation of the veracity of the book and the church that espouses it. Since I was baptized, I have borne testimony of that veracity countless times. On my 2-year proselyting mission for the church I promised people that the gospel would change their life, that the church was true, and most importantly, that the Lord’s plan of salvation would allow them to spend eternity at the side of their loved ones. The catch is, that each and every one of those times I was lying. Not that I know for certain that those things are not true (I don't think anybody knows anything for certain). Not that I didn’t have every hope that those things were true, at the time. However, every time I knelt down and asked for truth, I always got the same answer. Nothing. I have never had a definitive spiritual experience, never felt that "burning in my bosom" I'd so often heard described, or a gradual assurance of anything. And believe me, I have tried. I have put in the work.
Before I was baptized, I never felt the spirit, at least not that I remember. I always assured myself that would start after baptism and confirmation, where members of the church are given the 'gift' of the Holy Ghost and promises of continual guidance. I was so excited. I wanted to know what everybody else in my family seemed to be so certain of. After I was baptized, I still never felt the spirit, but I was taught that testimonies sometimes start small and grow, so I soldiered on. I bore my testimony when called upon, repeating what I heard others say, because I was told this would help it grow. I clung to phrases like “a testimony is gained in the bearing of it” and “doubt your doubts before your faith.”
Not long after I was baptized I developed my first crush on a boy. I was very confused, but chalked it up to him being a really good friend. It didn’t go away, but I never told anybody, because I knew it was “wrong.” I felt guilty and dirty, like there was something wrong with me, and I suppressed it until it finally went away (to quickly be replaced by another). I had crushes on girls in elementary school as well, and then in middle school, and I eventually convinced myself it would eventually go away. It didn’t.
It took a few years for the frustration and anger I felt at both of these situations to build to any effective, motivating level, and by that time I had cultivated a rather devout image for myself and I felt pressure to maintain it. I dove into Gospel trivia and memorized mix-n-match testimony pieces to appear to know more than I did. I knew the “facts” or “details” of the church's doctrine and the scriptures better than many of my leaders did. I made up or exaggerated stories of experiences at youth conferences and seminary to prove that I wasn’t deficient. I think I even cried a few times while relating these stories. I was just so embarrassed and angry at myself for not being worthy of a testimony. I pushed down and squashed crushes that I developed on other guys, disgusted with myself. "Of course I'm not worthy of a testimony," I would think. "Of course God doesn’t want to talk to me."
In perpetuating these lies I have pretended to be many things: straight, pious, faithful, socially conservative. I did it to fit in--to make sure everyone around me thought well of me. Problem is, doing it made me not think well of me. I vacillated between periods of despair, when I doubted I would ever know or fix anything, and almost manic drive to know, during which I would stay up late reading the scriptures and praying. Once during high school, inspired by scripture stories, I decided to stay up and pray all night. I actually made it until about 5 a.m. before I fell asleep kneeling by the bed. Nothing. I never felt anything, no matter how hard I worked and pushed to be worthy and worthwhile. But it was worth it, I told myself. Except when it wasn’t. Sometimes going through the motions was all I could manage. I sat in youth meetings at church and lied about my faith while being told that a part of myself that I hadn’t chosen and couldn’t control was wrong and sinful, hearing jokes about “faggots” and “pussies” and what my fellow class members would do if one of these disgusting sinners ever tried to hit on them or kiss them. This was one of the major reasons I stopped going to youth activities. I became secretive, detached, and depressed, hiding things that didn’t need to be hidden because it became a habit and because lying frequently made life and conversations smoother and helped to avoid awkward questions. Or any questions at all for that matter.
As the end of high school drew closer, I started to feel a sense of panic about the impending decision regarding whether or not to serve a mission for the church, something that is expected of every good little Mormon boy at age 19 then (18 now). I had always said that I would. I knew it was expected of me. I knew that not going would confuse everyone and break some hearts. But wasn’t a missionary supposed to have a testimony? Even though I was woefully deficient in this area, I, being the coward that I am, decided to go ahead with it anyway. The prospect of disappointing my family and friends was so daunting that the concept of lying to complete strangers for two years paled in comparison.
So I went. And, to be honest, it was fairly terrible. At home, I could distract myself with other things--not think about it for a little while. That is not an available luxury as a missionary; it’s all gospel, all the time. I tried to think about it as another opportunity to finally get a testimony, even though that felt cheap and dishonest. Sometimes that worked and I was able to push through the confusion and get lost in the work. And don’t get me wrong. I worked. Hard. I met so many amazing people and enjoyed my interactions with them for the most part. However, I secretly cheered at rejection and sighed in relief when a day consisted of simply walking around the city with no progress being made. It meant I didn’t have to lie as much. When I got transferred to the mission office, I couldn't have been happier. The other missionaries bemoaned the loss of proselyting time to our other responsibilities, but I was overjoyed to have the distraction of overseeing mission finances. Each transfer that came and went with me still there was a relief.
The mission was a highly stressful time for me in other ways too. By the end of high school, I was certain that I was, in fact, bisexual. The feelings of attraction and interest that I developed for guys were just as real as those that I developed for girls. Those feelings did not go away during my mission, no matter how hard I prayed for it, and they have not since. After I got home I despaired of dating and, for the most part, completely avoided it. I wanted to have the experience of falling in love with someone, getting married, and maybe raising a family. But, what if that person that I fell in love with was a man? It seemed safest to just avoid the subject all together.
Then Taren, who is now my wife, came along and forced me out of the shell that I had made for myself. Falling in love with her was such an amazing experience and such a relief. Finally I had something real that I didn’t have to lie about or fake. I could ignore the other part of me because I had found love and it was church-and-family-approved. And that worked to some degree, though of course not completely. But I am content and happy in my relationship and my family.
My doubts about the church and my lack of testimony have not been solved however. Part of what drew Taren and I together was our shared doubts and insecurities about the church. We tried for several years to solve this problem together but with no success. When it was just us two it was easier to force our way through the frustration and doubt, but having kids has brought new challenges and added complexity.
Lying has been such an integrated part of my life - a part of my life that I hate - and the idea of lying to my kids makes me sick to think about. I dislike the Santa Claus mythos for this reason, and it made going to church progressively worse over the years. They had questions, of course, and I couldn’t answer them without lying. I didn't know that the things they were being taught in church were true and it became increasingly clear to me that I didn’t really believe them either.
After we moved to Michigan, we made a concerted effort to remain active in the church, but my doubts about my faith, my sexuality, and my concerns and insecurities about church doctrine, culture, and policies led me into a deep depression. I was in a really dark place for really long time. I hadn’t told Taren the real depth of my concerns and I had never told anyone about my bisexuality. In November 2016 - on election night as it happens - my frustrations came to a head. I had seen some of those who had lectured and taught me about morality in my childhood embrace hateful, dogmatic rhetoric throughout the election, and while I understand that the people are different from the church, the exclusionary and judgemental culture surrounding the LDS faith has been one of my main concerns throughout my life, and now so many of those in my life who claimed to strive toward christlike values seemingly abandoned those values in expressions of hatred and fear. Some of those expressions felt very personal to me, especially as a member, albeit a secret one, of the LGBTQ+ community. I came to a moment where I just couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t lie about these things anymore. So I told Taren everything, and she has been incredibly supportive. I eventually told my immediate family and some close friends as well, as hiding these facts, in addition to being simply a continuation of my previous patterns, was going to become very difficult.
A little while later, we asked for release from our assignments at church and we haven’t been back. The Church has been a source of such emotional and physical anguish for me over the years. During that time, I made promises and gave assurances to some of you who will read this that I would not leave the church, and I’m sorry to have broken those promises, but keeping them was slowly breaking me. I do not hate the church or the people in it, but I can’t be a part of it anymore.
This is not to say that things were immediately "all better." I've battled depression long enough now to know that that's not quite how it works, unfortunately. But things are getting better. I feel more content with myself, who I am, and the choices I'm making. I no longer feel lost and confused all the time. Just a normal human amount, I think.
I realize that this may cause some awkwardness in the future and I regret that. I’m sure some of you have questions and concerns and I am open to discussion and answering those questions. That said, if all you want to do is convince me to come back to Church, please don't waste your time. That feels harsh as I write it, but I ask that you respect it. To be completely honest, publishing this post--even thinking about publishing it--is terrifying. This is a huge step for me, and it feels like I’m stepping blindly without any idea of what will happen next. But I feel strongly that this is the right step for me now.
