Wondering

I've been looking for this song for a few months. I honestly couldn't remember who it was by, or what it was called, or where I'd even heard it. I just remembered there was something about blood and something about on his head - a crown or thorns. I'd tried google searches to no avail, but for some reason this morning as I was working on a paper I didn't really want to be writing, staying up all night to meet my deadline, I found it.

Because I am.

Wondering.



Sometimes I think about
The way things used to be
Had it all figured out
When I was two or three.

But then I made some mistakes that I' regret
Let some things in my mind I wish I could forget
But I don't think I can erase these memories
That's why I'm down here on my knees.

Oh lord my God
When I in awesome wonder about the man on that cross
And all the pain I put him through
And everything that I still do.
Which drop of blood did I make him shed?
Did I put the thorns onto his head?
I try to do what the Savior said,
But I slip all the time on the path he led

I'm wondering
If you're listening to me
Just wondering
Who I'm supposed to be
I'm just wondering
If there's more to life than what I see
I'm wondering
Just wondering (wonder)

And just when I think these prayers are in vain
I feel a power in my heart that relieves my pain
So please let these words get past your brain
Stop wondering, stop wondering

Cuz I know that our fathers love is real
Open your heart and let it feel
Cuz I've never felt this love before
And I'm not wondering anymore (Just wondering)

Oh, I'm not wondering
I'm not wondering
Wondering anymore
Wondering, wondering anymore
Wondering, wondering anymore
Not wondering anymore

More soon.

Square One

It looks like I'm not going to be able to sleep until I get this out. So here goes.

Hi, it's me again. Been a while. Having a bit of a problem just now and thought I'd see what help/advice I could get.

Basically, in summary, I've been out for about NINE years. Crazy it's been that long. And I've been out almost the same amount of time to my parents. It started rocky and they struggled, and I struggled, and we had fights, and tears were shed, but then we started making progress. I was able to share my experiences, including some that happened on my mission, that helped them start to understand me a bit better. We took baby steps. I sent them talks. I sent them thoughts, scriptures, things people had blogged that resonated with me. Eventually we got to No More Goodbyes level. Progress was slow, but it was there. We even got to Prayers for Bobby. My dad seemed to have come around more than my mom and I continued being open with him. I even shared some of my difficulties with dating, struggling to find a boyfriend, etc. All received positively. I even went so far as to bring a guy home so that they could see what me being in a relationship looked like. I *thought* we had achieved a relatively solid place of understanding and agreement.

When I asked my dad if there would ever be room for me and my partner at their table, I was told (with a few conditions/strings) yes. I have been so proud of our relationship and honesty over the past few years, I thought I didn't have any complaints. I've been re-evaluating some things in my life and re-addressing my faith paradigm and post-orthdoxy Mormon spaces and have been engaging with them in dialogue about it, all to the positive as well.

But then this weekend I was sharing some of my recent findings with the memoirs I've been exploring, like John Addington Symonds. I brought Oscar Wilde up as well as I just finished his biography. I was making a comment about my previous engagement/relationship with OtR and how glad I was that I had made the choice to NOT marry her, because it saved us so much pain and grief in the long-run. These marriages, and other MOMs I'd mentioned to them in the years when I was a more active blogger; well, the majority of them didn't end well. They asserted that the ones that worked we probably didn't hear about because they worked. I wasn't ready to disagree completely there, but then my dad basically confessed he still harbors a hope that I will "find a lovely girl to love and settle down with and make a life."

Knife to my heart.

Are you kidding? He really just said that? My mom also noted that in her mind that was the only way "I'd ever be able to have the type of family I was looking for." To which I shot back with the countless committed gay couples I know who are currently raising children. I then tried to clarify my point with them about my non-attraction to OtR. I gave examples of seeing how much she cared about me and loved me and not being able to reciprocate that, and how much it pained me. My mom then came at with the assertion that why couldn't marriage be more about the "best friend" part; that was her favorite part: having that someone to be around and make memories with and be there to support you and spend time with you. I wanted to assert a reply about marriages failing if thy don't have a sexual aspect, but didn't really know how to phrase that.

It got worse though.

As I went further into my "inability to perform" when it came and me and OtR and the physical, I told them the story of being actually, actively physically repulsed by her lady parts. Like wanting to throw up repulsed. Hi, Kinsey? Yeah, I'm definitely a 9. We need to amend your scale. Thanks. That's neither here nor there though. My mom's response to that was literally: "I guess that's why you're meant to do it with the lights off." Egads. I really want to believe she was being flippant about that comment. I do wonder though what I'm inadvertently exposing about my own parent's marriage by having these conversations.

That wasn't the worst of it though. My mom added later on in the conversation that, just for my information, when I made them watch Prayers for Bobby that the two boys kissing--" (I showed them the edited version I had from Dichotomy even) "--well that made ME sick to MY stomach. Literally."

Bombshell.

I've been left completely reeling. I feel like the entire foundation of our 9-year relationship working toward understanding and common ground has just been pulled out from under me. Do they really misunderstand me and who I am that fundamentally? I feel like I've spent the last nine years with them thinking that I love mathematics and want to become an accountant while the whole time I've been telling them that I'm a writer in actuality. Like that's how far off the mark I feel we are now.

Has anyone else run into this? I feel like I have to start over with them now and re-establish in their heads the entire --everything-- we've already been through. You're repulsed by me kissing someone. You think I'm still going to marry a girl. I feel like I've just been invalidated in my entirety. Nothing I've said to you in the last NINE YEARS has made it into your brains!?

I'd really like to regroup and let them know how I feel but I'm at a loss how to respond (I think I may still be in shock as to what's happened) to the things they said to me. Has anyone had something similar happen? Any advice/angles that you found helpful in getting your parents to better understand you? I'm definitely looking for input on this one.

Thanks,
Hidden

He's Not Good Enough For You

I can't stop listening to this. And crying.

And living every word.

Define Me

This is on my mind today and I think everyone should see it.

On My Mind

This is what I've been feeling/thinking today.

I don't want you to hate / For all the hurt that you feel...



I know its hard to tell
How mixed up you feel
Hoping what you need
Is behind every door
Each time you get hurt
I don't want you to change
Cuz everyone has hopes
You're human after all

The feeling sometimes
Wishing you were someone else
Feeling as though
You never belong
This feeling is not sadness
This feeling is not joy
I truly understand
Please don't cry now

Please don't go
I want you to stay
I'm begging you please
Please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate
For all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion
Trying to change you

Being like you are
Well this is something else
Who would comprehend
That some bad do lay claim
Divine purpose blesses them
Thats not what I believe
And it doesn't matter anyway

A part of your soul
Ties you to the next world
Or maybe to the last
But I'm still not sure
But what I do know
Is to us the world is different
As we are to the world
I guess you would know that

Please don't go
I want you to stay
I'm begging you please
Please don't leave here
I don't want you to hate
For all the hurt that you feel
The world is just illusion
Trying to change you

Please don't go
Please don't go
I want you to stay
I'm begging you please
Oh please don't leave here
I don't want you to change
For all the hurt that you feel
This world is just illusion
Always trying to change you

On Being A Delinquent

This is not how I meant for this to (RE)start. This is not the (RE)beginning I planned. This post touches on experiences that I intend to cover in-depth, (as has been my plan before I was silenced) in order to shed light on my experiences and why I believe the path I have gone down is the right one. That said, this happened to me yesterday and stirred up emotions too powerful to be ignored, so this was created...

Once a week one of my good friends goes to the Farmington Juvenile Detention Center to teach a group of kids a class on writing. She gives them each a journal and then teaches them to write, at the same time doubling sometimes as a life coach. She does this because she cares. She believes. When almost everyone else in these kids' lives has given up on them, she is there. And she does this of her own volition. On her own time. On her own dime. She has sunk uncounted thousands into her kids, almost none of whom she will ever what effect, if any, she had on them.

She teaches them to write to cope, to deal, to emote and process. That's what I need to do right now. Writing has always been my therapy, my outlet, my way of living from the time I was 10 years old. Especially when I was first coming out. I practically bled on the pages I was penning. Page after page I would sort, reason, and process my emotions and thoughts until I could breathe again, eat again, live again.

Today I went with her to see the class. There were 13 kids, 9 boys and 4 girls. They ranged in ages from 13 to 18, and were in Juvenile Detention for everything from drug charges to sex offenses to assault charges.

I was incredibly nervous going in, psyching myself up for some ultra-sanitized no-nonsense, hardcore lock-down facility. But these were just kids. They circled up in chairs and smiled at me. These were kids who made mistakes or who had pasts that make mine look like a walk in the park. They've suffered, they hurt, and you could see it in their eyes. I was more a fly on the wall than anything, not really interacting other than a word here or there, a brief moment of locked eyes, the whisper of a smile.

The class today was on labels. Labels and the damage they can do. Each of these kids have already obtained the label "delinquent." Basically the lesson was to show them that they were in charge of which labels stick and which don't. Right now delinquent has already been stuck there, and it can technically be expunged, but with the right clearance, the right motive, and the right knowledge, really that will never go away. S always says this is her hardest class and I can see why. This class is designed to be a button-pusher, a trigger, a way to get people to think when nothing else will. So she made the claim that since I was new and didn't know any of them she was going to give them all nametags. That way I would be able to know who was in the class. She wrote and handed the first boy his nametag. "Pathetic," it read. S told them to put their nametags on in the center of their chests where everyone could see them. The next, "moron", "failure," "slut," "worthless," "unloveable," "freak," "jerk," "idiot," "creep," "reject," "lost cause." Then she gave me mine, which simply bore my name. They insisted she have one too, so S wrote herself a tag that read "Loving."

The discussion continued that labels can be very destructive and no matter how hard we want to say they don't affect us, that they don't matter... if they separate us from the larger group then they can end up destroying us. We talked about the worst things the kid shave ever been called, what they thought someone like me just walking in off the street would think about them, what kind of labels they would put on them. Then she continued by telling the story of someone very close to her who made a mistake, got labeled a sex offender, and how he has never -and will never- be able to escape that label. She told the kids they could rip up their nametags, or put them on their journals to remind themselves of this lesson, and how they get to be the ones who choose which labels stick and which ones don't. And how they are very close to having some bad ones stick that they really will regret later.

All in all the class was a very heavy-handed experience for me. My heart was literally breaking the whole time. From the very beginning, I just wanted to hold those kids, to tell them they would make it, to tell them that it would be okay, to apologize for all the pain and suffering they have witnessed when they are supposed to be children. I wanted to have words and answers to turn them around, to help them be free of their problems, to help them cope with the difficult, unfair hand that life has dealt them. Looking into so many of their eyes... I just kept seeing my broken little self. Granted, I struggle to equate myself to them. I never ended up in those places, I never suffered to the extent that some of them have... but my demons were just as real and defeating as theirs in my broken mind.

We talked a little bit about it after, but her busy schedule necessitated her to move on to the next task - studying for a midterm. When I got home I sat down at my computer to try and begin processing my internal weights. To make sense of what I was feeling. Of why that had impacted me so deeply.

I started a harmless FB conversation with a friend who is teaching English 150 at BYU and has a student who wants to write an issues paper about Mixed Orientation-Marriages (MOMs). She was looking for resources to give her student to assist her research. I pointed said friend in the direction of the MoHo Blogosphere Directory. Then highlighted a number of blogs written by gay men in marriages to give her student to draw from.

At some point in the conversation (unacknowledged to her), I realized that in regards to this issue, I am suddenly on the other side of the aisle. I, as a homosexual man, am the Juvenile Delinquent of Mormonism. Well-meaning people come along to talk to me, to teach me, to remind me that the choice is mine, that I choose where I go from here. But how many of those kids make it "on the outs?" How many them end up back in prison, just a number without a name for their choices? I'm sure that's all I am to many of my Mormon friends. They lament how lost I am, that I have decided to throw away everything that matters for gay things. There are people who say they still love me, but are they able to do that without judging me? I'm not so convinced.

I recounted in retrospect how frightening it is to watch these Mormon men who are by and large unhappy. They have wives who tell things like "go find your true love" because his inability to be physically intimate, clearly denotes she isn't his, though he maintains otherwise. Or that the relationship is "lopsided." "What do you do when you give it your best and that is not enough for either of you?" That was nearly me. "The physical, or lack thereof, is a big deal to my wife. I wish it didn't hurt her so badly. Sometimes it's really really good, but sometimes there is a long hiatus. I just can't seem to be there 100 percent of the time. I guess that's why it's called a mixed orientation marriage, sometimes the orientation just doesn't mix." I came so, so close to walking that road.

I spit the words to my friend:
"if the celestial kingdom is really everything it's cracked up to be
and the only way to get is to get sealed to someone in the temple and then remain faithful to them
and that's the core of your belief set
then you should be willing to do ANYTHING, RIGHT?!
ANYTHING"

My heart was aching, I was breaking, it was August 2009 again and I was sitting outside the temple taking stock of my life.

One of the people I baptized had just honorably returned from a mission and he wanted all of us missionaries involved in his conversion to come to the temple with him and do a session. Everyone came, including me. They all went in...

Except me.

Because I was gay. And I was finally okay with that. But it made me a prisoner, instead of a free man. It made me someone with a label that I wanted desperately to expunge and do away with, but I couldn't because I was dancing to the wrong song, I was writing in the wrong journal, and I was walking endlessly in the wrong direction. I sat outside the temple looking up at the representation of the things I've lost and I thought and I cried and I realized that maybe I was making a terrible mistake. Maybe this gay thing wasn't me. I had struggled for a good two years to even be able to breathe those words about myself and not instantly hate everything about who I was, and I felt like I was finally moving toward a place of happiness. But then there were reminders like this one, that my life had altered onto a course that I had not chosen, and I wasn't sure how to get back the things I had lost.

It didn't matter that I had been out 3 years. It didn't matter that I had become intimate with men. What mattered was the Celestial Kingdom. That's the goal, the focus, the key to a successful life in the doctrine of my Church. They preach it week after week. Celestial Kingdom, only attainable through Temple Marriage to a Woman. The very thought of being intimate with a woman makes me sick to my stomach. But that doesn't matter, because in the Mormon world it's everything; the single goal, the steak dinner my Grandfather raved about every time he saw me. After all this time, after serving a mission, after holding various leadership roles and callings, after writing so many missionaries to encourage their journeys, after converting people to believe the things I did... there I was settling for a bowl of porridge because my feelings and emotions had become more important than my beliefs.

I knew in that moment I had lost my eternal perspective. I had started going the wrong way, and landed myself in Juvenile Detention. I needed to buck up, shirk labels, and turn around. I went home that day and asked OtR to date me, to marry me, to be with me forever. We were already living together in a studio apartment, we showered together (I made her cover up her gross parts), she was my best friend, my everything, she was the closest I had ever come to love in my whole life.

And if I was going to get out of Juvenile Detention and I was going to be a good person and I was going to make it and I was going to be okay again, then I needed to remember what my mission taught me, my parents taught me, the lessons at church taught me. Celestial Kingdom or bust. "With an eye single to the Glory of God." This only comes by marrying in the Temple, and is only possible with a Woman. Is that why so many MOMs exist? Because they've made the choice to sacrifice, no matter what the cost, for the greater good, and to achieve the possibility of true happiness in the next life? That's what all those kids in that room were searching for. A way out, and on to the next plane of existence/happiness.

I was unprepared to draw this parallel and it hit me like a ton of bricks. I mean, in all my years a gay man, I've never considered myself to be a Juvenile Delinquent, except when it comes to the way Mormons view me and judge me, for failing to obtain my Celestial goals. But when I look at it, it's shockingly clear. In order to conform to societal norms, to "be on the outs" with my peers who ascribe to this belief set, I have to make a choice. I can be myself and go to jail, or I can efface myself, sacrifice everything for God, and try and beat myself against the brick wall of unattainable Celestial Happiness. It brings me all the way back to walking the knife edge.

I almost did it. OtR and I planned our wedding. I was going to go for it. I was going to make the choice of family, culture, and future over present. I wanted to be rid of my Delinquent label so badly, that I was almost willing to do whatever it took. It would be hard, and I WOULD BE MISERABLE, but it would be worth it.

Right?

That's what I had been told for years and years. "No one ever said it would be easy, just that it would be worth it." Right? How many times have you heard that anecdote?

But then I couldn't do it. I couldn't hack it. I ended up right back where I started, all the case files open, exposed; everyone knowing what I was. Labeled forever. Reject. Sinner. Outcast. Homosexual. Freak. Delinquent.

These are not things I can shrug aside, even when well-meaning Mormons come to me and try and support me. They try and console me, buoy me up, and tell me that it will be okay. My FB friend asks me if I felt that way not in regards to my path and having lost everything. My initial reaction was no...

But I've been avoiding these feelings the entire time, ever since I made my break with OtR. Because it was the only way to survive. I do. I do still feel that way. How can you not? When you had everything and lost it? That will always be there no matter where you go, no matter what you call yourself, that labeling can never be undone. This is why I have distanced myself from Mormonism. Why I have unfriended almost every Mormon friend I've ever had. Why I don't consider myself a part of that organization anymore. Because I can't.

The pain runs so deep, it transcends flesh and blood. The scars that my belief system has inflicted upon me are ones that won't heal. Because as long as it reigns supreme, I am wrong. Everything about me is wrong. I have lost the prize, I have given up everything that matters, and for what? So that I can be happy now?

Interestingly enough, the answer is yes. So that I can be happy. The gospel is preached as a Gospel of Happiness, and when I told my Bishop that I would be happier outside the Church,he scoffed. But to me that's more important. Maybe I'm just not strong enough to look far enough ahead to see the Celestial future, but I can't dwell on that, or I'm going to go looking for a gun again. I haven't felt this way in YEARS. I mean, literally, YEARS. Because it was killing me. I can't even count the nights I spent crying, being at war with myself, trying to find a way to break out of the doors and locks and cells and prison bars. I escaped. By redefining EVERYTHING.

But now, today, it's all come back. The only way to not have that kind of weight absolutely obliterate you is to move away from it. That's why the ones who don't kill themselves leave. Yes, there are a few that stay, but I don't know how they do it. The sadness is a deep, dark chasm that never ends. Juvenile Detention is the end of the road... and suddenly the sadness I saw in all of their eyes, the results of their pain and suffering... it became 10x harder to deal with. These kids are lost, they are struggling, and they don't know where to go next, or how to break the cycle. When their lives had run the way they have, do they really have the resources and knowledge to make it once they get out?

I don't have answers, solutions, or inspirational words. I just have emotions, and a keyboard. And knowledge. Before the end of our post-conversation, my friend pointed out how much she loved to use the quote by Viktor Frankl:

Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.

And, ultimately, that's what I have done. I still don't know how to efface the walls and chains that other Mormons paint onto me, I don't know how to escape being a Delinquent in their eyes, so I do the only thing I know how to do. Turn what people would use against me into an asset, a badge of honor that I will wear proudly. I wear a bracelet proclaiming to the world that I am Gay. And that I'm okay with that. It took a lot of pain, suffering, and re-envisioning to get there, but I'm there now, and I don't regret any of it.

I don't dwell on Mormons. I don't dwell on their ideals and their goals. And least of all do I allow them to paint me into spaces that are damning. They can take their judging and their measuring, and their belief that I have failed elsewhere.

I did not choose to be gay. I chose to leave the Mormon Church because the unattainability of its most important goals was going to kill me. I chose to not marry OtR because I have a right to be in love, and I wasn't.

I choose to remain a Delinquent in the eyes of Mormons and the Church because I have re-aligned my world view to goals that are reachable, positive, and don't require me to lie continually about who I am in order to strive for some future goal that I can't even see. If I'm wrong about that in the end, so be it. I made the choice and I do not balk at the consequences that come with it. I will be a Delinquent in the eyes of Mormons because they mislabel me. I am happy, I am healthy, I am no longer at war with myself, and I have found my place.

Breaking the Silence

76 days came and I went. December 6, 2011 happened.

And the need to be silent went away.

I didn't come back. Months slid by and the silence continued. 210+ days of unneeded silence. Many probably have archived or R.I.P.ed this blog by now. Because it's been years since it had any content worth reading about.

I have drafts that I started during the time I was being censored (for legal purposes). I have things I want to say. I have some explaining to do about legal things.

Then today happened.

I came back to blogging. I didn't mean to. It wasn't my intention. But things were set in motion that affected me in a profound way...

And I needed a place to write about it. So I came here. For 3 hours, I just let my fingers fly and the emotions pour out. I wrote something that to me is deeply profound and moving. I will post that blog as soon as I have clearance that I'm not violating any confidentiality clauses.

Suffice it to say - Hidden has returned.

Did you miss me? :)

End of Days

The Silence is almost over. 76 days and counting. Please let this go quickly. Please.

[CENSORED]

La mera verdad.



I feel like I'm drowning in ice water
My lips have turned a shade of blue
I'm frozen with this fear
That you may disappear
Before I've given you the truth

I bleed my heart out on this paper for you
So you can see what I can't say
I'm dying here (I'm dying here)
'Cause I can't say what I want to
I bleed my heart out just for you

I've always dreamed about this moment
And now it's here and I've turned to stone
I stand here petrified
As I look you in your eyes
My head is ready to explode

I bleed my heart out on this paper for you
So you can see what I can't say
I'm dying here
'Cause I can't say what I want to
I bleed my heart out just for you

And it's all here in
Black and white and red
For all the times
Those words were never said

I bleed my heart out on this paper for you
So you can see what I can't say
I'm dying here
'Cause I can't say what I want to
I bleed my heart out just for you

I bleed my heart out just for you.

FRUSTRATION

I can't blog. For reasons that I can't really say. ARGH.

But know that this blog is not dead. And that I will be back to tell the story that you all are waiting to here.

Hopefully sooner than later. *crosses fingers*