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*

Cinderella Man

In March 2008 she lost her everything. Now the other half has gone as well. And yet, this time the pain isn't as sharp. It's not as deep. Not because he was any less, but because she is stronger. I know it. And I see it. I no longer worry what she will do.

The poet rears his head anew.

Soaring (For Grandpa)
----------
Night of Winter
Snow falling
Softly, Sweetly
He closed his eyes and smiled
Because peace was there

Once upon a Summer's day
I knew him
Walked and
Talked with him

He was a fighter
Inside and out
Misunderstood
Misrepresented
So many times mistook
Almost his middle name

Externally yes
You don't know me
You don't see me
Internally much more
Resilience
Soaring

Roll with the punches
Bob and Weave
Little beat big
When little smart
First with the head
Then with the heart
Can't hit you
Can't hurt you

Songs you knew all too well
Coming to terms with
Questions of self
In a world not ready
For answers

Sometimes you duck
Sometimes you hit back
It's fine to be who you are
To stand up for what you believe
To shine
To soar
To say

I'm here
And I care
And I
Make a difference

Thank you for courage
Thank you for belief
Thank you for everything you gave
For everything you were

Memories
Cherished
Always

Now Peace
Now Joy
A Reunion
Bliss
The end is always the beginning
Of better
If you just know
How to look

In you
Of you
Through you
The Gift

I Carry
In me
Of me
Through me
To Pass

Love.

"Most gay youth...I'd say 90%, are actually doing quite well."

"They are not depressed, they are not anxious, they're not attempting suicide; they're really quite ordinary adolescents."

So says Professor Ritch Savin Williams, professor of developmental psychology at Cornell University.

I think he's crazy.

But have a listen for yourself.

One of my straight, LDS friends who is trying to better understand me and mine sent this to me wondering what my reaction was. At OTR's prompting, I decided to post it here as well.

Granted, it's not a well thought out, refined literary masterpiece I'm turning in for any sort of grade. It's quite jumbled actually, and follows no set exposition, other than its reactionary nature.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"First off, let me say that I find the attention gays are getting in the media and from celebrities encouraging. It's time we stood up and faced head-on the issues of the day. But people so often don't want to. Along with abuse and rape, to name two, there are myriad problems facing our world. We as a people simply turn away from them in the hopes they won't affect us, instead of giving them the attention they need.

"I don't care what science and studies say, he's wrong. I'm not going to simply dismiss his arguments completely, but he openly admits picking and choosing his studies to show the results he wants. Likewise, often scientific studies are skewed by the fact that people know they are participating in them. And if they don't, what's to guarantee they will be honest? Gay teens aren't depressed, anxious, or attempting suicide? I completely disagree. When I was at BYU, struggling with coming out, I wouldn't have shared my anguish with ANYONE, not even my best friends, let alone some doctor or "scientist" coming and asking questions about my healthy adjustment to youth-dom. I would pretend to be happy, well-adjusted, and fine to the greater public eye of scrutiny (which I would say would be the indicators showcased in these studies) and then I'd lay on my bedroom floor at night curled up into a ball sobbing until I couldn't breathe, wishing I had a pistol. What 'study' is going to be able to document that?

"Scientifically, maybe there's not a distinction, but in reality there is. And even if it's slight, we're still talking about people. People who are killing themselves, or thinking about it. This is not okay.

"I think the difference is even starker among gay mormons, who face even more problems with the added difficulties of deep-rooted, socio-cultural belief, faith, and stigma that completely envelops them. Every gay person I've ever known has considered or attempted suicide. I first tried when I was 12. How does that make me 'just as healthy, resilient, and positive' as other youth? I don't think it does. I think he's off base.

"Again, people are dying. I know of 4 gay mormons in utah alone who killed themselves this year. And then there are the ones in the media that prompt our attention... these are only the ones that make it into the headlines. How many don't?

"I don't want to judge him the way he's judging kids, but I find it interesting that he uses the term "same-sex attraction." Pretty sure he just pegged himself as a Mormon. I don't know that that word exists outside LDS circles. And I won't go into what that would allow me to say about his motives and arguments. Granted, I could also be wrong.

"Likewise, I don't understand his claim about bullies. Just because we talk about gay teens struggling to adjust and identify in healthy, happy ways doesn't mean that we are actively empowering bullies. This statement is logical fallacy at best - they don't relate. Bullies are inherently empowered to begin with. That's the whole essence of 'bully' - power over someone else.

"I feel like he's trying to bully these results and the larger message being put out into something he wants to see; something he wants to believe in order to do exactly what I said at the beginning: ignore that the problem even exists in the hopes it will go away and won't affect him. Well, it will go away. After all the gay kids are dead.

"That said, the one thing I *do* agree with very strongly is that this IS the best time to be young and gay. When I was in High School, I wouldn't have dared come out in a million years. When I came out at BYU I was alone with my pain, fear, and confusion. Now we have the Trevor Project, the It Gets Better campaign, prominent gays in the media and politics (we even have a gay city council member here in Salt Lake); it's way more socially acceptable to be gay. So it is getting better.

"On the other hand, kids are still dying. And yes, gay kids ARE fragile, and we can't ignore that. All teens are fragile - trying to find ways to healthily adjust and determine who and how they will be. Gay teens, I feel, have a harder time because they have to find ways to reconcile their faith with their feelings. Others can just build their feelings and self around their faith with no problems. Gay people can't because the two are mutually exclusive and completely antagonistic. Well, maybe that's too dichotomous of me. They do not fit easily together. When you have yet to establish your core identity and struggle internally on a daily basis, what do you have to draw upon to stand up and defend yourself against a bully? I definitely never was able to. And even if it doesn't show up scientifically, I have plenty of examples from my life and the lives of my friends. I always believe my reality and my experience over some ambiguous, biasedly-hand-picked, made-up 90% opinion.

"Today I'm not depressed, anxious, or attempting suicide, and consider myself resilient and positive - but this is on the other side of a 2-year HELL [OTR votes the hell was much longer than two years. 10? 27?] the likes of which you will probably never understand. Yes, I got there, but it cost me SO much. So which teens is he measuring? Just the ones who made it and didn't die?"

In[Vi]tro

For a long time now I've been internetless. The pace of my life is warp speed 10. Things move so fast, it's hard for me to keep up. I have no idea how bloggers like O-Mo do it. It seems like every day there's a new post - it's researched, coherent, poignant, and in-depth. It makes me a little jealous.

In the interim of the unplug (not always by choice), I've debated about the necessity of this blog, as so many of us do. What's its overarching purpose? Do I care if people read it? Am I wanting to contribute somehow to others and their struggles? Is it a place for my thoughts and feelings, and a sounding board for myself?

I've thought about not coming back. About not putting in the time. The effort. But after extensive pause and long conversations with OTR, we've decided that we will continue. That we must.

We want to tell our story. We want to share our experience. Not necessarily as a certain relationship deterrent, or an overt advocacy of one thing over another, but so that others can see where we have been, how it has affected us, and the growth our experience has left imbued upon us.

We have much to tell. And we hope you will be here. Reading. Understanding. Thinking. Acknowledging. Enriching and deepening yourself as you walk vicariously with us. That we may have some impact, no matter the depth of their indelibility.