A few years back, I asked Amy, “Who was the hardest person
for you to come out to?” We were standing in line at Disneyland surrounded—or
nearly so—by heterosexual couples and families (as per usual.) Every once in a
while my minority status becomes suddenly, startlingly clear, and I find myself
needing to talk about something gay as a means of clearing breathing room for
myself in a world that stifles. Anyway, Amy didn’t hesitate before answering:
“Oh, my mom. Hands-down.”
But her story, fascinating as it is (And it really is a good
one. Maybe I’ll tell you some time) isn’t the point of this post. The point is
my own experience. You know how sometimes you ask someone a question just so
they’ll ask you the same question back? “What’d you think of that movie?” you
ask coyly, hoping they’ll answer briefly and then return the question. Because,
while you’re not uninterested in the other person’s opinion—really you’re dying
to share your own. Well, that was my motivation in asking Amy, only we got so
caught up in her answer that I never said mine. So here it is:
The hardest person for me to come out to was myself.
That doesn’t mean that it was easy coming out to my parents,
or to my siblings, or to the half a handful of bishops whose offices I sat in
early in my journey. None of those experiences was a walk in the park, and each
of them left me shaken and tearful. But the truth is, they were nothing
compared to my highest hurdle: admitting it to me.
I started “figuring things out” about myself when I was
eighteen, right around the same time my four-year romance with marijuana was
waning and my interest in the Church was suddenly piqued. Sobriety made me
beholden to some things about myself that I hadn’t recognized before, among
them, the fact that I liked girls more than boys. A lot more. As I wrote in my
journal back then, “it was like I suddenly realized there was an alternative
[to liking boys] and the alternative was so much more appealing.”
In spite of the incredible allure of women, the Gospel won
out, and I found myself immersed in the Church in a way I hadn’t been since I
was a kid. I caught a bad case of missionary fever then, and spent the next
years preparing to serve some place exotic and thrilling (like Outer Mongolia
or Guam. Or Seattle. At least I got to speak Spanish.) I did a little bit of therapy with LDS Social
Services, fell in love and got my heart broken, and, as far as I could tell,
left my unwanted attraction to women behind. Flawless Victory. As I went into
the mission field, overcoming “SSA*” became one of a list of things I’d
accomplished in my life: finished high school early, check; quit smoking weed,
check; started exercising, check; stopped liking girls, check.
When I came home, though, that illusion came tumbling down.
With my mission now behind me, the only thing I had to look forward to was
marriage. To a boy. Imminently. I mean, in the Church there’s an inevitable
order of things, right? You move through the successive growing-up milestones
(nursery to primary to Young Women or Young Men), graduate high school and do a
little bit of college, go on a mission (this is optional if you’re a girl, but
for me it was the only option), come home and get married, have some kids and
the process starts all over again.
Meanwhile, it turned out I still liked girls just as much as
before. Maybe even more, in fact, because I no longer had the fervor of mission
prep to stifle my feelings. And school and work weren’t enough to fill my
suddenly barren post-mission days, so me and those feelings spent a lot of time
together. Staring at each other, feeling each other out, trying
to see who was stronger.
So who was stronger? (wink) You’ll have to wait until next
time to find out, because this post is…To Be Continued
*“same-sex attraction,” or what I now call “being gay”
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