And then

So I just spent the last hour reading through other gay Mormon blogs. It has been an awesome experience. It is so comforting to finally find other people who have the exact same issues that I do.

The thing about problems in your life is the whole empathy/sympathy thing. You can talk to people about your problems, but if they can only sympathize, they can never really help you. They can "be there for you" or be a shoulder for you to cry on, but they can't really do anything other than feel sorry for you. They don't understand. On the other hand, the empathizers (according to the spell checker I just made that word up) know all about your problems because they've been through it too. It's not like they can do much more than feel sorry for you, like the sympathizers, but there is something comforting in knowing that the person feeling sorry for you is doing it because they have gone through the same thing.

Anyway, so I should probably continue on a little bit of the story of my life up to this point. I grew up in Provo, or Happy Valley as us locals call it, graduated from Provo High, served a mission, went to BYU, went to grad school elsewhere and eventually landed in Southern California where I have lived for the last 6.5 years.

I've been gay my whole life. As far back as I can remember I have been attracted to boys. I remember being a kid in elementary school and watching that PBS show The Electric Company and thinking how cute some of the boys were on there. I was born this way. On the other hand, I have an out-of-the-closet cousin who the whole family claims is gay because he was molested when he was a kid, blah, blah, blah. Not me. I have a good relationship with my parents, I was never molested. I was just born with my brain wired up a little different than most guys.

I'm not sure if this is the proper way to express this, but I'm not 100% SSA. Every once in a while there is a girl that crosses my path that floats my boat. Granted, these girls have been few and far between, but there have been a few through my 34 trips around the sun. Unfortunately, relationships with those girls have never worked out, and Kristin Kreuk (the girl who plans Lana Lang on Smallville) has never returned my calls. But I did get this court order to stop stalking her....

So, now I'm one of the evil, 30+ single Mormons who is going straight to hell because they aren't married with a minimum of 3 kids. It's difficult. It's very difficult sometimes. Every several months I go through these bouts of depression where I get these overwhelming urges to just pack it up and hit up the gay bars. This last one happened over the last couple of weeks. Usually the depression only lasts a few days, or a week at most, but this time it went on for nearly two weeks. I'm feeling great today, and have since this past weekend, but I honestly didn't think the depression was going to end this time. It got to the point where I had to come out to a friend of mine just so I would have someone to talk to. She was super-awesome about it. I love friends like that. I wish that I had physical attraction to her, because she is a quality girl. But, as much as I've tried to "force" myself to like her, I get repulsed at the thought of intimacy with her. Sad, huh?

What else to say in this one? I've come out to 7 people total. Four bishops, and three very close friends - all girls. Unfortunately, I'm starting to get to the point in my life where I've run out of excuses for being single and I almost think it would be easier to just run up to the pulpit during testimony meeting and spill the beans. I am way too chicken to ever do anything like that - at least for now. Not to sound like a conceited retard, but I'm an above-average looking guy. In those little polls you take of the girls in the ward, I consistently rank in the top-3 best looking guys in the ward. That really makes it hard to fend off the inquiries as to why I'm not dating and such. Maybe I should just come out the next time I teach EQ. That would at least wake everyone up.

I'm beginning to doubt the cohesiveness of this post, so I should probably stop the verbal diarrhea now before it gets too messy.

Keep the faith.