Alone to Alone

I don’t know why or what is the purpose of life’s more difficult challenges, I just know there is reason and there is a purpose. Whether we learn this over the course of this lifetime or we realize it in the next is incidental, the only thing that matters is to stay faithful and endure. I don’t like to be defined by my trials but there is such a ubiquitous effect caused by being born into an LDS family with deep seeded LDS heritage and that being a faith you believe absolutely and love dearly only to realize you are attracted to the same sex. 

The most pronounced effect may be the sudden isolation and detachment that is felt from what you know is right and something inside of you that you know is not right. The mind reacts quickly and the blame, guilt and shame of self loathing is quick and sudden and the isolation real. Even more ubiquitous effects are caused by scizoaffective disorder, a combination of full blown bipolarism and schizophrenia. 

Everything you were, understood, believed, the ground you stood on, the reality you knew is swiftly taken away and in its place is a constant state of psychosis that is the mix of so many things, ugly things. The isolation felt from this effect is frighteningly real. You are suddenly alone in the universe, you are worthless, damned, unfit, better to not have been born, a curse, a scourge. 

The ability to breech the divide between what is happening internally with the external world, effective communication and understanding… this is an impossibility as one does not have a conception of the illness, just the path of delusion one is compelled to follow. This is beyond loneliness, this is being alone. With a disconnect from that which I loved caused by self-loathing and the disconnect of a psychotic mind, one is a cork adrift on a dark and tempest tossed sea. 

I live alone now, I am settled, established, secure and very happy but I am no longer alone as I once was. The transition from being alone to being alone but the kind of alone that I can appreciate, the kind of alone where I can listen to strange classical music nobody likes, keep odd hours, eat a unique and strange diet, watch obscure films, have odd habits, keep an odd schedule and take care of my needs as only I know how after 18 years, all of this is conducive and necessary to my peace…this alone I now embrace. 

This also includes love of self and love of others and involves an awareness and acceptance that others love me. How was this transition from darkness into light, so rapid and so sure, possible? It has everything to do with faith. My sense of the reality of the gospel is absolute. What I learned in this transition is truth so unequivocal it can never be denied. The Gospel gave me my sense of self back and I am a secure person as I have never known myself to be. I have self-respect and past wrongs are let go and I look to a future of absolute freedom from same sex attraction liberated of that thing inside of me that is not right and free of the self-loathing conceptions of myself. 

The Gospel allows me to be a man vastly better than I was before, what I knew is now my own and absolute, what I believe is akin to knowledge, and the ground I stand on is sure like a rock with the Gospel of Jesus Christ being the reality in my life. The definitive act of my transition from alone to alone happened at the Oakland Temple on December 27th of last year. It was a whirl but I finally “got it.” As my sister walked towards me in white, together with every member of my immediate family, the awareness in the form of knowledge came to me perfectly, “This is my sister, not just for today but for all eternity,” and as I held her tears flowed freely from my eyes as they had never flowed before. That was the moment I stopped being alone and became alone.