The Gospel of Jesus Christ is a powerful thing and can be the motivator for those things that the world does not think can be done. But with a firm testimony of the Savior and the Atonement and what exactly it means to be our Savior and a profound understanding of the atonement, every personal agony of this world can be overcome with effort and faith and perseverance.
My life’s personal trial was for me a trial of effort and faith and perseverance that was realized initially 27 years ago and I can say today that my battle, my personal struggle with compulsive same-sex-attraction that has never brought me a moment of happiness but only utter and very real misery including a completely deflated sense of self and a detachment from the family I love so much and the Gospel of Christ whom I love so much, is one that I have quite literally conquered.
The real change in my experience only happened as I accepted the reality of the Atonement as the path to transcendence and for the first time, regardless of what I heard from innumerable sources, I knew that this would not be an ongoing labor that must be pacified and maintained with constant attention and treatment, but something I would be utterly free from and there would be no trace of any aspect of this attraction as a part of my lifestyle, as it would be utterly conquered.
I knew I could conquer it as the Spirit bore a strong witness within me, a feeling of great strength that this could be done, and today I experience just this, a life of a single man who thinks nothing or pays no attention to the same sex and is far more concerned not only in finding a spouse for the sake of it, but is excited in the newness that has come for the first time in my life being attracted to certain women.
The significance of the quality of my personal experience was detectable early in a very sensitive, introverted, contemplative, intelligent young boy. Although sexually neutral, I had a profound fascination for the singular qualities of my male friends that was not sexual but ones that involved characteristics I lacked such as their agility at sports, their confidence, their ability to play the kind of physical games I was never good at, strength, boldness and fearlessness, and masculinity in general.
As I had none of these, these qualities occupied my sensibilities; my emotional intellect, my contemplative nature, and my sensitive nature yearned to be like them and it stung that I was different. My fascination was fixated on my male friends and these qualities.
Puberty is a time of life that we do not know understand the fullness of, but it is an incredibly powerful period and for one such as I, intensely emotional. As my friends, who were comfortably masculine, became fixated on the opposite sex, by the time puberty hit, I, with my heart aching to be like my friends, my inner self so insecure, and my mind so fascinated by the qualities I lacked, I remained fixated on my friends during puberty and in this duration of puberty my sexual future was sealed. Had I not this intellectual sensitivity and keen interest in my male friends without my sensibilities, I would not have been so focused and my mind would have been alerted to the girls in my life and my sexuality would be fixed in a like manner.
But what manifest did. I became acutely aware of my developed feelings at 13. One of life’s most heavily dire moments, especially for a young boy of 13, happened while on a vacation with my immediate family to Disneyworld in a van. I was alone at the back. I have always been a comfortably alone person, I have never fit into any groups although my friends are many I have always been a detached person, but staring upwards at nothing but lost in thought, I have never felt so alone. In fact I became petrified. I realized that on one hand I knew my religion was true and I loved it and honored it and was faithful to it and was proud of the good Mormon that I was. But, being intelligent and honest, I recognized the demon that was ready to plunge at me at any moment- very real feelings I was experiencing that I could not hide from that were becoming increasingly intense and scared me as nothing in my life had scared my yet.
This is some serious conflict for a boy of 13 and at 13 I had an immense awareness of this conflict that lay before me and I had a witness of the life that I was to face and it was a crippling feeling of overwhelming impossible devastation to my utter ruin. To me I had no future. This would be the dialectic of my life.
My mental illness has what is called “early onset” at about 14 and this hit me like a brick and I changed drastically in appearance and mentality in just a few weeks with my mind expanding exponentially. I did not serve a mission. I did not believe it was possible for me as I had compulsively acted on my feelings from this young age following my early onset and had little or no self-esteem.
Soon after, my activity with the Church wavered and then I became totally inactive. Then, to compound the tumult of my life, I had a complete psychotic break which would continue for 20 years and was diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder; full blown schizophrenia and bipolar and one of the most serious mental illnesses if not the most traumatic.
Although I consider this to be the most arduous and demanding challenge of my life with the most ubiquitous effect, my sexuality has always hurt more and damaged me more as a human being causing an intensity and depth of emotion far more penetrative and far more real than any of those of schizoaffective disorder which are quickly mended, while the insecurity that comes when I compulsively acted on my same-sex behaviors caused a lasting insecurity that was deep and penetrative and truly debilitating unlike any disability.
During my early years of schizoaffective psychosis, I sought spirituality as a remedy for psychosis and I tried to curtail my compulsive desires. I was not sexually active for long periods of time, years, but the feelings were stronger than ever. Such feelings are only more active with bipolarism as compulsive sexual drive and the emotional devastation this compulsion causes is a primary symptom of bipolarism.
The dialectic presented me when I was 13 had been ever-present throughout my life and in my mind was a scale that I attempted to resolve for 13 years. This scale would vacillate with one side weighing more heavily than the other, ever shifting, but I always knew in all truth, that they were irreconcilable.
After graduate school, moving out on my own, completely independent and having my own life for the first time, I made my resolve and was acutely aware of where I would ultimately find my peace, as innately I had always known.
The world I stepped into without a safety net and little established security was unsound and unsure. This was brutally evident and manifest from all directions. The world I found was a different one than the padded and cushioned one I was accustomed to and there was no body that had any real interest in me and I mattered very little in the vastness of what I experienced around me and I was faced with a world that is nothing of comfort but an arena for a fight and without a support group, I had no one, no fans cheering me on and it was brutal and bloody in its cold harshness.
The scales immediatey dropped from my eyes and in 2005, the year I moved out, I was made acutely sure of what I wanted and what mattered to me and quickly and decisively made my decision and although it was still a progress involving strengths I did not know I had and faith I lacked the faith in myself to believe, I made the unequivocal decision to choose God and family and for the first time since I was a petrified boy of 13, 17 years prior, I knew then unequivocally the course my life would take and it was a feeling of great comfort and the beast was at bay.
I knew for a certainty there was no future for same sex attraction in my life and I became active in the Church again. The progression from 2005 till December 27th of last year, 2011, and my worthy unity with all of my family in the Oakland temple was not a smooth or an easy one by any means, it was rough and rocky, but I was determined. Yes I would falter in several instances in minor ways but everyone who knew me and my spirituality knew what my desires were for my self and I never questioned my resolve and put a tremendous amount of work into overcoming what puberty had caused; this was no passive thing and I am today a worthy Melchizedek priesthood holder and hold a temple recommend honorably.
Since attending the temple and perpetual in depth study and growth I am a happy and successful man unlike I could never have hoped to be with more security that I could wish for. Had I lingered in the mires of my compulsive debauchery that claimed my spirit for so much of my time here on earth I would never have experienced real peace in this life. But God loves me very much and The Gospel of Jesus Christ manifest in his atonement allowed me to be free, to loosen the bonds that bound me to sin, to free me from compulsion to emerge whole and cleansed.
The blessings since have been abundant and joyous. Most significantly the two desires that I chose, God and family, these relationships have been restored with beauty, renewed and made whole in the infinitesimal love that is God’s ultimate plan for each of his children that we may all share in as we are all enlisted in this magnanimous and glorious work and to feel His mighty power in our lives to make anything possible that we ask of Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment