Full Circle

I have been out to my wife for exactly 11 months as of yesterday (11/27). I would never have imagined that I would be where I am at now a year ago. I was miserable then. I knew that I was gay and that I had lied to my wife, my family, and my son. I hated who I was and felt so hopeless that I just wanted life to end. I was not contemplating suicide but rather I was hoping God would at least see fit to extend a small amount of mercy and give me some terminal disease to end it all for me. I prayed regularly for this to happen. I felt a little hope when some medical issues I had been dealing with intensified and the doctor I was working with thought it might be cancer. I was hopeful that God had heard these prayers (since he hadn't heard the thousands asking for my sexuality to change), after a myriad of testing and some invasive procedures I was declared healthy despite the permanent abdominal pain amongst other symptoms. I was so depressed not only was stuck being a closeted gay married unbelieving mormon, but now I had to live with constant pain. I became angry because God wouldn't allow me to bow out of my miserable existence with some slight form of dignity, no if I wanted out I would have to do it myself. I was at this point that I came out to my wife. I couldn't handle it anymore this was all to much to take, I had to tell someone and she was the only person in my life that I felt deserved to know.

The last eleven months have been an emotional roller coaster but I have learned so much about myself. I still struggle with marriage/lifestyle depression (my term for the type of depression I feel, because I feel it about my marriage and choices I made). In fact today has been one of the hardest days in the past few months. My family is in town and the gay issue came up yet again. I was thinking now might be the time to tell them but yet again my bigoted family sent me crawling back into the closet even more. We were watching TV and Modern Family came on. I started watching it ( after all it is my house so I can watch what I want. One family member spoke up and said that show is disgusting. I asked why? They replied that there were gays on it and that is disgusting. I laughed and responded that they realize there are gay people/couples in the real world? They said yea, but it's just so gross. I was dying inside by this point. I felt like breaking down and sobbing. Over the last two weeks my wife and I have reached a level of functionality in our relationship that is unprecedented for us. I would not say it is a permanent situation but it is bareable for the time being since I don't want to loose my boys. But the dark foreboding heavy feeling has been hanging over my head and gradually increasing each day. When I woke up on the day of the "disgusting" incident, I was feeling overwhelmingly trapped and wanted to escape. This conversation just sent me feeling it even worse and has sent me spiraling full circle to where I was a year ago.

If God hates the gays as much as the people in my life seem to think then why in the hell are we still even allowed to breath on this earth. Why do I exist? What the hell is my purpose? Why does life have to hurt so much? (Tears are streaming down my cheeks as I sit in the dark all alone pondering on these questions). I am exhausted with the constant battle I feel raging within me. I feel torn and broken. I have been fighting for the last 11 months to discover a balance in my life, to understand my situation and how to improve upon it, buy instead as of this very moment I feel as though I want God to wipe me from existence. The most peaceful thought for me is the idea of complete nothingness after this life. I do not want an eternity of living with the memory of my existence and the pain I have caused and experienced. I do not want to be stranded in a facade of a marriage and I cannot handle feeling ignored by a so called "Loving Father." I do not feel peace nor love from the church or the gospel right now. I feel as though there is no point to what I have been going through. I just want out. I want a family that accepts me and loves me I want a family that will at least create a space where I feel I can tell them what I struggle with, I am tired of walking through this life so completely alone. I thought marriage would mean connection, support, and love, but I am not connected with my wife and so I actually feel more disconnected, and unloved than when I was single.

I was always taught that doing what was right would bring happiness but I have done what I was taught was right and now I am so far from happiness it actually hurts. I am tired of feeling on the verge of tears every time I look at my boys and wonder if they might be gay, I desperately hope that they are not so that they do not have to deal with all that comes with that. I am tired of the facade I have to project in order to preserve my marriage. I am just tired. I want to get away. Hope is gone. I feel I am a shell of a person who is just marching through life trying to live as others have told him he should. The easiest way to summarize how I feel is that I have come full circle. I am where I started when I came out to my wife. I feel alone, misunderstood, unloved, unconnected, and Godless.

I have reached the conclusion that the only way for me to survive my current situation is to resort to my old methods for dealing with all of this. I have to shut off my emotions, severe all links to the gay side of myself both internally and externally, and just keep swimming. I have to stop thinking about this and stop writing about it. This will probably be my last blog post for a while if not forever because I just can't handle this all anymore. I am trying to live two lives: one that is your atypical mormon man and another that accepts my sexual identity and seeks to live true to myself. I can't do this anymore and since I am to afraid to move in the direction I truly want I will instead close up shop and bury the gay like I did for the last 30 years. Hell, whats another 30 years of doing it? At least I can see a finish line that way.

But then again maybe after I cry myself to sleep and eat a pound of turkey I will feel better and delete this post. Who knows and frankly I don't give a shit. All I know is that I am sick of feeling the way I do and so I have to shutdown to escape it since suicide will never be an option. Good luck to the rest of you on your journeys.

Sink or Swim

Therapy has been going really well for me. I am finding balance in my life and I am accepting things as they are not for what they have been. We have spent a lot of time helping me reconnect with my emotions and I couldn't be happier with the progress I have made. Last week in my session I admitted that I want to get divorced and move on with my life. So my therapist asked me what that future looks like for me. I was baffled for a moment as I had never fully explored what I wanted in my "gay" future. I have daydreamed about things but I had never really discussed this with anyone. I mentioned a few things but we had to cut it short due to time constraints so today we picked up where we left off last time.

This time however we spent a lot of time talking about the things that hold me back from moving forward in the direction that I would like to go. What I determined is that there are two reasons: 1) I don't want to cause my wife more pain and 2) Financially we are not in a place to facilitate a divorced living situation. I feel emotionally ready to get a divorce and move on but financially I m stuck. So the reality is that I will probably need to stay married for a while longer.

One of the most shocking moments for me during this session was when my therapist asked me what my feelings were about getting divorced. I explained to her that setting aside my feelings on how much this would change the lives of my two boys, I felt relief and like a weight would be lifted off of my shoulders. Until today I did not realize how disconnected I truly felt from my wife. Despite how our relationship has improved, after bottoming out when I told her I was gay, my relationship with my wife is still only a shell of what I feel a true relationship could be. I feel like we function as roommates who have children together. As I was explaining all this to her I began to realize that I do not know how to be in love. I have NEVER been in love. I was in love with the idea of marriage when I married my wife and I do love her to a certain degree but not the way a person should love another person in a relationship. I guess what I truly realized today was that though some gay men are able to find satisfaction and fulfillment in their mixed orientation marriages, I am not able to do that. This idea seems foreign to me. I told my therapist how foreign it seemed to me that some guys were able to do this. I said that I wished I could understand how they are able to do this and then maybe I could find happiness in our situation. I no longer believe in the church and so the whole plan of "happiness" that we are taught doesn't bear sway in my thought process. Meaning, I don't have to stay married to a woman to find happiness in this life so why should I do it, for her and my sake?

I really do want to move on for the chance of finding happiness over staying where I am at and knowing that I will not be happy. I told my therapist I would like to take a break from therapy to process this and assess how I could possibly make changes in my life to make my divorce possible. She agreed that this might be a good move for me so I can assess and then come back with my ideas so that we can take a look at strategies to deal with the reality of what a divorced and out me might have to face. All in all I feel that I am in a much better place than I was two months ago when I started therapy but I still feel like there are things I need to learn. Like how to face being openly gay and divorced but also figuring out how to be in love. I want to fall in love so badly that it hurts physically. I cannot just stay where I am at without ever experiencing being in love. No one deserves to live without having true love and I cannot allow myself to go on pretending its ok for me to just survive my life. I want to live it and LOVE it!!! So I guess this is the part where I either sink or swim but either way if I try to live life at least I will be truly living. So how do I move forward now???? That is the real question!