Anxiety Rooted in Self-consciousness

Hello, blog.  It's been a while.  Many things have happened, many changes, and many things still the same.

I've found a huge level of happiness over the years since coming out of the closet, leaving the LDS church, and essentially taking control over my own life.  I feel like I've grown up a lot, especially in the past year.  I started and ended one of the worst relationships I've ever experienced (I don't think I'll ever write about it so don't ask or wait for it), I moved to another state, bought a house, and started asserting myself at work more (I'm still working at the same place I've been for the past 10 years), which is something that I should have been more diligent at before, but there were reasons I never asserted myself and it was hard to confront it, and I'm still trying to confront it.

What I'm getting at is Social Anxiety.

It has been the biggest thing I've struggled with, and at times has turned what would otherwise be fun and rewarding experiences into complete terror.  And to the extent that I've been able to gain a level of self-awareness of it, it still eludes me in many ways. Although, I've come to realize that it has been rooted in and played a huge role in all the areas of my life where I seem to constantly fail.  (Even in this blog.)

For so many years I've been extremely self-conscious about my appearance, hobbies, interests, they way I talk, what I say, you name it.  No matter what it was, I would find a way to feel like I was being harshly judged for it, and that fear of judgement, and subsequent rejection was devastating to me. I could only find value in myself only if others valued me.  And, of course, that value from others was always fleeting.  I would end up just turning it all back on people and reject them before they had the chance to reject me.  I found solace in being alone.  Unfortunately, that solace became a prison over time, especially once I started to find myself.  I realized that even though I was an introvert, I was still very much in need of socialization, even with people I don't even know.  In other words, I'm not a strong introvert.  In the Meyers-Briggs evaluation of personality, I'm just a hair to the right of the midpoint between Extroversion and Introversion. And just for the sake of completion, my Meyers-Briggs personality type is INFP, which explains a whole lot of why I have trouble in other areas, but I digress.

For me, social anxiety is highly dependent on context and for the most part it's pretty much what I bring to the table in regards to my own personal beliefs about myself.  In talking with a boyfriend the other day, we discussed what it was that kept us both hiding in our little hobbit holes most of the time.  We talked about what it was like to be in crowds, why some crowds felt safe and energizing and why other felt draining and threatening.

I related my experiences going to Dragon Con in Atlanta, GA.  Four days of shoulder to shoulder crowds reaching as many people as 100,000 during the Saturday parade.  I feel fine for the most part, except in the elevators.  But going to Ocean City, MD in the summer time to walk the boardwalk, it's all I can muster to just get the walk over with and get the fuck out of there.  And then there are places like MAL where I have this cognitive-dissonance of feeling fine but also out of place.   What was the underling thinking in each situation?

Well, with Dragon Con I feel like we are all equals. We are all there to have fun and share in our appreciation of science fiction, fantasy and its associated pop culture.  It's a very liberal and progressive crowd for the most part, which invites creativity, acceptance and even celebrates our weirdness. And for the most part, even the ones who are rowdy and drunk the entire weekend are tolerable.

Ocean City, on the other hand is a place of very limited social diversity.  Mostly east coast working class vacationers, hetero-normative families, and often there are loud, obnoxious, young adults who binge on alcohol while cat calling from the balconies at the bikini clad girls on the boardwalk below.  Daily sexual harassment is the norm there. And the air is thick with tobacco smoke.  And as such, I judge these people harshly.  I feel as if I'm much better than they are and it disgusts me that they pollute places making them unsafe for women and gay people.

But then, events like MAL, and even in small ways, Folsom Street Fair and Gay Pride, the crowds can be a bit rowdy but they are friendly, and I feel safe.  They, after all are my people or at least friendly to my people and I know I'm one of them.  But, at the same time, and this is especially true at MAL, I feel like they are all much better than me and that I'm really not good enough to be there.  I'm not gay enough, or I'm not good looking enough or whatever I believe I don't measure up to.

The troubling thing about all this is that it's not rational to believe these things even when at times my beliefs have been validated by certain events.  The thing is, those times were because of outliers, they did not represent the group, and I know this.  But it's just so easy to cast aside the reality to reinforce the fears.  And those fears run deep, and they are strong and overwhelming.  And even though I can play logic games with those beliefs to talk myself out of them, it doesn't' always work.   And I feel like I'm not making any progress at all.   But really, I have made a bit of progress.  I've realized how I've been unknowingly contributing to the social anxiety which I wasn't aware of before.  I've learned a bit of nuance about my judgement of others and myself.  Also, medication helps, so there is that.

So, now, what's next?

I've started a new chapter in my life this year.  I'm putting myself out there a bit more than I ever have before.  I started vlogging on Youtube.  It's a way to confront my self-consciousnesses and social anxiety in a rather detached way.   I'm forced to confront myself when I do this.  I have to watch myself back while I edit the videos, I have to look at myself in a third person and know that the person I'm looking at is me, even though it doesn't feel like me.

This has been an interesting exercise to see where I have been self judging and self-censoring and where I continue to do so and what I've been doing to divert it and try to get people to focus on something else.  It's also interesting to see what ends up being the "something else" I try to use.  It's a strange thing to view myself in a detached semi-objective way.

I've been heavily editing and trying to polish my videos for the same reason I edit and try to polish my writing.  But, no matter what I do, the video shows a much rawer individual.  One prone to stammering, not talking in complete sentences and otherwise eviscerating all that is proper and eloquent grammar.  All of which are things I'm very self-conscious about.  Sometimes I'm sliding in and out of Utah/Maryland/New Zealand/North Carolinian accents.  Something that I had no idea I did until I started this vlogging project.  I'm finding it more interesting than disturbing now and I'm becoming more aware of how I'm perceived and in small ways, I'm starting to like the person I see in the video.

In all, it's been fun and frustrating at the same time.  Frustrating in that I have a very boring life with nothing to really vlog about and I'm constantly battling with technical problems such as sound problems and crappy white balance.  But its fun in that the editing process is creative yet very challenging like piecing together a puzzle.  I've always had an interest in filmmaking and this has re-sparked that interest, which I had long thought had died. 

A Moment to Think

I can't ever seem to shake the feeling that I'm always late to the party.  Whenever I show up, it seems everyone has had their fun and on their way home.  This isn't fully literal in the sense that I'm going to a physical party, it's just a way for me to express how I feel about coming out so late in life.  Not just coming out to the world, but coming out to myself.  And not just with sexuality, but myself as a whole person and who I am and wish to be.  I've spent nearly four decades keeping myself locked away, isolated.  Most of my childhood was in a deeply religious rural environment where my only safety was in my room with the door locked, especially when my dad was home.  I grew up with very few friends whom I couldn't often see because we lived outside of town, but I would end up losing them every few years anyway as we kept moving to new towns.

I'm quite often left with bewilderment, anxiety, and an extreme sense of invisibility to the gay community at large.  I'm not accustomed to being flirted with, hit on, touched by others or to touch others, and I'm unsure of my place and boundaries in relationships with others.  All too often, my instincts have been maligned by my upbringing so I've been conditioned not to trust them.  And in my attempt to reconnect with my instincts, I often misinterpret and I end up being impulsive in ways that bring discomfort to others.   I sincerely hope that I've not offended anyone or made them uncomfortable with how I've behaved in their presence.  If so I'm very sorry.

I know for many out there, events like MAL, are a fun party like atmosphere to enjoy what we love, but for me it's still a nerve racking experience, filled with fear, anxiety, self doubt, and an overwhelming sense of feeling like an interloper.   But I would like to publicly thank Sir, Gunny for his more than generous efforts and more than generous time he took away from his own family and friends this weekend to help me keep those feelings subdued and show me what is possible. 

Going forward, I feel some slight hope that I might see a future in this, but too much is nagging at me to know for sure if I'm ever going to have much more than what I've already been given.  I don't mean to end on a low note, but I must be realistic with myself and honest with how I feel right now.   I'm sure things will change; they have to, for better or worse, but it's difficult for me to understand what lies ahead.  I have no context for this.

But I Was Only 5

2012 has been kicking my ass.  And yet, I feel stronger now.  At least I feel strong when I'm not actually feeling hopeless.    

I started off 2012 just diving right in to some of the most intense social situations I've ever had.  I wanted to push myself to get out there, overcome my shyness, meet people, and make new friends, get connected to others and be part of something.    

The first situation was by choice.  But the second one was not.  The third one was. The fourth was not.  And so on and so forth.  Back and forth it went and continues on that way.  Each event, situation, trial, confrontation, mistake, was/is pushing me through, in what appears in my dreams as, mountains of rushing water, a metaphor for my emotions.    Sometimes I come out of it with a new grounded sense of who I am, but other times I'm left wondering what in the fuck is left of me.  What have I learned?  What am I getting out of this?  I'm still working on it.  I'm still trying to sort it out. 

But here is what hit me lately:

A new found awareness of what it feels like when I leave authenticity.   I've started to notice the twinges of emotion, pangs of anxiety, eagerness to please while concealing my resentment.  All of these signal to me that I've stepped out of authenticity.  Awareness of where I stop loving the people around me, stop loving what is happening around me, and I start to judge the situation not as it actually is but as my suffering ego imagines it to be.  It's paranoid, hurt, afraid, and it tells me stories about what it thinks is going on.  Stories that have nothing to do with reality but I'm lost in my emotions, I'm not acknowledging them for what they are, and I'm feeding them these stories.  I don't know why, but it keeps the pain alive.   Leaving authenticity is something I do more often that staying in authenticity.

It's pretty fucked up. 

I've been jumping into things too fast, too eager, too afraid that if I don't do it right now, I may never get to do it ever.  I'm not realizing that I have not fully accepted myself so I still put on a mask, I still try too hard to play a role that I think is expected of me.  And I fail.  I fuck it up.  My sense of confidence, that confidence that I think others are looking for, is not real.  I conjured it up and pretended to be something I'm not, something that I know I can be but I'm not ready to be.  I'm not ready because I'm not doing it from my own personal center and awareness.  I'm doing it as a mirror of how I see it in others.  

This time it put me in a situation where I hurt someone.  I unintentionally inflicted serious physical injury.  And I've destroyed, permanently, a trust that I had just started to earn.  The ripple of that is not only losing his trust, but the trust of an entire social circle because of how he will warn others; spread the word that I am a bad person.

What was I thinking?  I don't know.  I wanted to be perfect.  I wanted to be what that other people expected of me.  I only wanted to please. 

Later that night, as I was making the long drive home from my disastrous weekend, I was talking to my mom about what had happened.   I was already feeling out of place from things going on all month but this weekend pushed me over the edge.  My body, thoughts, emotions, were all exploding.  I was feeling fear, frustration, anger, worthlessness, rejection, guilt, shame, regret.  I had hurt someone.  Seriously hurt them.  

I was reminded of an indecent that happened when I was 5 years old of a little boy, struggling, one step at a time, heaving a heavy stroller carrying the crying baby of my baby sister up onto the front porch, trying desperately to get her in the house.  She was crying; I was trying to comfort her. I had no idea what to do but get her in the house so that mom could make it right.   But I was afraid that I would be punished for making her cry; after all it was my fault that she was crying. 

I was spraying the lawn with the water hose, playing, pretending to be the little Rainbird sprinkler, as I smacked at the water stream with a plastic spatula. And she, for whatever reason I don't know, was alone with me, sitting out in the sun.  Was I supposed to be watching her?  I feel like I was.     But why would a 5 year old be responsible for a tiny baby just barely a few months old?  I don't remember but I do felt like I had been given the responsibility to tend just because we were alone together.  I don't recall being told to do it though, but it was common for my dad to tell me to do such things.   So, there I was, just hoping nothing happened and that mom or dad would come and get her soon before she started crying.   But then I slipped, I turned too far and a blast of cold water hit her face, startling her and she screamed. 

I was ashamed, I had accidently hurt her, I got her wet, and now I was going to get yelled at, punished, whipped with the belt or whatever, I don't know.   She needed comfort, she needed to be held, and she needed to stop crying so that I wouldn't be blamed for causing it.   But I was too small to pick her up.  And I didn't know where mom or dad where.  I didn't call for mom because I knew she couldn't hear me.  If she hadn't come by now from my sister screaming, she couldn't hear; she had no idea anything had happened. 

I'm sure mom was in the house somewhere but I didn't dare leave her alone. If anything were to happen to her because I left her alone, I would surely be punished.   So I did the only thing that made sense to me at the time, get her in the house so that mom could hear. 

The stroller was heavy, it was awkward, and the handles were as high as my shoulders.  The best I could do was tilt it back and drag it backwards, heaving the back wheels one step at a time up the concrete stairway, one, two, three, steps, then pausing to rest for a moment and regain my grip.  Each step hit her with a profound jerk and bump, each one seemed to make her cry worse.  Four, five, six, I was at the top.  Tilted the stroller back on all fours and then turned my attention to opening the door.   Once I managed to get the door open I turned just in time to notice the stroller had rolled toward the stairs, out of my reach and the front wheels had already hit the first step. 

I was literally frozen as I watched the stroller tumble down the stairs. Each jostle of the wheels as they dropping down onto each step sent shards of adrenaline through me and amplified the sound of terror I was hearing in her crying. When the front wheels hit the bottom the stroller flipped forward, head over heels, landing upside down, smashing my sister's face into the concrete. 

I no longer heard any crying, it had all gone silent. 

I rushed down the stairs; I was shaking, and muttering to myself, "Oh my god!  Oh my god!"  I was so weak; I was trembling; I could barely turn the stroller on to its side.  "Oh my god!" I kept muttering trying to unfasten the seat belt.  But I was shaking too much; I could barely grasp the buckles.   Her face was contorted as if she was trying to cry but couldn't catch her breath, she just shook, trembled and twitched.  There was a bit of rocky dirt on her chin and forehead and blood was starting to drip from the edges of her mouth.  "Oh my god!  Oh my god!"

When she finally caught her breath, in what seemed like a lifetime, she let out the most disturbing cry I had ever heard and don't want to ever hear in my lifetime again, a frantic screaming cry of terror, panic, pain, trauma. 

This was bad, this was serious, this was my fault, she was hurt, really hurt bad and I couldn't do anything, I didn't know what to do, and I had caused this. 

It was shortly after this when mom finally heard the screaming and came rushing outside to see what was going on, all the while screaming at me in panic, and demanding answers.  "What's going on?!  What happened?!  Why is she bleeding?!   What in the hell were you doing?!  What have you done?!  Get away! Don't touch her!"  I don't remember what I said or if I was even able to say anything.

Mom took her in the house, at which point the details of my memory have faded to images of her trying to get my sister to suck on popsicles or bottles but she couldn't do it.  Images of streaks of blood on anything her mouth had touched, the unending crying that seemed to last for days, and then I have no more memory. 

But this memory of my baby sister has been with me, haunting me my whole life, playing over in my mind from time to time, but only as a bad dream, disconnected and disassociated from it.  But now, I was suddenly reliving it all over again while driving home that night. 

I had to stop the car, before I passed out and crashed.  I was convulsing with intense wailing, soaking my clothing in sweat, releasing emotion it seemed from every pour of my body.  Even now, as I retell this story here, even rereading it as I proof read, I crumble in fits of sobbing.

I had found out a few years ago that I had actually broken her jaw.  I had broken the jaw of a baby only a few months old.  She is now in her mid 30's and has had to cope with problems as a result of that her entire life. 

And now, out of some twisted turn of events, I'm still paying for my mistake.  And continue to do so as I keep replaying my history.  Doing it all over again; hurting people while trying to play a role that I am not ready to play.  Just like when I was 5 years old.   But then, I was also forced into that role.  It's no wonder I feel such intense anxiety when I'm forced into roles, jobs, obligations, commitments, that I'm not willing to do or I'm not ready for.

That is why I hated being in the Mormon church so much.  It was an obligation, a commitment, a role, that I couldn't fill.  No matter what I did, I was never good enough.  But I did it anyway to keep the piece.  To protect myself from the anger and wrath of those who had authority and control over me.    But I'm not there anymore, and yet, I have been continuing to force myself into a roles I'm not ready for today.  Why?  To please others in hopes of earning their respect? 
Respect that I can't ever earn?  Am I doing it to try to redeem myself for the harm I've caused?   That seems ridiculous, as I'll just keep causing more harm.   I don't know. 

It needs saying even if it's wrong.

A sure fire way to affect change in a difficult emotional thinking pattern is to state it.  Give it voice. Put it into words, whether spoken or written.  And sure enough, whatever beliefs that arise out of that exercise will suddenly dissolve; especially if that belief was not formed from a rational headspace.   

I don't know why that is.  But it is why I write in this blog.  And it is why I need to keep doing it and continue to give voice to whatever is on my mind regardless if it's rational or not.   Because, for whatever reason, only writing in my private journal seems to have stopped resulting in parsing the jumble of thoughts in my mind.  This writing, this blog, has been necessary for me because of one basic thing, the awareness that what I write has the potential of actually getting read by someone.  That truth changes my entire thought process.   I don't even need to know who reads it or when, just that the words I write are going to end up in a place that can be found and read.  Without that concept of "public", I don't seem to be motivated to process any thoughts at all.  My private journal writing has essentially turned into an exercise in avoidance. 

So here I am, putting more time in to free-writing publicly about my journal writing being an avoidance mechanism so that it will dissolve and go back to being a catharsis.  Wait, isn't the awareness of what I'm writing about change the scope and purpose and end up sabotaging it?    Damn it! 

Nonetheless, I still want to take a moment here to state something about a post from a few weeks ago (April 7).  It was a post that exposed more about me and my messed up state of mind at the time I wrote it than it did about anything or anyone I was whining about.  

It's real, it's how I was feeling at the time, I can't deny that, but there are parts of it that are big red flags to me that I was not rational.  But in order to discover this, I had to forget about the post for a few weeks, finish a story I had been working on for a year, write a follow up post to that story, and then, by chance, go back and read the old post and realize that I was not resonating with whoever it was that wrote it!  Yeah, I wrote it but, I don't really know the person who wrote it.   Does that make me schizophrenic?  Not really, but it does expose how depression manifests itself to me. 

So, what do I want to say about the old post?  Not much other than to say that the feelings of isolation and loneliness, and the belief that I've been the recipient of judgments and rejection, have actually been ME doing most of the judgments and rejecting.  In turn, I've ended up imposing more isolation on myself, well beyond the physical isolation that I actually can't control right now.  Yes, the communities are generally dogmatic, cliquish and exclusionary, but that's over generalizing and unfair to the many individuals in the communities who are not that way and disrespectful to those who desire and need such closed door policies.  I mustn't forget that what seems like a clique is actually a close nit family.  One just doesn't walk into someone's family and expect to be treated as if you were always there.  It takes time, lots of interaction and the right chemistry.  And if it doesn't happen, it's OK.  It wasn't meant to be.  The problem I face is that I so rarely get interaction I never get the chance to ever know where I stand. 

Now, quite honestly, at this point, I need to be careful here because dwelling on my current physical isolation is one of the many major triggers that have literally shoved me into the hell of depression.   And even though I'm aware of how depression manifests itself at this moment in time, it doesn't mean I will recognize if and when I fall into it again.  So, will stating what I just stated mean that I will recognize it next time?  That's the expectation.   But now I just stated that the stating of it will now change its outcome.   Damn it!

Horseback Riding With Myself

I would love to say that my story with horses has come to a wonderful conclusion.  I dearly love them as I love all animals, but I haven't been able to reconcile my past experiences as well as my new found ones.  I still feel at times ignorant and undeserving of the knowledge and still a bit frustrated that I'm not as good of a horsemen that my fellow riders are.  I'm also insanely jealous of them as well.  Most of them are teenagers or younger and have the most uncanny, if I could say, natural ability to communicate with their equine companions that seem so unreal to me.  And the worst thing about all of this, is how out of place I feel as a 40+ salt and pepper hair, gay man, in a class of female teeny boppers, who can ride circles around me and jump fences, all the while I'm just trying to keep my horse from cutting the corners around the arena.

I'm currently not riding right now; I've had to stop in late 2010 because of health problems that have made it unsafe.   Problems with an untreatable, proximal positional vertigo being the main one as well as excessive weight gain, unpredictable heart fibrillations that cause dangerous lightheadedness, and a still as yet undiagnosed muscle atrophy, weakness, and neuropathy,  have made it difficult to make any progress on anything let alone dressage.  I don't really know if my riding days are over or not.  I hope that I can return to normal health.  But I just can't feel confidence in that happening as things seem to continue to slowly decline.  And to make it worse, other than the vertigo and heart issues, the doctors can't seem to find anything medically wrong with me. 

I've really been missing my time just being around those great creatures.  Grooming, hugging, leaning on, sitting on, smelling their sweat, picking their hooves, pulling their tails, giving them treats, whistling little songs to them while they crowd around me out in the paddock,  rubbing them on the brow and behind the ears until they practically fall asleep while their snotty snout is pressed into my stomach.  I've gotten so close to them now that I have gotten the point where I wish I could be one.  It's that way with all the animals I've ever made a connection to.   I see them as innocent, free spirits, always in the moment, with wonderful beauty and pure unconditional love.  Who wouldn't want to be them? 

Not to get too far off subject, as if there ever is a subject on a free-write post, but ever since I was 5 years old, I've spent much of my waking imagination in silent contemplation wondering what it would feel like to actually be one of the many animals that have occupied my waking sub-conscious.  I say 5 years old because that was how old I was when I had my first lucid dream that involved an animal.  It was a tiger. In that dream I also became a tiger and experienced an intimate and spiritually deep connection to the tiger that appeared to me.  I also felt a strong desire to never want to leave that dream and have pondered the experience off and on for decades since.  I don't know why I still remember that dream so vividly 35+ years later, but it was a life changing experience. One in which I don't really know how to explain, and it continues to be meaningful to me now, as well as many other similar experiences that I've had since, both in waking and non-waking dreams and meditations.  And aside from the apparent, if not superficial, similarity to the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes, it was nothing like Calvin & Hobbes, although I really do love that comic.

Only in recent years have I bothered to seriously look into these dreams to find out more about their possible significance and meaning.  And quite surprisingly, I've found many communities for that aspect of my life spanning from Therianopthy, to Native American spiritual traditions to the Furry Fandom.  So at this point, I can honestly claim I'm a furry and oddly enough, I actually couldn't care less about all the stigma and stereotypes associated with furries. They are my people, drama and all.

So what is the point of me saying all of this?  I don't know,
just to get it off my chest I suppose.  I haven't had a pet in my life for over 10 years.  That last one was a female tuxedo cat, who I still really miss.  We had a very special bond, as I've had with all the cats I've ever had.  She was always begging me to hold her up to the lights so that she could get at the moths.   I don't think I've ever gotten over her death.  She was suffering from an Alzheimer's like disease and it totally fucking sucked to see her go through the states of confusion she often went through.  She was only 12.

(1989-2001) picture taken circa 1994

Anyway, I wish I had the strength to just go down to the riding school again, but I also can't shake the feeling of being out of place there as if I don't belong.  It was easy for the most part to forget about that feeling when I could just jump on my horse and trot around the arena as it was just me, the instructor, and the horse.   But when I'm not riding, I become acutely aware of the dozen people there, and I am the only male.  And of course, the troublesome pink elephant in the arena that I wish wasn't there despite the common stereotype that all male dressage riders are gay.  I don't live in a gay friendly part of the country and there is always someone reminding me of that fact.

Some days I really hate my circumstances.  I really resent the shit my life has now.  And quite often I forget that in many other ways I have it really damn good!   It's as if one aspect of my life got amazingly better while others have reached their shelf life and are about to expire.  And it's those expiring parts that I never had the chance to make something of them.  For each day that passes, I find something new to regret.  

But, to avoid making this post a complete downer, I will include this cropped picture of me wearing my riding boots.  I'm on a horse.

Yeah, yeah, I know, toes forward! 

Horseback Riding With My Dad

My older brother affectionately called them Dumbass and Shithead.  Euphemistic terms of endearment I'm sure.  And in many ways, a direct reflection of how our dad thought of us as kids.  But the horses' real names were Stormy and Lancer.  Stormy was whitish in color. Lancer, a much younger sibling to Stormy, was black.  I wasn't a fan of most horse names.  I usually just referred to them as "The Black One" and "The White One" because I couldn't think of anything better.

They were, if I recall correctly, part Arabian and were rather feisty. They weren't the first horses my dad brought home though; the first one was a whitish mare named Lady Mary.  She died of something when she was around 8 years old.   She had only been with us for about a year when she developed some health problems, I thought, at the time it was probably from eating moldy hay, I didn't really know and wouldn't know until just a few months ago when talking to my mom about this story that I found out what really happened.   Lady Mary was pregnant and her uterus had detached.  I can imagine that she had suffering pretty badly.  She was not very old.  Shortly after she died, my dad got Stormy and Lancer.  But they were both sold about a year later so we could relocate to Northern Utah.

Growing up, I never knew much about horses despite the fact we spent a good number of years living in the southern Utah ranching country, where pretty much everyone was some sort of cowboy or ranch hand.  Not us though, we were somewhat city types even though we had never lived in a big city.  A few years before we had horses, when I was about age 9, my dad, on a few occasions, would disappear to help a friend from work setting up things for the local rodeo.  Occasionally my brother and I would go with him but we were too young to help.  I vaguely remember a scary incident with a raging bull that got loose, but I never saw my dad on any horses. 

Most of the time, while dad was off doing whatever it was he did while helping with the rodeo, my brother and I would just play under the arena stands, searching for money that had fallen there during the last rodeo event.  Bonus when we actually found paper money.  But most of the time it was a few dollars in coins, which we would then go spend on candy.  In those days, a few dollars bought a few bags worth.   Dad really didn't pay much attention to where we would run off to.
 
Also, during those early years, I once got to sit on the back of a pony at a birthday party.  I was by myself and the pony was there for riding so I got on jerked the reins and kicked just like what I saw on TV, but he didn't move.  I felt stupid sitting there so I got off.  I felt even more stupid when another kid grabbed the reins from me, got right on and took off, riding around the side of the house as if there was nothing special about it. 

A few years later, we moved to another small town in south-central Utah.  Even though it was a small town, it was in a much larger ranching community.  In the previous town, the primary industry was the saw-mill, here it was farming and ranching.  Many of my school classmates were avid horsemen or horsewomen who would ride in drill or rodeo events. 

I was always made to feel like I should know about many things that I had never seen before growing up.  But no one really offered to teach me anything and oddly, I never feel it was my place to know. Although, I was rather envious that I wasn't given the opportunity to learn about horses or riding other than a token effort to get a Boy Scout merit badge, which I was never able to get because I didn't have a horse or, by the time we got some, I didn't get the support from my parents to get acquainted with them.   But at the same time, I was ok with it, because, again, I didn't think it was my place to know about horses, and also, I was somewhat scared of them anyway.

My older brother once attempted to ride with a friend but was bucked off and bruised up pretty badly.  My dad was always telling us about how they were easy to spook and that you should never stand behind them or they'll kick you and that they could be very dangerous and we should stay away from them!  And yet, I also had been led to believe from somewhere that horses would never purposely step on you.  I have since realized that even though they may not do it on purpose, they will still step on you!
 
We, as city types, didn't seem to fit in here even more than in the past town we lived in.  But, it was here that my dad decided that he wanted a horse.

We all thought at the time that his reason for getting a horse was mainly for show.  But perhaps he wanted something more out of it.  He was much more motivated to do things to keep up with the Jones's, as he was to satisfy some unknown want for something.  But perhaps it was practical.  After all, we had 2.5 acres of alfalfa that had to be cut and baled at least once during the summer.  More if we had actually watered it.    But with a horse, that field was turned into complete dirt in a matter of weeks.  We didn't have to cut and bale that damned hay anymore. The bad news was we had to buy hay.  Lots and lots of it.  I was very allergic to hay as a kid.  VERY!  Eyes swollen shut for days sort of allergic.

We were not equipped to handle horses.  We didn't have shelter for them; we didn't have any way to keep the stored hay from getting moldy.  We had no means to ride them, no halters or lead ropes, no saddles or bridles or even any grooming equipment.  We didn't even know how to ride them even though the first two had been "broken in".  But ultimately, they were just out there as pretty things to watch.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, they were wonderful to watch, but they were also a burden to take care of especially when we had no idea what we were doing. 

We didn't even have a proper fence to keep them from getting out.  The fence we made only had two wires and it was not electrified.  The lowest wire was high enough for a horse to slide under.  All it took was just one little roll in the dirt, in the right place next to the fence, and upon standing again, one of them would find  himself on the other side.  It was fine when only one horse got out because they hated being separated.  They would stay by the fence looking confused by their predicament until someone could help them back over.  It was this little fence trick that prompted my brother to start calling them Dumbass and Shithead.

My dad brought these animals home with no intention of doing anything to take care of them, that all fell on us.  Just like us kids -- brought into the world to be someone else's responsibility.

We were never instructed on what to do about anything.  Mowing the lawn, installing a sprinkling system, driving a car, or taking care of a horse, it didn't matter, we had no idea.  If we asked in any way what we were supposed to do, my dad would invariably say, "The fuck if I know.  Figure it out, I don't care."  Or on rare occasions he would try and be helpful by saying something like, "Just give them a little hay and make sure the thing is full of water."  The "thing" was a large plastic garbage can.

But sometimes, if we did not execute the chores in the exact manner that he was expecting, never mind that we had no idea what he was expecting, we would get a Final Dismissal with him yelling, "What the hell are you doing?  I can tell you've never been around a horse before!" as if we should fee shamed for the truth.  At which point he would do it himself, swearing and screaming at us the entire time about how useless and stupid we were.  

It was like that with everything; just replace 'horse' with any other noun that is applicable to the situation.  And sprinkle in some choice profanities as adjective such as, "I can tell you've never driven a goddamn truck before." or "I can tell you've never installed a fucking sprinkling system before!"  It hurt because it was all true.  I had never done any of those things before.  I was only 13 years old.  You can't expect me to know all this stuff, can you? 

It was a late fall evening when dad decided that it was a good idea to try and saddle up Stormy and take him for a ride.  He had found someone who loaned him a saddle and bridle.  I was curious but scared that he would ask me to put them on thus making me go through the usual routine of disappointing him for being stupid.  I hadn't seen him do any of this before so I wasn't even sure if he knew how to ride the horse.

But apparently, as far as I could tell, he did know how. He slid the bridle bit in Stormy's mouth and mounted that confusing array of leather straps on to his head as if he had always known how it was done.  Once he had him saddled, he got on as if he had always been a rider and rode the horse around in a slow walk for a few hundred feet.  Even my younger sister had gotten to ride the horse as my dad led it around.  I was no longer envious, I was jealous.  This man was holding out on us.  Why wouldn't he teach us anything?  

I wanted to ride, so I went out there and asked. 

"Sure, just hop on."  He said.

Ok, How? I said to myself.  My nose was even with Stormy's shoulder.  I mustered up the courage, realizing the verbal abuse that would erupt if I were to ask, but in this case, I needed to know so I went ahead and asked.  Sure enough, the response used at least one 'fuck' word.  But he did explain which foot to put in the stirrup and where I could grasp to pull myself up.

Sadly, I had very weak upper arm strength, which caused me to struggle while climbing on.  The whole time I was scared I might accidentally kick his hind quarters and spook him.  But the worst thing about it, as I was getting on, was that I was feeling extremely embarrassed, exposed and vulnerable.  Not because someone took a picture of me, which I didn't appreciate, but because here I was on a live animal and I didn't know what I was doing.  And even then, it wasn't so much that I was afraid of the animal, but that I was afraid of doing something wrong that would elicit a verbal and abusive tirade from my dad.

Once I got situated, I sat there, looked around at my surroundings, everything looked different at this height. I looked down at the horse, his ears were focused on me and it felt like he was standing rigid, calm but not relaxed.  I wasn't sure really how to read the horse.  It all could have been more of how I was feeling.  I was definitely tense and unsettled and quickly growing impatient.  

The sun had just set a few minutes earlier; it was getting dark.  I finally asked him, "So, what do I do?"  

"The fuck if I know.  Just ride him, you should know."  He said.

"How do I go?  Or turn?"  I said.

"That's what the reins are for."  He said.

"I know, but how do you use them?" 

"Jesus Christ, I can tell you've never ridden a horse before."

And there it was, the Final Dismissal.

I was done.  Despite how often I would hear him say that, it would still sting every time.  I sat for a few more seconds until I could no longer stand the shame of the moment.  Then I decided that this would never be for me; carefully and clumsily I slid off the horse, walked in the house and never got back on another horse for 27 years.

The Question of Choice, Again!

Well, controversy!  It appears that Cynthia Nixon has been saying things that have gotten a few people in a tizzy in the past about the concepts of choice and homosexuality.  And now, this recent article has brought that all back in to the discussion again.  (The money quote can be found in context on page 3 of the article.)

I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice.
And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.
A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.
As you can tell, I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.

And a few others have been weighing in on it as well:

Sulli: The word "choice"
and
dadsprimalscream: Choices – We’re not All the Same

I like what they have to say about it.  And I agree with Cynthia and Dad, on this as I had pretty much come to the same conclusion myself last year in my post A Question of Choice.

But there is an argument going on in a few Facebook groups about it that I sort of let myself get sucked into.    And I realized that the topic isn't as straight forward for some as it was for me.  But I've been reflecting on it to see where I've come with this since last year. 

Some people feel like she was being a troll in her comment, I don't see it that way at all.  Some are concerned that bringing choice into the argument is dangerous for the younger and insecure kids trying to deal with this while being pounded on by the nasty religious environment they are growing up in, and that her statement is only adding fuel to their rhetoric.  I don't discount that many feel that way.   But I also believe that what they believe is fuel for their rhetoric could also be the very thing that drowns it.

Cynthia has a slightly different perspective than I do as she is attracted to everyone whereas I'm only attracted to my own sex.  Cynthia chose gay over not gay in the end.  But before that she also had to make the choice to accept that part of herself and choose to live it as well.   I also believe that many of the worst homophobes out there may have had the same type of choice.  But they chose to be not gay.  But before that, they chose to reject and hate the gay part of themselves.  

My choice was to decide if I was going to accept it and live as I am or repress it and live as someone who was not attracted to anyone.  I eventually chose the one that would make me happy because choosing asexually for the past 17 years stopped working for me.  So, I tried gay and gay was better.  I never chose heterosexuality because I could never understand it.  I did choose to consider it, date a few women, even claim I was straight, but all that time I was essentially, unconsciously, choosing asexuality when I did that.  And after awhile, I began to believe I was asexual and then eventually identified as such for a time.   I also chose not to live AS a heterosexual because I didn't have or understand what it was.  I chose what I understood.  

For far too long the LGBT community as been on the defensive.   The choice question has been allowed to be framed by the people who want to see choice in terms of right and wrong.  I can say I made a choice and I can defend my choice because I don't let the bigots frame the question of choice as right or wrong.   I did not choose my innate desires.  But I choose how I'm going to live with them.  The LDS church has come to the point now of accepting that the innate desires are not chosen, but that how we act on them is a choice.  Well, of course they are right, HOWEVER, they are also dictating what is the right or wrong choice by giving that choice meaning that is important only to them. And that if we choose wrong by their standards, we should not be respected, supported or loved.  This is pretty much the entire religious right's stance on it not just the LDS view.   

What I'm getting at and what I believe Cynthia is trying to say is that pandering to the bigotry, as if the bigots have any right to dictate what choices people make, is the wrong approach and the wrong way to justify one's own choices.

We do not have to justify our choice to live as we are, even though they are demanding it from us.  They're also demanding the right to have control over people to prevent them from making choices that they don't agree with and that don't even affect them.  That is what needs to be challenged.

Ironically, reminding them that their religious belief is a choice actually doesn't work because they see it as someone making the right choice.  And for them, if it's something they agree with, why shouldn't it be protected? 

Again, challenging their argument that personal choices shouldn't be protected because they disagree with them is really what it comes down to, and it's basically what the whole Prop 8 trial debate has been about.

Disillusion

It hurts.

When one set of friends talk total shit about another set of friends, 

it compels me to question the value that I am to people.

Especially If someone's value can be so easily tossed aside.

So, as I sit in stunned silence for a moment,

I am deeply afraid to say anything, and not sure what to say.  

What I fear, if I do say anything at all, is what my rage will say.

Which, if left unchecked, will make me the new object of scorn.

It all makes me feel isolated. 

More so than I already am.  

How Not To Love

I have a complicated ego.  (Don't we all?)  It shields me from reality, keeping me lost in the sea of its preconceived notion of itself.  And then shields me from the crap that its preconceived notion emits by rationalizing it into something else. Ultimately, how I end up seeing myself is completely different from how others see me.   Who gets the correct view of whom I am?  Neither.  Both are pretty much fucked up.

When it comes to shit like that, friendships can be, and will get, utterly destroyed.  And my ego, in its attempt to take the moral high ground by attempting to not judge their responses, can't see what harm has been done to that other person.  Completely oblivious really.  It's so messed up.

What it ultimately comes down to is my ego butting heads with someone else's ego.  And my ego will not let me see that that is what I'm doing.  Yes, my battered and bruised ego, injured from decades of abuse, screams out acidic tirades in frustration, all the while telling me it's simply expressing a truth that other people need to understand.  No concept of whether it's appropriate or even relevant.  It's oblivious to that reality.  And then my ego has the audacity to be confused and offended, if that screaming is rejected, dismissed or challenged.

So what am I going on about?
Me shoving my Dirty Laundry into other people's faces.

No one likes that shit.  No one.  It's a lose-lose.  Always has been, always will be.

I would have imagined that in time I could open up to people.  Come out of the closet about this blog.  To remove the anonymity and let it stand as a connection to my past.  Show how I've worked through things, and come to learn who I am.  But now, I'm not so sure this blog should exist.  It may need to disappear completely and permanently off the Internet.  I may need to disappear completely and permanently off the Internet too.

All the plans I had, wiped out by my own arrogance and smug self-righteousness.  Oblivious I was.  Fucking oblivious.  Patting myself on the back for all the great work I've done only to find I've done nothing but make enemies where I had none before.  They had done NOTHING to me.  They had been patiently putting up with my bullshit for DECADES.  They had defended me and stood-up for me when I was at my most assholishness.  They didn't give a shit that I was gay.  They didn't give a shit I left the church.  And then, I turn around and spit on them to feed my little bruised ego.  What was I trying to gain from that?  A reason to say, "Oh poor me. Look, see, no one really likes me."   Self induced pity.   This entire blog has turned into a pity party for me.  What the fuck was I thinking?

I don't care if people think that they shouldn't have been offended by what I was doing.  That's no excuse.  Why? Because deep down I knew that what I was doing was going to offend.  I may not have known why, or how or who specifically, but I did know it would offend, on purpose.  I was trying to push buttons. 

I have written and spoken at times about how it is not my responsibility to protect other people's view of the world by compromising who I am.  I still mean it.  It's just that in this case, I crossed the line and compromised myself in an attempt to selfishly destroy someone else's view of the world.  That's a big difference!  When my view of the world changed, it wasn't because someone was shoveling it on me.  I did it on my own because I needed to do it.  But then I snapped.  Something had triggered my pain. I quickly forgot my experiences and selfishly expected that others needed their world view changed.  Even when it was working perfectly well for them, maybe even better than the one I was currently trying to shovel.  It was pure hypocrisy from a lapse of self-awareness.

I can say it like I see it but it doesn't matter if buttons are purposely pushed.  They will only create conflict and close hearts, hearts that have been so willing to work with me and let me be myself.  Hearts that put up with the button pushing until it became so toxic that they had to shut down to protect themselves from annihilation.  Pushing to that point is poison.  It's healthy to remove toxic people from your life.  But I didn't realize that I would be the toxin.  I lost my awareness of that.

But get this, even though I had been pushing buttons for decades, the weird thing was, only recently had I become aware I had been purposely pushing buttons.  That seems odd, doesn't it?  The ego was in charge, and I was oblivious. I had not understood how stupid it was.  How destructive, how evil.  In fact, my ego thought it was just the way I do things.  I even told people in all confidence that I'm the type that needs to test people.  As if "on purpose" wasn't really "on purpose".  I really thought I had figured that part out. I was proud of myself.  Oblivious to what it really truly was.  Oblivious to what others already knew.  A character flaw, personality disorder, mental illness, whatever.  It is all those things but most importantly, to the unbeknown victim, it is the definition of an asshole.

But then I realized what I was doing was wrong.  I understood that it was a flaw, I understood its error and acknowledged it, I even stopped doing it, or so my ego told me.  No, I hadn't stopped doing it at all.  I had only stopped doing it to new friends.  I was still doing it to my old friends.   I wasn't aware that my habitual, destructive behavior had not gone away.  I was still a raging asshole.  After all these years, after all I've gone through.  Still, a raging asshole.


I need to forgive myself and move on.  The damage is done.  No amount of apology will be believed at this point.  I brought that on myself.  It's over.  Some may forgive me.  I may never know.   I don't know what else I can do other than take the punches as they are returned.  And they are still punching.  It's their right.

I could say that I love my friends but if I really do, then I would be letting them live their life just like they have been letting me live mine.  So until I can lean to do that, I'm not capable of truly loving someone.  But, I want to love, so I'm going to keep trying.


You know, this entire blog was set up to air my Dirty Laundry.  I haven't always used it for that but that's what its main purpose was.  Why on earth would I think that anyone would want to read it?  And I hope that no one finds it.  Because if they think the shit I put on Facebook was offensive, most of which I don't even write, wait until they read the drivel here.

And that's another thing, if I could just fucking stop airing my Dirty Laundry on Facebook.  Of all the places not to do that, Facebook would be the one.  There really are places I can go which would be appropriate, for one, the therapist's chair, and here, once I make it a private blog.  It will do no good to try and erase the past.  The internet has made that impossible.  I'll have to own up to it eventually.

I do not pity myself for all this mess, so for hell's sake don't pity me.  I believe this is the essence of the human condition, to live, learn, and love.  I'm doing my best with what I have and there are bumps along the way.  And what I've learned so far is how not to love.

Differences Are Normal

Back in September of 2009, I made a smugly moralistic little post called, "My Two Dates". 

The point of that post was to talk about a little event where I got asked if I would be interested in joining a couple for a little threesome action. I talked about how I learned a valuable lesson about misjudging people.  And then at the end of it, in an attempt to whitewash the fact that I was still a judgmental prick, I said that I was not interested in hooking up with them.  But I never really said why.  And to be honest, at the time, I wasn't really all that sure myself.   I did give some lame-ass excuse about how it would bring up some emotional baggage; as if I had any clue what I was talking about.  

Well, truth be told, 6 months later, I found myself chained to the wall of their play room having a good time.  This happened twice, on consecutive weekends.

Now, here are the reasons why I'm bringing all this up:  1) my conscience is getting the better of me.  Since I had originally said I wasn't interested in doing something only to turn around and do it, I felt like I had some explaining to do.  Not that anyone would have known either way, or that I needed to justify myself, I just needed to be honest.  2) I've finally come to terms with the core reason I was uninterested in hooking up in the first place and I've finally been able to put it all into words.  That is to say, I sort of knew what it was I had been working out back then, but I hadn't fully understood until now what it was all about.  3) I feel rather smugly moralistic about it all, which, oddly enough, is what's motivating me to write this in the first place.

In the 6 months that followed our initial meeting back in August of 2009, I had managed to get over my fears and initial reservations for avoiding them.  Many of my fears had mostly to do with just plain old self-esteem and insecurity. But my reservations or rather, my stated noninterest was rooted in the mindset of looking for my "One True Love".   A belief that had been culled from the many, downright useless, beliefs regarding the purposes of sex, intimacy and relationships, which were all framed within the context of traditional religious ideals, namely, the Mormon kind.  So, naturally, play time with a couple who have been together for 15 years wasn't going to get me into a relationship of that kind.  Although, it could develop into some other kind of relationship, not that this one was, but whether it happened or not, it was not the goal anyway, I was simply not interested in doing anything unless it fit within the set of "values" that I been accustom to.  So, I was willing to pass up an opportunity for some serious adult oriented fun. 

I had grown up around the idea of the traditional Mormon polygamist family and I knew about Polyandry from studying all the many forms of BDSM relationship dynamics that embraced it.  So, back in 2007 when I was first coming out, I was prepared to admit to my mom at the time, that I could not say that such arrangements would never happen and that I could see myself living in a nontraditional dynamic in the future.   It was an attempt to plant a seed in her mind that the rules have changed; the expectations of normality must be adjusted.  There is no "one right way" of defining a family.  To my surprise, she added to that by telling me her understanding of family, which included even more combinations that I had never imagined.  She was already ahead of the game.

However, I still held back.  I still had my doubts if such things really were for me or not.  I realized in the end that I was still in love with the idea of the perfect, white-picketed, fenced-in, nuclear family, that I had grown up to believe was the only way that was truly acceptable in society or at least in Mormon cultural society.  To make matters worse, the gay marriage debate was raging in the media and I found myself caught up in the whirlwind, trying to prove to the world that gay people were normal, that they were just like everyone else.  But, it was like going back into the closet all over again.  I had a hard time figuring out how I was going to get the queer world that made sense to me, fit in with what everyone else expected the gay world should be.  I wanted the freedom to live an honest life but not make others uncomfortable. I don't know how I was going to do that.  I was trying to have it both ways.  And in the end, the big question that I was not asking was, "why do I still try to garner their acceptance anyway?"

In all of this, the core issue to embrace was, if I'm going to live honestly and with any modicum of dignity and self-respect, I will stop trying so hard to live by their "rules".  I am gay, but more than that, I am queer.  There is no way I'm going to fit within the "rules" of the prevailing religious society's notion of the traditional, patriarchal family, no matter what I do.  So, essentially, I get to decide what constitutes the "purpose" of sex within the context of my relationships and I get to decide what constitutes my own family.  Whether it's comprised of a same-sex couple who fosters or adopts children, or whether it's comprised of several same-sex adults who all share partnership roles, or a partner and those that make up the "extended" family.  There could even be a hierarchy just like in the traditional or historical sense but with different names, titles, and meanings.  It doesn't matter.  I get to define what family, friends and sex are within the context of my own values that work for me.  And today there are millions out there, gay and non-gay, who happily and joyfully do just that.  

So, as it stands, the gay marriage debate will continue, obviously, as many people will be seeking to be part of that normalcy and continue to fight for it.  And that's OK.  But I'm no longer interested in fighting.  Because, truth be told, it's all a bunch of crap!  It's not to say that I don't support it or I won't be part of it someday, I may get married, but in the end, I don't believe, considering the way I view and choose to live my life, that my family, whatever form it takes, will ever be treated with any sort of respect whether I'm married or not.  Because the basic fact is, we, as queer folk, are not normal.  We are different. 

There is nothing wrong with being different.  But, spending any more time trying to convince a religious society that can't abide difference is a complete waste of my life.  And that is what most of the gay marriage political debating has been about, gay couples having to put up their best possible face to show the world just how normal they really are.  This for me means compromising my self-expression, my integrity, my sanity, to appease those that can't or won't embrace what they don't understand.  I'm not going to waste my time hiding and I'm done trying to change their minds.

We, queers, must make our own rules and live by them.  And it's not by the norms of an authoritarian religious society that we are to be comparing ourselves.  If we allow that, we are falling into the expectations of those who have never questioned why their normal familial traditions make them so bloody miserable.  And we might as well be miserable right along with them.  Sure, they will judge us by their standards, there is no way of getting around it, but they are in the wrong when they do.  They are the ultimate hypocrites if they think their normality is applicable to us.  And we are wrong if we try to get them to think our difference is not different. 

The great automatons that comprise most of the religiously bound human race are lost in a sea of sameness.  A lack of perspective and creativity in thought and reason, they have failed to embrace diversity, thus they have failed to embrace what's important.  And sadly, they are trapped there, consumed by fear of things they are also afraid to understand.

I know I keep reiterating this but I want it made clear!  It's not my place to fit within their reality, to erase my differences so that they can think I'm normal. The responsibility actually lies on them to broaden, allow and embrace the differences into their definition of normal.  They mistakenly believe that to do that, they would have to compromise their core values, which they say they shouldn't have to do.  Just like how I'm saying I shouldn't have to compromise mine for them.  But what they must understand is that I'm not compelling them to live my life the way they are compelling me to live theirs.  My core values are values I impose upon myself whereas their core values are values they want imposed on others. 

I've been foolish in thinking I could measure up to their expectations because they seek and impose an unattainable perfection.  And as they continue to do so, their definition of normal narrows, which makes their definition of perfection narrow.  Thus, any possible embracement of difference becomes impossible.  I've also been foolish in expecting them to look beyond their fears.  I know how hard it is for them.  I also know that they must make the effort on their own if they ever want to look beyond those fears.  No one can do it for them!  But I can't wait forever.

In essence, what I'm saying is, my search for acceptance from the Mormons has been put to rest.  My ship has sailed.  If they want to leave that "Great and Spacious Building" to get across the river now, they'll have to build one themselves.  They have been given the tools, materials and the plans; all they need is the desire.  Once they do, I'll be here ready to receive them.

Reset Please

Some days I wish I could just hit the reset button on my life.  Just fucking start over with a clean slate and do things differently.  Not so much by going back in time but more getting up and leaving it all behind, go someplace where no one knows me, and start my life off with how I want it to be.   

No expectations or surprises at how I've "changed".  No one trying to get me to revert to doing things the way I used to, or rather doing things the way they are all used to seeing me do.

I get to dress the way I want, I get to drink what I want, I get the live the way I want, and no one will ever know I have "changed".  No one will ever care.  They will take me at face value and accept that package they get. 

But no, that's not how it works.  I have to, in effect, be a nasty, evil, rebellious, bastard and hurt everyone's feelings. 

God, I fucking hate this.

To My Younger Self

Formspring Question:   "If you could go back in time, knowing what you know now, what would you tell yourself (being the best and worst) about being gay?"

To answer this question, I will share with you a past journal entry where I essentially did that in a way.  I wrote a few of these over the years but this one was actually coherent.

Hey little [Gay Dot],
It's been a while since we've talked. Sorry it's been so long. I want to talk to you just as you're completing puberty to tell you what to expect from here on out as it relates to this new physical change you have just gone through.

As things are now, you are already feeling the sexual urges. And when you get older things will get more and more confusing, where people in the church will start to talk to you about masturbation, dating, sex, getting married, having children. Some of this will scare you. Don't get discouraged thinking that you must do anything that doesn't make sense to you. Don't get down on yourself for not understanding what is happening.

As it turns out, there is something special about you. It's called homosexuality. Gay. You've already heard fag. Yeah, I know it hurts to hear those words. They are bad words to many people you know and they will continue to be bad words to many people you will soon come to know.

I want you to know, to understand, there is nothing wrong with you. This is normal in human sexuality. It's healthy and natural. Unfortunately, you will be told many lies about it. And you will know they are lies because they will be contradictory. Remember this one? "The natural man is an enemy to god", and "homosexuality goes against nature". Well, which is it? These lies will hurt and confuse you because you will not understand them. But you will come to understand over time and know from where they came.

Also, as you've already become aware a few years ago, you are physically and emotionally drawn to many exotic physical pleasures and role-playing behaviors. You have since come to know these things as Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, and Masochism. But, again, in time, you will come to understand fully what they are about, why they are part of your psyche and why they are special. These really have nothing to do with you being homosexual but they will play a large role in helping you come to understand your homosexuality and the role you will play in life. These things are also normal aspects of what it is to be human and are part of what makes you special. Again, you will hear many lies about these things that will hurt and confuse you. But you will learn to trust your spirit and it will help you discern what is real and what is not.

You have a unique way of looking at the world that defies society's traditional notions of sexuality, and gender roles. All these special things you have are gifts that give you profound paths to spiritual enlightenment that will serve you and those you interact with very well. And you will come to understand why that's important. And even though you feel very alone, from time to time, I understand as I still feel that on occasion. In time though, you will find many people, and discover thousands and thousands of others who feel the same way as you. And even though you feel very alone and scared right now, it will be Ok. We will be Ok. The more you come to understand, the more you will realize there is nothing to fear.

But as with all things good, they do come at a cost. I really don't need to tell you this as you have already experienced it. The world and the church are not accepting of these things at all. They don't know anything about them. They don't understand them. In fact they are deathly afraid of them. And they don't know what to do about their own fears. Forgive them. Let it go.

When you turn 16, and that intrusive bishop asks you about this stuff. You will be too ashamed to answer him. It's Ok to feel upset, confused and hurt. Don't feel ashamed for feeling that way. What he will do is wrong. You will come to understand that what you do with your own body is none of his business. But, forgive him for asking. He is merely doing what the thinks is right. He has no understanding of what to do if you told him about those things anyway. You will come to understand that these men have no power over you. And you will be able to let those shameful and manipulative moments pass.

When you turn 19, you will be confronted by some who will ridicule, and threaten to bash you. They will hate you because they are afraid of what you are. And many will continue to hate you. That will never change. Even though the panic you feel will seem all consuming, but remember, they have no power over you. This life belongs to you. It does not belong to them, the church, your peers, or your family. It's yours. Leave them behind. In time, Many people will come and go in your life. Those that truly care for you will stay in your life and accept you for who you are.

If I could truly go back in time and take on this confusion with more courage, I would. But the past is gone now. What we do now, is move forward, forgive them and let them go. In the process, we will take back what has been taken from us, our self-esteem, our self-worth, and our ability to love. Some days you may just want to die, and you may wish something to happen so that it will end. And some days, it may be you who contemplates how to take your own life. But you will survive this. I know this is to be true because I'm sitting here today telling you this.

The world is changing for the better. The church not so much but they will come along eventually. But, don't wait for them! You already know you don't need them. Let it be Ok that you don't believe in it. Just go out and do what works for you. Let go of the expectations. Let go of those that want you to be like them. They will accuse you of being selfish but you will soon understand that it is they who are being selfish. Let them go. And when you do this, you will soon find yourself on the path that truly works for you. And you will find friends who accept you for all that you are.

What has happened to us cannot be changed, but the emotions we have from those experiences can be changed. Don't feel ashamed of that. It's OK. We will figure this out. As I impart my adult knowledge onto you, you can revisit those awful moments in the past with new understanding, and change that belief you created about yourself at the time. That new belief will come forward to the present and empower us on this journey.

I love you little [Gay Dot]. Be well.

The Missionaries Are Coming

Formspring Question:   "what do you do when you see missionaries coming?" 

This is a good question, and quite frankly, I'm not sure the best way to answer this.  The reason being is that I live in a region of the country that doesn't have any missionaries, so I don't get to see them coming in the first place.  The last time I had missionaries in my home was in 2006, when I was still trying to be a good Mormon. But they weren't even working in the boundaries of their own mission.

I live on the edge of the Pennsylvania, Philadelphia Mission.  Physically, that's only five miles from the border of the Virginia, Richmond Mission.  The missionaries that visited me were from the Virginia mission and had been working this area by special permission from the Philly mission.  Not sure why, it was just one of those things.  But when that stint was over, they never returned to my little town.  Sure, the Philly mission then put some Elders in my ward which was 40 miles away in another city, but they never ventured outside of that other city.

Incidentally, it was interesting to see all of the "letter of the law" church members throw up their arms in disgust that these missionaries were not following mission rules because they left the boundaries of their mission. Whatever, some Mormons seem to think they know better than the missionaries or even the mission president for that matter.  There is sort of mistrust they have with them.  I know I felt it when I was a missionary in New Zealand, especially amongst the American Mormons who were visiting or living in the country.

But, I digress.

So to answer the question, at this point, I can only speculate while looking back this last summer when I "stumbled" across a pair of Elders while visiting the big city.  In that case, the only thing I did was take their picture.  But I consider that to be a situation where I was the one who the missionaries saw coming.  They were already there and I walked into the area.  That's not going to give me any reason to engage them at all.

The thing with all of this is that I really have nothing to say to them.  I honestly don't think there is any sort of conversation I could have that would be meaningful to them or me.  I've let the idea of religion go and the whole concept of god, priesthood, Jesus and church and stuff really has no meaning to me.  In fact, the way I look at the world differs so greatly that I find I end up talking past people regarding the way I view and experience spirituality.

And besides that, missionaries only have a single duty and that is to find people to teach.  People who want to learn about the church.  I don't fall into that category.  I could care less and I'm even less interested spending time on a conversation that would bore the ever living crap out of me.  But I'm not going to say that I would outright avoid them either.  After all, they are just a bunch of cute young men doing what they think is right.  You can't blame them for that, can you? 

Anyway, I've rambled on long enough.  I really should try to answer this person's question in a more meaningful way as in, what I would do, or how would I interact with them...if I absolutely had to.   In that case, I'm going to need to ponder on the possible scenarios if they came knocking at my door.
They are as follows:

1. What I could do.
2. What I'll probably end up doing.
3. What I really wish would happen.

1. What I could do is ask them their names, where there from, how long they've been out, offer them a drink (of water) and then flirt.  Depending on my mood, the flirting might range anywhere from friendly banter to overt sexual passes.  Of course, I will probably end up crossing the line into creepiness and won't realize it, especially when I ask them if I can take their picture.  Either way, my intention would be to distract them as much as possible.   I was very distracted and distractible when I was a missionary, and during those moments of distraction, I sometimes found myself amused when it stressed the hell out of my companion.

2. What I'll probably end up doing is being very polite, not really say anything other than to tell them that I'm a Gay, Ex-Mormon, Atheist, Liberal, and let them continue so I don't waste their or my time.  But if they persist, and some do, I'll resort to flirting.  In either case, I'll be trying to take their picture, which might require flirting anyway, or at least a little flattery, which is almost the same thing.  I guess scenarios 1 and 2 don't seem to be all that much different in the end except for the part about them finding out I'm a Liberal.

3. What I really wish would happen is that they would come knocking while I have half a dozen boyfriends over for a heavy, gay, BDSM fetish, play party.  And without batting an eye, I would nonchalantly invite them in as if they were expected.  How would I know if they weren't the friends of a friend, probably the naked one over in the corner, bound to a St. Andrews Cross and being flogged?  Who knows?  He did say he had two friends coming over, right?   And if they did want to talk about spiritual experiences, perhaps I could demonstrate how a bondage table, sleepsack and carefully placed electrical probes could be used to induce them. 

Yeah, I think I just lost a few followers to my blog right there.

Anyway, the looks on their faces would be...priceless.  

And, there would most definitely be a camera ready to take their picture.

Gender Doesn't Make the Man

Craig posted a video. (embedded below) Please watch.





I could only express such things in limited ways to only my closest friends and family.  But the way I would express them could only be described as petulant and detached. I wanted it understood that I didn't like the way things where but I didn't want people to think I was that passionate about it. 

But secretly, I was very passionate, and very much troubled by the ridiculous and meaningless social rules that pitted me against my feelings. Of all the things I hated most about the world, it was the notion that our gender would dictate a right and wrong way to think, behave or just simply be.

I was one of those little queer kids who wanted to dress up in my mom's jewelry and her 6-inch pumps.  When I was 5 years old, my first Halloween costume was that of a witch, with black flowing robes and the pointy hat.  At that age I didn't make any distinctions between what the boys were suppose to be and the girls were suppose to be.  I like what I liked, whether it was long frilly skirts, the Easy-Bake oven, or Lincoln Logs and Matchbox cars.  I liked it all and I wanted it all.  And up until a certain point, I was allowed to have it all, although, it was never to the extent that the lucky little boy, Dyson Kilodavis of Seattle has had.

Over time, as I got older, I started to notice that there were these set roles.  Strict categories labeled "good" and "bad" depending on the gender of the individual to which those roles were being played out.  And when I weighed these new rules to my own desires and actions, I started to feel like I was deeply flawed, terrible and a bad person.  But, for some reason, I've been able to keep myself somewhat resolved in not totally internalizing that negativity towards myself.  Even during that extreme but brief period in Jr, High and High School, I was able to resist taking on that self-loathing completely.   But then, during that time, I think I had forgotten what it was I was trying to hide from anyway. 

Well, I'm not going to let what society or religion dictates to me how I should be.  But to be clear, this doesn't mean I'm going to go out and start cross dressing or wearing makeup.  Just because it's something that is usually associated with women doesn't mean that I want it.  Sometimes I think most of what the women do is shit that some men have dictated to them that they should do.  No, I'm only talking strictly about what I want. 

So, what it really comes down to is this: If I like it, I'm doing it.  If some ignorant fool wants to give me shit about it, like the time I wore my knee-high moccasins to a macho, hetero-centrist tourist destination on the east coast, it's not my problem.   Their opinions have no power over me, that is until I'm physically assaulted which is a topic I'm just not ready to deal with.

Face Slapping

To some, my mere existence is a slap in the face of god.  To that I say, HA HA HA HA HAH AHA HA HA HA HA HA HAH AH A!!!!!

*Slap* *Slap* *Slap*

Now, turn the other cheek!

*Slap* *Slap* *Slap*

Ok, now the other cheek!

*Slap* *Slap* *Slap*

keep turning...

*Slap* *Slap* *Slap*

Ok, now that you're done slapping me, can I slap you?   No?

So much for the golden rule, eh? 

National NOT Coming Out Day

Apparently, I'm not as out as I thought I was.  In fact, I'm probably not out at all if being out means I'm going to happily announce on Facebook on "National Coming Out Day" that I'm out, which I'm not going to do.  Besides, if anyone on Facebook actually looks at my profile, he or she will see that my interest is in men and that I have a large mass of LGBT and other sexuality groups that I have "liked".   That's as "out" as I feel like I can do for now. 

I have "friended" many people from work, high school, my mission as well as from other times of my past who I know have not looked at my Facebook profile, and in a way, I'm glad.   I just don't want it to be a big deal.   But, I'm also screaming inside to talk about it.  It's the pains of living alone and isolated.  I just want to talk about it with people I know I can trust, because the rest of them just want to tell me how I need save myself by following Christ, and it's not just the Mormons that do that either.

I had lunch with a co-worker last week, who I also take dressage lessons with, and I mentioned to her my troubles with the "big elephant in the room" and the problems I had living and working out here.  I wanted to talk to her about the incidences I've had with some co-workers and their incredibly insensitive and homophobic rants during some corporate social functions, which HR effectively ignored, and the bullshit, insulting, gay and trans jokes that get tossed around as if LGBT people are just another group of freaks to made fun of.  

I know that simply mentioning that elephant issue made her uncomfortable so I didn't elaborate.  She's one of the many people I know out here that doesn't have a problem with me being gay but at the same time, does.  Still, I give her credit for trying.   But because I didn't say anything, she said that my elephant problem was mostly in my head.  Granted, I admitted that a large part of it is because of my fears, but I needed to explain to her that I've had it all turn bad enough times that I haven't been able to get past how it puts me on edge all of the time.  And then I gave her an example of a mutual co-worker whose entire family has shut me out of their life because of it.  I've written very briefly in passing about him on other blog posts.

She did admit that this place wasn't the best place for understanding.  That is coming from someone who has lived here for over 20+ years.  You would think that such a place, given its heavily touristy economy, would have a bit more diversity.  But I guess there really isn't any evidence to support that.

So, that feeling where I don't know where I stand with people continues.  Every day I have to find out if some new person that comes along is going to either let me live my life and wish to be part of that or they are going to instead turn around and make it needlessly difficult.  Already I've got a new office mate that is proving to be problematic.  And most of the time my solution is just to stay in the closet and not say anything that would clue anyone in.  And in order to do that I have to keep everyone at a distance, even the people who I have gotten to know and appreciate their friendship such as my dressage instructor and the other people I ride with.  Because, like I mentioned before, when that elephant came up, the friendship ended.  So, I keep it all bottled up in side until I'm ready to explode. 

To end a friendship over something as inane as person's innate sexuality is ridiculous.  But it's understandable that it's going to happen when there are people in the world who teach homophobia like Packer, Oaks, Faust, Kimball, Bednar, Ballard, Hafen, Holland, Cook, Monson, Wickman, Clayton, McMullin, Hinckley and many others.  And that's just a sampling of the Mormon leadership.

I've just got to find a way through this.  I don't know what that is going to be right now but there has got to be a way.   This has got to get better, right?  With all of those videos going around the Internets about it getting better, there is got to be a way it's going to get better for me.  So that I will be able to safely make that announcement on Facebook and not give a shit what the outcome is, even if it affects my job.   I want to be able to feel safe when proudly placing that picture on my desk at work of my future Partner/Husband/Boyfriend/Sir/Master/pup/boy or whatever the hell the title(s) will be if that time ever comes, just like every other God Damned privileged heterosexual does.

Demagogic Seeds

This post over at USU SHAFT spawned a random memory from my past.

Back in 1985, I attended a Mormon fireside in one of the North Logan, Utah stakes where some music "expert" talked about how the evil music industry used reel-to-reel recorders for evil and other such nonsense, reasoning that because they had the ability to play the tape backwards, it allowed them to create or manipulate this so called "back-masking".  He used several examples including the infamous Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" to prove his point.  (See videos posted at USU SHAFT)

The Akai GX-4000D,
one of my many tools
I used for Evil.

When he ran the tape backward the first time, I personally
couldn't hear anything in it.  However, before he played it again, he made sure to read to us what it was suppose to say. Then, while he was playing it, he would lip-sink to it to make sure the suggestion registered.  I thought it was a stretch but many in the audience gasped in horror during the demonstration.

I lost a friend that night because I just happened to own a reel-to-reel recorder.  Never mind that the model I had was incapable of reverse playback, it didn't matter, he berated me in front of everyone, then got in his car and left.  He was my next door neighbor.  He had driven me there; he was my only ride home.  I was left to ponder his and the speaker's words with frustrations and shame on that long, cold, dark and lonely walk home.  For a few months after that, he continued his efforts to embarrass and shame me in front of other peers at school and church.  The bridge was burned.  No matter how nice he was to me later in life, I never gave him any more of my time.

Looking back, that whole thing reminds me of something...  ah yes,  Alma 32:28-43, where Alma compares the word to a seed.  Go ahead and read it, I'll wait.  I'm not going to get into a detailed word for word analysis, instead I'm going to simply state my own cynical and biased summary of it which is:  Plant that seed whatever it is, and nourish it with your own misguided beliefs, fears and prejudices, and it will grow into whatever irrational zealotry you want it to be.  And no, I don't care if you believe that that is a gross misinterpretation.  It doesn't really matter.  As scripture, it makes as about as much sense to me as JRR Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings".

But, I digress.

That night at the fireside, the words of a religious demagogue with his fears and prejudices were planted in the mind of my former friend.   The words appealed to his ego so he nourished them until they bore fruit to which he based his faith upon.  The result, conflict where there never was before and would never have been at all.  So, is that a good seed or a bad seed?   It's hard to say because for him it was a sweet fruit, for the rest of us, it was rotten. 

I think too many Mormons are oblivious to the fears and prejudices they use to nourish the word because of how easy it is to get caught up in the fears and prejudices of the people they trust.  It's not hard to see such fruits in the Mormon church when it comes to pretty much anything involving homosexuality.  Fear, fear and more fear.

When I got to college, I was able to escape much of that stupidity, but my fear of rejection had been amplified that night.  Sadly, I still don't have it all out of my system.  I still get paranoid that I'm going to be rejected for something stupid like, for instance, being gay.  I really don't need to go on anymore about what those demagogic lunatics, Mormon or otherwise, have to say about homosexuality. And since I never know what new shit they are going to stir up, I'm constantly playing it safe, especially around the ultra-religious people I have to work with everyday.

Nonetheless, I get the urge to want to poke them a bit to get the rejection over with quicker rather than tip toe around all of the time.  I really get tired of holding back my life to make sure someone else's life remains comfortable.  I'm tired of nourishing myself with my own fears and prejudices just to protect someone else from facing theirs.  I want to move on and put all these people behind me for good.  But, I don't do it.  I don't poke them.  I'm too afraid to be alone.