Thursday, March 5, 2015

The Weight of the World

Why does it feel like I'm being crushed by the omnipresence of a few decisions that will not result in the difference between life and death for anyone involved?


Everyone around me thinks he knows what is best and right for me yet my future is so unclear to me.

Here I sit, car idling in the parking lot of the chapel where I used to attend church as a young, single adult, just a few blocks from the University. I have a class that won't start for an hour and I am so tempted to ditch it altogether because my graduate studies seem like such a colossal waste of time. But if my mother-in-law were to find out she just would not be able to understand why someone would pay so much money and want to miss class . . .  oh go to hell . . . you are not nearly as perfect as you think are.

There's a guy with his shirt off just a few houses down. He's just far enough away that my eyes can't see the details of his figure. Nearly any other guy I used to attend church with here, presented with the parallel situation (exactly the same except for the gender of the person afar) would casually drive by to get a better look without giving it a second thought. Yet here I stay, wondering why something that seems so perfectly natural and inherent in me is so hated, vilified, demonized by those who inhabit this building every Sunday.

Then two more shirtless guys cruise past me on their bicycles, easily within my view.

I am hoping in vain that my former Bishop just happens to be at the chapel right now as he randomly was a couple of weeks ago when I decided to stop here to quietly do school work in my car away from everyone. There are lots of student cars in the parking lot but I don't see his.

I want to talk to him. I want him to listen. I want to warn him to be more cautious when counseling with other men who "struggle with same sex-attraction" (what a load of bull $#!+). If he could only see the pain of the past 4 years he would be much more careful about giving his stamp of approval to such a marriage.

He's a great guy. How could he have known any better? He had never dealt with this, had never been a Bishop before, didn't even have to go to the trouble of looking up the church-sanctioned protocols in this situation. I fed him the same crap that I was being fed at LDS Family Services. It all fit into the plan so well. Surely God would not allow His holiest counseling service into being misled to give desperate young men a false sense of hope.

But he's not here. And it's time to start heading back to school. And I continue to struggle, not quite in silence, but certainly not out in the open, as everyone around me continues life as usual