Posted by:
Ryan
(
)
Date: March 28, 2015 02:35PM
I know no one here knows me, sometimes I wonder if I know myself. lol
Quick back story. I'm an almost 30 year old guy who had been struggling for almost a decade with my sexuality. I've come to terms, and become quite happy, with being an openly out gay man. My family joined the LDS church when I was young, we stayed for about a year, then backed out and started going to a pentecostal church.
I later joined the youth group, became close with the youth pastors, but three years later - everything changed. See, I had a friend who was also in this youth group, he was gay. One of the church members saw him walking down the street holding hands with his boyfriend and narked on him to the youth pastors.
Not only did they kick him out of the youth group, but then they gave a public chastising in front of the whole youth group. He was no longer a person, he became a debased object, just short of being called a F**. As you can imagine, it tore me up. It was like I had been hit in the knees with a baseball bat and was brought to my knees.
I became suicidal after that and was contemplating my existence, questioning my entire life. I took a break from organized religion for nearly a decade, I moved out of state and decided to give the LDS church another go. I walked through the doors of my local Ward, I was still on the books and was welcomed with open arms.
I was called as a Ward Missionary and gave up countless hours and devoted my entire life to the church. I had become a new person, found a new existence and peace. Then almost a year later, I met a guy (outside of church, even though I was quite infatuated with several of the missionaries who came and went as you might imagine I came to know them through working close together) and me and this guy started dating. Of course it was kept on the downlow, but it seemed every other Sunday you'd hear in Preisthood about the "Family unit" or taking passive agressive hits at the gay community.
That internal war started all over again. I became less active for a couple months, went back and within 3 weeks found I couldn't bear it anymore and left again. Although not suicidal, I became very depressed and even sat down and talked with the bishop, I never told him I was gay, just kept things as vague as possible.
Then two months later, after having struggled for so long and denying myself my own identity, I said f*** it, and I updated my Facebook orientation to public instead of private. Everything was fine for at least a month thereafter. My whole family at this time knew I was gay, they were happy for me, and glad that I finally took that step. Then I got an e-mail from the bishop requesting a meeting.
Never did it cross my mind that it had anything to do with me being gay, a month had passed and I actually forgot all about it. I stupidly accepted his offer and sat down with him. We talked about how I was doing, he made vague references to me being gay and at that point I had realized that it was the Mission Leader, the only member from the Ward that I had become friends with on Facebook - since I was a Ward Missionary, who had passed it along to the bishop that I was gay. The rest of the meeting was generalization and berating me, in a christ loving way of course. He talked about going to the temple, but instead of it just being about going to the temple like before, it became a conversation about how I couldn't go with the youth because of their privacy and needing to have that accoutability since they would be in a locker room naked. And how when I went with the adults I needed to respect my own privacy as well, in not so many words, don't be looking at the adults junk or bodies either. In just a short few seconds, I was treated like a pedophile and a deviant. Even though none of that ever happened, nor would it have ever happened. Once again, I hit rock bottom and became depressed all over again. If that wasn't enough, in my time off to take care of myself and better myself, I was then informed that he had decided to take away my calling and we "had a lot to talk about."
As weird as it might seem, in the midst of it all, I enjoyed my calling. It was my entire life, I loved meeting and talking to new investigators and having the oppourtunity to sit down with people who had become less active, and if not to get them to come back, to atleast be a friend and listen to their problems and try to help them with anything I could. Because unlike the bishop, I didn't care if they came back as I didn't see them as numbers, I seen them as people who needed help who weren't getting help from the people they should be getting help from and when they got better, if they didn't want to come back, so be it. That's their choice. But because of losing my calling, the way I had been treated, it felt like I had lost everything and had no reason to go back.
I was just a deviant homosexual pedophile who just sat in a pew for three hours, I'm not worth anything to them anymore, just a number to add to membership. So I never went back.
This morning my phone rang and I didn't recognize the number, it was a local number though so I decided to answer it. It turned out to be the Bishop. I haven't talked to this guy in almost 6 months and apparently he decided on a whim to call me on some random Saturday morning.
I regret answering the phone. All it turned out to be was a beratement of who I am, a chance to get in a few more jabs, and a clear understanding that he not only does not understand how to deal with depression, but how to treat people at all. It was the most insensitive conversation I have ever had. He just throws his weight around, throwing in the worst possible words you could ever say to someone to dismiss their depression like it's just a common cold.
Then he had the audacity to ask me if he would see me in church tomorrow. No. This conversation, my depression, everything about this whole f***ing ordeal should tell you why I'm not.
How do I move on? Even through all of this I suffer like it seems all ex-Mormons do. That sense of loss and feeling of wanting to go back. Which personally, as for myself, I don't understand why I feel this way. Not only is the bishop a heartless, insensitive, clueless asshole, but I've noticed over time that some members don't even talk to me anymore. Like this one women, everytime I walked in the room she nearly fell out of her chair with excitement and would give me a hug and act all weird. Then after all this started going down, she just sat there ignoring my existence acting like a stuck up bi***.
Ultimately, after that phone call this morning, as much I hate to admit it, I just sat there on the couch paralyzed with tears rolling down my cheeks. When does this end? How do I move on?