My Journey to Sanity

I grew up in the 1960-1970s South. I attended a Southern Baptist church, with my mom and four sisters (dad was always working on Sundays). Matter of fact, he worked practically every day, but would occasionally go. Our church was moderate: there were no proclamations against rock music, dancing or the such. Just sorta chill, you’ll burn in Hell if you don’t accept Jesus. So, do it. Our preacher had a beautiful cadence to his voice. So, I can see how people can become entranced by it over time. This is where I started to build my house of cards that I’ll call “religious belief.”
I had my first doubts when I was 7 years old. The class teacher told us the story of Pharaoh and Moses. I distinctly remember her recounting the sixth plague and Pharaoh’s response to Moses to GTFO! Then, she said, God hardened Pharaoh’s heart! “WTF!”, my little 7-year-old brain thought, “He said they could go!”. Then, a couple of plagues later, God does it again! The first card collapsed.
More cards in the house became shaky as I hit early puberty, and a harsh and disturbing reality began to set in: I felt an ever-burgeoning attraction to males.
In the Southern Baptist tradition, it’s believed that the age of responsibility is the point where you become a man, accountable for your own life choices. The impact of that is if you die, you will go to Hell and burn forever, if you’re not saved. Being saved is a seemingly simple process: Acknowledging your sinful nature and inability to repair this nature alone. You also profess acceptance of Jesus Christ as your personal savior, because he bought and paid for your sins, by dying on the cross as a sacrifice. Preferably, this is done publicly. As the age of 12 loomed before me, I knew my get-out-of-jail-free card was about to expire and I had to make a critical decision soon. So, not long after that birthday, I talked myself into a public display of commitment to the Baptist notion of “being saved”, by trundling down to the alter to make my profession of faith. Some cards in my house were repaired that night, but the glue was cheap and temporary. Baptism a couple of months later further added to the strength of my house of cards.
As puberty neared its termination around the age of 17, I began to understand that the homosexual feelings I harbored were not going to go away. I became very sullen and depressed. The hopelessness of my future and fear of discovery became my primary states of mind. I cried a lot and I even punched myself out of disgust. My bedroom was in the basement. So, I was isolated from my parents and two remaining sisters, which seemed to compound my sadness and despair. I remember distinctly wanting to die, but I was too scared to do it. I also could not imagine what it would do to my parents, especially my mom. So, I decided the best way would be to erase my existence. I just needed a button to push that would make me disappear. If there were such a button, you would most certainly not be reading this, because I would have body-slammed it, considering my state of mind at the time.
One day, at the lowest point of my teenage years, I stood before the mirror to comb my then-existent hair. As I glanced upwards, I accidentally looked into my reddened eyes, but was momentarily transfixed, filled with disgust and vile hatred. I angrily growled and wept at the same time. Silently, I vowed from that time on I would keep my eyes averted sideward as I looked up to comb my hair, never to look in my repugnant eyes again. Heaven was for good people, not disgusting faggots like me. More cards fell that day, but I did not care.
There was a reprieve, when I started working at Burger King. I was an ungainly and an unexciting bookworm 18-year-old who started to hang around with a couple of straight male co-workers. They were round-robin dating some girls who also worked there, and I (amazingly) joined the group. I was feeling sorta good about that, thinking that hanging around with straight guys would heal me. So, I joined the USAF, thinking that might cure me. It did not.
As I walked into the open showers, my first full day in basic training, I panicked! I remember frantically thinking “This is a mistake, this is a mistake, this is a mistake!”. I had never really seen many naked men and certainly not a group of them. I masturbated every single night while in basic training. I don’t know how I didn’t get caught. More cards fell.
After basic, I went to a technical school in Denver. I had more freedom there, and I was able to contemplate my predicament without the constant pressure and surveillance associated with basic training. I bunked with five guys in a 12 x 12 room. So much sexual tension and frustration! I remember wanting so badly to go to a gay bar, but the USAF always monitored them for service members and would very quickly kick them out with at best a general discharge, at worst a dishonorable one. Either way, your future work career would be ruined. I remember one night being so sexually frustrated that I called the gay hotline, hoping for some resolution. There was no help they could give me. More cards fell.
I arrived at my first duty station in July of 1982: Keflavik, Iceland. Two weeks later, I wrote to my parents and told them I had homosexual feelings, but that me and Jesus Christ were fighting it. I got back letters from mom, my sisters and even my dad supporting me and offering prayers. I told my African American Navy guy that I couldn’t keep doing what we did, and he said “OK”. Every couple of months, he would show up and we’d get it on (he always knew when my resolve was at its weakest, because I never turned him away). More cards fell and my interest in men of color was set in stone.
The rest of my USAF career was spent nominally doing my job and going to the most fundamentalist church I could find. I did have a perilous occurrence while staying with my shop chief in Georgia. He had a room to rent and I needed a place to stay. While at the beach to meet this blind date my sister set me up with, my roommate/shop chief decided to air out my mattress and found a Playgirl magazine and a book about the joy of gay sex. When I returned from the beach, I found a letter on my stripped bed. It said “Don’t worry and we’ll talk later”. After a tense conversation, he assured me he wouldn’t rat me out (even though he was a master sergeant and my boss) and that I should find another place to live. More cards fell.
Six months before I got out of the USAF, I was set up with another girl, a pediatric nurse my sister worked with. She was a beautiful and kind person. If there was such a thing as an angel, it was her. After I got out of the USAF, we continued to date, but there was no spark there, and she knew it. She refused a pre-engagement ring from me at Christmas, but we continued to date (no sex). The following August, she warned me, one night, while on the phone, that the next time we met she would need to have a serious conversation with me. I figured it was either we needed to get more serious or we needed to part ways. I decided then and there I would ramp it up if that’s what she felt we needed, but if she was breaking up with me I’m done. She broke up with me and we cried and hugged. As I drove away that warm August night, I said to myself: “That’s it, I can’t do this anymore. I will be in the gay bar the next time they’re open”. Many cards fell and the whole structure swayed. My next thought: “What will I do with God? I just don’t believe anymore”.
As the cards fluttered down like large, rectangular-shaped flakes of snow, my spirit soared. The weight of a decades-long practice of self-hate, despair and hopelessness winnowed away. I drove home, told my parents I was gay and an atheist, then went to bed a much happier man.
My troubles were not over. There was a tragic failed relationship, who subsequently died of AIDS, substance abuse and addiction, and moments of despair, but I never looked back for answers, only forward. Seven years ago, I met the most wonderful man I could ever meet, and about two years ago I started therapy. Both were the best decisions ever in my later life. One of the exercises I devised while in therapy was to revisit that moment in the bathroom when I was 17. Anytime I feel despair, I see my 17-year-old self in the bathroom, but I’m not staring vacantly in the mirror, I’m on the floor laughing and smiling, swarmed with puppies. They surround me with love and acceptance that is unconditional, as my adult self looks down with compassion assuring me “It gets better”.