Anticipation

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I have been watching the news from Japan this week more carefully than I have any disasters in a long time. The scale of it all and the seemingly unending chain of events are just too large to really comprehend. It is all so very disturbing and words just can’t express how it makes me feel.

The people in Japan have endured unthinkable tragedy, yet we know it is not over. More earthquakes and a possible radiological disaster are on the horizon. I don’t know what is worse, being caught off guard by something horrible, or being trapped with anticipation and left hoping and waiting for the conclusion.

It is my hope that this will all soon come to the best possible end and that the process of stabilization, reflection and renewal will be unhindered.

Communication

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My mother once told me that my grandfather would write a letter if he was upset or irritated with someone.  He would then put that letter in his drawer and hold on to it for a while before sending it to that person.  It was a kind of quarantine/cooling period for the thoughts to make sure they really were what he wanted to say before sending them off.  I’m pretty sure she told me this after having talked her ear off with an angsty childhood rant.

The take-home message from this object lesson was twofold.  First, be positive that what you are communicating is what you really want to say.  Second, be sure you are using the right medium.  The first was obvious, the second came later when I realized that though mothers may love their children very much, they do not deserve to be subjected to hour-long unfocused tirades about teenage injustices with the frequency I dealt them.

In this age of instant communication where words can travel faster than ever before, in quantities greater than anyone could have ever imagined, it can be hard to tell what, when and how things should be shared.  I’ve read some things online recently that should have been shared in a different format, at a different time if they should have even been shared at all.  Reading things like that makes me second guess some of the content I have wanted to share and how I have wanted to share it.  I have the ‘when’ but I’m missing the other two pieces.

There are a lot of things I want to share here for a great many reasons.  Mainly my whole coming out story (yes, I’m agonizing about this again).  I just worry about how it will be received and if it will accomplish anything remotely close to what I am hoping.  Where the risk is great, the potential reward is greater.  My problem is that I tend to be, for better or worse, a pretty risk-averse person and the idea of this blowing up in my face somehow is paralyzing.

I sometimes read other people’s stories and they leave me feeling depressed, angry, sad or dirty.  That outcome is the exact opposite of what I want to achieve here.  There may be some parts of the story which may be sad or frustrating the overall intent is show the journey I made to a positive and unexpected outcome from what seemed to be an impossible situation.  I think that I can pull this off, I just have to buckle down and do it.  It will just be important to listen carefully to feedback regarding the how, what and when of what I’m sharing to make sure I am communicating what I want to.

Oh Hai

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So I very nearly missed an entire month here.  For greater than a month I haven’t shared anything of any real substance about me.  It is a blog after all, therefore it is my place to be totally introspective (read self-absorbed) and let people just read it.  Or not.  Here is what you missed out on…

I watched the new Battlestar Galactica, went out a guy for about five seconds who totally spazzed out and vanished, worked, had time off, worked, had time off, had a cold for half a century, had an epiphany or three, realized twenty-ten is nearly over, slept, worked, had time off, made a handful of new friends, geeked out, subbed my toe, ate food, visited family, didn’t eat food, made up a new fictional creature.

There you have it.  Or not.

Moving Forward

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The very nature of this blog means that the subject may tend toward politics of some form or another from time to time.  My goal with this site, however, is not to proselytize any sort of agenda.  It is give people a window through which they can better know who I am.

The 2010 mid-term elections have ground on for what feels like a century.  I have taken a lot of time to think about how things are currently going in this country and I have come up with a short list of personal beliefs I hold regarding the current state of things.  Here it is:

  • I believe humans are not just fundamentally good, they are capable of brilliant and amazing things.
  • I believe that hope, change, and optimism are not post-peak political fashion: they are important elements of a happy, healthy, and productive life.
  • I believe the current negative political climate, in which many of our newly elected leaders have utilized fear as motivator, will ultimately destroy those same people who have fostered it.
  • I believe that thoughtful discourse–free of over-simplification, manipulative spin, or partisan prose–regarding our problems and potential solutions to those challenges is the only way we can move forward as a nation.
  • I believe the abiding American spirit of creativity, hard work, shrewdness (yes shrewdness), and compassion will ultimately steer our nation into a renewed state of true, sustainable prosperity.
  • I believe this can happen in the lifetime of my generation.

I voted today and exercised my right to choose who and what I think will best guide us toward a better future.   I have set very realistic expectations regarding the immediate future of government and politics, but I still carry the hope that the things I believe in can and will come to pass sooner rather than later.

An Open Letter on Homosexuality and the LDS Faith

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Dear friends and family,

This letter may be difficult to read for my family and friends who are faithful members of the LDS church. I want you to know that I do not condemn or begrudge your membership in the church. I love you all very deeply. At this time, however, I have to make a stand and make hard choices about what is right for me, my life, and my continued happiness.

Five and a half years ago I began to come to terms with my sexual identity.  It started in the moment I finally realized and accepted that, which I had had adamantly denied to myself and the people around me for so long, I was different.  That difference being my sexual orientation.  In that moment, my sense of self, my understanding of where I fit into the LDS faith and the future of my mortal and immortal existence fell under a cloud.  Every iota of what I understood was being challenged at every possible level.

Even as the act of acknowledging what I then called my “same gender attraction” opened the floodgates of uncertainty, fear and doubt I was overcome by a sense of peace and warmth and joy unparalleled by any other spiritual prompting or personal revelation I had yet received.  I was trapped between the emotions of despair as I now found myself on a very isolated road in the spiritual world and excitement at knowing I was not some lone freak of nature without precedent or possible common ground.  The small and pathetic boy who I saw in the mirror and despised was replaced by a man who was capable of so much more than I thought possible and had accomplished so much more than I had been able or willing to admit.

I was beset by an avalanche of overwhelming ideological, spiritual, intellectual, and emotional conflicts.  In typical fashion, I began my research.  I researched dozens of articles in the church’s reference materials and read and re-read every possible passage in the scriptures for any possible hint at what direction I should go.  I found myself left with more questions than answers and the feeling that although I could choose to live life by the rules of the gospel, the aloneness would be too much to bear.  Even more disturbing to me was the fact that this isolation would mean I would be deprived of the opportunity to have a family of my own.    

In the months before I came out, after reading about Heather Armstrong’s struggle with post-partum depression and coming to grips with my own mental health, I had come to appreciate the experience she related of building her family.  Having a family of my own had seemed to be a foreign concept up until that point.  I think this was partially because I was antisocial and I was a bit of a neurotic mess, but mostly because I didn’t grasp the idea of taking a mate from the opposite sex.  By the end of her struggle with PPD, I saw the partnership she had built with the significant person in her life and the excitement and joy that raising a child brought into their lives, in spite of the life-threatening challenges they had to overcome.

I had been keeping a journal and had begun thinking of my distant children one day reading it in the time before I came out.  However, months after coming out and beginning my research of the teachings of the church, I found no way to reconcile my sexual orientation and my desire to have a family.  I wanted a family and I wanted children and this very new goal, this very new concept, this very righteous desire was suddenly dashed against the rocks.

Based on the meager selection of information I could find, I felt that if I had only been stronger I could have willed my homosexuality into non-existence, that if I could have prayed and studied harder, the desires would have been taken away.  I felt that because of this deficiency, both in strength and my very nature, I had destroyed my own children.  As a potential father, I felt I had not been strong enough to fix myself so that I could give them life.  I had deprived them of their opportunity to live and depriving someone of the opportunity to live their life can be argued as murder and I felt, in that dark moment, as though I had killed my babies.

It was the night I had this sickening realization that I first attempted to take my own life.  

After that night, the options I had were distilled down to two very clear choices: I could remain active in the church and be alone until I died or I could seek my own way in the world and have chance to eventually build a family of my own.  I chose the latter.

The comments by President Boyd K. Packer last weekend forced me to re-visit the choice I had to make five years ago as the options became slightly more polarized: I could remain in the church or I could work to build a family of my own.

The decision remains the same and I will be resigning from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This decision has been a very difficult one.  It has been something I have considered over the last two years, but up until now I have always stayed myself from making this choice.  It means that for me to be able to pursue a family of my own, I forsake the principals and ordinances of the church which would keep myself and my family together in the afterlife.  The problem is that it has now been made very clear that the church, as an institution, separate from the individual beliefs of some of its membership, opposes my desire and–what I feel is my right–to have a family of my own.

Sincerely,

Eli