An Excerpt from the Past...

I found my old diary while digging through the darkest innermost depths of my attic, looking for junk to sell on eBay. This was a few months ago, but I simply set it to one side after a "Hey! Look! My old diary."

And then Anonymous asked where my journey started.

And while my journey started a long time ago, this one captures a unique period of my life--breaking up with a girl I was going to marry, my first two boyfriends, some "ex-gay" counseling, a few poems--a very mixed bag, to be honest.

I'd forgotten most of the pain. We tend to do that, I suppose, as people. I hardly recognize the confused, angry, depressed boy that wrote these words back in '97 and '98. And while the memories resurface as I decipher the chicken scratch, some of the concepts and thoughts I once held seem as if they could never have gone from my hand to paper.

But it was a part of my journey, one that many others can probably relate to, and one that others may find foreign and dangerous...

This from 8/5/1998:

---

[...] I just want to get this all over with. I'm sick of this dragging out and no one at all aware of this inner turmoil. The struggle to gain my gay identity amidst the religious and family pressures & reasonings. Don't get me wrong--I love my family, I even love God in a very distinct way. I also know they ALL (including God) would not agree w/ what I am thinking and wanting to do. I don't blame them, really, either. But how long can the charade go on? [...]

---

This, a day later:

---

[...] I see what Q_____ goes through. I try to defend him from the jokes and such, but that brings it's own back on me. I know this is exactly how I would be made fun of & ridiculed if they ever discovered. Why shouldn't they feel that way as the very "life style" I desire goes against all they've embraced, all I've embraced, and accepted as truth?

Which is true, I suppose...

And I still desire it. I am worse than Q____ in at least he has spoken forth about the truth about himself, faced up to it. Of course no one knows about G___ because then he'd be kicked out of church again.

But they all still know he's gay.

Oh, for such freedom... [...]

---

And apparently, on 9/6/1998, I agreed to enter "therapy" for my "problem."

---

[...] Had lunch with R.W. today, and we discussed when I would begin counseling with P.C. Tues. night I call him 'cause R.W. wants to "brief" him first. I said that was fine. :(

[...] I'm not sure this is going to "cure" me anyway. How do you cure feelings, emotions, and desires? How does one even ... Futile. Just futile. What if I am, though, by some miracle, cured? After all the years of prayer, all the nights spent in torment, what if the burden finally is lifted? Doubt clouds my mind, but I think that may be the devil.

---

And these are apparently my first thoughts after my first night of counseling with P.C.

---

P.C. strikes me as one who a lot of times neglects the emotional aspect of things and leaps right into "practical application" which can be all well & good at time I suppose.

And what will "therapy" actually do for me? Give me a better understanding of why I have the emotions and desires I do? Help me to cope w/ these thoughts? Make them disappear totally? The last is probably impossible, but P.C. thinks it is possible--I can tell he's never had this "problem."

R.W. suggested my "absent" father, and my desire to have a relationship with him is the root of this evil. And here I thought they always blamed the mother? :) What? A little humor isn't called for here?

If my father thought he was responsible for this it would kill him.[...]

---

One of my darker moments came a few weeks later, in October:

---

I hate them all, with their "eternal peace" and their "blameless before God" stance. They haven't a clue, have they? I asked P.C. if he even had a clue as to what I was going through. His reply: "I don't care. It's still wrong."

I must remember to ask him how he would feel if someone were to ask him to give up women, specifically his wife. Would he get a glimmer perhaps? Is it fair to blame them? I suppose not...

[...] They say this is the time of year for most suicides. I can easily believe that. So easily.

Would the family cope better with me dead, never knowing about the evil their son has within him? Would this be a kinder way to let go, and give up this evil burden?

Looking back at my list of benefits and losses, I do see I foresaw my loneliness coming... how wise of me... doesn't make me feel much better knowing I was wise, yet not wise enough, or strong enough, to find an alternative. I suppose I'm just a wise fool...

---

I survived this dark period, apparently. :D There's much more there, of course, but I thought this conveyed the gist without airing all my dirty laundry on the Internet.

I will share one last item from my journal (for now), a poem I wrote in January of 1999. Not that I think it's "the best poem ever," or anything, but I do think it helps convey a little more of the massive amount of depression I was dealing with under the time.

---

I have poison in my soul
Death is now my companion
I thought this life would find me whole
But I am alone.

I have weariness in my heart
Rhythm has no meaning
I look for someone to keep time in part
But I am alone.

I am despair personified
Happiness is but an illusion
Only the disillusioned are spied to have a glimmer of hope
In not being alone
As I am alone.

I am surrounded by stone
It has encased all but me
Limiting them all, making them clones
So they won't mind being alone
As I am alone.

But what choice have I?
The deception of my "Christian" life?
Or the freedom & despair of the reality of me?
Either way, I am alone.
So very alone.

---

Talk about your seasonal disaffected disorder, right? But when you think your family will abandon you, and the life you had which revolved around the very church which is telling you how evil you are--I had never had a moment which hadn't been church and family centered, in all my years at this point, never once had I felt so adrift, so cut-off from everything I had ever known...

That, my friends, is just an excerpt from the past of Jason Hughes on his journey through life.