I was baptized and confirmed when I was eight years old, just like most Mormon kids are. When you’re eight years old, you really aren’t given much of a choice whether this happens or not. What kind of eight-year-old has that kind of freedom and self-knowledge to know what they’re getting into? Being baptized was just something you did if you were Mormon. There was never any question that it would happen, and at that time, it was a happy occasion for me. I was baptized at the Stake Center in the baptismal font by my dad. I had to be dunked twice, since my knee bobbed up out of the water the first time, and Mormon baptism requires full immersion of the body in the water. You aren’t really a Mormon unless every part of your body goes in the water. Being an adult now, with a tiny bit more common sense, this whole thing seems so epically absurd.

Much to my chagrin and against my will entirely, my parents made me go to Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. Again, this is just what was expected of Mormon boys. There is typically a specific track that all Mormon boys, especially in Utah, are expected to follow, and not stray too far from: baptism at eight, Scouting, Eagle Scout, Priesthood, both Aaronic and Melchizedek, Temple, Mission, BYU, Marriage, Kids, Grandkids, Adult Mission, Death. No one often questions this track in life, at least no one I knew growing up; it’s Just What You Did. But oh how I hated Scouts. I hated camping, I hated the outdoors, I hated the sports we were forced to play. I hated tying knots, and most of all, I hated all the mean boys in the ward who made fun of me because I wasn’t into all the typical “boy” stuff. All I wanted to do was stay home, read, play the piano, and do things with the friends I actually liked. But nonetheless, my parents were emphatic about me attending Scouts, no matter how much I protested.

I always knew I was different from other boys. As I said, I never did most of the “boy” things. Sure, I tried to fake it; I went to BYU games with my dad and pretended to have a good time, even though I had no idea what the hell was going on down on the field. I stood up and cheered at the appropriate moments, but never really knew why. I made friends with some of the boys on my street, and Aaron, who was really into sports but also wore his heart on his sleeve like me, soon became my best friend. He convinced me to sign up for Junior Jazz basketball and be on his team. I did. I was miserable. At that age, I was slightly taller than a lot of the other boys and therefore was made the position of Center. Hell if I knew what that meant. All the other boys on my team knew basketball inside and out. I faked it. I had anxiety before every practice and every game. I got yelled at by the coach and the other boys a lot, because despite practices, I still had no idea what I was doing. No one ever passed me the ball. I just kind of stood there most of the time during the games, moving my feet and holding my hands up over the kid I was supposed to guard. In the two (yes two, I’m apparently an idiot and told my folks I loved basketball) seasons I played, I was passed the ball one time, and got one ball in the basket.

I did well in school in those days. School came easy to me. It was something that I felt comfortable doing. I was a model student, did my work quietly and efficiently, and always handed it in on time. During recess, I spent my time mostly with girls. I felt more comfortable doing the things girls did at that age; hopscotch, jump rope, playing on the monkey bars. I didn’t want to play football or anything else like that during recess. As far back as probably third or fourth grade, the boys started calling me gay, even though none of them had any idea what the word meant; all they knew was it was an insult and would make a person feel bad. By the sixth grade, the insults had ramped up so bad, and rumors were flying around about me playing “sex” with other boys (which I had done with a couple other curious boys my age, but who DIDN’T do that?), and they knew I was a fag, and for reasons I still can’t fathom, I became affectionately known as “Hitler”. Day after day, the boys (and even some of the girls) in my class would give me “dead arm” which was when the boy used his knuckle and punched me as hard as he could in the upper arm. My parents never knew about it, but most of the time my upper arms were covered in bruises. I really didn’t know how to fight back. I became more and more withdrawn and it became increasingly difficult for me to go to school.

Let me jump back a bit and talk a little more about my home life.

1988, the year of my baptism, was also a year of many other not-so-pleasant events. Around that time, my parents decided to sell their home, and build their “dream house” in a new subdivision less than a mile away. We would still be in the same ward boundaries, since the area wasn’t hugely populated at that time. Being an architect, my dad designed the house himself. The building process was very stressful on my folks. A lot of late nights, big arguments about the rising cost of the house, all the unexpected errors made by the contractor. There was a lot of tension in the air between my parents during that period; tension that was poised to increase tenfold over the next few years.

Once we got moved into our new home, got settled in and things seemed to return to a bit of normalcy, my mom began getting crippling headaches. I didn’t know this at the time, but my mom’s doctor who had prescribed her Valium, had, after two years, taken her completely off the medication cold turkey. Knowing what I know now about benzodiazepines, having been on them myself for my own panic attacks, this was a very foolish move on her doctor’s part. Benzos, like narcotics, are a class of drugs that shouldn’t be stopped abruptly after taking them every day for a long period of time. The withdrawal symptoms are similar to withdrawals from heroin. But again, around this time, there wasn’t a whole lot known about the nature of Valium or any drug of its type, and there certainly wasn’t much known about the withdrawal from these drugs.

As I said, after my mom was unceremoniously taken off Valium, she began to get migraine-like headaches that would keep her from being able to function like a normal human being. My bedroom was just down the hall from my parents’ and I remember lying awake late at night and hearing her cry from her bedroom because she was in so much pain.

No one knew what to do. My dad certainly didn’t. He began to look stressed and exhausted all the time. He was working 50 hour weeks, cooking, cleaning, grocery shopping, trying to take care of me and my siblings, helping us with our homework and all this on top of trying to be there for my mom. My dad is and always will be my hero. The man has gone through so much heartache and hardship in his lifetime, but remains to this day undauntedly happy and optimistic.

When the headaches didn’t stop, and my mom’s doctor(s) had done every test they could think of with no results, he referred my mom to different specialists. Through hours spent in doctors’ offices, through painful testing, MRI’s, CT scans, and even a spinal tap, the results always came up with nothing. No one could figure out what was wrong with her. During this time, accompanying the headaches, my mom also began getting horrible panic attacks. She would be deathly afraid, shaking, screaming, crying for no apparent reason. She also had more frequent periods of extreme depression. She became more and more bedridden, and was unable to continue the Supermom role. My dad pretty much took over running the household.

As one would expect, my parents’ marriage was under a lot of strain. They fought almost constantly about everything; money being the main thing. My dad was working so hard, and about that time, the housing market took a dive. Because he was self-employed, the money wasn’t coming in nearly as quickly as it was being spent. Thousands of dollars a month were spent on medical bills, which left little money left over for household expenses. My parents unfortunately turned to credit cards to supplement the lack of income. This only made things more stressful for them financially.

I guess to understand the impact all of this had on me, it would be helpful to understand the dynamic of the relationship I had with my mom. I was, am, and forever will be a proud mamma’s boy. My mom and I were always best friends. She understood me in a way no one else ever has or probably ever will. As far back as I can remember, my mom always referred to me as her “kindred spirit”. We had a connection that was almost psychic at times. I always knew when she was in emotional pain, even if I wasn’t home, and she always knew the same about me. During the rare times of calm when the pain was less, and there wasn’t so much anxiety, my mom and I would sit and talk for hours about everything from the weather, to school, to theology, to family, to music…everything. We shared everything with each other. When my mom’s panic was at its peak, and she was cowering in the back of her closet in the dark, and my dad couldn’t figure out what to do to help, I would go in there and she would hold me and sing “You Are My Sunshine” and I could always make her feel better and bring her down from the ledge. These were really scary times for me. As much as I loved being there for my mom, it took a large emotional toll on me. It’s really difficult as a kid to feel like you’re holding all this weight on your shoulders and not really having much of a choice. I couldn’t just abandon my mom.

During those days, I prayed a lot. I studied the Book of Mormon. I looked for some kind of answer to why all this was happening to my family. I don’t think I ever expected an answer, but the emotional weight of everything that was going on, literally forced me to my knees in prayer because I didn’t know what else to do. I was always taught that God only gives people challenges in their life that they are able to handle, but my faith began to waver in the height of everything that was happening. But that didn’t stop me from believing that God would hold me up and make me strong. My grades in school were suffering. I couldn’t concentrate on homework, and my time in class was spent worrying about what was going on at home.

When the anxiety attacks kept getting worse, my mom’s doctor referred her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist, in true form, prescribed a bevy of medications for her. Again, and I can’t stress this enough, not much was known about panic/anxiety/depression disorder, much less about the drugs typically used to treat them, but those drugs were thrown around like candy, and not much attention was paid to the combinations and dosages.

The medications began to take their toll. Her psychiatrist was constantly switching her from this to that to any and every antidepressant/anti-anxiety medication that was available. Zoloft, Depacote, Paxil, Xanax, Valium, Klonopin, and dozens of other things I can’t even remember. My mom never abused her medication; she only took the prescribed doses at the prescribed intervals. Alas, none of these medications worked. The anxiety spiked, the depression increased, and her asthma started raging out of control. Things began to get so bad and so dark. My parents continued yelling and screaming at each other. My little brother would come to my room and sit with me and cry. So many nights we just sat holding each other and crying, listening to the screaming and crying coming from my parents’ room.

During this time, the family, sans Mom, still attended church regularly. My dad held his callings and did everything he was supposed to do. I think church was a big escape for him, which at the time he really needed. Any escape at all. He didn’t know what to do. Anything he said to my mom turned into an argument. He was working later and later, and when he came home, he avoided my mom as much as possible. He had begun to look like an old man. The worry lines on his face were becoming deeper, and his health began to deteriorate. He was exhausted all the time, and by that point, my parents were sleeping in separate rooms; mainly because my mom was so sick, he couldn’t get the sleep he needed.

I want to break here and explain that my parents always deeply loved each other. I don’t know of many marriages that could withstand all the trauma my parents’ did and still remain intact. There were periods of calm interspersed throughout these rocky times. During these moments, my parents got along great. They laughed and talked and genuinely enjoyed each others’ company. My dad just didn’t know how to cope with the stress of my mom’s illness. None of us did. It was like a huge black cloud hanging in the air all the time.

As I grew into adolescence, I realized more and more how different I was. As I began puberty, and should have been noticing girls, I started noticing boys. To be perfectly frank, I never really paid much attention to it. It wasn’t this big epiphany I had like “Oh. My. God. Becky. I. Like. Boys. That. Is. So Wrong.” No, it just kind of was what it was. By the time eighth grade rolled around and I was about fourteen, I understood a lot better what ‘gay’ meant. I realized I had little to no interest in girls, and the time I spent fantasizing during the times I masturbated, I found myself thinking about other guys in my school, wondering what their penises looked like, and how it would feel to touch them and have them touch mine. Again, at the time, it just wasn’t a big deal to me. ‘Gay’ wasn’t something that was talked about a whole lot, at least not in the concrete sense. At fourteen, I really didn’t grasp the actual concept of sex. Sure, I knew what it was, I had gone through the whole birds and bees talk with my folks and I heard kids at school talk about it a lot, but sex as a reality didn’t impact me much. Even though I began masturbating when I was about eleven years old, it never occurred to me that it was bad. Frankly, I had no idea what I was doing, I just knew it felt good to do it. The guilt never really hit me and I got lucky that the whole “do you masturbate” question never was directly asked in my priesthood interviews. Sure, the, “are you morally clean” thing got asked, but for all I knew, that only was referring to having sex with an actual person. I passed the sacrament with no guilt. I studied my scriptures. I believed in everything the Mormon Church taught me. At thirteen, I was made president of the Deacon’s Quorum. My spiritual self seemed to be the only part of me that was wholly intact. I liked going to church. I liked feeling like I was close to Heavenly Father. I think at that point, it was the only thing I felt like I had left to hold onto.

Thinking back, I kind of kick myself for not keeping a journal. I started probably ten of them, but as with a lot of things in my life, I started, but never finished or kept it going. It would be really fascinating for me to go back through and actually read the thoughts I was having at that point in my life. The details and timelines of all this have become a bit blurred. That whole period in my life felt like one ongoing nightmare, so I’m finding it a bit difficult to keep all this stuff in chronological order.

As a complete and utter aside, and because I suffer from a bit of ADD, I want to talk a bit about memory. Memory, all alone in the moonlight. Memory is a funny thing. Every moment of every day as long as we live, our brains are bombarded with sensory stimuli — unless you’re Helen Keller and have been shot up with some weird Amazonian numbing agent, in which case there would be no stimuli, mainly because you’re Helen Keller and you’d already be dead, so it’d be a moot point anyway.

Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, touches. Head, shoulders, knees ‘n’ toes, knees ‘n’ toes, knees ‘n’ toes, head, shoulders, knees ‘n’ toes, eyes, ears, mouth and nose. For the average homo sapien, our brains process and immediately discard most of the external stimuli we are exposed to day in and day out. The big exception to this rule would obviously be the blessed few who have the gift of a photographic memory; although I can’t honestly say whether that would be a blessing or a huge annoyance. I don’t think I’d want to remember a lot of the things I see. For instance, just the other morning, some random homeless man in a wheelchair came rolling over out of nowhere to the smoking area outside the office where I work (keep in mind, I don’t work in a downtown urban-type area. It’s an office park with nothing else really in the immediate vicinity) and began sifting through the ashtray and scouring the ground for cigarette butts that had one or two drags left on them, and stuffing them in his socks. I don’t want to remember things like that. It’s horrifically sad, and quite frankly, more than a little creepy. Of course, thinking about it further, I may want to keep that one in the Files so I have something to talk about at future awkward dinner parties I’m sure I’ll be invited to at Lindsay Lohan’s house when she gets out of rehab.

But, at the end of the day, whether fortunately or unfortunately, I’m not one of these Sainted Mind Photographers myself, so I constantly marvel at the small, minute, seemingly insignificant and wildly random details my brain seems to hold onto for some utterly bizarre reason; things I’m not really exposed to repeatedly in daily life. Why, for instance, do I remember the lyrics to a song I heard only once and hated, but for the life of me, can’t remember the exact color and shade of my mother’s eyes? I saw them nearly every single day of my life for over twenty years, and to this day, I don’t think I could pick them out of an eyeball lineup. Especially if it was one of those high-pressure lineups in the dim room with the one-way glass, where you’re the white trash hooker from Rhode Island named Sheila who was the only witness to a heinous contact lens incident, sitting there with your ratty bleach-blonde hair and dark roots wearing bright magenta lipstick and matching eyeliner you got at the Pick ‘n’ Save that you knew were a bad idea but went real well with the shoes you stole from that bitch that calls herself Couch Cushion who works the 7-11 parking lot one street over and is constantly stealing your Johns because she swallows and you don’t but you know you’re way classier and give better head than she does plus you practice safe sex by doing backdoor because the last thing you want is to get pregnant again so soon. So you’re sitting there in the police station and you’ve got the whole I’m Coming Down From a Ten Day Meth and Heroin Bender twitches and you’re smacking on a flavorless piece of Big Red gum that keeps sticking to the partial dentures your pimp had to pay for because your last John punched you for accidentally using teeth when you were giving him the five-dollar Mississippi Tongue Twister that happened to be the weekly special you were running at the time, and the butch female cop who’s wearing too much Acqua di Gio for Men aftershave and whose breath smells like canned green beans, M&M’s and Camel Menthol cigarettes has her mouth right next to your ear, which is kind of a turnon, even though you’re not really into bumping uglies with another girl again, plus she’s grinding her teeth and threatening to tell your pimp that you’ve been skimming trick money off the top for the past twelve years to pay for your out of control canned cat food addiction if you don’t hurry the fuck up and point out the eyeballs she KNOWS you saw that night, but no matter how hard you try you can’t point them out because there are five sets of disembodied eyeballs staring at you through the glass, and your memory isn’t that great since you tripped over a stray cat in the alley where you sometimes give quickie discount half ‘n’ halfs and hit your head on the edge of the dumpster that your best friend lives in, so Officer Butchie loses her cool and starts hollering and throwing the used Kleenex at you that she keeps handy for the chronic post-nasal drip she developed from snorting too much blow off the toilet seats in the bathroom at the police academy. Or something. So, just like our friend Sheila the Hooker from Rhode Island, I’m not all that great under pressure, especially if I have a butch female police officer with a hardcore coke habit screaming and throwing Kleenex at me.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah. Early adolescence. So, from the time I was maybe eleven or twelve, I had a best friend. His name is Josh. I use him in the present tense because he is still a part of my life. He grew up just four houses away from me, was a year older and we were interested in a lot of the same things. Josh and I spent almost every day together. After school, on the weekends; we even took Josh along on family vacations with us sometimes. He was like a member of the family. By the time I was fourteen, and realizing that I might be *gasp!* gay…I felt like he was the only person in the whole world I trusted enough to tell. I sat him down one Friday evening when he was sleeping over, and told him the things I was feeling. He sat calmly and listened to me and told me he was my friend no matter what. We left it at that. Things didn’t change between us at all; we went along as we always had.

The more I came to terms with being gay, and the more I understood what it meant, the more the guilt started to set in. I attended all the Priesthood Sessions of General Conference with my dad and little brother, and each time, either the prophet or one of the GA’s would bring up how evil it was to be homosexual. I would sit there in abject terror for my soul, knowing this was a part of me that I needed to squash. I needed to stop masturbating and thinking about guys in a sexual way. I needed to pray harder, and study the scriptures more, build my testimony and turn my life around. Above all, I could never, ever tell anyone else.