237. emblem

Last week was the sixth of my first semester as a graduate library school student, and it feels like I’ve been running a marathon since February. Yes, it’s a trope to gripe about the busyness of academic life, how much reading there always is, and how there’s never enough time to complete project work.

However, for the first time in a long while, I’ve actually felt good. A friend commented recently that it’s been weeks since he’s seen me depressed.

“I haven’t had time!” I said, which is true. Between school and Sunday Assembly, I haven’t had the bandwidth to think about much of anything else.

Another part is that I actually enjoy what I’m doing right now. Both of my classes are delightful, even in their moments of tedium and pell-mell insanity. My cohort is made up of people who are passionate about what they want to do and can’t wait to be librarians themselves. For the first time, I’m on an actual path towards a career that I can see myself in (and loving) long term. Turns out, librarianship is an ideal fit for my seemingly disparate skills and interests.

The downside of all this busyness is that I haven’t had much time to write or blog, as evidenced by the gaps between this and my last post. It’s certainly not for lack of things to write about. I mentioned this a few days ago to my therapist, that this has been frustrating because I process most effectively through writing. My headspace is often a hurricane of thoughts and emotions, too chaotic and busy a place for reflection or making breakthroughs.

In some of our recent sessions, I’ve brought up the fact that right now I hate my body. I’ll write more about this next time, but it’s something I remember feeling from an early age. I’ve always disliked being naked or unclothed in public as a child, even with my family, and even in warm weather. The curious thing is that (particularly in the summer) my dad would go shirtless, as would most of the guys I was around. But even as a child, I already had a sense of Otherness about myself. And when one is acutely aware of that, they are also often hyper aware of the boundaries between themselves and other people.

Some of it was the intense and pervasive fear of being judged, or people noticing imperfections with my body. I was pretty scrawny growing up, and being a late bloomer when other boys were filling out didn’t help matters. I hated everything about my body, because it didn’t meet the exacting standards I assumed were expected of me.

This is something I’ve theorized is at the root of my sense of dissociation, both from myself and from other people, and why I tend to be more of a loner. I’ve written here about my tendency to keep other people at a safe distance from me. Of course, this is in keeping with my upbringing in a religious fundamentalist community, where we were encouraged to “search our souls” and confess any and all sin that might be lurking in our hearts. In hindsight, it’s not that different from Scientology, except that instead of disembodied parasitic Thetans, we believed in sin.

A few months ago, I quoted Lawrence Heller: “When people experience trauma, they feel bad; children, in particular, think they are bad when they feel bad. Chronic bottom-up dysregulation and distress lead to negative identifications, beliefs, and judgments about ourselves.”

Virtually everything about fundamentalist Christianity teaches that, because of the sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, all human beings are broken, flawed, and sinful. This is why we need the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, to metaphysically purify us of those sins. For most people in that community, this belief fills them with a sense of awe and gratefulness. However, for many of us, an unintended consequence of growing up with that worldview was that we came to believe that we are broken, flawed, disgusting, unlovable, undesirable, etc. Many Bible verses even reinforce this notion:

“For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.” (Galatians 5:17)

This was a real brain teaser when I realized that I’m gay, but even beyond that, the predominant feeling I was left with from my theological upbringing was that anything I felt or wanted was fundamentally wrong—which meant that I was wrong. So I retreated to an inner world of books and writing, and developing characters and personas that I knew were “acceptable,” keeping everyone away lest they figured out what a horrible person I was.

As a teenager, my mom would sometimes say to me, “If people knew how you really are, they wouldn’t like you.” (In context, I was a pretty angry teenager, which makes sense in hindsight considering that Christianity had made me a self-loathing closet case.)

The hardest thing the last couple of years has been learning to be with people as myself. Realizations along the way have helped bring the “real me” into sharper focus, like figuring out that librarianship best describes my orientation to the world. But shaking the sense that I need to run away from people or pretend to be who I think will be accepted is quite difficult.

So it’s always a shock whenever people genuinely seem to like me. Last week, I walked into class and everyone exclaimed, “David’s here!” My housemates Matt and Jason have truly become the family I always wanted. Ditto the people at my yoga studio, and at Sunday Assembly. It’s an unfamiliar feeling, and an uncomfortable once because there’s still that voice in my head warning me that I could fuck up at any time and be cast out.

Not a terribly healthy/helpful voice.

But one fence at a time.

236. alight

I had something of a breakthrough yesterday and am trying today to hold on to this sense of clarity.

Yesterday, I started listening to an NPR podcast called Invisibilia.

“Launching in January 2015, Invisibilia (Latin for “all the invisible things”) explores the intangible forces that shape human behavior – things like ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions.”

The premier episode is titled “The Secret History of Thoughts.” It focused on disturbing thoughts and how we deal with them via the stories of two individuals who’ve had profound experiences in this area.

I was recently told by a friend that he occasionally has thoughts of harming or murdering people, especially those who have behaved ruthlessly or selfishly. He said that most people have these flashes of violent intention, itself an artifact of our evolutionary past that follows us around like cans tied to the rear of a car with a “Just Married” sign in the window.

During adolescence, my sister’s therapist would describe me as a “toxic volcano.” For various reasons, around age 13 or 14, I went from being a quiet and bookish boy to an angry and turbulent young man. In hindsight, my emerging sexuality and how it brought me into direct conflict with my religion was at the root of much of that. In evangelical Christianity, however, we weren’t encouraged to think much about mental health.

In late spring of 2008, I began experiencing suicidal thoughts. I’d just moved from my first apartment and was driving all of my belongings in my SUV to my new place. I was feeling alone and more than a little sorry for myself. As I pulled up to an intersection of a busy highway, I had the thought of just pulling forward into the path of an oncoming truck. The thought came out of nowhere, and it was frightening how calm and rational the thought sounded.

In the years that followed, even up to today, I’d have these random suicidal thoughts pop up. I’ll be working in the kitchen with a knife and think about slitting my wrists. If I turn on the garbage disposal, I’m afraid I’ll somehow lose control and stick my hand in. (Frankly, I blame M. Night Shyamalan’s dreadful 2008 film The Happening for that deep dark fear.) If I’m up high, say in an office building, I’ll think about falling—not so much considering it, but more what if I did.

Thankfully, I don’t dwell on these thoughts much. Perhaps because I spend so much time in my head, and because of my early interest in psychology, I learned to interact with these thoughts and deconstruct them.

In her 2013 Ted Talk, Eleanor Longden describes her journey with schizophrenia, saying that eventually she learned “to separate out a metaphorical meaning from what I’d previously interpreted to be a literal truth.”

“What I would ultimately realize was that each voice was closely related to aspects of myself, and that each of them carried overwhelming emotions that I’d never had an opportunity to process or resolve, memories of sexual trauma and abuse, of anger, shame, guilt, low self-worth. The voices took the place of this pain and gave words to it, and possibly one of the greatest revelations was when I realized that the most hostile and aggressive voices actually represented the parts of me that had been hurt most profoundly, and as such, it was these voices that needed to be shown the greatest compassion and care.”

While I’ve never heard voices, many thoughts I’ve experienced have seemed to have a mind of their own. I’d obsess over wrongs, worry over finding a job, whether or not my music or writing was good enough, personal failures (real or imagined), how I don’t meet the subjective—and arguably fickle—physical standards established by a seemingly monolithic gay community in order to be “desirable.”

Which bring me to the breakthrough I had last night.

Part of the Invisibilia episode on thoughts focused on Martin Pistorius, who contracted Cryptococcal meningitis around age 12 and spent thirteen years literally trapped in his body.

To cope with the sense of isolation and powerlessness, he says he learned to detach from his thoughts, almost engaging with them as another person in his mind. Eventually, he did regain some motor control, and now communicates much like Stephen Hawking.

And, at age 33, he got married.

This led to reflecting on my darkest thought: that I’m going to be single and alone for the rest of my life. I broke up with my last boyfriend in March of 2013, and been on one date since—and not for lack of trying or looking. Frankly, I’ve found gay guys in Minnesota wholly uninteresting. And if they are interesting, they’re taken or uninterested in me.

(My current fantasy is that I’ll somehow land a British guy, leave the United States and find a job as a librarian in England or Ireland somewhere, like the Bodleian or Trinity.)

So being surrounded by people who are dating, married, building lives together, talking about kids and vacations and so on triggers the thoughts and fears of being alone, that I’m unlovable, that I’m incompatible with everyone, that there’s something fundamentally broken about me, that I’m always going to be alone.

Thing is, I know that being in a relationship won’t complete me or solve any problems. The current theory is that, because I was taught growing up that gay people don’t have relationships and that it’s a lonely “lifestyle,” my fixation on finding a boyfriend/husband is based in the fear that they were right.

But hearing Martin’s story and how he managed to detach himself from thoughts that would’ve dragged him down into despair highlighted for me that reality that I can do the same with mine, that I can detach and deconstruct my own.

I had the thought last night that, if Martin found a wife at age 33 while confined to a wheelchair and communicating via computer, maybe it’s not impossible for me.

I don’t really believe it yet, but it’s a step.

235. astir

I found out about a week and a half ago that my uncle died.

Out of respect for my family, let’s call him Nick.

Nick is my mom’s younger (and only) brother. It wouldn’t be accurate to say that his death was a surprise to any of us, including my mom. When my parents were last out in California, he’d gone missing. Again. This wasn’t the first time he’d disappeared or dropped off the radar for a while. Unfortunately, my uncle led something of a troubled life. That’s not how I’d like to remember him, but it’s how I do remember him.

Growing up, Uncle Nick was something of a byword in my family’s home. That may not be how my parents intended for us to hear it, but the ongoing saga of his life was basically presented to my sisters and me as a cautionary tale.

There but for the grace of God go any of us…

And that’s not to say that my parents weren’t constantly worried about him. Uncle Nick was an alcoholic, a drug user, and a host of other things, so he was in our prayers a lot. The main story that I remember was when he ended up going through the window of the Porsche that hit him after he got out of a taxi on the wrong side of the street while drunk and/or high one night. That trip landed him in the hospital, and also in a heap of trouble.

There was a time when he was going to church and seemed to be turning his life around, but apparently that didn’t last very long. The last my parents heard when they were in California last year was that he was living with some woman, and probably using drugs and alcohol again. It got to the point where they were calling county jails and even morgues to see if he’d turned up.

So when my mom got a call from a number she didn’t recognize about a week and a half ago, she called back and was asked by the woman who answered the phone who the name of the deceased was after identifying herself as calling from the coroner’s office.

This is the story from my mom, as we know it:

Apparently he had been drinking on January 1st, fell and broke his hand. Someone found him on January 2nd, face down (not sure if it was in the street or on the sidewalk), and sleeping. It had been below freezing, and he was just in street clothes—no blanket or sleeping bag. He was able to squeeze the paramedic’s hand when they asked him if he could hear them, but he couldn’t speak. When they moved him he became unresponsive, and died about an hour after he got to the hospital—10:12 am, January 2nd.

It was weird talking to my mom about this, mainly because it felt like talking to someone else about their family member dying. I mentioned this to my therapist in my last session: that as I get further along in identity building and more secure in a sense of authentic self, the less connected I feel to my biological family. And I feel bad about not feeling bad about this. While we share memories, and even a warped sense of humor, since reconnecting with them in the spring of 2013, I’ve struggled to find a sense of belonging with them.

Sadly, it probably comes down to my lack of religious belief. Some may think that a minor thing, but evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity is at the core of my parents’ and sisters’ identities. It’s not for me, and it probably never was.

This discussion led to something else in my last therapy session.

For a while, I’ve been trying to put a finger on why my being single bothers me so much. And as my therapist and I hashed out my feelings about my uncle dying, I hit on this:

I don’t really have any long-term relationships of any kind.

I’m still in touch with a handful of people from college and even from the church I grew up in, but these are largely online friendships. I don’t actually see most of these people anymore.

What bothers me is that for the last 10-15 years, I’ve been watching the people around my put down roots and grow in their relationships and marriages. I know very few people now who are single. But it’s not really just that that bothers me.

It’s the fact that I’m less than a month away from turning 32, and I don’t have any kind of long-term or enduring relationships in my life—including friendships. Some of that can be attributed to changing priorities and life circumstances. Some friends moved away. Others got married and had kids. Neither parties made much effort to keep up the friendship, though it’s probably more accurate to say that many friends gave up trying to make a friendship work with me.

It doesn’t feel great to admit that, but I’ve a sense that it’s true.

So the business of me griping about feeling old, and how now that I’m over 30 no guys are going to want me is less about age. It’s about realizing how old I am and how little I have in the way of relationships compared to others around me.

My housemate Matt is in almost constant contact with his parents and sister who have become like a second family to me. So many friends of mine spend holidays with their families. Their families love their significant others, and vice versa. Et al.

The image that came to mind the other day was of being on a raft, sailing down a river, and passing friends who’ve made homes along the shore.

My fear is that I’ll keep on drifting, sailing on and on without making real connections; that I’ll end up like my uncle, alone, having burned his bridges behind him.

Let’s sponge away the writing on that possible future.

233. happenstance

Quick disclaimer: this post will deal with my sex life in unsexy and entirely untitillating language. Because my relationship with sex these days is… well, complicated.

I haven’t had many relationships that could be described as healthy. Beginning with my family (our first relationship lab, as it were), through my tumultuous teenage years, up to present-day, my life has been a decades-long exercise in keeping people closest to me at a safe and comfortable distance.

Clearing my orbital neighborhood, so to speak.

There was also the culture of shame endemic in the evangelical Christian community. Religious fundamentalists in general are adept at wearing masks to hide their true faces from each other for fear of judgment, shaming, and reprisal. In my community, it was often done with a smile. under the guise of “prayerful” good intentions; and in my family, Bible verses were often used as reminders of how we weren’t living up to the Bible’s standard for Christian living.

Not only did our parents disapprove of us—God also disapproved.

Consequently, as I wrote about in a recent blog entry, virtually all of my relationships up until now have been based on fear. I learned to fear everyone, regardless of whether there was something there to actually be afraid of.

At the same time, I desperately longed for acceptance, for belonging, and safety. The cognitive dissonance was, and still is, deafening.

This has played itself out in my sexual relationships in a number of highly toxic ways.

For one, I’m ashamed to say that once I became sexually active, I began using sex to try to achieve intimacy. It’s not the sex part that shames me in hindsight as how embarrassingly stereotypical that was. And it never worked. After I broke things off with my first boyfriend (i.e., “Aaron 1.0”), I had quite a few hookups on the way to my second boyfriend (“Aaron 2.0”) as a way of “catching up” to where I figured most gay men my age were—that is, age 26.

Even in those hookups, I was still hoping against hope to find a partner, someone with whom to find mutual belonging. I must have been looking so intently that, even if I had found someone compatible at that point, my expectations for the relationship would’ve doomed it to fail from the start.

Of course, after Seth I went on a sex binge, trying to literally fuck him out of my system. That didn’t work either, and each time the disappointment and the dissatisfaction deepened.

It was a cycle of self-perpetuating and self-propagating shame.

It frustrated me how friends of mine could have so much sex with seemingly no emotional consequences. There’s that line from the chorus of a recent Daft Punk song:

We’re up all night for good fun
We’re up all night to get lucky

“Good fun” was something I was not having.

After I broke up with my most recent boyfriend in March of 2013, every sexual encounter started to leave me more and more depressed. I was thirty years old, and the rest of my life looked to be a series of endless, unsatisfying hookups.

Plus, as I wrote recently, I had defined success for myself as finding a boyfriend and partner, because that was one thing I grew up believing I could never have. So with every disappointing hookup, my parents’ voices in my mind saying that gay men lead sad, lonely lives grew more terrifying.

So I probably put myself in situations where that prophesy was mostly likely to come true.

A foursome I had last fall (which ended with me being a third wheel after one guy went to bed and the other two guys were into each other but not me) left me feeling undesirable and even more out of phase with other gay men than ever.

Meeting the bisexual tree scientist this summer (who I was actually, finally into—until he told me that he’s still in love with his ex-boyfriend and that they were trying to get back together) left me feeling as if there’s a game of musical chairs going on, and everyone else is faster than me.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of impossible expectations and a ton of emotional trauma (yes, some of it self-inflicted) wrapped up in sex besides just getting off with another person.

So much that I can’t enjoy it properly anymore.

For example, a couple weeks ago, a friend introduced me to a guy at a gayming party, texting me before I arrived that he’d found my “future husband.” I shouldn’t have taken it seriously, but before I could stop myself, I started surreptitiously studying this guy, imagining our future together, in Technicolor. We did hook up later that evening, and while he clearly had fun, he also made it clear that he’d just got out of a five-year relationship and wasn’t interested in anything serious.

Just like all of the others, I thought.

So I’m taking a break from sex for now. It’s just too confusing and unhealthy. I’ve been saying that sex is like advanced graduate studies in relationships, and I’m still trying to just finish high school. Frankly, I need to get to the root of this need to base my self worth on external factors, like looks and performance, first.

The tough thing about that is that it’s hard not to resent everyone who is in a relationship, or who is able to enjoy sex without the resulting existential tsunami. Of course, we can’t know what’s really going on in other people’s relationships or in their minds. Maybe everyone else really is just as afraid and insecure, but can simply cope better. However, when your emotional vocabulary is based on fear, it’s difficult not to invent reasons why a relationship is already doomed, or turn an otherwise fun, pleasurable experience into an emotional minefield.

Fear fuels self-belief that I’m broken and damaged became a reason to preemptively sabotage potentially fruitful relationships.

This is why I’m in therapy, folks.

231. nostomania

This’ll be a quick download on Thanksgiving and how things ended up not going with my family.

In short, I told my mom that while I appreciated her invitation, it’s not a good idea for me to spend major holidays with them right now.

But first, a video.

Like many things YouTube, I discovered Sexplanations through the Green brothers’ creative and informative YouTube channel.

“Field of eligibles” was a new term for me, but it put a name to something I’ve been struggling to define for a while. Because while there are a good number of gay men in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area, eligible, as she notes, doesn’t aways translate to desirable.

And we’re not talking about a huge population to choose from here. If statistics are true and only 5% of the U.S. population is predominantly gay, of the 1.86 million males in Twin Cities metro area (the current estimate is that 49.7% of the population here is male), probably around only 93,000 of those are in my field of eligibles.

Then factor in my personal preferences—well-educated, cultured, geeky, secular-minded (ideally, atheist/agnostic), self-reliant, mentally and emotionally stable, physically attractive (to me), and reasonably hirsute (that’s more of a nice-to-have than a must-have), to name a few of the qualities that I look for in potential partners.

Even just using a couple of those filters rules out a huge percentage of the gay men around me.

The reason that I was thinking about this in these terms today is because yesterday found me single yet again at Thanksgiving. It’s been almost two years since I’ve been in a relationship. And I realized the other day while cooking for the Sunday Assembly Thanksgiving that the last time I really cooked for a holiday was when I was with Jay, and that brought up a whole lot of sad memories and feelings.

One of the things I’ve been exploring in therapy lately is why I’m obsessed with being in a relationship. From what I’ve been able to parse out, for most of my life I’ve had all of these external measures of self-worth. Even though I grew up hearing about unconditional love, the kind of love I actually experienced as a child was anything but that. The standards for being an evangelical, fundamentalist Christian were pretty steep. In short, we were expected to live up to the model of Jesus’ life on Earth, although that was only the minimum requirement (the rest I’ll get into another time).

Basically, I was unwittingly trained from a young age to compare myself to others and base my self-worth on how I was or wasn’t up to par. That paradigm transferred over into other areas, too, from basing my self-worth on how good a pianist, to how good a composer, to how good a writer I was, and so on. It was all performance centered.

I attended an evangelical Christian liberal arts college where the saying “ring by spring” was only partly a joke. The expectation was that by the time you’d graduated, you’d have a degree and your opposite-sex life partner. On the drive into campus, there’s a large rock that students would paint in the way of an engagement announcement. Usually it was just the couples’ initials or names, but often it was quite artistic. By the time I graduated, virtually everyone I knew was engaged or married.

Soon, I was often the only (or one of the few) single person at a gathering. In the years before I came out gay, the reason for my singleness was difficult to explain to anyone. Working all the time was a convenient excuse, but even that started to wear thin after a while.

After I came out, finding a long-term boyfriend became even more of a measure of success. Especially for someone like me, it would signal having overcome decades of oppression and religious abuse to deliver the ultimate “fuck you” to an institution that had told me for years that my limited choices were to change my sexual orientation, embrace a lifestyle of total celibacy and be alone for the rest of my life, or burn eternally in the fires of hell.

A real brain teaser.

So all that to say, holidays can be a real downer for me.

The only time I’ve been with a partner for Thanksgiving and Christmas was when I was with Jay. To be honest, I more enjoyed being with his family than I did with him, and they’re the only thing I miss about dating him. Because those times were the first I can really remember feeling welcome and accepted at a family gathering. While I know that my biological family loves me, there’s so much tiptoeing that I’ve had to do around them, always worrying about what not to say or do. That feeling intensified once I became an atheist.

And forget about bringing home a boyfriend or husband to meet them. While I’m sure they’d try to be tolerant and civil, I doubt they’ll ever be truly accepting and welcoming.

Yesterday, I spent Thanksgiving with my housemates’ family. And it was lovely. The only time religion or politics came up was when explaining to Matt’s mom why I wasn’t with my own family. The rest of the time we just enjoyed being with each other. I could be myself. And it was terrific!

While I was the only single person at the table, looking around, I could see myself bringing a boyfriend home to meet those people. Of course, there’s tons of work to ahead before I’ll be capable of dating anyone. Establishing stable friendships is difficult enough. I have to scrape away decades of internalize self-loathing and self-hate, and the fundamental beliefs that I’m not valuable, not worthy, not lovable, that I have to have achieved something or look a certain way for anyone to accept me, let alone think I’m worth dating.

But regardless of how long that takes, I’ve at least found a place to call home.

230. chiaroscuro

“My only defense is the acquisition of vocabulary.”
― Margaret Edson, Wit

From my experience over the last few months, the therapeutic journey is a lot like exploring a TARDIS—the further in, the bigger it seems to get. Each new revelation puts the past in a different light as pieces swim to the surface of my consciousness.

Last week, on recommendation of a friend of mine, I started reading a book by Laurence Heller and Aline Lapierre, Healing Developmental Trauma: How early trauma affects self-regulation, self-image, and the capacity for relationship. Because the more I unpack my childhood and young adult years with my therapist, the more I’m realizing how deeply scaring the experience was.

Everyone’s childhood fucks them up. Parents don’t know what they’re doing, and to a certain degree everyone re-enacts with their own children the very mistakes their parents made with them. Some of it is simple social learning. We are primates, after all. Most parents just do the best they can.

And there are people who have had legitimately horrific and brutally traumatizing experiences. I have never seen anyone murdered before my eyes. Ditto being raped or sexually assaulted. Or suffered a debilitating physical injury.

But spending the majority of my formative years trying to suppress my true identity ingrained unhealthy and pathological behavioral scripts in me. This is what I’m in therapy for.

In the first few pages of the book, there’s a table that describes the various responses to when our core human needs (i.e., connection, attunement, trust, autonomy, love-sexuality) are either not met or outright denied us:

Adaptive Survival Style	Core Difficulties
The Connection Survival Style	Disconnected from physical and emotional self Difficulty relating to others
The Attunement Survival Style	Difficulty knowing what we need Feeling our needs do not deserve to be met
The Trust Survival Style	Feeling we cannot depend on anyone but ourselves Feeling we have to always be in control
The Autonomy Survival Style	Feeling burdened and pressured Difficulty setting limits and saying no directly
The Love-Sexuality Survival Style	Difficulty integrating heart and sexuality Self-esteem based on looks and performance

Read through that list a couple times and see how many of them describe how you relate to other people and to yourself.

This table describes virtually every friendship and romantic relationship I have ever had. I think the next couple of blog entries are going to be unpacking each of those lines and what they have meant for my life, one by one.

What I’ve realized over the past couple of weeks is that the vast majority of my relationships (romantic or otherwise, but especially sexual and romantic relationships) have been based on fear. Fear of rejection, failure, and even success.

Growing up, once I realized that my sexuality fell outside the bounds of what was considered “acceptable” to my community, I couldn’t afford to let anyone get close to me for fear of them finding out my deep, dark secret. So I became exceptionally good at blending in, at becoming who I thought someone expected me to be.

It’s surprising how easy it is to do. And still is.

In essence, my identity growing up was built around what I thought people didn’t want me to be. It was a negative self-image.

The thing is that this identity was bolstered by the Christian theology I was raised with. And one of the core beliefs we had was that pursuing our personal desires was sinful: the phrase often heard in my house was, “dying daily to self.”

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must turn from your selfish ways, take up your cross, and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24)

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. (Romans 6:6)

I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Galatians 2:20)

I memorized these and many other similar Bible verses growing up. Combined with constant exposure to weekly church sermons, Bible study groups, and in general being surrounded by evangelical Christians every day, as I grew up, it gradually became clear what I should want: to be annihilated by Christ. My personality, my very identity, was so deeply warped and perverted by my sin nature that it needed to be wiped clean and rewritten with that of Jesus: the only truly perfect man who ever lived.

That did wonders for my self esteem, as you can imagine.

How this eventually played itself out was that I didn’t believe that I had permission to want anything for myself. I majored in music because, while I enjoyed music, that was what my father and music teachers wanted for me. It never occurred to me to ask what I wanted.

I pretended to be heterosexual for fifteen years because that was what good Christians were supposed to do, though it was suffocating and miserable. I even pretended to be a Christian long after I’d stopped believing because I thought that was how I’d win Seth over.

None of my romantic relationships lasted long as those guys weren’t dating a 100% real person. They were with the David that I thought they wanted to see. And it’s not inaccurate to say that I stayed with my last boyfriend as long as I did because I didn’t think that I deserved better.

So my current project is to learn to get comfortable in my own skin, to listen to my wants and desires, and learn how to communicate them to others when appropriate.

It’ll be by taking small steps and embracing those moments when it feels like I don’t know my lines that an authentic “me” will emerge.

Hopefully.

225. osculate

Funny how I first learned the word “osculate.”

It was in men’s chorus at Northwestern, the conservative Christian college that I attended and graduated from.

And no, not how you think.

Unfortunately.

If the group was particularly well-behaved and productive in rehearsal (which, given a bunch of college-aged adolescent males, wasn’t very often), the director would promise to read from something referred to as (curiously) the “red book.” Essentially, it was a book of advice from the 1940s to young men on various topics… such as, how to woo girls.

As you might imagine, it was about as bad as advice from the same time period written to young brides. There was a chapter in this book on how to “go in” for the first kiss, and how to overcome any objections the young lady might have.

Because, you know, women are virginal and virtuous, and men are coarse animals who can’t help themselves.

There are two things I can recall about this book, the first being the stilted, unwittingly hilarious, horrific language the author used in basically recommending young men force themselves on women. It went something like: “If she backs away, don’t worry—women are naturally hesitant in these areas… If she tries to push you away, don’t worry… if she starts to claw at your face, start to worry.”

I’m paraphrasing, obviously. But not very much.

The second thing I’ll never forget about those days in men’s chorus, at Northwestern, and of all my growing up years was the intense attractions that I felt towards guys—and the equally intense anxiety of being found out and caught.

There’s enough anxiety around one’s affection being discovered and the fear of being exposed and scorned.

However, it’s a real brain teaser for a young gay man (or woman) to know that one’s romantic affection could get one expelled from school and from an entire community.

So, all this to say, I had a breakthrough a little while ago, thanks again to Hank Green’s Crash Course: Psychology.

“Say someone almost drowned as a kid and is now afraid of water. A family picnic at the river may cause that anxiety to bubble up, and to cope they may stay sequestered in the car, less anxious but probably still unhappy while the rest of the family is having fun.”

Earlier today, I went grocery shopping with my friend Matt. On the way in, I stopped to pick up some course-ground coffee for my French press for an upcoming trip (as I’m not a fan of drinking coffee that I can also chew).

One of the baristas was a young man who I’ve seen there before, and who I’m 99.99% sure bats for my team. (Not so sure, however, which position he plays.) I’m never sure if baristas (who I’m reasonably sure are homos) are actually flirting with me, if they’re being polite, or if they’re trying to get a bigger tip. But this guy was definitely laying on the charm in asking me if I’d done anything fun that day.

When guys flirt with me, especially seemingly out of the blue, it launches an internal monologue that goes like this:

Shit, someone is talking to me!
Wait, is he flirting with me?
Is this guy even gay, or is he just one of those overly friendly straight guys? Because I can’t tell anymore!
Quick, what can I deduce about his cultural and educational background? His hair is styled in one of those dumb faux-hawks. Is he a “club” gay? Will he even understand half of the words I use? Should I switch to one-syllable words? Wait, that’s so incredibly elitist and arrogant, making grand assumptions about someone based on their hair style…
And wait, why would he be flirting with me? Guys don’t flirt with me. Yet, he seems to be flirting with me. Oh god, what do I do? Am I supposed to flirt back? What if he’s not flirting with me after all? Will that make me look desperate? Pathetic?
Shit, he’s talking to me… oh, no, he’s still just waiting for me to respond to the thing he said two seconds ago.

Later, I recounted this experience to my friend Matt and he pointed out that there have been plenty of occasions where I’ve spontaneously come up with something witty or clever to say. So why is it so damned difficult for me to respond to flirts?

In other words, why am I basically Liz Lemon?

Enter Hank Green.

“Anxiety disorders are characterized not only by distressing, persistent anxiety but also often by the dysfunctional behaviors that reduce that anxiety.”

It doesn’t take a PsyD to recognize that my current anxiety about guys is directly caused by those closeted growing-up years. In every interaction with a cute guy, I feared that I might inadvertently say or do something to give away the fact that I was wildly attracted to him, i.e., gay.

If you’ve seen the video of the guy getting beaten up by his bigoted family after they learn he is gay, being outed in a predominantly religious community is a legitimate fear, whether of physical violence or being shunned.

For much of my teenage and adult life, I had to tell myself that acting on my attractions to other men, let alone having a boyfriend, was impossible. And though I’ve been out-gay for some time, there’s still that same unresolved anxiety running like a background app on my phone, draining the battery.

While it leaves me lonely, like the girl who survived drowning only to hide in the car when her family goes to the beach, I unconsciously shut down potential romantic or flirtatious interactions to reduce anxiety.

And, just as my depressed moods have a cause, it’s not that I can’t flirt. There’s just unresolved trauma. Phew!

What to do about it now?

That’s one reason why I’m back in therapy.

219. balmy

I’ve decided to work on achieving the next level of my Doctor Who nerd cred that I’ve been meaning to do for some time, especially after the Doctor Who convention in May: the Big Finish audio adventures.

This is an aspect of the series that not a lot of fans know about or get into – especially newer fans of the 2005 reboot who have debates over whether David Tennant or Matt Smith is the best Doctor evaaaah.

Personally, I’m a fan of the Third Doctor, Jon Pertwee. A lot of people aren’t crazy about him. They find him cold, condescending, and even callous. But he’s the scientist Doctor. There is no mystery he can’t solve by using calm logic and deductive reasoning. And when all else fails, there’s always Venusian aikido.

So back to Big Finish.

The British company was founded in 1996, and they started releasing Doctor Who stories in 1999. Basically, they’re audio plays that follow the first eight incarnations of the Doctor and his companions outside of the TV show.

I got into radio plays as a teenager with the Focus on the Family radio theater productions of The Chronicles of Narnia, which I still think are the best adaptations of those stories. Radio is a different medium than television or film. The action takes place in your imagination. It’s so much more engaging, in my opinion.

So yesterday, I downloaded my first Doctor Who story: Zagreus (2003). In short, the Eighth Doctor (Paul McGann) and the TARDIS are exposed to anti-time after an explosion and he is taken over by Zagreus, a creature from an ancient Gallifreyan nursery rhyme. There are quite a few references to Alice in Wonderland, which in several places feels a bit silly. The Third, Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Doctors are pulled into the story and help Eight regain power over himself and defeat Rassilon. Rassilon is one of the founders of the Time Lords who turned out to be something of a psychopath and even a shadow of Josef Mengele after he experimented with Time Lord physiology to give the race its thirteen regenerations.

There was a moment at the very end of the story though that took me by surprise. Leela, the “savage” companion of the Fourth Doctor, made an appearance. I love Leela, partly because she’s one of the strongest female characters in the entire series, and is probably the most capable and independent of all the companions.

Her weapon of choice in her first episodes is the Janis thorn, a plant from Leela’s home world that causes paralysis and death in victims, something the Fourth Doctor finds so disturbing that he forbids her from using it anymore.

She doesn’t hesitate to fight or to kill, and shows no fear of death or dying. In one episode, The Horror of Fang Rock (1977), Leela is temporarily blinded by a flash and asks the Doctor to kill her. “It is the fate of the old and crippled!” she says. In The Image of the Fendahl (1977), she says to the Doctor, “There is a guard. I shall kill him.” He tells her not to, explaining that it’ll disturb K-9 (his robotic dog).

In The Sun Makers (1977), Leela is about to preemptively kill a guard. The Doctor stops her, saying that he hasn’t done her any harm. She replies, “Then I shall kill him before he does!”

At the end of Zagreus, the Doctor has told Charley (Charlotte Pollard) that she can’t come with him into another universe; that it’s too dangerous and that he doesn’t trust that he’s entirely free of Zagreus. She and Leela are sitting outside the TARDIS.

Leela: You are crying, Charlotte Pollard.
Charley: I am not.
Leela: Not on the outside. In my tribe, a witch-woman grieves on behalf of us all. Better that than for an enemy to witness a warrior’s tears.
Charley: I am not crying, all right!
Leela: Then let me cry for you.

It was a moment that really took me by surprise for how moving it was. Leela is a woman of action. She doesn’t hesitate to fight, to kill, to charge into battle. And here, we see that she is also a woman of deep feeling, that she can also allow herself to take on and feel the grief of another person.

That is notion of grieving with and for another person is something that, in the United States at least, is a very foreign idea. We don’t do very well with “negative” emotions as Americans. We try to get through them as quickly and privately as possible. We slap a smiley face on everything to pretend that it’s all okay.

It’s a practice that is also common in many other cultures and parts of the world. When someone is killed in, say, the Middle East, the entire community turns out to mourn. Men and women wail and weep loudly. To our emotionally repressed Western eyes, it’s something that’s distasteful, unseemly, immodest — savage, even.

Community is not something that we do well in the Western world. There’s more a sense of communal living in places like Europe. But we Americans like our space, independence, and freedom. We lock ourselves away in our houses, in cars as we drive to and from those houses. We have offices and cubicles at work that we stake out as “ours.”

“Let me cry for you.”

Grief is an intensely private thing. Rather than let others join with us in experiencing and mourning loss, we shut them out. We gather with close family and friends, but for the most part we cry alone. And we heal alone.

A friend of mine recently lost his grandmother. He got the news that she was dying during one of our recent band practices for Sunday Assembly, and a few days ago she died. We had a discussion that night about community, and how we deal with grief and death as atheists.

I wonder: how would it be if we could cry for each other?

212. cuittle

On Sunday, in the Wall Street Journal online, writer Dave Shiflett penned an opinion piece about the upcoming American Atheists convention in Salt Lake City, Utah — on Thursday, in fact: “Where Atheists Meet to Evangelize: Telling believers they are rubes may not be the best recruitment strategy.”

Frankly, I’m still not sure what to make of it. I don’t know what Mr. Shiflett’s personal religious views are, but his article contains a number of mordant jabs. “… deity-dissing group,” he calls American Atheists at one point.

“… suggesting that the uninitiated are delusional and feeble-minded might not be the wisest way to expand your brand.”

I’m reminded of what Julia Sweeney reports in Letting Go of God, what her mother says in a phone call after Julia is accidentally outed to them: “Everyone knows that there are those few people out there who don’t believe in God, but they keep it quietly to themselves!”

The timing of Shiflett’s article was curious, because on April 11, Kellie Moore wrote a piece in the Washington Post about the growing number of secular communities: “Don’t call it atheist church; secular communities are growing.”

Moore notes that many of the secular groups are geared towards families with young children, and that the children’s activities don’t include “teaching atheism.” In fact, they try to steer clear of any kind of indoctrination.

“Teaching atheism”? What would that even look like??

In my own Evangelical upbringing, a fair amount of time in church was spent teaching us theology and Christian apologetics, the systematic field by which Christians learn how to present a rational basis for the Christian faith and defend it against objections. Everything from having us memorize Bible verses to lessons on Sunday mornings about the Christian life were intended to prepare us to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).

Going between these two articles, it’s interesting to see how religious people superimpose their models of church and community onto atheist assemblies. To paraphrase Queen Victoria: “Whatever do atheists do?” They assume that, like them, our goal is to make more atheists; to break down the deeply held beliefs of Christians with cold, hard, scientific logic and rational arguments.

The popular image of an atheist is based on media figures like Richard Dawkins or Christopher Hitchens, aggressive and vituperative voices bent on destroying any belief that isn’t founded in hard science or reality. We are portrayed as angry, bitter loners without a moral foundation or compass. A recent study covered today in Pacific Standard confirmed that Americans intuitively judge atheists as immoral.

One article on Crosswalk.com claims to expose “Chilling Strategies of Neo-Atheists.” If you’re paying attention, this is how Evangelicals portrayed Communists in the 1950s—godless, immoral atheists mobilized by Stalin to turn the United States just as Communist and atheist as the U.S.S.R.

Nicoll claims that part of the atheista strategy is to target the young and turn them into god-hating, anti-religious clones. (Transference much??) He then quotes philosopher Richard Rorty, who described his dream that students might enter college “as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists” and leave full-fledged atheists.

“… we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

It’s true that some atheists share this view; that religious people are feeble-minded and that religion must be stamped out if humanity is to survive and thrive. Yet what Nicoll accuses us of sounds more like what Evangelicals having done since the inception of Christianity. “Give me the child of seven,” said Francis Xavier, “and I will give you the man.”

This is the distorted view of atheism that we have to contend with, just as many liberal Christians try to distance themselves from their bigoted brethren.

Honestly, how often does the average atheist think about religion? Probably not much. For those of us who follow the news (politics in particular), it’s difficult to ignore the presence of Christofascism, the kind of belief that seems eager to wield a sword to spread and enforce Christianity far and wide.

So were it not for city councils opening meetings with Christian prayers, daring anyone to bring a lawsuit; wedding photographers and bakers making martyrs of themselves in their increasingly bizarre war on marriage equality; and politicians trying to write their religious views about women’s bodies into law… well, most of us wouldn’t think much about religion.

The new Cosmos (with the amazing Neil deGrasse Tyson) is a reminder that there’s more than a lifetime’s worth of amazing things to think about and ponder!

Yesterday, I posted an article with the musing that punishing those who hold (increasingly) unpopular views about marriage equality “seems to run counter to the very message of the LGBT movement, which is that there’s room at the table for all. The real question is whether equality opponents are willing to sit at the same table.”

This is where I’m also at with Evangelical Christians.

The fact is that, until we invent spaceships to whisk us away to other planets, we’re stuck learning to live peaceably together on this one. The atheists I know are willing to reach out, to build a table where there is space enough for everyone, their views and beliefs (however strange). Because right now, outside of academia, we’re rarely invited to join the party. True, we often self-segregate, but mostly, that’s because we’re accustomed to not even being recognized.

We don’t want to necessarily make atheist converts. We don’t want to dash anyone’s hopes and dreams. Rather, we desire a renaissance of critical thinking—and less dogmatism. We want children (and adults) to be free to consider every possible idea and facet of human knowledge, and decide for themselves what they believe instead of being told that they must accept one particular narrative, without question, or burn forever in Hell.

That’s all.

Because it’s about time we started celebrating the wonder of being alive.

207. congnisance

A few weeks ago at the Former Fundamentalists retreat that some friends of mine put together for our group, I made a troubling observation that I’ve been pondering.

The day was made up of a number of talks and workshops put on by members of the group. It was a wonderful way to spend a Saturday, in the company of like-minded people who are engaged in critical thinking and wondering about our world and our universe.

What troubled me though was how many women spoke up during discussion times — not many. Even during our bi-weekly meetings, the majority of the talking is done by the guys.

Gender variance among atheists is certainly male-leaning. Salon published a piece last year titled “5 reasons there aren’t more women in atheism,” citing things like:

“… women are more devout because they have to be. Women’s religiosity is directly related to economic security.”
“… sexism is real and has an effect on women’s participation and leadership within the atheist community.”
“… it’s no exaggeration to say that managing sexism is exhausting, depressing and distracts from work women could be doing as visible spokespeople of fighting for higher and equal pay, or immigration policies that include uneducated women, or ending sexual predation, or advocating for the right to control our own reproduction.”

One place I’ve noticed this tend is Bill Maher’s show, where he’ll sit a woman guest between two guys who will then proceed to talk over or even around her. The woman may be knowledgeable about her subject area but can’t get a word in before someone else starts jabbering.

Our little tribe is a microcosm of an ongoing conversation concerning women in atheism. Because atheism is still largely a boys’ club. It was born out of the male-dominated academies of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and largely retains the same mindset. It raises concerns for me that women are still being socialized to not voice their thoughts and beliefs. And if I’ve learned anything from the LGBT movement, it’s an appreciation for diversity and the uniqueness of others.

Part of it is, I think, the dynamics of male relationships. When a bunch of guys get together, posturing and competition begin almost immediately to establish a hierarchy. We love to spar, whether physically or intellectually, and learn from an early age that if you’re going to make it in any group of guys then you have to prove that you deserve to be there.

This once meant literal life or death for humans on the African plains. Each male had to contribute to the group, whether through hunting or fighting, or the tribe could perish. This is why you’ll see many boys do ridiculously dangerous stunts to impress each other. We’re still running that same evolutionary program.

Men constantly have their masculinity challenged, especially if you don’t fit into a “masculine” stereotype. If you don’t look, talk, and walk like a dude, you’re not a “real man.” Whatever that means. This is perpetuated in Evangelical Christian culture, with the notion that there’s a Divine ideal each sex should live by. If you grew up in that world or are familiar with the books “Wild At Heart” and “The Heart of a Woman,” you’ll know what I’m talking about.

The blog What Women Never Hear had about a post a year ago about ten ways that men and women differ. (It’s full of Evangelical, heteronormative generalizations, but how can a piece written by a heterosexual guy about gender differences not be?)

Girls ease smoothly into family life by anticipating what’s needed and what’s coming. Boys have to be taught to respect others’ interests by honoring their standards and expectations.
Girls unconditionally respect others regardless of sex. Boys respect males much more readily than females. They usually must be taught to respect authority-figure females such as mothers, grannies, and teachers.
Girls can easily respect others before others earn it. Boys tend to challenge others first and then respect them after they earn it.

There are massive generalizations here, along with the pathologizing of males, but there’s truth to be found here — as there is in all generalizations. However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that we live in the shadow of the Industrial Revolution, when gender roles and expectations experienced massive upheaval after people started migrating to cities. We’re still working out the details of mixed gender spaces that resulted from that shift.

For much of human history, the sexes inhabited different spheres—men, the field; women, the home. During the Industrial Revolution, centuries-old community structures dissolved almost overnight. The Victorian “Cult of Domesticity” called for the abolishing of traditional men’s spaces as the Powers That Be willed that men belonged at home with the family, and not in the company of other men. The decline of male friendship coincides with this as men started seeing each other not as brothers but as competitors.

… okay, this is getting too broad for a thousand words, so to bring it back to the former fundie retreat, I don’t think there was an intent to crowd out women in discussions because I don’t think anyone noticed it was happening. We guys tend to assume that if someone wants to say something that they’ll speak up, not knowing how intimidating it can be at times to enter into the discussion circle. There are some strong opinions in our group!

And I do think there is something to the claim that men respect other men more than they do women. This is not so much a criticism or indictment as it is an apparent inheritance of our bioevolutionary past. But so is tribalism, xenophobia, and aggression. Awareness is the first step towards changing any behavior. And part of the reason we all became atheists in the first place is we refused to ignore evidence that required action and change.

We’re (slowly) evolving as a species. These are the growing pains of leaving behind the African plains and graduating to something more than merely human.