Pink Tuesdays

I started giving this book Simon gave to me without Try’s permission - Coming Out of Homosexuality. Its a really good book, lacking in some areas, but nontheless good.

One thing I learnt from the book is to allow myself to grieve. While in my previous blogs here, I noted how negative my casual sex encounters were, the truth while I feel not just guilty, but used everytime, there is a being rush, a high, an excitement each time. And lately, I’ve been reminded of those. More so, my deepest unfulfilled sexual and relational fanstasies now impossible with this lifestyle change. Let me excerpt that part of the book

Grief and Disorientation
Any time we lose something or someone important to us, the loss registers deep within our being. When this loss greatly impacts our life, we grieve. For people coming out of homosexuality the loss can be multifaceted: a network for friends, an identity, possibly a lover, a secure living situation, hopesa of having a romantic of sexual relationship (at least, the kind we prefer). The change is often dramatic and total, and the grief that follows can be devastating.

If you are at the point of making this step or if you have recently left the gay or lesbian lifestyle, you need to give yourself permission to grieve. This can be a critical step in your healing. As Christians, we make a serious mistake when we glibly convey the message “If you have faith in God, he will get you through anything. Just praise the Lord through your trials.”

When others view the lifestyle or relationship you are leaving behind as sinful or negative, they may find it hard to acknowledge your need to mourn. Straight Christians often cannot imaginewhy you enjoyed the homosexual lifestyle in the first place, they assume you are glad to be rid of it. They may not understand at all why an evening at Bible study does not excite you as much as an evening with your lesbian or gay friends.

Please do not let guilt and outside pressure deprive you of your need to mourn those things that you miss. God wants to minister to the hurts and needs you [to] bring [it] before him.

The Christian life and your growing relationship with God will provide times of excitement, joy, comfort and peace. But there will still be tears and loneliness, hours or even days of anxiety or depression. These times need to be accepted and experienced as a normal part of making any major life change.

“After I left the lifestyle,” Bill Hernandez recalls, “I dealt with depression and denail for about two years. On one hand, God was blessing me, teaching me about himself and his Word in amazing ways. Basically, I had peace. But about every six weeks I would get antsy - anxiety and loneliness would build up inside of me and I would get headaches. I missed my love and deep down inside, I would call his name. I would think, Only Grant can help me get over this feeling.”

For the first few months after leaving the lifestyle, Bill made occasional trips across the [San Francisco] bay to visit his ex-lover. “Usually, we’d become sexually involved again. Everytime this happened, I felt devastated and worthless. But I would turn to the Lord with my feelings. He didn’t condemned me. He would forgive me and fill me with new hope.”

Bill recalls, “The more of God’s love I experienced, the more confident I became. Eventually, the trips to my ex-lover stopped altogether. The security and peace I had in Jesus were more real to me than anything homosexual involvement could offer.

Many years back, just a couple of years after we moved to KL, when I was 13-14, I had major fights with my parents on the subject of church. At that time, my SSAs haven’t come to full bloom yet, but I wanted to go to a church where I wouldn’t be “so-and-so’s son” or “that-person’s brother”, but as me.

I still do, actually.

My disillusionment with church revolve mainly around the fact that my family is actively involved in it. My older brothers are active in the music ministry, my father was once the head of cell leaders, and now a deacon, my mother was the superintendant of the children’s church, right under the children’s pastor. And church seemed like a chore, more than anything else.

I tried to get involve. I tried to learn the drums, but instead the music coordinator said, “Hey, your brother is really good at the drums, you are better off learning from him!” Uh huh, when he teaches me (or shows any act of kindness for that matter), cows would fly and astronomers would declare the moon is indeed made out of blue cheese. So I wanted to learn the chords of a song I really like, I still remembered the title, “Church on Fire”. I asked. “Oh, your (other) brother knows the chords, ask him”. I’m better off asking the wall - I’ll get better answers.

Wanted to quit the children’s ministry? “Ask the person who forced you into this, a.k.a. your mom”. Ask her, she’ll ask me to ask the children’s pastor again. It is an endless cycle. My first gay experience, well-planned for weeks, happen mere hours after I taught a children’s church class, two days before my 18th birthday (I told Try it was one day prior, but I remembered wrongly, it was definitely a Sunday, my 18th birthday fell on a Tuesday).

And I can’t turn to church - anyone in church - from the countless youth pastors that held the post to any elder. Why? In my very Asian family, you simply don’t wash dirty linen in public.

I once almost told my ex-pastor from my old town at a youth conference here my struggles. Almost. Couldn’t. That pastor and my parents are very close - we even travel up north a couple of hours drive away from KL just to visit him for Chinese New Year. How could I tell him and have the assurance my parents not knowing?

What’s wrong with my parents knowing? Half a year ago, I was in my deepest pit. I was depressed. I was angry. I was hopeless. And the problem I have had nothing to do with homosexuality, and it is even then not even as close to being as major as that. I talked to my mother, she for the most part ignored me. Then I was alone with my parents in the car, I built up the courage to talk to my parents. Horrible mistake. They demeaned my problem, make it sound as it is completely my fault. They refused to listen to me completely, let me finish speaking.

Then I made a even horrendous mistake - couple of days later, I brought the topic back up. I demanded for an apology and for them to act at least the slightest bit concern. Me, a nineteen-year-old, got spanked (and pretty bad too) by my father. I ran out of my house, my mother found me by the car. Neither of them brought the topic up after giving half-hearted “I’m sorry but I did absolutely nothing wrong”.

The thing is that isn’t the first time that has happen. And it gets worse the more bigger the burden, the more serious the problem. They lack any compasion whatsoever when I have problems they can’t relate, what about this problem I doubt neither of them could ever relate? Its worse when they can counsel near-strangers, give them a shoulder to cry on. Once, a brother and sister, just slightly older than I am, came over for help in their family problems. The way my father counselled them - why couldn’t he put at least 10% of that effort into one of his sons?

A couple of months ago, I was watching Queer Eye for the Straight Guy and my mom joined in. Soon after, she was making disparaging remarks at the homo’s. As if they rolled out of their beds one morning and decided to be gay. So what happens if my parents find out? Would everything from the way I walk to the way I speak would become a target of ridicule?

I could never tell my parents about this problem. And by extension, I could never tell anyone in church about it either.

I still have the urge to tell my (new) youth pastor about my struggle. But I have a greater urge to find a new church. With no family there.

Someone came to my blog with this search request. So to answer: currently, slightly more than two weeks.

Hopefully, eternally.