Journey

I've been AWOL this last month, trying to recover from the high that came after the panel and the video and the equally intense nothingness that came in the weeks afterwards.  I'm sure there's all five or so of you that might check my blog fairly regularly and to you I apologize for my absence.  To the rest of you...suck it up, I'm allowed to take a vacation.  I still have about a million posts I've half written, started and never finished, that I'm planning on finishing soon.  So just keep your pants on.

My dad told me before I started this blog to be careful.  It doesn't take a lot of brain power to go on the internet and complain about stuff.  I hope to inspire and uplift my readers.  Sometimes I'm not sure I can do that, but I will try my best to leave you with something to think about.  I've been thinking about a lot of things lately, most of which feel very heavy and deep.  Many of these things I have thought through many times and I thought them to be resolved within me.  But as a very wise, bearded friend recently shared with me, peace is a journey, not a destination.

This last weekend I went down to St. George, UT with some friends.  Usually when I go hang out down there I spend Sundays watching the Game Show Network in my condo while eating cheese-its and taking advantage of the opportunity to just do nothing.  However, I've been doing a lot of nothing lately, so at the request of my amigos we went to an early morning sacrament service at the nearby Mormon congregation.  I have been somewhat avoiding church lately.  It feels different and it's like I'm the only one who notices.  I could go into some "square peg/round hole" analogy, but it's not that at all.  For so long I was focused on this idea that once I resolved the struggles and issues I had with my sexuality things would go back to the way they were and I would stop feeling so distant from the peace and acceptance I was promised the gospel would bring to my life.  But just like Schrodinger discovered, you can't unknow the cat is dead.  The things I have lived through have shaped me different.  It's not just that I feel like I don't fit in, the truth is I know I don't fit anymore.  

My whole life I've been told that there is a path that is narrow and hard, but it's also the way to eternal happiness.  Now I find that I'm not on the path I thought I was at all.  I go to church and can clearly see that the life that lay in front of me is so different from the one everyone else will travel.  Not just being gay, but everything is different.  The answers they give in Sunday school seem empty for me.  Even messages about families and the temple cut deep into my heart.  It all means something else now.  Words that used to easily bring comfort now just leave a feeling of indifference. I am on the road less traveled by, but I don't recall a diverging fork anywhere.  I don't know if this road has the same destination, and that scares me every day.  Even though I have accepted myself, that doesn't mean I am at peace.

I often forget that my journey is far from over.  The destination, whatever it may be, is miles in the distance.  I may find peace many more times, and just as many times it might be taken from me.  I need to trust that this is not what the next sixty years will feel like.  I need to have faith that there is something to hope for.  I sometimes wonder if my choices are between an empty life and a hollow eternity.  If I choose what makes me happy today, will the promise of eternal joy still be mine?  Each day I get out of bed is a choice to believe there is something more waiting for me in the next sunrise.  I have to believe that, or I don't think I'll have the strength to continue.

~Bridey J.