I was born to Mormon parents, who had been born and raised in families that had been Mormon for generations. Mormon religion and culture have permeated nearly everything and everyone I have interacted with for the majority of my life. It has almost certainly had the single greatest external influence on my life and development. For about 25 years, I did my best to live up to what I saw as the Mormon ideal--and was largely successful by most any objective standard. My devotion was apparent and even my private infractions were minimal. I was, in many ways, the stereotype of a Peter Priesthood.
But I never felt entirely comfortable in my own skin. I knew that I was attracted to other guys, for one. That fact will probably be the primary reason anyone will find my blog as I do want to make a foray into the MoHo community; but the truth is there is a great deal more to it than that, and I plan to write about those other things as well. Despite my personal discomfort, I "knew" that the Mormon church beyond any ability to question. Anything that conflicted with that could be nothing but a personal failing--a position that left me struggling with depression for periods of my life.
Five years ago, I finally reached a breaking point and left the Mormon church (as well as all religion and theism) behind. A few months ago, I finally made it bureaucratically official. It has been and continues to be difficult to understand the various influences it has had on me and to determine which are independently valuable and which are cancers that need to be removed and recovered from. But I begin this blog at a time when I feel more optimistic, more confident, more at peace with myself than I have ever felt.
I intend to share here all aspects of this journey (past and present) as honestly as I can, which is something that I will have a difficult time doing. The only exception to this is that in order to feel free to speak candidly about my life, I need to be able to speak candidly about people I have interacted with and I can't do that if they could be identified from what I write. Unfortunately, I think this means that I have to obscure even my own identity. Perhaps this is overly cautious, particularly given the few people who will ever read this, but it's what I feel like I have to do at this point.
I'm not going into this with any sort of a plan, so my topics and stories may seem jumbled, but I will try to keep each post as independent of necessary context as possible. I hope someone will find them valuable, even if that someone is just me.
