Dry your eyes mate... you've got to walk away now. It's o-o-over!
So sang Mike Skinner aka The Streets in one my favourite songs of a few years ago.
With an average of two posts a month it would surprise me if anyone ever reads this so having promised a major revelation regarding in my last post regarding the big decision I took the previous day I shall be candid.
In my first post on this blog back in August I alluded to the fact that in certain situations, specifically when I am at church, I have not always been completely honest about who I am. If I'm completely honest despite being well into my thirties I'm still not completely comfortable with who I've realised myself to be. I've effectively been a Christian since I was 17 but I wasn't always a practising one. I left the church for a number of reasons around the start of 2003, I'd been left somewhat disillusioned by several difficult experiences relating more to other members of my family than to me personally although at the time of leaving it was always my intention that to paraphrase William Hartnell one day I would come back.
Not very long afterwards I started to the somewhat difficult process of coming to terms with my sexuality. Part of me that didn't want to admit it had known that I was gay since my mid-teens however I was ashamed. For most of my formative years I was visibly below average height in stature and so I was an easy target for bullies. As a result I became a somewhat reclusive and anti-social individual. Inspite of this I hung on in there. I survived five years at a tough secondary school in Essex and one of the things I learnt from being bullied was that my life would be made even less worth living if anyone thought I was gay. That's the mindset which even now I'm struggling to shake off. Of course the fact I was raised in a time when government education policy meant that there was zero education on homosexuality so it's hardly a surprise that throughout my school years homophobia was rife. So jumping forward to when I was 23 and had taken a break from regular church attendance I finally found myself in a position where I felt I could genuinely ask the question of myself. Gradually I became more self-accepting and I gradually became friends with a few other gay people and in 2007 I even managed to come out to my parents. However around the same time I misjudged a situation with another young gay man. Nothing actually happened but the resulting comment brought to the surface a sense of guilt that I was becoming selfish and losing track of the moral compass by which I'd always tried to live my life. The result was that on July 1st of that year I went back to my old church for the first time in just over four years (except for a one off appearance at a Christmas service in 2005 when I felt the need to go after learning that a friend from the church had died of cancer), having thought it might be difficult most people were actually really welcoming so I went back the following week. It was then that I first met the current minister who had taken over a couple of years previously. From my perspective it seems that we really didn't hit it off on first meeting and sadly the continuing suspicion that he doesn't like me has hung over all my subsequent dealings with him.
My return to the local church was almost a short-lived one as that summer I met someone and fell in love and found myself instead occasionally attending mass with my then boyfriend who was a Catholic. However after a couple of rather intense months that relationship sadly fell apart for reasons which with hindsight I consider to be mostly my own fault and I haven't had any contact with him since early 2008.
I was initially left quite hurt by the break-up and the resulting emotional confusion lead me feeling an immense sense of freedom once it became apparent in the Spring of 2008 that I wasn't going to hear anything more from my ex. The trouble is I took the sense of freedom to something of an extreme. I started to somehow believe of my own accord that I wasn't gay any more and for a few weeks the apparent relief felt great but it was short lived. In May of that year I made what I now consider to be the biggest mistake of my life: I told my minister. The trouble is when I was talking to him I had reached a point of feeling very confused and admittedly I had clearly caught him off guard as he clearly wasn't immediately sure how to deal with me. Unfortunately he effectively pushed me into giving an answer as to whether I still wanted to be "free" or not and again to my great regret I indicated with some hesitancy that my desire was to do as I felt God was leading me. He then advised that I would need to put some distance between myself and other gay people I knew, comparing it to an alcoholic going to a pub. So we prayed together and I went away feeling briefly relieved to have unburdened myself and a week or so later he gave me some Christian literature on the subject, two books and a pamphlet. The pamphlet was basically an outline of the traditional biblical position on homosexuality including many quotes from the old and new testaments, one of the books was more a defense of right wing Christian family values in America so not really relevant to me at all (although I did read it all and wonder slightly that my minister could have examined the content a bit more closely before passing it on to me) and the other was a much more sensitively written book by an American minister who is an ex-gay who is now married with children and leads a prominent international ex-gay ministry. I didn't actually read the second book properly until last year and I did take some comfort from the phrase when talking about dealing with other Christians - "some people just don't get being gay"- I remember instantly thinking of my minister the moment I read that and in a strange way it helped. I'm getting a bit ahead of myself though. For the next 12 months or so following the conversation in 2008 I played along, keeping myself "on the wagon" as I used to put it. I did kind of wish throughout that time that my minister might be just a little bit more supportive but the gulf between us seemed to widen however I have other friends in the church so I let it slide. In the summer of 2009 I started to reach a point where I felt I couldn't ignore the feelings I was having. I didn't really do much to act on them but I reached a point where I was struggling and my church attendance became irregular to the extent that having mostly ignored me for the past 18 months (aside from receiving me back into formal membership of the church in April 2009 after I complained to some friends) my minister offered me the chance to meet with him early in 2010. We talked about several things as at the time I'd just been made redundant and was due to be starting a new job but wasn't entirely sure if it would work out. However when we came to the issue of my sexuality and I admitted that I'd effectively given up the tone of the conversation seemed to instantly darken. I was told that if I went down this road, particularly if I entered into a same sex relationship, then I would never be more than a nominal church member, specifically I would never be allowed to be elected as a deacon again (I had previously served as one during 2001 and 2002, probably one of the youngest members to do so in the history of that church). This is the point where the conversations I am attempting to recall blur a little as similar ground was covered the next time I spoke to my minister a few months later but anyway I believe it was still on the first occasion that he made comparison between my situation and someone having had an affair and also referred to a recent incident in which someone had been effectively prevented from becoming a deacon because guidelines from higher up our particular denomination advise that Freemasonry is incompatible with Christianity, as I'd felt that this particular business had been rather insensitively handled by him I didn't particularly appreciate the reminder. Anyway the bottom line was that I went away from that meeting feeling that I'd been given an ultimatum. Initially I chose to stay and recommit myself to the church but a few weeks later my feelings of anger got the better of me and I stopped going to church for a couple of months. Eventually something compelled me to email my minister, it was quite a rambling email in which I struggled to make my point clear. I had a reply asking me to try and clarify what I wanted to say so I did, the resulting reply asked if I would be happy to meet. What I'd tried to say but somehow hadn't communicated was that I wanted to come back to church but didn't want to be given an ultimatum about being gay. Unfortunately the resulting meeting was extremely embarrassing. I found myself getting increasingly tongue-tied (in the immediate aftermath I convinced myself it had been for the best that I had been prevented from speaking my mind) and so my minister was able to take the moral high ground. Apparently he had never intended to drive me away simply to be honest with me. The stand out quote from this meeting which to this day leaves me fuming is:
I'm not homophobic I just think it's wrong.
Anyway I allowed myself to go back to church. I feel I should re-emphasize I have a lot of long-standing friendships at this church so I've used them as a justification to keep going even when I've found my minister to be stand-offish. At the same time I started to build up certain expectations that despite my inner feelings I was going to be able to get married and have children and over time I built up a fantasy image of a picture perfect future. This gradually became my motivation and yet I was conflicted by opposing feelings. Of course none of my other church friends have any idea about my true sexuality so it was easy to play along with being one of the lads in an environment where being gay is something to be joked about just as it was at school.
There was a brief lapse in the idyll at the start of this year when I got involved in an ill-advised relationship with someone who gave me to understand that they had broken up with their long-term partner. That ended very abruptly in April but quite frankly I was relieved and was soon back to building up my fantasy marriage. Thankfully something has always stopped me from asking out the girl in question otherwise this whole post would be very different!
Fast forward to September, and on Tuesday 13th I'm hit by a massive reality check and feel a sudden compulsion to pray about this whole situation. I'm shocked by the answer that comes back. I get an overwhelming sense that it will be wrong for me to continue as I am in my current church as every time I go there I find myself instantly enveloped by the alternative Richard I want to be rather than accepting who I am plus I cannot in good conscience carry on as part of the church whilst I am so diametrically opposed in views to the current minister. As if to add a sense of confirmation I see a post on the internet about Freemasonry which instantly reminds me of how my old friend was treated. I now know what I need to do. I initially set myself a target to be out of my current church by the end of this year but I seem to have been overtaken by circumstances. Since decision day I have been back to church once and was left so uncomfortable by the experience I only don't think I'll be able to go back again for some considerable time.
This last weekend it's really hit me like a bullet how much I've been avoiding people who could have really helped and actually been there for me when most of the people I've considered friends don't really have a clue what's going on in my life. To those people I can only say how sorry I am but with the added assurance that I am changing my outlook. To quote Treguard the dungeon master:
The only way is onward...there is no turning back.
Music plays quietly as in the distance the voice of Mike Skinner is heard...
you've got to walk away now.
