Finding where do I fit in

While growing up, my parents and siblings have always been there through all my trials and troubles, through all my childhood and youth I was bullied at school, I never had any friends, or someone who cared about me, I remember one time I was walking by myself at school and out of nowhere 4 classmates started to push me and hit my face, and while they were doing that, they started to call me names like pussy, fagg, homo, and yelling at me, to defend myself, and as you figured, I couldn’t, meanwhile I was thinking about the advice my dad gave me, “don’t let anybody hurt you, I give you permission to beat the crap out of them”, but deep inside I didn’t want to hurt anybody, so I never did anything,  my problem too was that I had and I still do SSA, so every time they called me those names I always wondered, “how do they know?, is it that obvious?, do I walk or look different than they do?, how can they see it when I try not to show any kind of feelings towards men?”, my family never knew I had SSA, I never told them, because growing up as an LDS and having an LDS family, that was wrong in so many levels, I always heard the things they said about people with SSA, not with hate but saying things about them that weren’t right, they even told us once how they would never wanted that any of us to be gay, because they didn’t taught us any of those feelings, and they knew and were proud of us because non of us were, so for me even though I was bullied and my family knew all my “problems”, I was never happy, and even though they knew what I was going through, they never knew the whole truth, so I was always down, there fore I lived like this for more than 12 years.

When I was 12 or 13, my dad was called as a bishop, the Friday before the Sunday he was going to be ordained, once again I was bullied, but this time was one of the worst ones, before school was over, I was picking up my stuff from the floor, while I was doing so, one of the popular kids (he was tall and big) asked another kid to push him against me, so he did, I heard what they were going to do, but I didn’t care, it was the same thing every day, I knew they were going to do something to hurt me, as always; when he pushed him, this kid threw himself towards me, throws me on the floor and he landed on my rib cage, and then jumped quite a few times on it with his butt not letting me breathe, while he was doing what he was doing I heard a few snaps coming out of my chest, then the pain was really sharp and awful, and felt that something was poking me while I tried to breathe, I went home not feeling well, but I didn’t say anything to my family, it was so hard to breathe that I wasn’t able to do anything, so I rested for the rest of the day, my mom thought I was down so she gave me space and didn’t asked anything because she knew this was an every day thing, on Saturday I felt a little better.

Sunday arrived, I was a deacon and like every Sunday I prepared the Sacrament room by organizing and putting down all the chairs, we had no benches, I was really excited but really worried about it too, my dad was going to be the Bishop, the “BISHOP” so I thought: “how am I going to tell my bishop (Dad) I have SSA, so while I was organizing the chairs, I kept thinking, “ now people will always be staring at me because now I am the bishop’s son, so I said to myself that I had to be the example, the perfect kid, even though I wasn’t. After organizing the room again my rib cage snapped, and right there I started to freak out, during the meeting I couldn’t breathe, I told my mom, and she told me that I was just anxious because dad was going to be the Bishop, she told me to relax and to take a deep breath, I tried and I couldn’t, I told her I couldn’t breathe, so she took me outside and right there is when I felt my lungs couldn’t take much air, I started to pass out, my mom ran to the sacrament room to get my dad (he just got sustained), and he told the stake President what was going on, so my dad booked it out of the room, and went to see me, I was laying on the floor trying to breathe but still nothing, called the ambulance and it never arrived, so my dad took me inside of his truck and drove as fast as he could to get to the Hospital, I just remember my mom next to me praying and asking Heavenly Father, to give me more time to get to the Hospital, after that, the only thing I remember was opening up my eyes at the hospital with some doctors checking me and then they started asking me questions, and the only thing I was able to mumble was “I can’t breathe”, so after the X rays we realized that I had 3 broken ribs on each side, my parents couldn’t believe that, they asked me what happened, I was really afraid of what they could think about me. My mom couldn’t believe it and started crying, my dad was really angry with the kid and with the school, because they knew my problem and never did anything about it, I got back to school next Monday and everybody started to make fun of me.

During that time, every day I prayed to be the best example, to like girls or pretend so well so my Dad (the Bishop), would never find out I had SSA, neither the members of my Ward or Stake, I prayed so hard and made like a covenant with the Lord that if I accomplish my duty to God’s program and get the reward, I asked him to take away this from me, and prayed to help me overcome this feelings, but nothing ever happened, I was never disappointed on my Heavenly Father, but kept asking him to take them away from me, but every single time I was getting hurt even more, I never knew where to go, who to talk to or what to do.

In school, everyone was mean, in church I had to be perfect, to not embarrass my family, I felt I was never going to be enough for anybody not even to my Heavenly Father, there was too much pressure, I was going to School and I was there from 7 am till 2pm, being by my self with nobody to talk to, being thrown into the garbage, every once in a while, for lunch I asked my brother to eat with me for at least 10 min, so I could talk to someone at school, I promised him that after those 10 min I was going to let him go back to his friends, my brother, he was always nice, he was there for me, then I usually went to the library and asked for a computer so I could get into my Yahoo messenger and see if my mom or dad were there and see if they wanted to talk to me, so my family were my real friends, after school was over for the rest of the day, I was home in my room crying and praying to have at least one friend at school or prayed that Heavenly Father would take me away from this life, cuz having SSA and being a reject was to much, I felt nobody loved me, I got to the point one day pretty much because of the bullying and the SSA to finish my life, I had 3 options, overdose, to hang myself with a rope around my neck, or my dad’s shotgun, so one day when I was home alone, I tried to do it, the three of them, but when I found my Dad’s shotgun, I got really scared so I ran away, and prayed again, and cried until I fell asleep.

I dropped out of High school, and started home schooling, that was a huge relief, but I was already hurt.

Sense I was 8 I always wanted to serve a fulltime mission, as a representative of Jesus Christ, so one day, while I was at home, my determination to serve a mission got stronger, I was in my room thinking about all the things that happened when I was in High School, I was felt anger, hate, misery, loneliness, I prayed to be able to forgive and to let go of the past, after the prayer I still had those feelings, and this thought came to my mind: -Briand if you where able to handle those years in High School you can handle serve the Lord for 2 years, I knew that I was still going to be rejected but it was a different kind of rejection, and I really wanted other people to have what I had (The Gospel), I knew I was prepared for it, I thought 4 years of seminary, being obedient to my priesthood leaders, doing my home teaching ever month, going out with the missionaries, serving 2 mini missions were going to help me to serve a fulltime mission, but what about my SSA?, and thought maybe all that preparation plus serving a mission was the antidote to get raid of my SSA and be normal, so I prepared my papers and send them in, during my interviews with my bishop, he always asked me how I was doing with the law of chastity, I really didn’t want to tell him anything, cuz obviously if I said something about pornography or something related to it, after the interview we were going to go home and then he would ask me about what kind or why, then I was going to be forced to come out and then things were going to get worse, so I always lied because of fear, I didn’t want to tell my dad (Bishop), about how I had attraction towards other men, so when my calling arrived I was really nervous, I was really afraid of going and then do something stupid that I would’ve regret, but I said to myself that if I focus on my mission and in working hard, the Lord was going to take this feelings away, and at the end of my mission I was going to be a “Real Man”, I was really scared of going to the MTC, not because I was going to leave the nest for the first time but for being in the showers with other missionaries, or being in the same room with someone I was going to feel attracted to, the reason I say this I because other returned missionaries, form my ward told me 1) that the showers in the MTC they call them the Tree of Life and I didn’t know what the meant until I saw a picture of them, pretty much is a pipe with like 5 showers attached to it all around it, so pretty much you where able to see everybody’s butt, and I felt like I wasn’t going to be able to shower, 2) that there were missionaries who had SSA and, they way they referred to them was really mean, and that once a missionary came out to his comp in the MTC, I was really afraid of all that.

I was called to serve in the Chile; I wont mention which mission, to avoid any kind of misunderstanding; since the day I was going to be set apart I knew it was going to be hard to be in the mission cuz I was being tempted to fall 3 hours before my stake president was going to lay his hands upon me and set me apart, my sister who came from Canada to be there, asked me to go with her to the hair salon, she wanted a new hair cut, while I was waiting for her at the lobby I had 3 calls from a private number where nobody answered, the only thing I was able to hear was a heavy breathing, after I got a text from a number I didn’t know, where this guy said he knew me and that he knew I had SSA, and in this text he was offering me all kinds of sexual favors, the only thing I needed to do was to show up at the place he was at (this place was 2 blocks away from where I was), I didn’t reply to that text, first of all I was scared of the whole situation, I didn’t want to do anything stupid, or get in touch with a guy that might’ve typed the wrong number and sent that text to me by mistake, short thereafter I got another text where this guy called me by name saying that has seen me in the restrooms and that he knew I wanted that experience, right there is when I started to pray as hard as I could asking heavenly father to let me know who that person was, after I said the prayer, all this memories came back to my mind when I want to the restroom of that mall, and remembered that every time I went there was this guy from a store I once went to order contact lenses, and remembered that he asked me for my cell number to call me when the order arrived to the store, my number was for the store files, and this guy took it out from the files to do all that he was doing, and then I started connecting all those weird call from months before where the same thing happened, where someone called from a private number and the only thing I was able to hear was the heavy breathing, and then hang up, then  after knowing who he was I had to choose if I wanted to do it or not, part of me wanted it, but I made a decision that I was going to serve a mission and decided to return with honor, so I replied to the text saying I know who he was, and that he was wrong with me, I said to him I wasn’t a attracted to men, and that if he kept doing that I was going to sewed him for sexual harassment, and for privacy violation, and he stopped sending me texts.

My sister and I went home, on the way home my sister asked me if I was doing alright, I told her I was just nervous because the hour was getting closer and soon I was going to be the missionary I wanted to be sense I was a little kid, obviously I wasn’t going to say anything to her, she said I was really pail and told me everything was going to be ok, when we got home I just went into my room and prayed to feel better, cuz in my mind I have already sin with having this feelings, short thereafter we all got ready to go meet with the Stake President, I got set apart, and the next day flew all the way down to Chile, before leaving my parents told me how proud they were about me, and for being such a great example for them of diligence, patience, and love, the only thing I could think was “if you would only knew”, I got to the MTC, and everything was fine, I didn’t go to the Provo MTC, I went to the Santiago Chile MTC, that meant no “Tree of Life” (showers), that was a huge relief.