Falling Into Life: A Gay Exmormon’s Journey

Chapter Seventeen – Just a Little TLC…

As I was losing my religion I met Tom…

While I was trying to find a way forward, I reached out to my few non-Mormon friends who would treat me kindly and with respect. My family was in a panic fearing they’d “lose me”, and to a degree, I wanted to lose them, they were exhausting. It was a gamble every time I spoke with them, who knows what I’d hear next that would hurt me. I’m sure they thought the same thing about me.

I had been following a person while reading on a Mormon recovery site who posted under the profile name of TLC. He was a gay Exmormon who had been married and had somehow extricated himself from this mess. The more I read his posts the more excited I felt because suddenly I had found a compatriot! He *knew* what this was like, he had been through it, and he *survived* it!

I was dead set on finding a way to contact him, I had to. Maybe he could help me feel better? I was experiencing vertigo, and a visceral feeling of freefall, and it wasn’t pleasant. I had difficulty at work; it was terribly challenging to focus on my tasks. My marriage was failing, we were fighting continually, I had started seeing a married man for sex and companionship, and it was just not working. Everything had become so complicated, and unmanageable. I was under tremendous amounts of strain, and had begun working a few other jobs to make ends meet. Our youngest son was about a year old, and that added further strain to the mix.

One day, I noticed that TLC had written an astoundingly heartfelt letter to the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper in response to some negative anti-gay rhetoric being pushed in print. He gave an email address, and so I sent him an email, not letting on how bad my life was. He responded and I cut it off, vacillating between thinking I was straight, and gay, and bisexual. I was in flux, and not willing to admit to even him that I was gay just yet. We laugh about it now, he knew from my response that I was messed up. Oddly, my Evergreen brainwashing had really taken hold, and my sexuality was the last aspect of my personality that I was willing to acknowledge.

I honestly believed that by leaving the church my marriage would improve, even while staying in an affair with another married man. As I approached that collision of leaving my marriage, I got a phone number for TLC, and I waited until I just couldn’t handle it another minute. One day I felt decimated entirely. I couldn’t function it seemed, my breathing was shallow and I was continually on the verge of panic attacks. I was racked with deep anger and resentment. I pulled out that phone number, and I slowly, numbly walked to a quiet telephone room in my workplace, closed the door, turned off the light, and I dialed him.

A man named Tom answered, his voice sounded peppy and kind. He also sounded cute. I asked if it was him, made sure I hadn’t misdialed, and when he identified himself as TLC I fell speechless and began sobbing. It’s all I could do. I slid to the floor against the door and just sat there crying, unable to speak for about fifteen to twenty minutes.

He was saying that it was going to be OK, and hearing his voice gave me hope that somehow it would be. I blubbered right to the end of that call. And I did the very same thing for about five more calls over the next few weeks. I couldn’t believe the state I was in, I felt catatonic at times, numb to influences around me, severed from nature entirely, and I had difficulty feeling any body-soul connection. I felt like a mandarin orange, my outer shell was holding in my rattling soul, if someone were to slightly shake me, they might feel my internal disconnection.

I’m not sure why he kept taking my calls, it’s one of the funniest aspects that we like to reflect on now as he has become of one my closest friends in all the world. If I have a “savior”, a true saving element in my life, he is called Tom. Tom saved my life. When I had offered my deepest despair to a deity, it endlessly mocked me with deafening silence. I sought help from Tom, he became my saving grace. When I called, he actually answered! Our calls slowly improved, I always told him I was “bi”, and he’d chuckle and say “Bi now, gay later!” I enjoyed his effervescent ability to make me feel better, stronger, and valued. His beautiful care of me stunned me.

No one in my entire life had ever heard my truth without chastising me for it.

Tom set the stage for my healing process. He showed me that I would not only be healed, but that I would thrive! He gave me hope when I thought I had none. I began to realize that I didn’t have to take the poison being thrown at me any longer. When someone told me that I was “choosing to be gay”, Tom helped me with the strength to turn that situation around and say back to them, “Tell me when *you* chose to be straight?!” My world was slowly opening like a beautiful flower. As time wore on I began to see that if and when my wife and I separated, it would be OK.

Tom helped me craft my message for my children through his own life experiences. I was deathly afraid of them losing faith in me, or hating me, not that they would, but my panic led me to imagine the worst. I also had expected the worst in my wife. I was sure she, too, might keep me from my kids as most Mormon wives do in this situation clinging desperately to the faith and forcing the love of the father out of sight.

Coming out to them would prove to be the most terrifying thing to me, because my children are so important to me, and the last thing I could ever do was lose them. I now had the image of myself not only facing this, but being a fantastic dad! I *knew* I could do it!

I wasn’t going to ruin them; I was going to be a supportive, wonderful person in their lives. I was never going away. I am, and will always be my kid’s biggest fan. I adore my children, I love them so much, and I have no intention of ever leaving anywhere without being able to reach them at a moment’s notice. My coming out did not include my bailing on them. Some men, straight and gay, do this. I would never do such a thing.

My Ex had a terrible divorce situation where her father left her mother and truly dumped her and her sister like trash. He became someone different, and forced her into terrifying situations when she was only six years old. Her life experience meant a lot to me, and I never forgot it, I would *not* be like her father to my own kids. I am sure that both my ex and I feared the same outcome with each other. Her life experience and my belief system both told us that we were clearly expendable if we made a mistake. Throw-aways. Cast-offs. The flotsam and jetsam of the correct, egotistical, and righteous.

This is how Tom helped me most: I was a valuable person without all those who said I was invaluable. Tom and I have done many things together since that first phone call. He is a monumentally important person in my life. We talk almost daily now, and we share each other’s world. He made my relationship with my life partner possible because he stabilized me enough to move forward with confidence. He was my very first real life true Exmormon friend, and since we met, I’ve made about a thousand more friends. He’s been there every step of the way with me, and I am sure we will be discussing old man issues when the time comes, if we’re lucky enough to make it that far.

We have both made it through, but I’m not so sure I could have made it without him.

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