I need someone to talk to...

[Dukeguy06]

Hello,

I really need people to talk to. I have been very depressed, because I'm gay(maybe bi) and I'm still in the closet and I have oneone to talk to about it. I'm not going to get into my whole story on here, but I really need someone to talk to. So, if you are out there just send me a PM or IM me on AIM, my s.n. is Dukeguy06.

Thanks,

A very unhappy and depressed Josh

 

[mike_n_herrin]

hey josh, i sent you a PM also, but i'm moving your thread to coming out subforum. i think you'll get more feed back there.

and welcome!

- mikey

 

[Dukeguy06]

So I was told to post my story, background because there are people here that could help me.. so here it is.. You can just post comments on here My PM box is full and I'm getting like a million IMs Didnt think anyone would write or IM me, boy was I wrong

Well, first off let me tell you my story...

I have known since i was 6 years old that I liked the same-sex. I'm now 21. Well, I have grown up in a very church-going family. Well, I have always told myself that God would take this "sin" away. Well, about three years ago, I started going to church alot and I went do and got "saved" and I thought that it would end my gayness, but I was wrong. It didn't, so I pushed them in the back of my mind and started my new life going to church and all. Well I couldn't push it out of my mind so what I did was the stupidest thing every, I went and had the idea that if I told everyone that God has call me to be a youth pastor maybe that would help. But it didn't, I only got more depressed and unhappy. Now, I'm at the point where my family and friends all think I'm going to be a youth pastor and I'm at the point where I just want to say "f--- it all" and stay in my room for the rest of my life and not come out.

You see if I do come out it would make me look stupid and I will have to tell my family I lied about the whole being called thing, but if I don't come out, i think I will become even more depressed and unhappy to the point where I will do something stupid.

I don't know what to do..

 

[snapghisch]

Hi there Josh,

I'm sorry to hear what you're going through and I completely understand as well. You see, I went through a similar phase as I was dealing with my homosexuality. I come from a very, very strict Catholic family and being gay, as you can imagine, isn't the best news for them.
I devoted my life to God and to the Church to try to "heal" my homosexuality. I went to confession and discussed this with priests, who also agreed that I should turn to God for my answers. Well, after about 3 years of this, and me being psychologically and mentally exhausted from the entire process, I gave up and accepted being gay. My family did not react well at all. They ordered books from some bizarre group that claims to "heal gays" and would lay them on my bed, my father took me to a strip bar and offered to hire a prostitute for me. It was a nightmare. At some point, however, they realized that there was nothing that they would be able to do to change this. It has taken several years for this to become a comfortable theme for my family. My mother has fully embraced it. She's gone to gay bars with me and gets along great with my partner. My father (my parents are divorced) still has his issues with it, but we still can talk, and even joke about it.

In the end, you have to decide for yourself. Coming out is a difficult process, but is a very relieving one as well. If you need/want to talk anymore, feel free to PM me.

 

[Lube]

You see if I do come out it would make me look stupid and I will have to tell my family I lied about the whole being called thing, but if I don't come out, i think I will become even more depressed and unhappy to the point where I will do something stupid.

There are guys who have been married to women for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, and then came out.

How stupid do you think they look? Your concern is minor in comparison. Don't sweat it.

And, after all, it's not really stupid. We finally stand up for ourselves and become real men.

Part of growing up is admitting your mistakes, taking ownership of them, and moving on with grace and new-found self-respect.

 

[Seasoned]

Josh,

I'm so glad you reached out and found that so many are willing to chat. I know what it is like to feel trapped and lonely. With support you will be able to come to terms with your sexuality. You have realized that you need support and you also realize that it's unlikely, at least for now, to come from those closest to you.

It's evident from your story that you feel you were born gay. For whatever reason there has been resistance to that notion by most societies since the beginning of time. Each gay person discovers their sexuality on their own and depending upon personality and environment is self-accepting or conflicted.

What happens now is that you listen and learn from others who have been through or who are going through a similar experience. For some of us it can be quite a struggle to face a belief system that doesn't match what we know about ourselves.

What you have to realize is that no matter how much it might feel like it that you are not alone. It seems to be that you hinted at suicide in you post. I sincerely hope that you don't consider that to be a viable option and if you do, that you seek help immediately.

I understand that you may have fear because you are confronting a belief system that doesn't match what you know to be true about yourself. You didn't choose this. You didn't cause this. My great hope for you is that eventually you will embrace it as an important piece of who you are. It's the belief system that needs changing, not you.

You are in the midst of a process that many of us have gone through. It does get better. I have come to cherish my life and to be grateful for who I am. It started with me accepting who I was and then presenting myself, at my own pace, to the rest of the world.

Keep things a day at a time and don't get too ahead of yourself. You are fine just the way you are. You are not flawed. If anything, you have extra gifts. Stay true to yourself. Make the choices, one at a time, which allow you to stay true to yourself.

PM me anytime. Again, there is a plan for you that does not involve checking out early.

 

[rareboy]

Well the first thing you have to do is shake off the notion that your God didn't mean for you to be this way.

As I constantly repeat, God had nothing to say about homos in the Ten commandments; the ultimate laws of the Old Testament. Christ himself had nothing to say about being a fag.

Instead of allowing everyone in your fundy christian family to use the bible as a literal weapon to beat you with, while they gleefully ignore the sections that apply to their own lives that just aren't convenient to them, you should take an intelligent look at the old and new testament, including learning more about how these books eventually got compiled and translated the way they did.

In short, start thinking. there is nothing as dangerous as a fundamentalist who doesn't think for himself.

Get counselling from someone who can liberate you from the cage you have built for yourself. You're not the first very young person who has had a lifetime of church who is afraid they are condemned.

I am living proof that you can be a happy, healthy, out homo in a 27 year relationship. and that you can have a healthy, intellectual respect for all religions.

So. Start telling people the truth. Forget about making bargains with your God that you can't keep.

Get out there. Love someone. Love yourself. Use the life you've been given to do good for others.

 

[G-Lexington]

An old poster from the 70s proclaimed "I AM somebody, because God don't make no junk." God didn't screw up by making you gay. And you can't pray the gay away. If you could, many of us wouldn't be here on this website right now.

Say you're standard height. Six feet or so. Now say you live in a house built for small people, roughly three feet high. So your head scrapes along the ceiling, you can't fit in the bathtub, you're always crouching down to reach into cabinets, you bang your head on doorframes, and you have to curl up into fetal position to fit into your small bed. Given that, you might think "If only I weren't so tall, life would be so much better."

See, the problem isn't that you're too tall.
Your problem is that you're in the wrong house.

You've at least seemed to realize that. You're on the wrong highway, heading in the wrong direction. (To suddenly switch metaphors.) What do you do when you realize you're driving the wrong direction? You sure don't say "Well, I can't stop now - people will think I don't know what I'm doing." No - you find the first place possibly to swing around and start going in the RIGHT direction. And I think that'll be what you need to do next.

So give it some thought. Being a youth pastor isn't for you, apparently. Do you have any idea what you DO want to do? If you DO enjoy helping others, there's nothing to prevent you from doing that as a gay man. (I do it plenty.) Keep giving that some thought. Get a day job if you're not sure what your next move should be. If you've started training to be a youth pastor, stop the training. It doesn't matter if "it's already paid for" or "I only have three months left" - stop. It's a dead end now, and it'll only make you feel worse to keep up the facade anymore. And feel free to hang out here some more. The more gay guys you know - even online - the more secure you'll feel in your sexuality.

Lex

 

[KaraBulut]

So I was told to post my story, background because there are people here that could help me.. so here it is..

And we also want you to post in the forum because there are hundreds- perhaps thousand- who read these forums who will be helped by reading your story and seeing how you work through it with the advice that it posted here.

...I have known since i was 6 years old that I liked the same-sex. I'm now 21. Well, I have grown up in a very church-going family. Well, I have always told myself that God would take this "sin" away. Well, about three years ago, I started going to church alot and I went do and got "saved" and I thought that it would end my gayness, but I was wrong. It didn't..

The curious thing is that those who believe in an all-knowing and perfect God somehow assume that he made a mistake in making them gay.

Do you see the error in that argument?

Find a church where the people don't believe that gay people are mistakes. Find a group of friends who are interested in you and not so much interested in who you sleep with.

If you hold the religious belief that everything is intended and predestined, then it is up to you to set aside all these false beliefs about sin and sexuality. And to find the path that is out there for you- the one that you were intended to take before you tried to rewrite your gayness into something that was not meant to be...

 

[TX-Beau]

So I was told to post my story, background because there are people here that could help me.. so here it is.. You can just post comments on here My PM box is full and I'm getting like a million IMs Didnt think anyone would write or IM me, boy was I wrong

Well, first off let me tell you my story...

I have known since i was 6 years old that I liked the same-sex. I'm now 21. Well, I have grown up in a very church-going family. Well, I have always told myself that God would take this "sin" away. Well, about three years ago, I started going to church alot and I went do and got "saved" and I thought that it would end my gayness, but I was wrong. It didn't, so I pushed them in the back of my mind and started my new life going to church and all. Well I couldn't push it out of my mind so what I did was the stupidest thing every, I went and had the idea that if I told everyone that God has call me to be a youth pastor maybe that would help. But it didn't, I only got more depressed and unhappy. Now, I'm at the point where my family and friends all think I'm going to be a youth pastor and I'm at the point where I just want to say "f--- it all" and stay in my room for the rest of my life and not come out.

You see if I do come out it would make me look stupid and I will have to tell my family I lied about the whole being called thing, but if I don't come out, i think I will become even more depressed and unhappy to the point where I will do something stupid.

I don't know what to do..

Hello, welcome.

Don't dwell on looking stupid. Trust me, some of us were so out of control in the closet that you look like light and sanity in comparison. Most of us have been there. So forget looking stupid, just tell your friends and family that you've realized that this isn't for you. You're young, you can change your mind. You'd look far more stupid if you pursued this until you just couldn't take it anymore and had a meltdown. It's your prerogative to decide for yourself.

But that probably isn't going to help you much. Coming out, and coming to terms with yourself is a process, it's going to take time. HOWEVER, there's no time like the present to start. In fact, it's essential that you start in the present. So start taking control of the situation, one baby step at a time. Make the problem manageable. Don't worry about coming out immediately - no of us came out until we were farther along than you are - and that's OK, worry about changing your career path. When that's done, worry maybe about changing your church, when that's done, take another step.

Part of your depression is your lack of control over the situation, and part of it is the lingering shit they filled your head with about your sexuality, you got pushed in one direction, pushed in another, because you got told a lot of crap - from people you trusted, who can't possibly understand, and so you wound up where you are. You'll want to start making decisions that are good for you, not decisions that you think others will think are good for you, and certainly not decisions that are a reaction to something you were told you shouldn't like about yourself.

The more steps you take, to better your life will be, and moving in a direction you actually want to go will help you gain confidence, and the more confidence you gain, the easier life becomes - and one day, you'll look at yourself in the mirror and realize that you love yourself just the way you are, and that all that crap you struggled with was always someone else's fucking problem. That you were just who you needed to be in the first place.

There is a light at the end of this, there is a way out, never think there isn't.

Remember, small steps. One after the other.

 

[TX-Beau]

Oh, and if you're clinically depressed, by all means get help. And I'm not talking about a christian counselor, find some outreach from the nearest sizable gay community, there are resources out there for guys in exactly your position.

They understand also.

You know, there are gay churches out there, you could go be a youth pastor at one of them. But I suspect that thats not really what you want to do, and that you'd have to be farther along than you are to make that kind of choice.

I grew up in a strict Southern Baptist family, I remember that feeling of being trapped, blocked everywhere you turn. You feel like you have to bootstrap yourself out of it, that no one is there to help you, that no one would want to help you if they knew. But one of the good things about the internet, which wasn't around when I was going through this, is that you can find all kinds of communities, like the one here, where you can get the support you need. So I hope you stick around.

 

[Chris1180]

Call me anytime if you need anything, number is 1-410-634-1258