Peace and Pride

Noise. Constant mental noise is what I had almost become accustomed to ever since I went through puberty in 7th grade. Ever since I had my first dream about a boy and realized there was something different going on in my mind and heart than what appeared to be going on with my guy friends and the world at large around me, at least, the world I could see around me. From my limited viewpoint in Fort Worth, TX, boys dated girls and girls dated boys. That was it. But something about it didn't seem to fit with me.

No, it had to fit. I had to fit. I must fit. I was a Christian, I grew up in a Christian household. I absolutely had to fit.

The noise. The thoughts. The attractions. The resistance. The self-loathing. The self-hate. The prayers. The agony. The trying. The therapy. The self-loathing. The self-hate. The despair. The begging. The crying. The depression. The hoping. The hiding. The secrets. The denial. The self-loathing. The self-hate. The noise.

I lived with all of this for years, an endless cycle. Always hoping things were getting "better", believing one day I would have a break through. Biblical counseling. Conversion therapy. Solid counseling. Healthy therapy. In late 2019 I started seeing a therapist here in Shanghai who knew nothing of my sexual history and struggle with what I was calling "same sex attraction," a phrase I found more comfortable than saying I was struggling with being gay. No, she and I didn't talk about that. We simply talked about learning how to be present, how to recognize my inner narrative and the thoughts streaming across it. I loved this and was learning quite a lot. I listened to a podcast of Oprah's with Eckhart Tolle, taking in all I could and practicing being present regularly. Then 2020 hit. Despite all of the ups and downs at the beginning of that year, I was still practicing being present, a practice helping me feel stable in a world heaving and rocking around me with the pandemic.

May of 2020 arrives, my wife (now my ex) had been through her terrifying fight with COVID in a Chinese hospital and thankfully recovered, we had started back to work with far fewer teachers than we should have making the work load heavier, and the world outside of China was on COVID fire, so we feared for friends and family back home. In the midst of this, I continued to practice being in the present. One afternoon, I'd just had lunch with a friend, and was walking through a courtyard area with a huge crowd of people crossing the other direction. Upon reaching the other side of the courtyard, I paused. Present with my thoughts, I realized, I had not registered one single woman who walked past me, yet registered at least fifteen different men. And that's when the truth hit me. After years of therapy and taking care of issues I had blamed so much of my being gay on, those issues were at rest. If I had nothing else to blame these thoughts and attractions on, if I were truly in the present, aware of the thoughts gliding across my mind, this meant what it meant. I'm attracted to men. I'm gay.

Fast forward weeks of anxiety as this truth settled in. The complex and painful period of coming out to my wife, kids, parents, and close friends. Separation. Moving. However, once the dust of change had settled, I had another startling realization: where there had been noise, there was now quiet. Calm. Love. Rest. Comfort. Contentment. Joy.

Peace.

It blew my mind. It was beautiful. After decades of the endless noise, the volume constantly changing and never settling, I had peace. I came out. I owned being a gay man. I discovered peace. Having come from a Christian home, and still considering myself a Christian, scriptures from the Bible are still a part of my thought process and the one that came to mind right away was that which spoke of the "peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus." I understood it for the first time in a circumstance I never would have expected and fought against for over thirty years.

This week at our school, the students are celebrating their own Pride Week. On Friday, I get to sit on a panel of people who identify as part of the LGBTQIA+ community. I get to do that. My hope? My hope is that there is another person sitting in the room, whether a student or adult, and they can be encouraged to find their way to hit mute on the noise and discover peace. All of our journeys are radically different, but hopefully we can support each other as we travel.