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Learning to Love

Jacob Meadows

    I was beginning to wake up, in that place where everything is still dark but your consciousness begins to take over and you are somewhat aware of your surroundings. I did not want to be awake yet, and I was fighting for sleep. But then, I felt I movement behind me and a sensation on my neck.
    Aaron.
    In my sleepy stupor, I felt the warmth of my boyfriend spread across my neck as his lips brushed softly against my skin. He himself had not woken up but had just rolled over to find a comfortable place to lay and kissed me in his mostly sleeping state. A smile spread across my face thinking about the beautiful man that was lying in my bed with me. He was 6'5", tall by anyone’s definition. His dark hair and brown eyes completed the tall, dark, and handsome description. I could feel the lean muscle in his stomach and arms as he wrapped his body around me. Never before had I met anyone I found more beautiful than Aaron. Never had I looked at someone’s face and felt the comfort it gave me, the feeling of safety and home, when I looked into his eyes. That has not changed since.
    We had known each other for over a year at that point, dating on and off throughout that time. Sometimes tumultuous, our relationship had its highs and its very lows, but we were happy then in that moment and had been for about four months. He was my first real relationship. Sure, I had dated in high school, but those were girls and they were not the serious caliber of relationship I was in now. Aaron was the first man I had met that I felt ready to commit myself to and call my boyfriend. And within the time that I had known Aaron, something happened.
    I fell in love.
    When one thinks about falling in love, they probably feel that gentle, easy feeling that they had while watching Cinderella fall in love with Prince Charming. If they have never fallen in love they likely feel a desire to do just that. They also have that unrealistic, naïve view of how magical and simple it will be to do. On the other hand, those people who have fallen in love before are able to feel the Cinderella feeling, but they are aware of the Evil Stepsisters who were there to make falling in love difficult. Only someone who has fallen in love will know about the obstacles to love. I have fallen in love, as I said, and I have had my very own set of unique Evil Stepsisters to deal with. That is what this short memoir will be about.
    I was lying in my bed with Aaron’s arm around me right after he had kissed my neck, and a smile covered my face as I resigned myself back to sleeping in the arms of my boyfriend. Except I never fell back asleep. The warmth I felt from the kiss moved to my stomach and turned hot. An overwhelming sense of guilt ravaged my body. It started by burning in my stomach, then it became a nauseous feeling, then it touched my chest and my heart started beating faster and harder while my lungs felt so heavy I was unsure if I could breathe. Heat sprouted behind my eyes as tears formed. And finally, the thoughts began again as they had a few times before.
    I was sitting in a room on a couch across from a man behind a desk. His face looked kind and welcoming. Behind him on the wall was an enlarged magazine cover featuring a shirtless male model who was holding himself in a seductive and feminine manner. The caption read something about being gay and how it was a sin. I felt uneasy looking at the picture because I found the model attractive but I also knew that the man sitting in the chair was watching me scope the picture and he was judging me for it.
    “So, Jacob, how have you been this week? Any new revelations?” The man’s voice possessed a southern twang but also a familiar feminine lilt, the same quality of sound mine had. This was because this man, a counselor, was at one time a gay man. He left the lifestyle, as he called it, and now he helps other gay men and women struggling with the attractions I have been having to lead a life more worthy of Jesus Christ. I had been in this office with this man every week for the past year talking about my same-sex attractions. I told him then that I had not felt very tempted that week and I was feeling better than ever before. “That’s great, Jacob! God is working in your life and I am so glad that you have found Hope for Wholeness.” Hope for Wholeness was the name the man had for finding Jesus to leave the homosexual lifestyle and also for his counseling program.
    “I have been trying something new. Whenever I feel tempted to look at a man or I have unclean thoughts, I think about how I will have to tell you about it and how disappointed you will be. That always puts me in the right mindset to stop what I am doing!” I was smiling as I said this.
    “That is a wonderful device to avoid temptation!” He beamed at me with pride. Since starting this counseling, I had been told that I was a shining star of an example of how this process can work. People who worked with my counselor told me they wished that they had been as strong as me when they were my age.
    I was a boy, then, a boy struggling with homosexuality. Not a homosexual, they told me, I was a boy struggling with a particular sin. And I was proud of myself for fighting it.
    I was shaking from the extreme feeling of guilt that is wracking my body. The urge to cry was so strong, my eyes were alight with the burning of a stream of tears being held in. I carefully pulled back my sheets and blankets and climbed out of bed, walking across my room to open the door. As I crossed through the doorway, I looked back to see Aaron lying in my bed his arm laying across where I had just been before I closed the door and walked into my living room. Then the tears began to fall and I began to breathe heavily. I thought I was on the verge of a panic attack. I paced back and forth in my living room in an attempt to calm down.
    I could not figure out why I was so upset until I started to think about the past that has brought me to this point. Growing up, I was always effeminate and enjoyed the stereotypically girly stuff. This was never a problem until I moved to South Carolina in the sixth grade. It was at this time that someone called me gay for the first time. I did not even know what that meant at the time but I quickly learned and when I asked teachers for help, they did nothing. It was not until the tenth grade that I was able to harden myself against the near constant onslaught of insults and dirty looks from my cohort. It was that year that I began the counseling which had brought the guilty feeling that morning.
    I was raised in a string of Southern Baptist churches and one day my preacher approached my parents and said he knew someone who could help me fight the homosexuality that he was afraid was lurking inside me. My parents agreed to bring me to him and one day they put me in the car and took me to see him without much warning. That first visit was volatile. I yelled. My father yelled. The counselor said that there were obvious issues. My mother cried. I cried. The counselor said he thought I would benefit from coming to see him. I gave in and said I would come back. And so for the next year, I put myself through voluntary conversion therapy to stave off the temptations of lust and homosexuality I was experiencing.
    Essentially, my counselor taught me that I could choose not to be a homosexual and that I could spend the rest of my life averting my gaze and cleansing my thoughts of all things gay. And I believed him. I was 13 when I started in the therapy. I was a child. They brainwashed me into believing that homosexuals go to the Christian Hell and that if I was not strong and resist my urges I would end up there. And so throughout high school I continued to fight the most natural part of my being.
    As I paced the living room, I wrung my hands while trying to make myself breathe normally. I wanted to think of something positive, something in my life that made me happy. So I thought about when I accepted my homosexuality. I was a freshman in college and one of my queer friends took me to a lecture from a guest professor who explained away the Biblical damnation of homosexuality. As I sat in that auditorium, I felt something inside me change. I felt acceptance of who I was. I decided on that night that I would stop fighting the attraction that was natural to me. I would allow myself to look at a beautiful man and think about how looking at him made me feel. That night I came out to myself and I have lived as a homosexual man since then. I began to date men and I slowly began to feel more and more comfortable in my own skin. This was the beginning of learning to love who I was and while it has been hard it has also been the most extraordinary lesson.
    And so, I sat down in my chair and made myself breathe. I told myself that I love myself and that it is alright to be gay. It is normal. It is my normal. I focused on the happiness I have felt since I came out. But I still had this guilty feeling beating the inside of my chest. Everything in me wanted nothing more than to be in Aaron’s arms and tell him exactly how I was feeling. I wanted my boyfriend, my best friend to hold me and soothe my anxiety.
    I wiped my face and walked back into my room to lay down next to the man that I loved. As I climbed back into the bed with Aaron, he was roused from his sleep and he looked up at me. He asked me what was upsetting me and put his arm around me, rubbing my back. I told him that I had been afraid to tell him what I had been feeling. He assured me that it was alright to talk to him and so the floodgates opened and I told him that I had been feeling guilty about being gay and about being in a relationship with a man. I expected him to leave and never look back. Instead he looked at me and held my gaze.
    “Nothing you said surprises me or scares me. It’s alright.”
    He said those words as though they were simple and had little weight. He pulled me in and we laid down together holding onto one another. I smiled as the anxiety and guilt left my body.
    To this day, I am occasionally attacked by the feeling of guilt. But I am learning that it is alright to love who I love and to be who I am. I know that the effects of the conversion therapy I experienced will last for the rest of my life, but I know I can live with it. I find comfort in my love for Aaron and even during times of stress and anxiety I am able to lean on him. Life is not about fixing the parts of you that anyone does not like. Life is about learning to love yourself in spite of those things society hates.
    So, learn to love.
    Love others.
    Love yourself.
    Love.

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