The Silence that Kills from Within

In commemoration of Day of Silence

A while back, I heard one of the most unnerving and upsetting things I’ve ever heard in regards to my best friend. Discussing his homosexuality once with his Bishop, Cole was told that he was “beyond feeling.”

This really blew me away. Beyond happiness? Beyond pain? Beyond love? Beyond being loved? I still don’t know if that’s even possible—to be completely ruled by a numb sense of ambivalence. Why would anyone try to convince someone that he’s broken on the inside? Especially someone who does so much for those around him. Someone who helps so many people emotionally access unknown parts of themselves through music.

There was no rational explanation or emotional outlet. This man was wrong and he was doing harm to my dearest friend. I did all that I could to reassure Cole that he was at a much better place than in the months following his broken engagement to a girl. Just as he was healing from that tragedy and on the precipice of coming of age in a musical sense, another part of his world began tearing him down.

All of this left me feeling angry but incapacitated because that’s the last thing I wanted to feel towards a leader in The Church. For so long, I’d managed to walk the slack tightrope straddling the boundaries between a gay life and a life in The Church. I placed one foot in front of the other on a daily basis, limiting myself only to kissing and make outs, but nothing more. There were of course challenges to all of this—currents of wind pushing against my solemn, deliberate steps—but nothing seemed to frustrate me more than those coming from my LDS Brothers and Sisters (terms of affection and equality for other members within the Mormon Church). Cole wasn’t the only one who felt as if he was being torn down.

As I took the last class required for me to graduate from Institute (a religious education system serving those 18-30, generally), I became uncomfortable. I’d been uncomfortable before (not knowing how to handle the advances of my female classmates before I knew I was gay) but suddenly, I listened to everything with a new awareness. It was difficult to hear other people talk speak to the “issue” of homosexuality when I’d suddenly become a first-hand authority on the subject.

“It’s unnatural.” “It’s Satan’s influence.” “It’s because they masturbated too much.” All of these comments rattled around my head. No one including the instructor of the course seemed aware that there were people like me. People who had been totally faithful, who had served missions, who had been held up as examples. Now, though, because I’d kissed another guy, because I wanted to be with a guy for the rest of my life, because I didn’t agree on Proposition 8, I was a pariah.

In class, I became silent and anonymous. I would disappear for a week at a time working through the chaos in my head. I could not be at peace with both wholes in that atmosphere—complicit in my silence or outed by my voice. The instructor would occasionally send an email concerned that I’d missed two classes in a row completely unaware that his voice was one of those pushing me away. The one place I was supposed to be “a safe haven from the pressures, trials, and challenges of the world” (see the website) had become the one place I dreaded most because there was no room for my voice or my stories.

I put up with that feeling until the end of the semester, occasionally defiantly opening connexion on my laptop rather than taking notes. When the semester was finally over, though, I rejoiced because the silence could no longer kill me from within. I only had to deal with those feelings in the occasional Sunday School lesson or at the occasional family barbeque.