(Content Note: for Suicide, Homophobia, and Self-Harm)

“Sometimes to get something beautiful, you have to bleed. Bleed out onto the pages of your story until you think there’s nothing left. But there is something left. There is hope.” (from 6/5/15 Journal Entry)

It’s been 4 years since coming out to myself as gay this week. And 5 since finally coming to terms that I was not straight. I’d be lying if I told you I thought I’d be here and alive today. Because even when I was writing something semi-hopeful, I thought to myself that it might be better to be dead than be gay.

I thought maybe if I was repentant over my sexuality, that would be enough. If I was celibate, that would be enough. If I was in ministry, that would be enough. And still…

On the outside, I’m looking inside

Hoping you’ll see the tempest in me.

I am wounded, with an arrow stuck in my chest

Don’t you know I need this wave rushing in

Because on the outside I am looking inside

Hoping you’ll calm the storm raging inside of me

I am drowning, with an ocean filling my lungs

Don’t you know I need this love rushing in

Sometimes I had to bleed…metaphorically speaking. Sometimes even literally. The pain gets to be too much. Sometimes the only way out of the darkness is to embrace the darkness, it seems.

Let me turn the lights out so you can see the stars

The stars will shine on my beating, bleeding heart.

I do not understand. I do not understand myself.

I go outside…but I put myself on a shelf.

I do not understand but I long to be so very understood

I am in the dark, searching for the light.

I sit in the darkness, my thoughts filling up the night

I live in the dark, so please, turn on the light.

Because all around me is night (poem from journal entry on 9/6/15)

Still trying to figure out how I was such a goody two shoes Christian at this point, but this was started pre-Twitter.

Also, journal entries during and following the Pulse shooting, just…whew. It’s taken a long time to get here. And there are a few about me wanting to find love that I may share in the weeks to come, but reflecting back on that time in my life feels like I’m looking at a totally different person.

People keep saying that it gets better. And maybe, just maybe, I finally believe them, because now I’m not sitting in the crushing darkness alone.