My Gay Story [part 1]

Mexico City, Mexico. September 2010-2012

This is the coming-out post that I wrote first but never published. Instead, I wrote this post. Now, I feel more comfortable sharing this experience.

Originally written 29 October 2013:

Read part 1 / en español
Read part 2 / en español
Read part 3 / en español

Read part 4 / en español
Read part 5

Read part 6

My life has been going full-steam ahead, with hardly any time to breathe. I got off the mission and hit life hard. It's a bit like riding the moving walkway in the Chicago O'Hare airport (or really any airport) where you're running on it to go really fast and then it ends. You keep running but you're not going fast anymore. It just FEELS inefficient, even though you're moving as fast as your legs can carry you.

Achieving High Goals - Eagle Scout

The past two weeks for me have been really difficult. I'm gay. Wait...What? Yeah, that's what I thought too. Raised in the church, you are taught to set high goals, inspired to achieve them, full-steam ahead. The mission accelerated that. Then you get off the moving walkway and real life starts. I've seen great friends, mission companions, and ward members dating, getting engaged, and getting married. Full-steam ahead. I've been in this surreal dream since my teenage years, wondering when this "straight" thing was supposed to happen to me. Sure, as a teenager, your hormones are raging and you don't really understand your feelings, right? Reality check: those feelings become fixed rather quickly. I didn't know that. I was waiting for so long to make sense of all the 'set boundaries, don't date until you're 16, bridle your passions, obey the law of chastity' counsel. Sure they made logical sense to me, but not emotional sense. Was it hard for other guys to keep clean thoughts around girls? I didn't seem to have a problem with it. It was the physical features of guys that were interesting to me (I didn't know that was called 'being gay' haha). I only realized a short time ago (leading up to my writing this) that, yes, I am attracted to men and not women. And I realized the term for it: gay. Homosexual. Same-Sex attraction. Same-gender attraction. Whatever you call it, it's the same thing in my opinion.

Switching to Computer Science, Bioinformatics Emphasis

So when I realized this, the duly-named blog title was my reaction: Wait...What? Imagine getting through 3 years of college in a degree program, then suddenly you realize...this isn't for me. You switch majors to one that requires you to recalculate all of your goals, the what, the when, the how. That is what this has been like for me. I was wary at first, but then I accepted it and intend to start going full-steam again. 

What helped me most recently in the transition from being wary to acceptance was a hymn sung by the ward choir at church, particularly the first verse:

It may not be on a mountain height, or over a stormy sea, it may not be on the battle's front my Lord may have need of me. But if, by a still, small voice he calls, to paths that I do not know, I'll answer, dear Lord, with my hand in thine, "I'll go where you want me to go"...

For so long I was preparing for the battle's front, for the mountain height, for the stormy sea. The Lord calls many, many people to these places. I was taught my priesthood duties, how to treat women, how to be a good father and husband. But recently, the Lord with a still small voice has called me to paths that I do not know.  What is my answer? What do I do? Where do I go? What do I say? I'll say what You want me to say, do what you want me to do, be what you want me to be, dear Lord. ...Savior, if Thou wilt be my guide, though dark and rugged the way, I'll... I will. That is the only answer.




Dan Bunker