inside out - a letter
learning to live when life is twisted, inside out, and upside down
Hey friends!
In this season of life, I think I’m mostly grateful just to be alive. I don’t know many who can say that they’ve been hit by a car, much less those who came out as unscathed as I. Granted, I can’t work; my arm is still partially immobilized by the sling I have to wear throughout the day. I ended up with a fractured collarbone and a dislocated one at that, beyond my scrapes, scratches, and bruises. Yet, it’s called me to slow down, and focus on the fact that not everything in life is lost. It’s okay. For some reason, getting hit by a car was an emotional reset button that gave me space to think about how much I appreciate the life that I have been given a chance at filling with color.
The past few months have been, to put it lightly, rough. Looking back, I can’t really blame myself. When coming out didn’t really go the way I wanted, when it felt like I was losing myself in the madness, when the boat of life approached stormy waters, ricocheting off the increasingly larger waves that came crashing down, it’s no wonder that I felt like I was drowning. In fact, I was drowning in a sea of depression and self-doubt.
The complicated thing is that this storm had been brewing for a long time, and I’m not sure there was a good time or a better timeline for being unabashedly transparent about myself and who I am. It’s a complicated truth for sure. Not everyone is going to agree with my choice to live openly as someone who is undeniably gay in every sense of the word. But it’s who I always was, even if I had to constantly edit out of my life and behavior. Even if it took a period of painful self-discovery and honest introspection.
I don’t even want to attempt to start to describe how exhausting it is to need to constantly have the self-control to not let the inner me slip out, but in my defense, I faced ridicule and punishment otherwise. It was safer to be quiet and closeted, even if it’s not what I would have wanted for myself in retrospect. I wish I could have been known and loved, no matter how weird, different, or complicated I was.
On top of these pains, I’ve long struggled much more with suicidality, which was simply exacerbated by everything else in the past few months. I’ve not wanted to exist for an unfortunate percentage of my life, and it ain’t great. To wake up and not have the will or desire to live, quite literally, just sucks. In our time, there’s still (annoyingly) stigma on the fringes about mental health and seeking help from therapy and counseling. Certain “Christian” (intentionally in quotes) circles can push anti-therapy rhetoric that just isn’t true, and it’s this that kept me from therapy for far too long. Yeah, we still love Jesus (a lot), and yeah, we still went to him in prayer, but sometimes his answer is simply that we already have resources to get better. I started therapy almost two months ago, and it has become something I now look forward to.
I’m a lot better for it, to be honest. I never thought I would get “unstuck” from this ditch of life. I didn’t think anything would get better, which is what would cause me to slip deeper into not wanting to live. I’m fortunate to see the other side of that, able to peer back and hold compassion for myself. To younger me, you deserve all the hugs in the world, and I love you so much for being strong even when it was hard. Tears have been shed these past few months, but more so, there were a lot of moments of feeling too overwhelmed with depression to cry or to respond in any beneficial way. And yet, brighter days came, and I’m okay.
I’m also grateful for all the support my friends and spiritual siblings have shown me. While I sometimes wish I could have won back the time I lost to depression, I maybe wouldn’t have savored the deeper and more vulnerable relationships that I’ve formed in spite of what I’ve gone through during this season of life. While belonging is something I’m still working on, I’m grateful for all the ways that the people around me have shown up for me, thought about me, and cared about me. It means a lot, and it also means I’m not so messy that I’m unlovable. Truthfully, no one is, and there is joy in knowing that. To all my friends, whether close or not, and to my coworkers who have become a special sort of adopted family, you matter a lot to me (even though I don’t say it nearly enough). Thanks for sticking by my side.
And if you’re reading this, thanks for being around. Thanks for sticking around even as the messy and complicated me came out and pulled back and ran in circles. We’re all human, and we’re all our own unique work-in-progress individuals who God is guiding, leading, listening to, and comforting.
So to all of that, and to whatever comes our way,
James
what I’m currently thinking a lot about or have been thinking a lot about (expect some more writing on these topics going forward)
sexuality (ofc) + affirming theology (which is why I started Reclaim 😁)
re: coming out (because my story has changed, unsurprisingly)
deconstruction + reconstruction (and the fact that I’ve been doing both simultaneously)
losing my mind over artificial intelligence (all I can say is, ugh)
the book (or rather epistle) of James and how it gives us a positive vision of the law
embracing a theology of compassion, empathy, and love
reemphasizing the Christus Victor theory of atonement (because the penal substitutionary view misses the mark)
why my eschatology now denies the Western, medieval, eternal torment concept of hell and sees apokatastasis as a more faithful and traditional view and leads to a gospel that emphasizes love of God and neighbor and not fear of hell
+more (and certainly some of the topics above do go together)
and now, a tiny little poll (that, knowing myself, I might disregard)…