Trial by Fire

A trial by fire is an ordeal, a process of being tested and judged, and in the end you either survive or you don’t. It can also be thought of as a forging process where in the end, provided you make it to the end, you are stronger. My trial was not by fire, but instead by water in the form of my own swallowed tears.

I remember ten years ago on this very morning hearing the news that some “fag” in Laramie was beaten. I don’t remember if I heard the news at home before school or if I heard it at school. I don’t remember who told me. I don’t really even remember who used the word fag. I honestly don’t even remember if I heard Matt described as a fag. I imagine I did though. My memories of that time are vague, more abstract feelings than anything else but those feelings forever changed me. That was the day I learned to be afraid and to hate myself. That was the day that I turned inward and began the process of swallowing 10,000 tears. That was the day my trial began.

I was 17. I lived in a very small town. I didn’t know any gay people. I didn’t know anything about gay people. Gay people were something that lived elsewhere. They were bad and dirty and diseased and liked to have sex with children and animals. This was my impression of what it meant to be gay. So, when I started having feelings that seemed to indicate an attraction for men I had to assume they meant something else. I wasn’t any of those horrible things so I couldn’t be gay. I was simply envious. I was skinny and hairless and awkward. I was into muscley guys with big hairy chests because I was jealous… yeah… that’s it. I didn’t date girls simply because I didn’t have to. My class only had 32 people in it. Roughly half were guys, of the remaining 16ish one was my cousin, several were taken and the rest just didn’t seem desirable. That was all… I was skinny and awkward and I just hadn’t met the “right” girl yet. That seems like a pretty thin alibi but it worked for me for far too long, since the alternative wasn’t something I was able to face.

I vaguely remember all the media attention. I remember hearing stories in the news about how a gay college student from Wyoming was brutally beaten and left for dead. I remember this was the first time I heard the word “gay” used in the news. I also remember hearing someone say that he had it coming. Again, I don’t remember who said the words but they stuck with me. They shattered something in me; something I didn’t even realize was broken until years later.

Looking back, on that week ten years ago, I was probably on the verge of a revelation. I was probably starting to sort through my own feelings and I was probably about to actually figure out that I thought men were attractive because I am actually gay. Being bad at sports had nothing to do with it. I was probably just starting to realize that I was in a closet and instead of opening the door and coming out and making peace with myself I went so far in that I didn’t realize where I was. I just knew it was dark and crowded and I had to be careful to not think about it too much.

After high school graduation I went on to college where I met my first girl friend. It had been prophesied by a friend years before that I would loose my virginity the first week after I started college and then I would just be a wild sex-having party animal. Well, that never happened in spite of the fact that I had girlfriend. Something still felt… just wrong. I kept using the old excuse that I was jealous of other guys. I had to let go of the idea that I hadn’t met the “right” girl but I replaced it with the idea that I was simply too busy to be able to date. I never addressed the fact that I was not attracted to women at all. I guess I just didn’t realize what it meant to be attracted to anyone in a physical way. That thin alibi worked for a while longer.

Eventually, I left the little community college that I had called home for three years to finish my degree at an out of state university. I remember ruling out the University of Wyoming in my senior year of high school and then again when I left my junior college. I didn’t want to be in Laramie. It wasn’t safe for me. I didn’t know why though.

When I left Wyoming I began a period of isolation in my life. I didn’t know anyone and I had no interest in making any friends. I had figured out who and what I was and I began a phase of my life where I prayed to God to make me “normal” and to take “this” away from me. I still never used the word gay. I hated myself and I cried most every night. I hoped my tears would somehow baptize me. I hoped they would wash me clean. I hoped if I just felt bad enough and repented enough and cried enough then God would change me. He didn’t. I remember the first time I ever spoke the words “I’m gay” out loud. It was late at night. I was in my little twin size dorm bed. I had finally cried all the tears I had available and this feeling of warmth and revelation swept over me. If I had spent the better part of a year doing nothing but asking to be changed and I was still exactly the same person, then there was no way God was going to change me. I was made this way, and it was selfish of me to ask to be anything else. “I’m gay.” Wow… that feels good.

Graduation was coming up and I had to decide where I was going and what I was doing. School was all I had known so I decided to continue on and get my master’s degree. The University of Wyoming offered me the most money and so I accepted. I remember telling my boss I was moving to Laramie. I hadn’t told her or anyone else in the entire world that I was gay but she somehow knew. All she said was “be careful.”

My trial was nearly over. The tears I had been repressing had been building up for years to the point I actually thought I was going to drown. Every morning that I woke up hating myself was like waking up under water, gasping for air and hoping that the water would either wash me clean or sweep me away. Every time I came out to someone, every time I came closer to loving myself, every time I let myself shine through the façade I had built to hide behind, it felt like I was coming closer and closer to breaking the surface of the lake I had put myself under.

I graduated in December, I spend Christmas with my family, and then moved to Laramie in January. From there my life sped up. I came out for the first time to one of my friends in April, another two or three in June, and then went to my first Pride festival that summer. In August I went to my first Spectrum meeting, where I met my first boyfriend. It was sometime after I came to Laramie and came out that I changed completely. Nothing outwardly changed; actually, nothing changed inwardly either. I simply took down most of my walls and I became myself and I liked being that person.

Today, ten years later, I can say that I’m on the shore of that lake and the lake is now more of a puddle. I would have never guess that Laramie would return ME to myself but I guess it’s poetic justice. I let Matt’s death take something from me ten years ago and now I’m letting the town Matt lived in return it to me.

I often seem dramatic and I seem to always be having some sort of dating issue. I also tend to do too much for people and be overly accommodating to my friends. I give too much and I seem to have all the inner turmoil of a thirteen year old girl just before her first big dance. Well, that’s because in many ways I am that teenager. I didn’t start dating until four years ago. Most people dealt with all of this years ago. Heck, I didn’t even meet myself for the first time until relatively recently. In the last five years I’ve gone from hating myself for being who I am to giving interviews to Newsweek about what it’s like to live in Laramie as a gay man. I’ve come a long way in a short amount of time. I’ll stabilize sometime but right now I have a lot of life to make up. You don’t recover from roughly 8000 days of hating yourself over night.

This week, I remember Matthew Shepard. I never met him but his life and death have had an exceptionally profound impact on my life. I have no idea what sort of person he was like. I’ll never know what happened to him ten years ago, but it doesn’t matter. He was killed, he was killed at least in part because he was gay, and nothing about that is ok. It is my goal to help others to find themselves, to teach young people to not hate themselves simply because they are gay, and if I’m able to keep just one person from having to go through the trial I’ve been through for the last ten years, then my life has been worthwhile.