I’d fallen in love.

Again.

It was roughly the second time it had happened since I’d come to Iowa State.

The second time that was the least bit meaningful, at least.

The stories were roughly the same. We ate lunch and dinner together often and hung out a lot out in between classes, after work and on the weekends; we got along well enough, thought about and approached problems similarly, shared some interests, blah, blah, blah…

For the record, this whole “coming out” thing was never on my bucket list.

It seems so cliche. And over-blown. Like a marginalized kid’s cry for attention and / or love and acceptance.

No. My plan, once I’d started to come to terms with my attraction to men, was just to find somebody, get married, raise a family and grow old together. Like people do. Where’s the need for all the fanfare, to say to the world, “Hey! I’m going to start doing what you’ve all been doing for years!”?

It seemed… unnecessary.

But let’s back up a bit.

I’d fallen in love — for a second time — and — for a second time — the guy was straight as an arrow.

Sure, from time to time he’d talk about his “man crushes,” but I was smart enough to know he wasn’t actually “interested.”

Better yet, I’d tried to counsel him through romantic interests of his own. I fancy myself to be pretty understanding, when it comes to the lady-folk, and — you may have noticed — all sense of reason and understanding tends to go out the window when you’re dealing with someone you love, so he was in search of help, I was interested in spending as much time as possible with him, and so, naturally, I obliged.

When one of his love interests finally panned out, I started coming to terms with reality: As much as I might want it, we were never going to move beyond being anything more than friends.

And that was OK — I mean, I struggled a bit, sure, but who doesn’t? — but I’d gone through this before and I was getting tired of pretending. Tired of pretending I’d only ever been interested in just being friends. Tired of pretending to be “interested” in girls. Tired of hiding the parts of me that the world would point to as “evidence” of my being “gay.”

And so I agonized over it for days, if not weeks, and on that particular day at Hickory Park, we sat down, ordered our regulars and, after what I’m sure was, like, an hour of me just babbling on and on about a whole lot of nothing, I finally got around to the reason for all my angst:

“I’m gay.”

And I’m in love with you.

But I know it isn’t going anywhere.

Please don’t hate me.

I couldn’t stop shaking, and my voice could barely manage the words. I had no idea how he’d react. “Terror” doesn’t seem like quite the right word to use to describe my emotions, but I was terrified of what he might say or do. Terrified of seeing something like disgust in his eyes as someone he thought he knew revealed the truth about himself. I didn’t look him in the face for a long, long time.

Because in my mind, he’d be more than justified in feeling betrayed, duped, even lied to. I half expected him to just get up and walk out. Whatever his reaction, there was a part of me that felt sure that this confession would mean the end of our friendship.

A few minutes later, I actually put words to my fears.

“You don’t hate me?”

He scoffed — almost laughed a bit. From his side of the table, it was a ridiculous question.

“No, dude, I don’t hate you.”

The truth of those words would take weeks to sink in, and the weight they would lift from my shoulders… It was tremendous.

Because it was a fact I’d only recently come to accept about myself.

And trusting him enough to tell him — much less finding a reasonable excuse to do so — had taken years of friendship-building. And here I was, selfishly putting it all on the line. Risking it all for the sake of a little honesty. For the chance at knowing someone who knew — and was OK with — me.

I’m gay?

I’ve been attracted to guys since I was, like, 12. But for a long time I didn’t know what that meant, because, in small-town Iowa, “gay” isn’t something that comes up in sex ed. They keep it pretty simple: “This is how you make babies” and “this is how not to.”

In small-town Iowa, words like “gay,” “fag” and “queer” were just words people used to refer to things that were awful. As a kid, you learn to distance yourself from things that garnered those labels. Sometimes, it was the weather. Sometimes, it was an activity, like crying or playing the cello. Oftentimes, it was people.

And then I came to Iowa State.

And, at Iowa State, being “gay” is kind of a big deal.

Granted, it doesn’t mean having (getting?) to choose between living with another guy or a girl just yet — although coed housing’s all the rage among the LGBT crowd on campuses across the country — but it meant rallies and clubs, and, in my extremely limited experiences, it meant taking deep, deep offense to things that had previously been pretty insulting, sure, but had always simply been an attitude and a vocabulary you just put up with.

But I would go a different way, because I’d grown up in small-town Iowa, been heavily involved in the Church and, through the end of my senior year in high school, told my friends and family that I planned to attend a seminary after completing my bachelor’s degree at Iowa State.

So when I came to campus, I got involved in a number of campus ministries, and that’s where I learned a whole lot more about what it meant to be “gay.” The differences between me and other guys, the feelings I’d developed for guys while going through puberty… It all pointed to a condition that had plagued the human race for thousand of years, and if I didn’t deal with it, my soul was at stake.

So that became nearly a full-time focus.

Because, if I couldn’t get into heaven myself, what hope could I have to effectively serve and share the good news with the poor and hungry around the world?

So I changed my major, started searching for a career with a more secular focus and started going through a little one-on-one counseling.

I attended some group therapy sessions once every other week for a while in Iowa City.

I even went to a conference.

You might call it an attempt at “praying the gay away.”

But to us, it meant seeking sanctification and salvation.

And it would lead to a life of celibacy or, if you were one of the lucky ones, real change. Attractions to people of the opposite sex. A wife. Children of your own flesh and blood that you’d make in your bedroom (or… anywhere, really), without the use of doctors in white coats and expensive lab equipment.

Most importantly: It would mean living righteously.

Living the way God had intended.

And, honestly, I can’t say that there’s a little part of me that doesn’t still believe that that’s what God would love for my life to look like.

Because, you know… penises fit pretty neatly into vaginas. And, obviously, sex is how people make babies. Usually.

But I got to the point — and it was a gradual shift in my thinking, to be sure — where I decided that I’d spent too much time hating myself, spent too many nights crying myself to sleep over the hopelessness I felt and too much time spent thinking, “I’d rather be dead or straight — right now — than to have to go on, living like this,” to want to do it anymore.

I don’t know when it happened, exactly, but somewhere along the line, I started to become comfortable with the idea that I was “gay.”

Unfortunately, that reality presented a whole new host of problems.

I’d told a few people in my life about my attractions, but I’d always framed the issue as “a struggle,” and it’s not a thing I really “struggle” with anymore.

I’d never spent much time doing the whole dating thing, because I couldn’t be with the people I wanted to be with and wasn’t interested in being with the people who wanted to be with me, so I had no idea where to begin.

And then there was the fact that I’d been hiding myself from the world for more than 10 years. I kind of felt like a stranger among my own friends.

Figuring out what’s next…

I came to Iowa State with the intention of making friends with guys because I’d gotten the idea that hanging around them would be a part of the process of “curing” me of my desires.

The problem was, I kept falling in love with them.

Which was annoying, as you might imagine, because, at the end of the day, they always go home to the girl. And, after a while, that starts to get old. Really old.

Like the depression and thoughts of suicide before it, the rejections and the feelings of inadequacy brought on by a guy choosing someone else over you simply because she’s got boobs and a vagina (OK, there’s probably a bit more to it than that…) coupled with the feeling of failure brought on by having yet again fallen in love with a guy who was just supposed to be a friend…

Well, it led me to change course. Again.

There are probably a lot of you who don’t really care, so I’ll assume I’m not talking to you.

There are probably others who’ve kept reading because you’re trying to figure out where I went wrong or how you might still be able to reach out to me to bring me back on track. I know I can’t convince you — I wish I felt more confident about it myself. But despite everything, I’ve decided to lean on my faith and simply hope that God can continue to use me to reflect His glory in a broken world. I’ve just come to believe that He’ll accomplish more if I’m even slightly more comfortable with the person He’s created me to be than if I spent the rest of my days asleep or on medication because those were the only means I’d found of coping with the pain of feeling like I’d failed Him (by somehow not being “good” enough to see my sexual orientation change).

For still others, maybe my story will resonate with you because you find yourself in a similar boat with the Church or because you’ve been hiding for years yourself, and you’re ready to “come out” to your friends and family in your own way — to free yourself to be yourself to the people around you.

If it’s you I’m speaking to — and I hope there are at least a few of you — I hope you can find some comfort in knowing that you aren’t alone in your “struggle” or in your desire to be free to be you.

But if you’re among the silent majority — those of you on campus who have yet to make up their minds about “the whole gay thing” a — I hope you can find some sense of conviction to be better than the people who’ve come before us. Because I think my story and the stories of so many others encourages us to ask ourselves whether we’re contributing to a culture that pushes people into closets, rather than one that encourages them to be themselves. Also: To ask ourselves whether we’re setting the sort of example for others to follow that would lead them to do the same.

Because, honestly, it wasn’t the bullies I was ever afraid of the most. They were assholes and nothing more. I knew that. No, it was the silent majority that really worried me. The ones who might never make fun of anyone themselves, but they’d snicker when others did. It always made me wonder whether they felt the same way. And, if they did, I’d ask myself, “Who in the world could possibly love or respect someone so different… someone like me?”

So I hope you can find the courage to stand up to hate and intolerance when it rears its ugly head. And to make it clear to those around you that you stand as a sanctuary from hate and discrimination so many seem to be so comfortable with.

Jake did. Adam did. So many others in the world have and do on a regular basis. And lives are changed because of men and women like them. Lives are saved, even, sometimes. But, most importantly, people are freed. Freed to be themselves. And I’ve yet to be given a gift that meant or mattered more.