Back home

Well I moved back to my hometown on Sunday. My cousin and I drove for 3 days across desert, mountains, foothills, and plains to get me back to the heartland. God’s country. The hub. The hinterlands. The sticks.

"Why would you want to move back to this town?" It’s a good question, one I’ve pondered for over a year at least. Any answer I could give would be incomplete, because the decision is largely illogical and unreasonable. Politically, socially, economically, spiritually, it seems better to live in Los Angeles. L.A. has everything a young, ambitious, liberal, gay churchmouse could desire. I had a good job doing important work. I had a spiritual home and pastor who really cared about me. I had opportunities to participate in a gay community that needs concerned people to get active and mobilize. I had the most political opportunities and protections in California than in most other states, except perhaps Vermont. And so why would I leave all that?

Perhaps because it wasn’t enough. I was lonely. I was unhappy. I was living like a hermit. I didn’t feel connected to my parish, or important to the work I was doing, or empowered by my progressive queer community. I felt bad. Sad. Of course, it cycled up and down. I did have good friends and good times. But I still felt disconnected from the people around me. I felt like I had run away again. I felt like I was cheating. I hadn’t faced up to my immediate past, and I was hiding from my family and my mother’s ghost.

I came back home to face up. I want to finish what I started and commit to an experience of myself that is finally authentic. I have to do this before I can be released from my own bonds. I have to live – openly, fully – without shame or remorse. I have used my mother’s death as an excuse for far too long – on the surface denying it – and I haven’t even begun to experience the depth of the pain I will have to face before it’s done.

I have been able to "pass". I have lived mostly in the closet, only barely inching out here and there where I knew it was safe. I have to own up to who am I as a gay man so that I can finally be free. This is a frightening step, but I know in my heart if I don’t do it I’ll never be who I was meant to be. I have to do this to be free. I have to do this to be me.

So to answer the question, well, I felt I had to go back to basics. To accomplish this work I felt I had to come back to the source. My hometown, my family, my past are all here, and I must find my way among them. There is still an unwritten reason that I can’t quite put into words. If I had to do it, I would call it grace.