Justin Part 2

Justin was a Wheaton grad and we had similar religious backgrounds. He was recently divorced and still processing through much of what had transpired in his marriage, refusing to let his divorce turn him hard and bitter.  

Justin was an open book. Me, on the other hand…well, he tried. He wanted to know me better. We would take walks at night and sometimes end up on hiking trails in the pitch black. One night, out on the trail, he questioned me about my history, where I had been when this thing happened and that thing happened. He wanted to get it clear in his mind, my history, but he also wanted more. He prompted me to go deeper with him, tell him about past relationships and the more personal things in my life. As he was waiting for me to open up and answer, he tripped over a root and plunged forward. I started laughing, thinking surely the mood had broken and the moment had passed, but he would not be dissuaded. I could sense his gaze on me in the darkness. He was silent, waiting. But I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t go there. Could not get personal. I deflected. Continued to resuscitate my timeline instead of going deeper. 

He didn’t give up though. Hanging out one evening in my apartment, he told me the story about the break-up of his marriage, about how it made him doubt that God was good, about how his faith was shaken and upended. He was open and vulnerable with me. Afterward, as he strummed my guitar, he looked up and gently asked, “What about you?”

Did he intuit I was hiding something? He certainly sensed my reticence.

He encouraged me saying it was okay, “it’s only me.” And still…still, I could not open up. I was too ashamed to tell him that I was attracted to women, that my last relationship had been with a woman.  

I watched Justin and listened and learned from him. I admired his heart, I respected his openness and vulnerability and his faith was infectious. When we love someone, we like to tell others about them and how great they are. Justin talked this way about his faith, his love for Jesus. He sprinkled his thoughts about Jesus so seamlessly in his conversations like he was talking about a mentor he respected, a parent he loved or a best friend he wanted to hang out with. Being around him caused a few more chunks of the wall I had built around myself to collapse. 

Justin was very involved in a local church and invited me to service on Sundays. I had not attended church regularly in a long time. I hated showing up by myself and sitting by myself. I often felt like church held no space for people like me. Single people. The churches I was used to were full of married people (heteros) and families. Children everywhere. I felt out of place in church. The oddball. I stayed away. But now, with Justin, I was going to church. It felt wonderful to be part of the majority, to be normal, arriving on Sunday mornings with a man by my side. 

One night, he took me again to his small group and during the course of the evening one of the guys in the group told his story, which just happened to be his coming out story. Good grief. I could not believe that THIS, of all things, was the story. I felt so uncomfortable, so unsettled and even like a fraud, although I genuinely liked Justin. In the car on the way home, Justin wanted to talk about it. He was surprised that this guy was gay, but he thought it was brave and gutsy for him to tell his story to all of us. This was THE perfect opportunity for me to tell Justin about me and my experience. I mean he was being open and honest and non-judgmental about this guy. It could not have been a better time for me to open up and tell him about my attractions to women. I could NOT do it. I felt my throat tighten up. I wanted to tell him and yet the words I wanted to use got stuck in the back of my mouth.

Like the foam letters little kids play with, they were too big to make their way out of my mouth.

Instead, I sat there and listened to Justin go on about this guy and his story and then I changed the subject.  

I was convinced that if I told him, any interest he had for me would die. I didn’t know how he would process the fact that, even though I liked women, I now felt attracted to him (I didn’t know how to process it either). But more than that, I was still wading through the swampland of my soul (the queen of vulnerability, Brene Brown’s, description of shame). I was too bogged down, feeling something was wrong or broken in me for being attracted to women, to open my mouth and use my words and tell him. 

Not long after that night, Justin took me aside after church and broke up with me. We weren’t dating so it wasn’t technically a break-up, but he said that while he had enjoyed spending time with me over the past several months, he still did not have any better sense of who I was as a person than he had in the beginning when we first started hanging out.

I repeat…he did NOT know me any better than he had at the beginning of the summer.

Gah. I had always prided myself on having pretty decent self-esteem and a strong sense of self. Others had told me this throughout my life. Where had that girl gone?

The secret and the shame had so infected my life that my being, my personality, was diminished. Lessened. Hidden. I had lost myself. And if I had lost myself, if I could not find me, how could I expect Justin or anybody else to find me? How could anyone know me? How could I form a meaningful relationship with anyone?