Unanswered Questions

I was asked to share my thoughts today in church during an Elder’s Quorum lesson about “where our choices lead.” At first, I didn’t know what to say. This is actually a very difficult question to answer for someone like me. As a gay and active member of the Church, I am constantly considering this question because I am straddling two paths – both of which would lead me to very different destinations. If I were to embrace a completely homosexual lifestyle, I would give up many of the blessings I enjoy by being an active member of the church. On the other hand, by embracing the standards of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I miss out on the possibility of a romantic/intimate companionship that all human beings need. I can’t have both.

But this post isn’t about the conflict I feel, living between two worlds. This post is not about justice, equality, or fairness – religious or otherwise. This post isn’t even about me asking “why.” I could delve into a myriad of questions I’ve had over the course of my life, not the least of which is, why have I been burdened with being gay in a hetero-family-oriented church? No, this post isn’t about all of that. This post is about living with unanswered questions.

I won’t go into detail about what I shared with the brothers in the Elders’ Quorum lesson today, mostly because I’m pretty sure I was bawling like a baby through all of it, even though it only lasted about 5 minutes. But, I do want to share one thing I said, which is the foundation of what I want to share in this post. Regarding my circumstances, as stated above, I shared this, “The Lord knows me. He knows this is hard for me. But I know there is a reason to have faith; even if I don’t know the reason yet – I know there is one.”

Essentially, I am choosing to live a faith-centered, abstinent lifestyle, without really knowing why. I have no proof that my faith will be rewarded. I have no proof that I’m making the right choice. But I am making that choice. I am choosing to abstain from a fully gay lifestyle, in order to remain a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in good standing. (I know many people in my situation have opted to leave the church and I fully support them in their decision – we all have a different path and we all deserve to be loved and accepted for who we are regardless of the path we choose.)

I guess that’s what I think faith is – moving forward when we don’t yet have all the answers. Which is, as I’ve come to realize, unbelievably ironic for me. You see, I seem to have a great deal of faith when it comes to religious/spiritual matters. But I have recently come to know that I don’t seem to have much faith anywhere else in my life.

When I look in the mirror, I hate what I see. When I look in the mirror, I see how fat I am and I hate it. I hate how it looks, I hate how it feels and I hate the burden that it creates in my life on every level – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I hate that I can’t physically do things I want to do; I hate that I can’t wear clothes I want to wear; I hate how self-conscious I am and every time I go out in public, I worry that people are going to laugh at me, make fun of me, or look down on me. I worry that they will think about me the way I think about myself – weak, lazy, ugly, and stupid.

I have been on a multi-year journey to fix this – to lose weight, to feel better about myself and my life. I’ve had some successes, but many, many failures and every failure gets harder and harder to get back up from. The problem, if I can oversimplify, isn’t about knowledge or opportunity – I’ve had an abundance of both. The problem is that I tried to move forward without faith. Maybe it seems ridiculous to you, but I think it takes faith to change nutrition and exercise habits. Every time I started a new diet, or a new exercise program, or hired a new trainer, I struggled to put faith into the process or the person who was coaching me. I struggled with cutting things out of my diet, restricting calories, trying new exercises, needing to modify exercises to my ability level and so on, because I didn’t really know if it was going to work or not. The outcome of changing lifestyle habits was my unanswered question – was this really going to work for me this time?

Paradoxically, there were times when I did put my faith in the process and several times it did pay off – it paid off in increased strength, flexibility, weightloss, increased energy, and so on. But then I had a set-back. Several circumstances made me question my faith in the process, so much so, that I gave up on it. I gave up on eating right; I gave up on exercise. And it took its toll. I lost the energy I had gained. I gained back the weight I had lost. I lost strength, flexibility; and probably the worst part – I lost believing in myself.

As I’ve contemplated the things I’ve lost and as I’ve pondered on the seemingly inexhaustible supply of self-loathing I experience on a daily basis, and especially in light of what I was reminded of in church today – I realize that the one  thing I’ve never had any faith in – is me. When I had faith in the process of weightloss, it worked, I did lose weight, and it felt great. But I didn’t believe that I was worth it. I didn’t have faith that I could sustain the progress I had made because I didn’t have faith in myself. And I inevitably gave up on the process of weightloss.

I have spent thousands of hours, years even, money, tears, and whatever energy I could muster to try to understand why I am the way I am. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not bagging on therapy – I love therapy and I’m a huge advocate for it. But after so much time and energy trying to understand why, I think I’m at a place where I realize that some questions just aren’t going to be answered. I don’t know why my first, visceral reaction is to hate myself; I don’t know why I have an aversion to doing anything “hard,” or that will make me look stupid; I don’t know why a good body and self-confidence come so easily to others and not to me. I don’t know why I have to fight my own brain every single day just to function in this world, let alone improve myself. And maybe I won’t ever know. Maybe that’s what faith is – to not know, but to move forward anyway. Maybe what I have needed, more than “answers” is just to have faith that I am worth it; that I can do it; that regardless of how successful I am (I really want to lose that “last” 100 pounds!!), that I’ll be better off for even trying.

Going back to a point I wanted to make – it seems strange that I have no problem having faith in an omniscient/omnipotent being that I can’t see, hear, smell, or touch and yet I can’t have faith in the very physical, tangible experience of being me. I can’t help but ask myself, “what would having faith in myself look like?”

I literally just spent the last 10 minutes looking off into space because I don’t know how to answer that question…

I guess it would mean pursuing health and fitness without having to defend or justify myself. I would do it because it would make me happy. I think it would mean being willing to make sacrifices of junk food/binge eating because I know those things don’t really make me happy long-term. I think it would mean being willing to accept all the bad things that come with life – being willing to be in pain, to be uncomfortable, to sacrifice or go without something I may want in the moment; and knowing that life doesn’t present hardships as a punishment – it’s just a part of life and it’s okay. I think it would mean accepting that some things are just hard, and that it doesn’t mean it’s wrong, or that I’ve done something wrong.

It has been difficult to face hard things because I haven’t felt that I was worth it. I also just realized that when something gets hard, I immediately react with feelings of indignation. When I face something hard, I hear my inner voice saying, “this isn’t fair…” And you know what? It isn’t. It isn’t fair that I have to work so hard to lose weight when it comes so easily to other men. It isn’t fair that I have to sacrifice enjoyable food when other men can eat whatever they want and not gain weight. It isn’t fair that I’ve been through so much trauma, only to have to work even harder at changing my thoughts/beliefs as a result. It isn’t fair that I have to deal with the fallout of things that happened to me, that I didn’t cause, that I didn’t want and that I never would have chosen. It isn’t fair that I have to suffer the consequences of other people’s bad choices/behavior. Yes, I know that makes me sound like a brat – and maybe that’s all I’ve ever been. But I’ve avoided and I’ve retreated and I’ve hid myself away because I just can’t face dealing with hard things when it wasn’t my fault to begin with. Well that also sounds like a victim talking…

Okay, so it isn’t fair. I am absolutely, 100% right – it’s not fair.

Now what?

Where does “it’s not fair” actually get me? Nowhere!!

Focusing on “it’s not fair” just leaves me stuck. I don’t have the answer, but maybe, just maybe, one way to get past “it’s not fair” is to realize that what it is, is an opportunity.

No, I didn’t want to be molested. And it isn’t fair. But it is an opportunity to forgive. No, I didn’t want to be morbidly obese. And it isn’t fair. But it is an opportunity to learn to appreciate the body God has given me. No, I didn’t want to live my life hating myself because other people hurt me. And it isn’t fair. But it is an opportunity to triumph in the face of adversity.

Maybe what “isn’t fair” is also an opportunity for faith. I think having faith in myself is trusting that what I want is okay to want; that I am worth achieving and maintaining improved health and fitness; that it’s okay that the process will be hard at times, but that the outcome will be worth it.

I think having faith in myself will mean doing the hardest thing possible: accept myself for who I am, the way I am, fat and all.

I have gotten used to beating myself up and I have gotten used to misery. I think it will be just as hard to admit that I’m okay, as it will be to accept that I’m okay. I have never allowed myself to be truly happy. I thought I needed to change, to achieve an ideal body/success, in order to matter, in order to be happy. So I’ve never allowed myself to really be happy. I was afraid that if I was happy then something bad would happen to “balance it out.” I was afraid that being happy meant I was being selfish. I was afraid that being happy meant taking happiness away from others, because there’s only so much to go around. I was afraid that being happy meant that I couldn’t change my circumstances, that I had to give up my dreams of improving myself physically or otherwise, because if I’m happy, then what else do I need?

It’s just occurred to me that I don’t think of happiness as an outcome of choices I make (i.e., a side effect); I think of happiness as THE destination – the whole end goal. Once you’re happy, that’s it – you’ve made it. You’re happy and there’s nothing else to want or do because you don’t need anything because you’re happy.

But what if happiness is NOT a final destination? What if happiness is NOT an end, in and of itself?

What if happiness is like a jacket. You aren’t meant to wear jackets all the time, but for some kinds of weather it’s the perfect comfort. In that way, maybe fulfillment doesn’t come FROM simply “being happy,” but maybe fulfillment comes from growth and achievement, and happiness just sometimes comes along for the ride…?

Well this post just kind of went everywhere, didn’t it? Sorry if it’s been all over the place. I didn’t realize until I started typing this that the concept of happiness was such a contributing factor to my lack of self-worth.

Ultimately, I don’t know what will come from all of the realizations I’ve had today. I still have so many unanswered questions. But I suppose that was really the whole point of this post in the first place: Faith is just living life with unanswered questions – and unanswered questions are no reason to stop living.

What Do You Deserve?

I have recently experienced a huge set-back. I say recently, but in reality it’s been happening for over six months. In September of 2018 I hit a milestone – I lost 80 pounds! I’ve never lost that much weight before!

I looked at the number on the scale, hardly able to believe what it meant. Losing 80 pounds was more than halfway to my goal. My clothes were much looser and I was in need of buying smaller clothes, so it really shouldn’t have surprised me to see the number going down.

And in reality, I don’t know that it was the number itself that surprised me – it was my reaction to that number that surprised me. I remember feeling disbelief, then fear, then disappointment. It struck me that I should be over-the-moon happy with my weight being down, but I wasn’t. I got a little angry at myself, “Micah! Look at what you’ve accomplished! Why aren’t you happy about this?! Isn’t this what you’ve wanted your whole life? Well, it’s finally happening!! Why aren’t you happy or excited?”

First, my disbelief. The fact that I “couldn’t believe” I had lost 80 pounds means that I didn’t really believe that I would. How else do you explain being “surprised” by weightloss when weightloss IS THE GOAL?! Deep down, I never really believed that I could be successful at losing weight because I had tried SO MANY times before. Suddenly, this time was different. Something about this process had worked and I wasn’t ready for it. I was seeing it, but I wasn’t believing it. In that moment, I realized that something within me was out of alignment with my goals and how I saw myself (more on this below).

Second, my fear. This is convoluted, even to me. I was afraid of so many things. I was afraid that I wouldn’t be able to maintain that weightloss. I was afraid that if I didn’t maintain that level of weightloss that people would make fun of me or worse, look at me with that crushing pity or disappointment in their eyes. Suddenly I felt “pressure” to HAVE to keep the weight off and I was afraid that I couldn’t do it – I mean, I wasn’t even able to believe I had done it in the first place, so how could I maintain it? I was afraid that it would make some people feel bad about themselves. (I know, I said this was convoluted… which is just a fancy way of saying my thought process is SO F’d up!!) I was afraid that, rather than be happy for me, it might make others who are also trying to lose weight, feel bad that they haven’t lost weight or haven’t lost as much weight. I was afraid that if I shared my progress, people would think I was showing off or trying to be something I’m not (what does that even mean?! I have no idea!!).

Part of the fear was not purely my own though. I recall telling someone that I had lost 80 pounds, but still have “more to go” and their response was, “but is that realistic?” The moment they said it, my soul was crushed. Basically they were saying, “hey, you’ve lost this weight, maybe you should just be happy with that and stop trying to lose more. That way you won’t set yourself up for disappointment when you don’t lose any more weight.” I know the comment was well-meaning – they just wanted me to be happy, but it confirmed to me that other people don’t believe in me; don’t believe that I could lose any more weight and that I ought to just be happy with what I had achieved, or be happy at being slightly less fat than when I started, or just “accept” myself the way I am and stop trying to improve myself. Suddenly, I had confirmation that I should be afraid of not being able to lose more weight, because others didn’t believe I could either. Which is probably what contributed to…

Third, my disappointment. My original goal was to lose 140 pounds. Losing 80 pounds, as I said, is over halfway, but because it wasn’t 140 pounds, I hadn’t “met my goal.” Why be happy about losing 80 pounds, when I still have 60 more pounds to go? Losing 80 pounds was great, but it wasn’t enough. I couldn’t be happy about losing 80 pounds because I told myself (unknowingly), that I wouldn’t be happy until I reached 140 pounds lost. It’s all or nothing and I won’t be happy until ALL the weight is gone.  The problem with saying, “I’ll be happy when…” is that you’re also saying, “I CAN’T be happy until…” Here I was, 80 pounds lost, AND I STILL WASN’T HAPPY. I was disappointed that I had ONLY lost 80 pounds and not 140. 

Somehow, of all of the three feelings mentioned above, it was feeling disappointment that was most eye opening. The fact that I had achieved something I had never before achieved – and still wasn’t happy about it, made me realize just how bad my mindset has been. Even as I have gone through the grueling process of trying to change my outlook on life, I still had this deep, deep belief that I could only be happy in one way – at my ideal weight.

But since I had “failed” to reach that weight, I gave in to my disbelief, my fear, and my disappointment. It’s interesting – I didn’t stop going to the gym and I didn’t stop trying to eat clean, in fact, I went through a nutrition certification course so that I could coach others on optimal eating habits. But what did change, was that I stopped really believing that I could do this – that I could maintain 80 pounds lost, that I could lose an additional 60 pounds, that I could actually achieve my goal weight. What has been the result? Well, here I am 6-7 months later and I’ve regained 40 of the 80 pounds lost!!

This is devastating to me.

I feel so disappointed in myself. I feel like a fraud for wanting to help other people eat well and lose weight, when I can’t even seem to do that for myself!

I’ve been asking myself for weeks/months, “what’s wrong with me? Why can’t I get my act together? Why do I keep messing up, failing, and hurting myself – mentally and nutritionally?”

It finally dawned on me one day with alarming clarity: I just don’t deserve it.

When this thought came to the surface, I realized how much it felt like “me.” This is my identity; this is who I am – a man who is undeserving of anything good in his life. I don’t know why I haven’t realized it until now. How could I not have seen it until now? But now that I do, I look back over my life and I realize that it has been there the whole time. This belief has been with me for as long as I can remember, influencing every moment of my life, every choice I’ve made, every circumstance I have found myself in. Maybe I couldn’t see it because it was so good a hiding or masquerading as something else – such as being a victim, not measuring up, being afraid, etc. Being undeserving has been a part of all of those things, like an undercurrent that can’t be seen, but influences everything above it.

I have ruined diets, binged, and given up on myself over and over again, because I didn’t believe that I deserved anything better. If I did feel like I deserved something, it was that I deserved punishment, pain, and suffering. No wonder being miserable “feels right,” it’s all I’ve felt I’ve deserved. I deserve to be fat, ugly and lonely because I don’t deserve to be healthy, attractive or in a relationship. I don’t deserve to lose more weight, because that would make me happy and I don’t deserve to be happy!

Being undeserving can – and has – cut through every facet of my life. I think this is why I felt “disbelief” at having lost 80 pounds, as I mentioned above; as well as why I felt fear about losing weight – because I had achieved something I didn’t “deserve.”

For as long as I can remember I’ve had this really weird belief system that goes something like this: If I deserved to have something in my life, then I would have it; if I don’t have something in my life, it’s because I don’t deserve it. A couple of examples of this are: If I was deserving of having a good body, then I would have one (and not have to work for it?); but since I don’t have a good body, I don’t deserve it. Or, on the negative side: Since I was molested as a child, I must have deserved it, because if I didn’t deserve it, it wouldn’t have happened…

It’s as if the condition of having or not having something in my life is somehow “irrefutable proof” of this Deserving rule. Honestly, I have no idea where, when or how this rule developed, but I obviously felt it was so reliable that it just became a part of me.

Which leads me to my next question: now what?

Now that I see what I’ve been doing consciously or unconsciously my whole life, what do I do about it now? How do I just flip the switch and say, “ohp, gosh, you know what? wait…, wait, wait… I guess I was wrong this whole time; I really am deserving of having good things and being successful…!”

Like, I can’t do this. I can’t just wake up tomorrow and suddenly believe that I’m deserving of all good things – it’s far too incongruous with my experience. How do I lie to myself and tell myself that I suddenly deserve all the things I’ve told myself my whole life I DON’T deserve?

On the other hand I have this little “mindset coach” in the back of my head asking, “why does being deserving even have to factor into the equation? Why does everything have to be related to whether or not you deserve it? What if you took ‘being deserving’ out of the equation, period?”

Those are good questions, but I don’t know what that would look like. I don’t know how to answer those questions. Perhaps, instead of looking like “what do you deserve?” it might look like “what are you willing to work for?” Because if it’s no longer a matter of what you deserve, then it must become a matter of what do you really want and are you willing to DO what it takes to achieve it?

I don’t know. I’m really at a loss here. Has anyone else gone through this? What advice would you give me?

Have you ever asked yourself that question? Or have you ever wondered...

What do you deserve?

Why It Was Good To Hate Myself

So I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how I eat. Weird, I know, but just go with me on this. I have a history of emotional eating/food addiction and binge eating. I recently had a relapse into this behavior and I kept asking myself why.

A conversation that basically went something like this:
“Micah, why are you eating crap when you know it makes you feel shitty and you’re only going to regret it? Why are you doing this to yourself? No one is forcing you to eat this way; this is coming from you. Why do you eat like someone who hates himself?”

And my reply was simple, “because I do hate myself.”

“Is that true?” I asked myself in genuine surprise. “Do you really hate yourself? You’ve been doing so much work on self-acceptance; loving and accepting yourself for who you are. Hasn’t that meant anything? Haven’t you learned anything from all that work? How can you still hate yourself?”

It took some time to answer this question, but I was finally able to answer it: “Because hating myself is the only way to be right.”

It has taken me some time to unpack the idea of what “being right” in this context means and it’s not any one thing, but a combination of things.

First, as an overweight kid I experienced a lot of rejection. I was hurt and betrayed practically on a daily basis. And then I realized something. Rather than waiting for people to make fun of me (and I knew they would), I would beat them to the punch and make fun of myself. And guess what? It worked! It was almost as if everyone was saying, “oh hey, we don’t have to make fun of him (as much), because he’ll do it himself.” And while the teasing didn’t end, it changed the way people reacted to me. Suddenly, people were laughing “with” me and I actually felt like I was getting along with people. Putting myself down, i.e., learning to hate myself, made other people “like” me. I learned that people like you better when you hate yourself. Therefore, hating myself was the right thing to do to have friends.

Second, I never felt like I was good enough to warrant my parent’s time or affection. I’ve blogged about all this before, so it’s pointless to hash it all out here again, but just to apply this to my current topic… People who are worthless don’t “deserve” their parent’s time and affection. Since I didn’t deserve my parent’s time and affection, I felt worthless. The only thing you can do with something worthless is to hate it, ergo, it’s “right” to hate worthless things.

Third, I thought the only way for me to be "right" before God was to hate myself. I believed that self-hatred was essentially the same as humility. Or, in other words, being humble by acknowledging my worthlessness before Him was the only way to be "right" before Him. Also, I was afraid of God’s punishment just for being me. (And YES, being a “gay Mormon” has everything to do with this, but that is a huge topic and a whole other blog post!!) I thought that if I could punish myself enough, then He would have compassion on me and not punish me Himself. It’s ironic. My whole life I have professed to know God as a loving Father, and yet, here I am believing that He only wants to punish me.

In every case, hating myself felt right because it was reliable, it was something I could count on, and it always worked. It satisfied every explanation for what was wrong in my life. And it allowed me to have some weird kind of control in my life because I couldn’t count on anything else. Hating myself was more than just a feeling, it was something I could DO; even when it meant that what I was doing was harming myself. Hating myself for being worthless applied to everything and it was an answer for everything: my parent’s and friend’s rejection, every failure, being a disappointment, being fat and ugly, being molested even. I thought that only people who have worth are protected and spared such horrors and that “safety” was well worth hating myself for. I was miserable, but I was safe.

Miserable, but safe.

These three little words seem to have defined my life up until this point. For most of my life, the need for safety outweighed the need for happiness. For the last couple of years at least, I’ve been approaching that tipping point – the point where the misery is just too much of a burden, a shackle, rather than a life line. In other words, the need for happiness becoming more important than the need to find safety in self-harm.

As I have been working on self-acceptance, seeing my past for what it was and seeing myself for who I am, I feel “growing pains” of an emotional kind. It’s scary giving up the “safety” of self-hatred. It’s terrifying accepting myself for who I am – a flawed, imperfect man who just wants to be a good man. It’s terrifying because just being me means I may not be “right” before God; it means I was probably all wrong about how I interpreted my parents treatment of me; it means I can’t control whether or not people like/accept me/approve of me. Giving up control, whether real or imagined, is terrifying. It means opening myself up to the possibility that I’m not safe, or that I may not be safe… that I’m going to be wrong, imperfect, etc.

As I was working through the twisted “logic” of hating myself in order to “be right,” I had a moment of innocent realization. “I just don’t want to hurt myself anymore.” And for a moment, I felt the sweetness of self-compassion.

I often see and hear messages of the need for self-love and self-compassion and I have believed that those concepts were great advice… for others. I never felt like that advice applied to me – again, because I thought hating myself was the only way to be “right.” But for a moment, I did feel self-compassion and that moment taught me a few things. 

First, I only know what self-love looks like because I have known what self-hatred looks like. For the first time in my life, I now have something to contrast with self-hatred. (This idea explains the title of this blog post.) And this is NOT a minor point – the contrast is necessary. Maybe – for me personally – I needed to hate myself in order to know what loving myself should look like. Indeed, as Lehi, a Book of Mormon prophet taught, “There must needs be opposition in all things.” Life happens in the opposition; growth overcoming entropy; faith in the furnace of affliction; 

Second – and please know that I am NOT in any way shape or form advocating self-hatred as a path to self-love – what I have learned is that there is great power in gratitude for where I have been because it was all a part of the journey that got me to where I am now. I could continue to lament the years I spent in self-hatred, to regret all of the things I didn’t do, or missed out on, but what good would that do me now? None. Instead, I can look back and say, it happened. And it led me on a path to finding self-love – no, more than that, to seeing the NEED for self-love and self-compassion. I truly believe that my poor health, being overweight, being sick, etc., is all somehow tied to years of hating myself and wanting to hurt myself.

In all of this reflection I have “climbed a mountain” of understanding and while I appreciate the view, I am, once again, at a precipice. I can back down this mountain the way I came and ease into the safety of self-loathing once again. Or I can jump into the unknown of self-love.

I choose to jump.

Why? Because I believe that there are arms to catch me; the arms of unconditional love. Love without condition. Think about that. Pure love – love with no strings attached, no conditions, no expectations. Just a love freely offered that says: I love you for who you are – all of you; I accept you for who you are – flaws and strengths, imperfections and gifts, all of it, ALL of you!

I didn’t know it, but all my life I’ve been looking for someone to love me in a way that would allow me to escape my prison of self-hatred. Someone who could just hold me, for no other reason than to be close to me; someone who could be affectionate with me; someone who could truly see all of me – the good AND the bad – and somehow love me just as much for having both – unconditionally.

Somehow, and maybe I’m wrong about this, but I don’t think I’ll find that from another human being, until I can do that for myself. Maybe it was good to hate myself for a time, but the best thing I can do now is to learn to love myself, unconditionally.