Gay Mormon Stripling Warrior

Les Miserables is one of my all time favorite musicals. The music is beautiful and so powerful. My favorite song is I Dreamed a Dream and it is performed in the first act by the character Fantine. Some background information: Fantine is a working class French woman very much in love with a man named Félix Tholomyès. Tholomyès abandons Fantine, leaving her to to care for Tholomyès' daughter, Cosette, by herself. Fantine out of lack of means to provide for Cosette, is forced to leave her in the care of the corrupt and selfish Thénardiers. She sends money to pay for Cosette's keep.  Unbeknownst to Fantine, Cosette is being abused and used as labor for the Thénardiers' inn. The Thénardiers lie to Fantine about the costs of Cosette and use the money for their own selfish wants. Fantine is later fired from her job at Jean Valjean's factory, because of the discovery of her daughter, who was born out of wedlock. Meanwhile, the T...

Friendships are like the Stock Market. It's dangerous, risky, and you're not always guaranteed a return. Invest too much into a bad stock and you'll lose everything. Invest into the right stock, you become rich. Continuous trading of your stocks will put you at a stand still, you will not progress in the marketplace and will become quite discontent with your situation. I've been doing a lot of thinking the past week or so just evaluating friendships and people in my life, or more accurately stated attempted friendships in my life. I take an interest in someone and will generally want to be their friend. In doing so I'm investing anything and everything I have to that friendship. Texts, Facebook, phone calls, little favors just because, going to lunch, hanging out. I sincerely care about a person. I have a theory that my intensity with friendship is a sort of compulsive behavior which overwhelms people. So more often than not I make this investment and instead o...

Today was a big day. I went to the temple with my sister. It's the first time I've been to the temple in a long time. It's the first time that I've done an endowment session in over a year. It has taken me so long to come back to the temple because of mistakes that I made acting out on my attractions a year ago. I never confessed them to a Bishop and though I've never done those things again, I have still felt constant guilt and unworthiness. Today was different. Today I went in feeling that I truly needed the upliftment and peace that only comes with the Temple. For one thing, I hate Black Friday. When I say hate, I mean LOATHE ENTIRELY. I feel like it's complete hypocrisy. Thursday we're giving thanks and putting others ahead. Then the next morning people are literally crawling over each other to buy things for themselves. It's disgusting. Plus all the people gives me so much anxiety, but I digress. I wanted to withdraw from the world and find p...

I swear I'm not meaning to sounding like Debbie the Downer especially since this is Thanksgiving and all. This should be a post where I express my gratitude for everything that I have in this life. I do have plenty to be thankful for. I have parents that love me and are still together after 30 plus years of marriage and are actually happily married. I have a Mother who is one of the most spiritual if not most spiritual faithful women I have ever met. I have a Father who has taught me how to work hard and provides continually for his family. I have the opportunity to attend a Church sponsored school where my education is high quality but at low cost. I have the gospel, I have friends, I have my intelligence, I have my siblings, I have not only a working car, but a beautiful working car, I have a laptop, iPod, iPhone, I have nice clothes, I am able to fly home and see my family several times a year. But still none of this seems to fill me right now. It's the end of the day...

This evening I had about 45 minutes before I had to leave to go to the airport to catch my flight to go see my sister for Thanksgiving. I ran outside to go move my car so it would be out of the way while I was away over the holiday. I turn on my headlights and nothing happens. No lights on the outside of the car come on, though the inside lights up just fine. I call my parents to let them know what's going on. My mom chews me out and makes a comment about wanting to know what she is supposed to do about it. We both know that any repairs made on my (rather expensive to fix) SUV, will be paid by her. I have no money. I go to school full time, year round. I'm preparing to graduate and take the MCAT. So it makes sense that I would call her and tell her what was up with the car since she was the one cutting the check. I get off the phone with my mother and ask my grandmother if she can follow me over to the shop so I can drop off my car and have them work on it while I'm go...

This weekend I was privileged to attend a conference put on by the  Association of Mormon Counselors and Psychotherapists (AMCAP)  called  Sex Attraction Conference: Reconciling Faith & Feelings . It was "the  first-ever public presentation brings together a   number of people who have experienced same-sex   attraction, including several persons who now have   successful opposite-sex marriages. They will offer   insights into how they have reconciled their challenges and their traditional moral values, including   the teachings of The Church of Jesus Christ of   Latter-day Saints. Other therapists and scholars will   provide additional perspectives."  Before I talk about the conference, let me preface with an apology. This blog post is going to be pretty bipolar and all over the place because I'm going to be copying down my notes from my journal, so bear with me. I was initially super apprehensive about ...

When I was in elementary school I didn't have a lot of friends. I was quiet, not athletic, and blissfully ignorant. I was the definition of "nerd". I wore the pants thats you could zip off the bottoms and become shorts. I would wear the white socks half way up my shin. I had large round glasses, I was pudgy, I wore my Old Navy Tech Vest almost every day - yes I was that guy. My favorite thing to do was to read. I would devour any book that I could lay my hands on. Harry Potter was by and large my favorite. I have easily read each of the books in the series over a dozen times. Not only did I like to read. But I was usually the teacher's pet and top of my class. My less than desirable traits ostracized me from the guys (lack of interest or understanding in sports). My lack of athletic talent or body removed me from the interest list of any of the girls. Anyone that was left was then turned off by my teacher's pet qualities. So I didn't have any friend. ...

I'm an Exercise Physiology Major, and as such I am required to enroll in the Exercise Physiology class and corresponding lab. Today for lab we were required to do the skin fold test on our classmates and then have them do it on us. I was dreading having the skin fold test done on myself. I was always the fat kid in elementary school and middle school. My body fat percentage was always a considerable amount higher than all the Ethiopian bean poles I went to school with. I'm in some of the best shape I've been in a long time right now, but I still have flash back nightmares of being teased and called fatty. So I was very shy about removing my shirt and showing my stomach. I quickly put on my shirt as soon as I could once I was done. Then came the next part of the lab... Each person in our group was supposed to find two people outside of class to do the skin fold test on. I called up a buddy I just met this semester, (who I do find attractive) and then I wandered into...

My older brother got married a couple years ago. Due to distance and serving a mission, I haven't had the opportunity to meet his wife until very recently. His wife came into town for a visit this past weekend. We were able to meet up for the first time and chat over some hot coco. We were both laughing because it felt like a date. My brother was diagnosed with schizophrenia many years ago. He has tried to kill himself several times. My family has been dealing with the trial that it is for over ten years now. We tried many experimental treatments to try to help and "cure" my brother, but to no avail. My brothers medications have caused him to put on a lot of weight and lose the body he used to be so proud of (he was studying to be a personal trainer for a while). My brother has a college degree and is a genius (like most people who struggle with mental illness), but his disease debilitates him, dumbs him down and makes it so he is unable to hold down a steady job...

I must have this huge disclaimer on me that I can't see that apparently says "take advantage of me." I'm a gay mormon, so I already the tendency to be more emotional than most guys. I give and give and give with all the relationships in my life. At times I do it from the good of my heart, and at other times I admit I do it because I want a friend to feel obligated to reciprocate that love and care to me.  If some people would just look outside themselves and see that there is a person who genuinely loves them and cares about them. I stand there and most of the times these people just look right through me to other people in their lives who aren't even that great.  I know I'm not perfect. I know I make mistakes. I know I have truly crazy moments of attachment from being gay. I also know that I'm a damn good friend to people. I have always prided myself on the caliber of friend I am to people. I am the best friend that you see in movies, ...

I know that I am far from perfect. I know that I have so many short coming and things that I need to work on, but one thing I do have a testimony of and do have perfect faith in is Priesthood blessings. What I love about Priesthood blessings is that anyone can have one, you don't have to be worthy to receive comfort from our loving Father in Heaven. I spend the majority of Saturday in bed with a terrible migraine. I've gotten migraines since I was at least 7 years old. They usually incapacitate me. I get a terrible headache, I can't stand noise, light, or motion. I tend to get nauseated, flushed, and dizzy. I can't sleep and try to lay perfectly still with a bunch of pain killers in me and a cold washcloth on my face. Ever since I was little, I would ask for a blessing once I got migraine. I knew that if I got a blessing, I would be healed no matter what. I always did all I could for myself before I would ask for a blessing because we are supposed to help ourselv...