Up until a few weeks ago I would often say “I believe I had a good and normal childhood,” mostly because I rarely tried hard to remember much of it, and what I did remember was the shallow, fleeting moments. I was convinced that my shyness or introspection arose from some mysterious adolescent trauma or high school drama, because what few memories I clung to showed me as a happy child and then an unhappy young adult. But now I’ve remembered some important childhood memories that might point to a much more powerful and long-lasting influence than any single event.

My earliest traceable memory of any kind of sexual attraction took place in elementary school. I was an extra in a play at the local community college with some other kids, but I paid special attention to one boy in particular. I didn’t know at the time that what I was feeling had anything to do with sex or even romance. I just knew that I liked the way he looked and wanted to be close to him.

At some later point, in the same theater but with a different group of kids, I learned a new definition of the word “queer,” and it wasn’t a good thing.

My parents raised me in the LDS (a.k.a. Mormon) church. This was the age before widespread internet access or smartphones. Before the world extended beyond your hometown outside of what you saw on TV. And so as a child, everything I knew came from my family, friends, or school. And as a child, I believed what I was told. I believed that 2+2=4. I believed that it’s important to be nice to people and share. I believed that there is a heaven where I can live forever with my family. I believed that “wickedness never was happiness.” And I believed that “gay” was one of those things that no one talked about.

Another thing they tell you at church is how important it is to help others, to love and care for them, to serve them, to not be selfish, to not be proud, to sacrifice your own will to God.

And I believed it.

So imagine – and I have to imagine here, because I can’t remember – little gay Dallin growing up in this world where the most important people in your life are telling you to avoid sin, not be selfish, and to serve others. And other important people are telling you exactly what counts as “sin,” namely things like stealing, murder, anger, and sex outside of marriage between a man and a woman. What do I do? Exactly what they tell me to.

I become this porcelain sculpture. I say what I think they want me to say. I do what I think they want me to do. I hide what I think they don’t want to see. And any time my own desires or feelings get in the way of things, I crack.

Whenever I’d be relaxing and my parents would ask me to do some chore that I didn’t want to, I’d crack. I would either say “yes” immediately and seethe. Or more likely I would fight with myself. I knew the desired answer was “yes”, but I really wanted to say “no.” These times were some of the only moments I ever remember arguing with my parents or being angry with them.

At one point I was learning to play the cello and I took private lessons as well as participating in a string orchestra. One day while traveling between my private lesson and orchestra practice, I shattered. I didn’t want to do this any more, but the desire to quit this difficult schedule went against what people expected of me. It was unbearable.

As I got older I became more adept at holding myself together, or so I thought. Rather than crack or shatter I learned to disconnect. If I couldn’t figure out some assignment, I just gave up on it. If things were going to hell, I just watched TV. Most of my life was going well enough, so I just focused on that and ignored the rest.

Going in to high school I had accumulated a small group of good friends. For some reason (I have one guess, but I won’t claim to assume why) two of these friends began to fight, and I found myself in the middle, trying to play peacemaker and failing miserably. Eventually both friends left my daily life and I had to readjust my social circle to accommodate. I say that so matter-of-fact, but that period was the most stressful and painful time of my life at the moment, and later on I would find myself blaming some of my behavior on those events. But now I know that the strongest influences on how I turned out were in place long before high school.

That said, I did begin turning to masturbation and pornography as a coping mechanism during those months, but I’ll spare you (and myself) the details.

High school is a very interesting part of my life to look back on. I was getting older, which meant I was learning more about the world. I now knew about sex and porn. I now knew that people made mistakes; no one was perfect. I developed a double life. In public I presented my porcelain sculpture, expertly held together by force of will. In private I drowned out the noise with video games and porn.

I knew what I was doing went against church teachings, but I had found a loophole. You see, when the Bishop teaches a lesson about pornography, it’s about us boys not looking at girls. This aligned perfectly with what my own parents taught me growing up: respect women and their bodies. So on campouts or temple trips I quietly and sneakily admired the other boys’ bodies, and alone in my room I searched the internet for boys and admired their bodies.

I never connected this with attraction or romance – because it didn’t feel romantic – so I never connected myself with the label “gay.” When I hit the magical age when Mormons tell their kids to start dating, I went on a few dates out of duty or when a girl asked me. But I just wasn’t interested, so I made it through high school with a sum total of about ten dates under my belt. I never thought of asking a guy out, because that just wasn’t an option. And now that it is, I expect people would have warned me against it anyway.

Before one temple trip, while interviewing with the Bishop, he caught me out. It was then that he learned the whole sordid tale: I looked at porn, regularly, and it was boys. He sent me to a counselor for a while and helped me stop the porn use. I talked openly with the counselor about the cute boys in my class and tried to figure out what it was about them that I liked. After a few weeks I felt better and stopped going to the counselor. At no point did anyone directly confront me about the subject of homosexuality. I figure they must have assumed I was conscious of the connection myself. But I was still clueless that anything I was doing or feeling could relate to sexuality.

I avoided porn for the rest of high school and things started to look up. I eventually told my parents about it around graduation, but I must have avoided the “it’s boys!” part. I graduated high school and began freshman year at Brigham Young University in Provo. Mormon Central.

That first year at BYU was amazing. For the first time in my life I had a group of other men that included me in their social lives on a regular basis. I was living on my own and learning to adult. But I had developed a few strange habits that my roommates weren’t shy to call out. Unless they invited me to do something, I spent a lot of time in my room. I didn’t really share anything, and I didn’t talk a lot. I was very reserved and quiet, but occasionally I threw out such a radical statement they couldn’t handle it.

So here I am, 19 years old, college freshman, thinking I’ve perfected the balancing act that is my life. I’m not looking at porn. I’m not hung up over cute boys. I’m going to school. And I apparently have friends. Everything is going swell.

That summer, after freshman year, I leave for Hawaii on a proselytizing mission for the church. I remember wondering whether the tropical environment would encourage the kind of shirtlessness that might get my attention, but it was never a big issue. The big issue was my health. But I’ve already told that story.

So I get back early from my mission and spend a few months recovering at home before going back to BYU in the fall. And I immediately fall back into porn. So begins the three years of silent suffering. I didn’t tell my parents. I didn’t tell my bishops. I didn’t understand it myself.

In the last apartment I lived in while attending BYU, my roommates were all recently returned missionaries. They liked going to the gym, they liked dating girls, and they probably had a hard time figuring me out. I was the wise, reclusive older student with the printer and the fancy router. That didn’t stop them from trying to set me up on a few dates.

In all my time at BYU I dated three girls; two of those only had one date, and only one was my own choice. The one girl that I took on multiple dates was a blind date setup conspiracy between my roommates and a girls’ apartment nearby. At the end of the first date when the decision had to be made whether to continue, I figured “why not?” She was fun to talk to, but honestly that was it. Just like every other date I had ever been on, there was no chemistry. I dated her out of habit. Then one week I forgot to set up the next date and she didn’t try to correct my lapse. And that was my longest relationship ever, if you could call it that.

By this point I had decided that my trouble with girls was a response to the high school drama. I was afraid of rejection, I thought, so I didn’t try to get close. And I hadn’t yet tried to figure out why I was so reclusive; I still thought there was nothing strange about it.

So graduation comes around once again. My parents come up to visit and I buy my first car. Later in the summer I move into my own non-student apartment in the neighboring city. And for the first time I had decided that I was lonely and needed to actively try to make friends. But old habits die hard, especially when you haven’t dealt with the reason behind them.

Things come to a head that fall. I’m in an angry funk, as usual, when my mom calls me. She’s preparing a lesson for church about pornography and wants to get my suggestions on how to protect and prevent. So I tell her about the previous three years. About how I had reverted to my old habits and never went very long between looking. About how I was starting to avoid church because I was tired or in a bad mood. About how I wonder if anyone ever realized that I only ever looked at boys.

And there it was. The light bulb turned on and everything clicked.

I was gay.

My entire life had coalesced into that one moment. From coming home from my mission early, to not getting the job at Apple, to meeting the people I met in that city at that time. Everything came together so I would have a cushion to fall back on when this, the secret that I had kept from myself since childhood, was finally revealed.

There was now a hole in the sculpture. I could see through the cracks and patches at what was inside. But I kept holding it together. Because that sculpture was “me.”

I came out too soon. But if I didn’t come out when I did, I’d probably still be closeted.

North Star was a wonderful support for me in the beginning. I met other LGBT Mormons who wanted to stay true to church standards. But the important parts about belonging to the group was interacting with the people.

I attended the first North Star Conference a few weeks after coming out. I was still so new to the idea of my own sexuality. But it was at that conference that I made my first powerful breakthrough. Someone put their arm around my shoulder. And then I returned the favor.

I began to grow. The gaps between pieces of the sculpture began to widen, but the more I looked inside the gaps, the more afraid I was of what was inside. I didn’t want it to escape, so I kept a firm grip on the pieces so nothing too big could leak out.

Eventually I grew as much as I would let myself. I was comfortably “out.” I wrote blog posts and watched LGBT movies and YouTube videos. I went to Pride parades and wore North Star merch. I went to support groups and made friends. I even had a few chances to kiss someone. But I had stopped growing. So the powers that be decided to move me to the next level.

I moved to Seattle, Washington. From research done while interviewing, I had learned that Seattle was very LGBT friendly, much like San Francisco. And, being outside Utah, both the Mormon and the North Star population was much lower. This would be the first time I lived outside of any dominantly Mormon area. The training wheels were off.

I knew there must be a reason for me to be here, since the forces at play were so forceful in moving me. I began to look around for it.

I met a new friend, and we talked regularly about many things. With them I felt comfortable talking about deeper problems within myself and the question arose: why had I gone from this happy kid to this morose adult so quickly without any clear reason? Was there some trauma in my past that led to depression? I considered looking for a therapist.

There is one other out gay man in my ward. One Sunday when I was feeling particularly sad I asked him if he could recommend a good hugger in the ward. He offered his services and we hugged. He commented that I was shaking. It had been several months since I had had any contact like that, so I’m not surprised I was shaking. I told him about my interest in seeing a therapist and he recommended Josh Weed.

I had heard about Josh independently from two of my siblings around the time I was coming out. He’s a gay Mormon man who is married to a woman. Until he was recommended to me as a therapist I didn’t realize that was his job, or that he lived in this area. I considered it a great sign.

So I told my parents about it and they were excited. But secretly I had another motive I didn’t tell them. I secretly hoped that Josh would give me permission to somehow experience some of the darker fantasies that I had been afraid to admit.

Josh is a character, for sure. He is outspoken and blunt, which I would not have expected from a counselor. But he says things that I wish I could say. He tells me things about myself that make sense, even though they’re hard to swallow. And through these sessions we’re finally taking a good, unflinching look at my whole self.

Up until now, I’ve been afraid to look inside the sculpture, between the cracks. Because that’s where all the things I’ve been hiding are stored. That’s where my sexuality, and anger, and pride, and self worth are locked away.

I wanted to be the boy my parents wanted me to be. So I built up that facade. Anything inside me that conflicted couldn’t be allowed, and the pressure cracked the surface. I grew so accustomed to that facade that I forgot what it concealed. Any hint at something deeper was terrifying, so I avoided it.

When I came out and began to widen the cracks, I could see inside to darker things. I could begin to imagine futures that didn’t align with what my parents imagined for me. I could imagine futures that didn’t align with what my religion tells me is good and right. I could see for the first time exactly what it might feel like to let go of the facade entirely, but it terrified me. So I kept it locked down.

Now with Josh I’m starting to see the cracks for what they are: fractures between who I am and who I pretend to be. I have been holding myself back. I’ve been keeping myself in a shell, unable to grow. I can’t rely on the protection of my porcelain facade any more, because it’s thin and fragile and isn’t actually protecting me any more. I need to grow beyond the bounds of my past, beyond the restraints of the sculpture.

I’m afraid of what’s inside. I’m afraid that I won’t know how to control myself once the leash is removed. I’m afraid that those around me will fear or hate what they see. It’s that fear that has held me back my whole life. Fear of myself, caused by fear of others. It’s time to grow up.