.the.[beginning].

I had a very interesting day today, and in the spur of all of the destruction I’ve caused I realized the things I have to say, the things I say to myself and never to the world. I then remembered the impact the first blog I ever read had on me. I am here; who I am today because of what I learned, and the person that wrote the things I learned taught me. I need to express my feelings because if something I have to say has even a minute impact in someone’s life then I owe it to them to write.

I want to start at the very beginning. Or what I can remember of the beginning. Several names have been changed for the protection of myself, and the people involved in my story. I also have to paraphrase several conversations by what I remember of them, not exactly what the people said… if you were part of these conversations and I have faulted you, please let me know. I’m not perfect and definitely won’t be able to remember each conversation word for word.

For as long as I can remember I’ve never been the typical little boy. I never enjoyed sports and the lifestyles of the normal “straight” boy. I always knew that I was the definition of different; I used to spend hours after each day of school crying, because I knew that I wasn’t accepted. I was raised in Utah where the LDS Church is the dominant religion. School was like attending church in that the church had so many of the teachers under its belt... With separation of church and state being completely irrelevant in Utah, the teachers absolutely taught by the church, and although It’s unfortunate, I was raised with beliefs that I now value and love and shouldn’t complain. I remember having recess in 4th grade and being miserable because my friends, all being girls, had begun to grow apart from me. I attempted making friends with the boys of my grade, but lost all of my progress when I braided Megen’s hair at the end of class.

I spent all of my free time after school hanging out with my friends. Up to 5th grade I made really close friends with 3 guys. Taylor Nelson, Kendall Humes and Kaden Newbold. We did everything boys wanted to do… built club houses, played Nintendo (soon to be replaced by Xbox), and anything that involved having a blast. I had never had that much fun, and definitely not with boys. At the same time as hanging out with them, I hung out with Beau Carter, Tyler Christensen, and Jake Jerrison. As far as Beau and Tyler go, I was friends with them from church, and living so close together. Beau was and is a rebel. He loves girls more than any person I know and I enjoyed my friendship with him. He was awesome and we never really had many problems. Tyler on the other hand, had many issues, and in turn our friendship had issues. I never truly accepted him as my friend, and I think the feeling was mutual. I have several bad memories of him; choking me in the Chapel, Telling me he had sex with his male cousin, Writing a hit list in Jr. High, and many more. The three of us grew further apart as Tyler came closer to coming out of the closet. He grew up angry at his family and the world and his coming out brought a lot of his anger to the surface. For me I never got along with him, but I enjoyed hanging out with him at the same time.
Time went on and Tyler came out, moved away, moved back, and is currently the biggest PDA gay I’ve ever met, and it honestly makes me sick.

I haven’t talked to Beau in about a year. I will see him places I go and wave or talk to his mother and get updates from her. But in general I don’t know much about his life and what he’s doing.

The other three boys, Taylor, Kendall, and Kaden, were all fine. I hung out with them religiously the summer of fourth grade, and we spent literally every spare minute building, and playing Xbox. When school started for 5th grade, I went out for recess, and went to find my friends. Given my wondrous history with guy friends, I had seen this coming… I had to run after them and never really caught up with them. I cried that day after school. After a few hours of depression, my mom came into my room to tell me that the A.L.L. program (Accelerated Learning Labs) had called and I was the first alternate. We went down to the school, and talked to my teacher. She was overweight, clearly had never been pretty a day in her life, and loved to take it out on innocent little children. Hated that class and hated that teacher. Surprisingly I continued to be friends the three boys, because apparently me not being at the same school made it acceptable to be my friend.
Kaden’s parents got divorced, Taylor moved, and Kendall’s parents’ house was bought out by realtors and made into a lot of 5-6 houses. In the gist of it, we lost contact. Or at least I did with them.

In the A.L.L. program I learned… nothing. It was practically the same as normal school. The only difference I can remember is that I had another thing about me that was different and people used against me. I hated the names I was called and the experience altogether.

Upon starting Jr. High, I started dressing how I wanted to, and asking my parents to buy me preppier clothes. I loved knowing I was dressed better than people around me, and it gave me a confidence I hadn’t ever known. I’ll skip some of the pointless friendships I had, but I need to backtrack to Jake Jerrison. Throughout all of my experiences up to Jr. High, I always had this secret friendship/relationship with Jake. We were sneaking around either at his house or mine, being curious little boys, and we did many things that were “wrong” according to what we’d been taught. My curiosity pushed me into porn at the same time as all of this was happening. I would take what I would see in porn and put it to use with Jake. It was sad, but I completely enjoyed every minute of it. I was watching a movie in my Brother Dave’s room, when my dad came down.

“Chase, is there something you want to tell me?”

“No, not that I can think of” when really I knew what he was talking about… and I could tell he was disappointed that I didn’t want to be honest with him.

“Something that happened with Jake?” I didn’t respond. I sat there waiting for him, knowing he was going to yell at me either way, whether I said something or not. “You know what you’ve done wrong, and you will be calling the bishop and setting up an interview with him.”

“Ok.” The conversation was pretty vague, but this was the first time he had heard anything about me being gay, and it sucked that he was so disappointed.

::After reading through this, and scanning my terrible memory... the pieces didn’t fit exactly as told. It happened that Jake, or his parents, told the bishop and the bishop asked me to tell my dad, which I never did. When he came down, I knew he had been told by the bishop what had happened, and he then asked me to set up another interview with the bishop about what my consequence would be::


“Hello, Chase!” My enthusiastic bishop called from behind his desk.

“Hey.” I made my way to the chair closest to his desk, which he motioned to.

“Chase, I want to start by saying we love you.” He stopped and looked at me. I wasn’t looking at him, but I knew he was waiting for me to look up. After doing so, he continued, “We love you. We, being me, your parents, and your heavenly father. We all are here for you no matter what.” He continued and told me what I had done was wrong and that he wanted me to stop taking the sacrament for a month. I did so, and didn’t do it happily. I saw Jake the first Sunday and watched him take the sacrament. I knew he or his parents had told the bishop, and I hated the fact that I was revoked the privilege of sacrament and he wasn’t. I haven’t talked to Jake in person since then. His family moved, and I never learned who really told the bishop. I knew I had my problems, and would’ve liked to talk to Jake about them. But apparently he’s not gay.