Attempting to Stamp Out Bitter Feelings...

Yesterday my Netflix movie came.  I watched "8: The Mormon Proposition."  I knew it would be a rough one to watch for me.  I've been preoccupied with wading through my more immediate concerns regarding church history, doctrine, the unbelievable two-facedness of the church leaders, etcetera, etcetera over the last couple of months, but I finally decided it was time to deal with this uncomfortable issue.  (Basically, I knew it would be like ripping an incredibly sticky bandaid off of an incredibly hairy arm and I've left it for one of my "final frontier" issues to tackle.)

Before I joined the church I didn't care if a person was gay, straight, bi, or whatever.  It was a non-issue entirely. It wasn't until after I had been a member for quite a while that it started to bother me.  When I was 24, I was married in the LA temple to my now ex-husband.  We met when I joined the church back in high school.  Anyways, to make a long story short, we were married for 6 years when he told me he couldn't live this lifestyle anymore.  He told me he had been unfaithful for the last several years of our marriage and was leaving me to live an openly gay lifestyle.

I was devastated, of course.  Add to that the fact that his timing was less than spectacular because at that time we had a 5-year-old, a 13-month-old, and I was 5 months pregnant with our third daughter.  I mean, our marriage wasn't perfect, but it was a real shock.  I was left speechless (for the first 30 seconds, and then I was anything BUT speechless). 

That was roughly 9 years ago.  I still don't understand my ex-husband's timing, but at this point in my life I can understand he had his own decisions to make--decisions I would never want to have to make myself.   

Still, there's been this ugly, uncomfortable "thing" (for lack of a better word) that has stuck with me and makes me want to cry/run/curl up in a corner and hide when the word "gay" comes up.  It's still there in me now (though to a much smaller extent) despite the fact that I have been pushing myself towards reason and understanding of the gay community over the past several years.  The frustrating thing is that I still have a lot of pain that lingers and at this point I think that's just one of those things that will be with me till the end, but it's really starting to piss me off.  This ugly feeling defies logic (in my opinion) and it seems to want to linger in even the smallest degree despite what feels like monumental effort on my part to rid myself of it.

So, because I hate this uncomfortable "thing" and I'll be damned if it beats me, I've decided to really delve into the California Prop 8 situation from a few years ago and try to get more educated about the church's role in passing it.  Seeing that film was definitely a step in the right direction for me.  My hopes are that I will grow in leaps and bounds with this so that I can put this issue to rest for me.

And on a lighter note, one that helps me to just forget my past and move forward: