Episode 28: The Last Secret Never Told

Episode Summary

Content note: This conversation touches on abuse, trauma, and suicidal ideation. I’m sharing a part of my story that I had never made public, from childhood abuse and the years I spent trying to change who I am to conversion therapy and the journey toward accepting myself. I talk about moving to Israel and China, coming out, finding sobriety, and rebuilding a relationship with a higher power of my understanding. This is a conversation without a neat bow, but I hope sharing it helps someone feel less alone. Thank you for being here.

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julianleaver.com | @julianleaver

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Full Episode Transcript

The path not traveled, the path not taken. Who would that person have been? It's so interesting to me. Who would that person have been? Everything happens for a reason, hundred percent. Because none of this, I can't change any of this. None of those things that I just described are things that I can change. They're not in my control. They're literally just, they just are. And so you have to just react to them.

And so I think for a long time I thought they were all cause and effect, right? Abuse happened and so I'm gay. Until I was 24 years old, full stop. I did everything in my power to undo what I felt had been done to me. To not be gay, I moved to Israel like the center of the religion that I was born in to be as close as possible to that, to undo whatever thing that had happened. I put myself through conversion therapy to undo what I thought was this behavior because of it. I moved to China to get as far away from myself as possible and then when I arrived, there I was. And the through line of all of that at the time was religion and was the version of God that had been taught to me.

Then I came back from China with the realization that I that belief that I had held was false. And so then decided that I would just go to fucking town and like just party balls and live my best life and be gay and open and loud and proud and all the things I could be.

But in that process I untethered myself from God or we could call it here a higher power but that's where the that's where the fallacy actually arrived, because what I didn't know then that I know now is that I could have just created my own God. I just thought I had to fit within the box of this other one that truly was not serving me and almost killed me. Then I let go of that and then in letting go of that almost killed myself, until I got to this point in 2016 where I then was able to walk back into AA and God was on every single wall and that was, that's a miracle. That's a miracle.

And then every day from then has been like working back towards getting a relationship with that God of my understanding which is cool because that God I got to decide who that it is Pick your own. So yes it could have taken turns at every at any of these points every single place there was like a miracle that I'm still alive. I don't know. I don't know how we frame all of that in this within a safe conversation I don't know that there is a bow. This one doesn't have a bow. This is just living life on life's terms. Well, it's just the truth they're not hidden by a secret.

The first secret was that I was abused as a child by my father. Full stop. And then, and then extricated from that situation and then put in a lot of therapy to figure out how to move forward and then given the mantra that we are not the victim which is a great mantra in to move forward with It is not a great mantra to deal with the trauma because it sweeps the trauma under the rug. But it works to move forward. And in hindsight, I needed to move forward because if I had sat in that too long in that at that age it would have been, I think, actually probably disastrous, like looking back on it now. But then that then transferred into the awareness that I was gay that I liked boys that then could not be said out loud. I'm in the last generation of gay men who who are privileged enough to come out at a younger age And I understand that does not occur everywhere. It occurs in large cities. It occurs in places that are heavily educated. It does not occur in a lot of America at this time still which is heartbreaking. But it was much more a hidden situation and so then in hiding that and then thinking that cause and effect like I was abused therefore I was gay. And that never got corrected until I moved to China is pretty wild, because it was never addressed. The gay piece was never addressed, only the abuse. I don't know if I actually ever said them out loud. I don't know if I did. I don't know if I was ever given permission to say this. It was never addressed by anybody. Just figure it out on your own.

I knew in the sixth grade when I had a crush on the student teacher. That's it. That was like, okay, this is like probably the way this is going. So how am I gonna figure that out?

And then it's so interesting because I've been watching that Heated Rivalry show and there's the scene in Heated Rivalry where they are sitting at the coffee shop and or in Russia and the one straight guy in who he thinks he's talking to two other straight guys is basically talking about how brave this figure skater is who is out of the closet and there's two separate instances in the show where they zoom in on the face of the other two guys who are there who are both closeted. And it just, it hit me like a fucking ton of bricks. Because in high school I was involved in student council and there was another guy in student council who was very open like out there and he was just destroyed. And so I thought, okay, I just have to hide this piece of me. But also at the time I thought, I can fix this because this is not who I am. This is because of something that happened to me.

And so then I went to college my first year at TCU and went really just balls to the wall and had so much fun. It was a blast. It was horrific on, from the academic standpoint, but I had a great time. And then I left there because I realized I had not yet addressed this piece that was just the secret you can't even actually focus on anything else because the secret is so right there all the time it dominates all the thoughts. It's: Think about math, and then the secret. Think about history, and then the secret. I need to do this English paper, and then the secret. She, I think knew that I was gay but just head in the sand a little bit no conversation happening.

And then I moved to Israel so that okay I'll go to the center of this religion that I was born in and see what that kind of proximity looks like. And that was a fucked up situation. Nothing for me happened there except for too close proximity that I recognized. I was like, this is not, something's not quite right here. And then I, then, then my term ended and I left for work. I did international shipping and clearing and moved goods in and out of Israel to help build this massive complex of buildings that was being built and I moved people's goods in and out and that was when I really, like, I got a girlfriend. And then I had a girlfriend. Nothing happened. I'm still a gold star gay, it's okay. And then she said some things that were like about oh I could never date someone who was gay and choosing to be something else. And I, and that really freaked me out and so I went to a therapist there at that location who was basically then educated me on abstinence was the only way pretty much to change it, and prayer. Then I left there and returned to Oklahoma and put myself in conversion therapy in Oklahoma for six months. It was not good.

And then I moved to China and I taught English in China and the coolest thing about China was that it was these baller liberal people from Australia and New Zealand who were insane and who helped me get to a place of not quite admitting it completely out loud to myself but they had just a good understanding of reality and they were just themselves and they were free and it was cool to watch, and I wanted that freedom.

And so then I came back to Oklahoma to finish school and blew up my whole friend group and change everything and came out and realized this is who I am. And then untethered myself again from a higher power and then off we go down the road till 2016, really. And then 2016, got sober and started this business, not a sober decision, and then started really getting help. And it's been so much better ever since. The work of, a lot of work. On June 1st. This is June 1st of 10 years. Wild. It's 10 years for both things basically one month apart and started going to the same therapist that I still see now like the November before that.

It's been a wild ride. I have a hard time with that. So much of it is just like I don't know I feel like if I give myself any credit for it it feels like I am, like I've arrived at a place that I like want to stop I guess it could be, right? But that's not who I am. like that's the part about always pushing, always being better, the obsessive. I know this intellectually; in practice, much harder. And now God just does for me things that I cannot do for myself, which is good.

My instincts are aligned, but that's because I'm highly plugged in. If I become unplugged my instincts are off. They're really off kilter if I don't pray every day if I don't take a minute every day if I don't if I fuck with the routine then it's not it's off kilter it really is. It's wild to watch it, but impacts everything. It impacts every decision. It impacts every aspect of my life from the personal to the professional. Period.

It can be rough. And there's been rough periods of this like Sobriety is not a walk in the park. It's so much easier now because I've been doing it a long time and I have all the right tools, but in the beginning it was so rough. I'm so thankful that I got sober when I started this business because I could detach myself from the industry of weddings and just focus on building my business and not focus on going to all the things or being in all the rooms or trying to put on a brave face. I could get really sober. I could go to meetings three times a day. Oh, it was just as bad. It's always been like this. It's always been like this. This is how this industry operates. It's very odd to me. There's nothing else quite like it. We just have to say it all. It's different. I don't know, you and I have a very different dynamic. It's very different. Like a gut check. You're welcome. Thank you for that. I love you very much. It's been like a really fun friendship. It's been really good. Maybe we should get off camera. Let's just turn the camera off.

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