"I am like a eunuch; full of love, hormones and virility, but with nobody to share it with."
I received this anonymously from a reader. I thought it worthy to be posted (with his permission) as this is all too common an experience I witness. While I do receive messages like this all too often, this one was written very well, with class and respect to the reader, Here it is.
Like the creator of this blog, I too am married, frum (religious) .....and gay.
I came across this blog after searching endlessly for some sort of network, some sort of support group, for what I figured must be a problem for a few others out there in the big, wide world as well.
When I finally came across this site, I cried.
The relief that somewhere out there there were others who were going through the same excruciating and hellish path that has been my life, was indescribable.
I ended up making contact with someone on the site - and though we have never met, we regularly catch up, and provide an ear for each other's difficulties.
As cliched as it sounds, the truth is that I knew from very early on that I was not attracted to girls. I had crushes on some of my friends throughout school, and going to Yeshiva was an absolute torment. I came from a real heimishe family, and a very frum kehilla; and exploring and defining my sexuality was a totally foreign concept to me. I refused to recognize that I was created somewhat different to the rest of my peers, only admitting to myself that I had a serious problem which needed sorting out.
I shed copious amounts of tears over the years, beseeching Hashem (God) to hear my pleas and cure my illness. But nothing changed.
I got married and had kids; all the while secretly harboring the real me very deep inside myself, and living life as normally as possible.
But my feelings persisted no matter how hard I tried, I could not change the fact that I was attracted to males and not to females.
Finally, after many difficult years of soul-searching and thinking, I admitted to myself something I'd not allowed myself to think until that moment ........I was Gay. There was no escaping it, no getting away from it.
Instead of davening (praying) for a cure, which obviously was not going to happen, I had to change my tune entirely. I had to accept that this was the way Hashem created me, for reasons only known to him, and that I now needed His help to guide me through this difficult and rocky terrain.
But one question I didn't have an answer for, and nor do I today - is why Hashem would put me in such a compromised position and give me the nisayon (challenge) of homosexuality, while at the same time decreeing it an abomination and unacceptable.
A number of years have passed since that revelation, all of them difficult. While on the outside I live a normal, happy life, inside I am crushed. Each and every day is a struggle. There is no permissible outlet for people like me. There is no physical relief offered for all my emotion and frustration to be poured into. I am like a eunuch; full of love, hormones and virility, but with nobody to share it with. My life is a lonely one, one in which I tread a singular path not knowing whether the man davening next to me, or the one learning across the table from me, is similarly afflicted or not. And there is no way for me to find that out, to share my struggles with a fellow sufferer in my vicinity.
So I reach out to all of you, with the hope that we can become both family and friend, and help each other navigate the supremely difficult path of being a frum, gay, yid.
bignisayon@gmail.com
