Technology
Perfectly Imperfect
In this episode of 'Perfectly Imperfect,' the host shares a deeply personal journey through adolescence, grappling with identity and faith within the confines of the Mormon Church. Through c...
Perfectly Imperfect
Technology •
0:00 / 0:00
Interactive Transcript
Speaker A
Well, hello there. I am really excited to talk about what we are going to talk about in this episode. I'm also kind of nervous because this gets pretty heavy for me. But I promise you that we will keep it light, we will keep it fun when we need to, because life is short. I'm going to die. You're going to die. We might as well just accept that fact. Nothing's that serious. We're here for a short time. Let's have a good time. Okay, so about this time, I was going into junior high school. And if anybody can make it out of junior high school school without all the emotional wounds, my hat is off to you. My time in junior high school, I mean, it seems as if everybody was very clear of my sexuality, even though, you know, it took day in and day out, like, trying to convince myself first and then everybody else that I was not homosexual. But no matter how hard I tried, people obviously saw through that and were very vocal about that fact. But. But that did not stop me from being the best Mormon ever. Like I said growing up in Utah, everybody is Mormon. Like, I don't even know the percentages, but let me just say, like, you knew in your class who was not Mormon, and specifically you would definitely know the teachers that were not Mormon, because, you know, it was clear. My 9th grade year is actually when I started going to seminary. And seminary is where they allow you to leave school for like a class period and you walk across the street and you go to another building and you have little Mormon school for a whole period and then you go back to regular school. So I was getting Mormon teachings on Sunday and I was getting them at school and I was also getting them during the week at young men's. So once a week they split up the young men's, young women. Sometimes they combine them and you'll just like, meet with your leaders and you'll do fun activities. And back then, the LDS Church was connected to the Boy Scouts of America. No longer for reasons. But that aside, I want to pause and say really quickly. So in the Mormon Church, there's leaders and then there's the regular church members and whatever. I had the most incredible leaders. These men honestly took the place and the role of being my dad for a bit while my dad was not like, nearby. And I can't thank them enough for their goodness and their kindness. And they showed me every ounce of love that they could, as if I was one of their own children. And I to this day have not a single negative experience with any of my Leaders. That includes bishops. That includes, like, young men's leaders, scout masters, whatever it is. I loved them all deeply, and I will forever be grateful because that is absolutely not the case in everyone's situation, especially with queer kids in the church. Anyways, so moving on. I'm just very grateful for them in case any of them happen to ever come across this. Okay? That being said, while they were so kind and wonderful, the leader, leader leaders of the church, their messaging around homosexuality were very, very, very, very clear. And this is when pornography and masturbation were being introduced into my life. And let me tell you, how big of a problem it wasn't for me compared to everybody else around me. Okay? I'm talking, like, once or twice a month maybe. And in my brain, my sweet, beautiful, determined brain, I thought I was addicted. I was an addict, you guys. Like, I could not get a grip, and I can't get over, like, looking strongly. I thought all of that was so bad, like, unbelievably bad. But again, I believed what I was being taught. For an example, in the Mormon Church, there's something called a general conference. It's held every six months, and it's where, like, the top leaders address the rest of the entire church. So one of the leaders, for example, in 2011, Boyd K. Packer, in regards to, like, sex between a man and a woman, this is what he said in a general conference. So where sweet, young Braden is listening to these messages, he said, to misuse this power, speaking about, you know, sex between a man and woman, to misuse this power is exceeded in seriousness only by the shedding of innocent blood and denying the Holy Ghost. Being somebody that believes what they are being taught, will take that, internalize that, and use it as weaponry against oneself. And I believed it. I believed it. I believed that inside, deep down, me, who I was, how I. I was feeling was against the very God that I was dedicating every second of my life to up until this point, you know, going to the temple and being worthy and having my recommend. And all of this started to, like, slip out of my hands. And it felt as if I was just, like, trying to catch it all as it just, like, fell out. Because I was trying so hard. I was doing everything that I could. I was churching every Sunday, young men sing scout camps, holding all my callings. Like, I was the leader in all these callings. And I was genuinely doing everything that the scriptures told me to do. But yet nothing was taking away my very biological feelings to experience pleasure, experience my own body and Being attracted to my same sex, nothing that I could do was getting rid of those feelings. And I obviously internalized all of that as something was wrong with me, because that's wicked, that's evil, that's twisted. I remember looking up frequently in the back of the scriptures, they have, like, this topical guide where, like, if you look up a subject, it'll, like, reference a ton of scriptures. And I remember looking up homosexuality literally all the time, just, like, hoping that I would come across a verse or something that made me feel better, that somehow, like, being gay or I obviously wouldn't say that word, but that, like, it was okay in some way. But every single time, I was met with disappointment when that was not the case. So at this point, I'm about 14, 15 years old, and then I entered high school. High school for me was fantastic. I genuinely loved high school. You know those annoying kids that like, oh, my gosh, I loved high school. That's me. My sophomore year, however, was not the easiest because once again, my sexuality being questioned and all that was not the funnest thing to push back on. But as good of a Mormon boy that I kept trying to be, it didn't really seem to work out. So in the midst of, like, all of this trying to be perfect, I got what's called a patriarchal blessing. And in the Mormon Church, somebody lays their hands on your head and they give you a blessing, and they kind of. It's like a blueprint of your life. Like, they talk about the mission you're gonna serve and the wife you're gonna have and the kids you're gonna have and the leadership roles you're gonna have. They just kind of lay it out for you. And my blessing specifically talked about a wife, and it equally gave me hope. And it kind of, like, freaked me out a little bit that I was like, okay, well, even though I have all these feelings, because obviously the pornography I was watching was not heterosexual pornography. Like, I was watching gay pornography because that is what I am attracted to. And so having that show up in my patriarchal blessing that I was going to marry a woman, I was like, okay, well, somehow this is going to work out like, long term for me. So I had a lot of faith and a lot of hope in that blessing. So this is about the summer of my junior year, and I wanted to be perfect. That was my goal. And in Mormonism, I mean, there's plenty of scriptures and in the Bible as well, because they use both, but it talks about, like, be therefore perfect, even as I or Your father who is in heaven is perfect. All those things. Mormonism really, really, really hounds that point in. Well, they've eased up quite a bit. But when I was younger, it was a lot about like, our goal in this life is to become as much like Christ as possible. And in the Scriptures we learned that Christ was perfect. And so with pornography and masturbation more consistent in my life, I was like, you know what? I feel so guilty. I don't feel worthy going into the temple anymore. I wanted to feel perfect. I wanted to get rid of all of that so that I could show how much I loved him and how much that I wanted to obey him and become like his son. I was such a dedicated member of the LDS Church. Long story short, I came across a group called the Sons of Helaman. And the Sons of Helaman is a group that is all about. Actually, you know what, let me read it. I'll tell you what they're about from their words. This is from the official website because it is a group that is still running. It says the Sons of Helaman is a gospel oriented training program for young men teaching them to overcome pornography challenges and other unwanted sexual self mastery behaviors. The goal is to train young men to leave pornography behind and discover their spiritual gifts to use in blessing the lives of others. In groups led by a licensed professional therapist or qualified mentor, young men acquire tools and learn various strategies required to win their self mastery battles, recovery techniques combine modern scientific knowledge with principles taught in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I willingly signed up for this program and it cost money. And so I had a conversation with my sweet mother and asked if this was something that she would help me out with. She supports me in anything and everything. She's fantastic. And so I went into her and my mother knows everything about me. We have a great relationship and I'm very grateful for it. So this was not taboo or weird. I just told her that this is something that I've been struggling with and that I want to perfect it. Literally perfect. Like I would use that term, like I want to be perfect. I want to be perfected. And I remember being in this man's office when me and my mom went the first time and he asked, you know, like, what I wanted to work on and all this stuff, because on the paper that I was filling out, it talked about like same sex attraction, which this is what it's called in this program and in the Mormon Church, they still refer to it as same sex attraction because it apparently pains Them to say the word gay, but. Well, not really. They did have a Mormon and gay website, but all of them ended up becoming not Mormon anymore. They took it down. Okay, what was I saying? Okay, so when we got to this man's office, we filled out a paper and on it it talked about same sex attraction. And I thought. And I remember telling him, I was like, well, this is like kind of in my life, but it's not that big of a deal. That's not what I'm here for. I'm here for like the pornography and the masturbation, whatever. And he said, okay, well, like, if that's ever a problem, like, we have our own. Like, we have some things that we can do. And alluded to the idea of actually using pornography as a way to kind of like reverse that or fix it. I will never forget how I felt. I can't remember exactly his phrasing, but in my brain I go, you would use pornograph to fix my problem? How does that work now? I kind of have a more clear understanding of maybe what that process may have looked like, unfortunately. And I'm so grateful that I did not partake in that. Who knows? I could have been straight, y'. All. Just kidding. Obviously, it doesn't work. Okay, so I signed up for this program. And for the next two to three years, I will document every single day that passed and write down whether or not I had masturbated or watched pornography. And I am very proud of myself. I went at least a year without any of that, which. Are you kidding me? For a young man in high school to go without that stuff for a little over a year. Are you kidding me? This is the level of, like, perfectionism that I was after. That even this thing inside of me that other people were doing, I wasn't gonna do it. I was gonna show God that I was so dedicated to him and his gospel and what he expected of me, that I was gonna do it. I was gonna put this on of sacrifice and really show him how clean and pure and righteous I could be. In this group, they have a practice where you write letters to your future companion. And so I'm going to read to you my very first letter that I wrote to my eternal companion and telling her all about the Sons of Helaman and why I signed up for it. This was June 28th of 2011, so I was 16 years old. Day number one. I recently joined a pre mission training group that helps young men like me with getting over the constant struggle of masturbating and looking at pornography. Also in my case, same sex attraction. The pornography is not the most occurring of the three, but the other two aren't that bad either. Again, y' all crazy. The group is called Sons of Helaman and there are up to eight young men in each group. In these different sessions, we talk about winning, losing battles a day where we do not watch Mr. M or Mr. P. That's what they would call it. Which in my case, looking back on it, probably should have called it something different and help each other so they don't happen again. I am on week three with no lost battles right now. Smiley face. I chose to join this program by myself because of the pain and constant guilt I was in. I also realized that I'm doing this for you. I want our marriage to run smoothly and try to avoid any stupid mistakes I could make. I'm so excited to meet you. I know that Heavenly Father will place the right woman in my arms and you're going to be perfect. This program has changed my life for the better. And I know Heavenly Father allowed me to find this place so I can better myself and become a strong, worthy, loving young man and make you proud to call me your husband. So there you have it. Pretty clear on what's going on. I, from this moment would write to my future companion for two years straight because again, if I could do something, it was follow a rule. And it wasn't necessarily a rule, but I was like, you know what? I'm gonna do it every single day. I'm gonna tell her every little thing that's happening to me and all these things. And you know what? I am so grateful I did that because now I have two years of my life, doc, documented. And this is literally the next day from that letter is when I started dance. And I have all of that. I have all of this on paper. So I am very grateful for that. Now let's talk about the other side. I would say about a month or so later. Yeah. Because this is August 9, 2011, I started writing letters to Heavenly Father as well. And these aren't so uppity. These are probably more of how I was like actually feeling. I say, Heavenly Father, same sex attraction has controlled my life for so very long. I can't even begin to tell you how badly it frustrates me every single day. It kills me because Satan is so rude to me in that way and he won't leave me alone. I'm begging you, Heavenly Father, to help me get over this trial. If I don't stop it. Soon it will soon control my life and Satan does not deserve that. Thank you for listening. I know you'll help me. I just don't want to deal with this anymore. I've quit Mr. M and Mr. P. Is that not enough? Frowny face again? I plead for you to hear me and help me through this rough patch in my life. Good night and I can't wait to talk to you tomorrow. And then two days later. August 11, 2011 Dear Heavenly Father. Ooh, this one's a little harder. I really hate myself sometimes. I hate battling the battles that I do every day. Even when I feel great inside, I still hate myself in so many ways. I just want to understand why this is happening to me and how I can get rid of it. Sons of Helaman are helping me with M and P, but SSA same sex attraction and I can't take private counseling because it's too much money for my mom. But I'm never going to be able to do it on my own. School is starting and I can't just put on an act every day that I'm happy and act like nothing is wrong. Because I know inside that I'm torn and fighting with myself constantly. Maybe I just want to be perfect and I get mad because I'm not. But why me, Heavenly Father? A mental challenge is so hard to overcome because it's always in my head. Why can't I just be like every other guy out there who doesn't struggle with these things? Help me, Heavenly Father. I just need your help more than anything, especially for this school year. I love you and I know you hear me. Good night. That was going into my junior year of high school. And I'm going to share something very personal and it's okay because I have, like, worked through it and it's all of the things. But this is to the degree that I wanted to stop being gay, y', all. Is. I remember praying on my knees for God to take my sight away because I couldn't stand having something in my life that I had no control over that was taking me away from him, that was making me feel guilty. I literally asked him to make me addicted to drugs. I was like, please do anything else. Like, take away my eyesight, make me addicted to drugs, whatever it is. I don't want this anymore. Give me any other trial. I can do anything else. I can carry anything else, but I can't do this. I woke up the next day totally being able to see. Thank goodness. That's how much I Did not want these feelings because the God that I grew up loving so much, I was disappointing. And you know, I would come across people that would say like, no, this is like how God made you. And I would not accept that information. I was like, how would God make me in a way to immediately disobey him? How would he make me in a way that would allow me to never be happy? Because in Mormon dumb, they have the levels of heaven, there's the celestial kingdom, the top one, the middle of the terrestrial, and then the last one to the telestral. Who knows which one I'm going to now? But you cannot live with God and have a same sex partner. It's impossible. It just didn't make sense to me that God would fashion me in a way to go against him. That didn't make sense in my brain. So I would never accept the idea that God made me that way. Although up until then I had no evidence that could disprove that I was meant to be any other way. Recently I was talking to my, my roommate Emma, shout out, love you. You know, we talk about these things. And, and she said, you willingly signed up for a correctional camp? And I said, wait, it kind of turned that whole experience like 180 upside down. And I said, I guess I kind of did, didn't I? I said, yeah, willingly. I genuinely did. I genuinely felt that that was going to get me to where I thought that I wanted to go, which was free from all of my sexual desires, sins. But here's the thing, as well as I did in that program, and I became like, you know, the face of it. And I would start to go to these little groups of, of church leaders and tell them how wonderful it was and how it changed my life, which at the time, y', all, it did. That was a goal that I wanted to accomplish and I was accomplishing it. Now, later on in my life, we'll talk about how that, you know, did some damage. But at the time I was in it, I was Mormon with a capital M M M M. And I was happy. I wasn't free yet, but I was happy. And I've learned that there is a difference between being happy and then being happy and free. So once you got up to a certain amount of weeks without losing a, quote, battle, then it'd be free. So if anything, I knew that my mom would no longer have to pay like the $45 a week or whatever. And oh my gosh, like I said, give me something to do and accomplish. I will do it. Especially for my mom, because being a single mom, raising three kids, doing a great at it. Here I was asking to go to this thing that she would pay for because I didn't have a job. I was starting to dance. I was, you know, honors classes, all these things in school. I wanted to relieve any sort of pressure that I could. And so I won. You only had to do 12 weeks, y', all, to graduate. I said, oh, 12 weeks. Okay, hold my caffeine free soda. No, I'm just kidding. I drink Diet Coke. So I had caffeine in it. So I made it all the way through. Sons of Helaman homosexuality still there. So when I was going into my senior year, this is where I kind of start to see in my letters that I'm not holding as much weight like that. The perfectionism and all of this stuff, like it was still present, but I was kind of just like letting go of it a little bit, and I was starting to have a little bit more fun. It was my senior year. I was being fulfilled and, like, feeling accomplished in many other ways in my life. So I felt like this was something that kind of fell by the wayside a little bit. But here's a letter to my wife. This is day one. After going, you know, X amount of weeks and over a year, and this is July 23, 2012. I say I made it to my one year mark and kind of went downhil from there. I've lost Mr. M four times in the past six and a half weeks. Y' all do the math on that. That's amazing. And I couldn't seem to get back on track. But then I remembered you. You were the only one who kept me winning every day. So I'm going to focus on writing you to stay on track and go another year. I love you and know that since you're back in my life, parentheses I never forgot about you parentheses it's going to help me win. So there you have it, folks. You heard it here first. I'm sure any therapist that maybe come across this would love to dissect all this of this. I was so determined to fit myself into this church that was not built for me. Let's be honest, it just wasn't built for me. But at that time, I was so determined in it, and I was going to make it work. I was going to carve out a place for me that wasn't already there. And so I graduated high school. That was wonderful. I got to give a speech at the seminary graduation. I did all the Mormon leader Things that I was supposed to do, I did them all. And then at this time I was 18 years old. And 18 years years old is a big number for Mormon men because you receive the other level of priesthood because there's two. There's the Aaronic priesthood and the Melchizedek priesthood. And the Melchizedek priesthood means you could do all the things like you unlock the door to all the special things that you get to do. In the Mormon Church. It is the power to act in God's name. I remember when my bishop called me into the office and he asked me if I would accept that responsibility. And I remember crying and I like, remember fanning my face literally like miscongeni. And I remember at the time I was like, oh, Brayden, that was really gay. Like, you probably shouldn't have done that. So I got the Melchizedek priesthood and I was on to the next thing you do as a Mormon male, which was serve a mission. And I had separation anxiety from the time I kind of started junior high school up until now. The longest I had been away from my mom up till now was my week long senior trip to Lake Powell, which was a blast, by the way. That was the longest. Like I couldn't go to sleepovers, I couldn't go to overnight camps, I couldn't do any of that. I would like panel cry, have stomach aches, have my mom come get me. It just never worked out. So the thought of going on a two year trip away from my family to an unknown location, as someone who loves control and stability, that idea was not achievable. Everyone around me was going, right. Like all my friends were going. Because as a Mormon male, it is a, quote, priesthood duty. So it's not like required. Nobody's going to force you to do it. But. But growing up, all I heard about serving a mission was, it is your priesthood responsibility to go on a mission. The women in the church, like the sisters, they're not required because they can't hold the priesthood. So they don't have the verbiage. It's not as strong. But for young men, it is as close to a requirement as you can be. Now for somebody that couldn't fit that box quite yet. I went to the University of Utah and this is the first time that I became a minority as a Mormon. I was in the dance program at University of Utah and man, I look back and I was the most judgmental mother trucker. I swear I frowned down upon a lot of people for not being Mormon and for not obeying the commandments of God. And obviously I can understand now that this is just like sheer projection of my own insecurities at the time. But everyone around me was like, like, swearing and talking about all the things that I just was not used to growing up. Now, kids in my high school did that, obviously, but my friend groups and all of that were all Mormon, all on the same trajectory as me, so I didn't have as much exposure to any of that. So my time at the University of Utah opened my eyes quite a bit. And this is when I was dancing. This also helped me start to become more in tune with my body and in tune with the world, and it started to kind of open my mind up a little bit. That being said, I still was very Mormon and everybody knew it. So at this time, I started to kind of feel a little more like my feet were underneath me and I could start to do more activities away from home. There was a dance company in LA that I wanted to audition for, and so I went with a bunch of friends, and it was like my first trip, like a way way, like on an airplane and all this stuff. And I started to do things like that. And dance really started to give me the confidence that took away that separation anxiety, for the most part, at least long enough to make me feel like I could go on a mo. So it was nearing the end of my freshman year in college, and I remember driving to go teach at a studio, and I had the most overwhelming feeling where I had to pull my car over to the side of the road, and I just cried. And I was like, God is telling me to go on a mission. This is my time. And I remember looking at my rear view mirror just like my bloodshot, crying eyes, and I remember going, okay, if you're sending me on a mission, you better take care of me. I remember saying that to God, that I'm like, okay, okay, here we go. I remember telling my mom that I was, like, gonna start preparing. And that's quite the process before. And then you have to get your wisdom teeth out and all this stuff. So I started to prepare to serve a Mormon mission. I got back on the Sons of Helaman train. I was like, all right, I gotta prepare myself to become as worthy as I possibly can be. No masturbating, no pornography. This is gonna be the peak worthiness as a missionary because you are, quick quote, set apart from the rest of the world, and you genuinely represent Jesus Christ as if he's walking down the street. So I was like, okay, I'm gonna become as close to Jesus once again as I possibly can be. So I spent the next few months preparing for my mission. And one of those things is I continued to write my journal. So to finish this episode, I'm going to read you my last journal entry before I left for my mission. Well, it's been real. Journal. Smiley face. I enter the MTC tomorrow, and I couldn't be more proud of how far I have come and the steps I've taken to make it to this point. It's going to be the hardest thing I've ever done, but, man, I'm sure the Lord is just waiting to throw blessings at me and my family. Smiley face. Most importantly, these people need to feel joy. These people need to know how much they are loved and the amazing things that lie in front of them. I've never forgotten or will forget the moment I knew I needed to serve my mission. That inspiration was straight from above. And that's how I know that he is going to take care of me. This church is perfect. Go forth with faith. Little did I know that as a missionary and as, quote, perfect as I could be, I would start to see cracks form in my testimony of something that I knew to be true.