There were times in my life growing up, that I not only doubted my dad loved me, but sometimes I wondered about my mom, and somewhere along the line, I got the idea that they wouldn't love me if I wasn't serving God. I remember many times my mom asking me how I was doing spiritually, and no matter how, I'd say I was doing good. I was afraid of what response I'd get if I said no.
My dad was big into hunting, and I had tried it one year, and hated it. It ended with a scene at my grandma's after I had gotten lost and had all the males in the family looking for me. I quit, and decided to never do it again, and it seemed to drive a wedge in the already distant relationship with my dad.
I was hating school, and got picked on regularly. I dreaded it when the teacher would leave the room...... I always got picked on. I loved to read, and reading became an escape. It seemed to bug my dad that I always had my nose in a book, but his world didn't interest me. Reading did.
I discovered masturbation all on my own somewhere between 8th and 9th grade, and I won't go into details of how, but was soon addicted. I discovered somehow that the romance books with barely dressed people on the covers had some pretty graphic sex scenes in them, and was soon addicted to them as a prequel to pornography, and in my opinion, they are pornography. Even then, I was more attracted to the shirtless guys on the cover than the barely dressed women, and would focus on the description of the guy in the sex scenes, but I was clueless about homosexuality. We had not had a TV since I was 12, and I lived a very sheltered life.
I was still getting picked on a lot at school, more than anyone knew. I still remember when some EMTS came in to train us all for CPR in high school. The other kids started making fun of me when I started CPR on the dummy, and I ran from the room and hid out in the bathroom. One of the EMTS chased me down and tried to get me to go back and finish, but I refused, and never did learn CPR, and that incident comes to mind any time people mention getting CPR training.
There was an event every year at another church that was a district thing, and they always had the choirs from the local Christian schools sing together in a mass choir. I went one year, probably 8th or 9th grade, and was the only boy from my school. The boys from the other schools were really nice to me, which I wasn't used to, and I had a really hard time talking to them. Looking back, I realize that was most likely the start of my being attracted to other boys. Whereas a normal boy might have felt shy around a bunch of girls, I felt shy around a bunch of boys.
Not everything other kids did to me was bullying in that sense of the word, but looking back at what happened in 9th grade, it may really hurt me in ways I didn't realize for years. I can't remember how it started, but some of the boys started messing with me in other ways. It wasn't unusual for them to do stuff to me to get me to get an erection, like one boy older than me, poked me in that area with a broom stick until I got one, and that wasn't the only time something like that happened. It somehow escalated to them getting me to pull down my pants and expose myself to other boys in the bathroom - always being egged on by the one I was exposing myself to. They told other boys, and they'd get me to do it.
Our principal had lost some part in the all purpose building, and myself and 3 other boys were spending some time looking for it, and sex kept coming up. There was groping and stuff going on, and it ended with one of the boys exposing himself and me being egged on to put my mouth on his exposed penis.
Where things would have ended, I have no idea. The same boy I mentioned with the broom stick, who was 3 years older, pulled me aside one day shortly after the above mentioned incident. He told me that was what queer guys did, and if I didn't stop, he would talk to my parents. So I quit. Skipping ahead several years briefly, I was at a camp meeting several years later after he and I had both graduated, and he came up to me and apologized for the way he had treated me in school. He said he didn't even know why he did it, and I replied and said it was brought on by my not being good at sports, and he said that was no excuse. He was the only one who ever apologized to me. Unfortunately, I got picked on at that camp meeting more than one summer.
When I started 10th grade, they changed the format of grades K-8 to something called A.C.E. Instead of the traditional classroom and teaching, students sat in like a booth and worked on their own through books called "paces". Mostly to get away from all of the kids who picked on me, I asked and got permission to switch to it. That worked in my favor the next year when the whole school went to that format.
My last two years of school weren't too bad. Most of the kids who had picked on me had graduated or moved to another school. It was too late. My self esteem was shredded.
In my senior year, we got a new pastor at church who had a boy my age. We got along pretty well and hung out some. There were a lot of other boys in the church, so it wasn't a very regular thing. He dated my sister and when they broke up, he quit being my friend too, though I am thankful that he got me to go to Bible college and helped me get used to that before that happened.
By the time I got to college, I was a mess spiritually. I was up and down, and as I have stated before, was scared into going to the altar at every revival and camp meeting. I was addicted to masturbation, and I was so naïve, that I figured I was the only kid doing it. It is what would trip me up and make me give up on serving God.
Somewhere around graduating and going to college, I experienced what I think was my first crush. I was at the church camp I mentioned before, and there was a boy around my age there with his brother and brother-in-law who were providing the music. I felt shy and awkward around him and could hardly look at him.... but again, I barely knew what homosexuality was.
College. It was a good and bad experience. Sometimes I wish I hadn't gone, and other times I am glad I did.
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