My Life: The Abridged Version (How I Got Here, and Where I am Going)
Phot credit: Danielle Sanchez
I was born in 1977 with complications, which might have been the first hint of what was to come. Every year I seemed to catch some ailment, some sickness, or some disease. After a while, I just accepted that I was a “sickly” child.
But I was more than just a sickly child, growing up in a Jehovah’s Witness household. I learned early on what it meant to be different from everyone else’s point-of-view, and to feel as if I might be the only person on the Earth doing what everyone else wasn’t doing.
Of course, we all know that isn't true – but that’s the way it felt. I was the only person in my elementary classes who refused to salute the flag. The only person who refused to draw any depictions of Christmas. The only person who refused to partake in someone’s birthday. Little did I know, but this was the training ground for me to understand how to survive being a person who is considered different than the rest.
To make matters worse, I felt deeply conflicted. Here was a “son of God” who knew he was gay. On the one hand, I was being taught that gay men will perish in Armageddon, but I also knew that this is who I was, and who I continue to be. So I hated myself and tried to hide it – even though the more I tried hiding it, the more it seemed to flourish.
Middle school was very difficult. Being called “sissy” and “girly” really hurt, because it tore at my soul and I couldn’t figure out how to get rid of this disease – the disease of being gay. To make matters worse, I didn’t feel comfortable coming home and telling my family my conundrum – since I was afraid of what may transpire. So I would come home from school, go into my room, and just cry.
As the years went on, I learned to suppress my feelings – only because I had to. When the time came to graduate high school and go off to college, I went away wanting to do everything I couldn’t do my entire life before the age of 18, especially to love and be loved by those I had wanted to love for so long.
So I started doing everything that I was told was wrong – smoking cigarettes, drinking to get drunk, celebrating holidays, and having lots of sex. I wanted to get everything out of my system, and I did. After six months, something inside me felt off, and I found out that I had become very sick once again. I was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 18, in stage 4 – out of 4 stages. Just as I began to strip away from my past, I found myself preparing to go back home again for treatment.
For two years, I went through chemotherapy and radiation treatment. The entire time I blamed myself for having cancer, because I truly believed that God had given it to me, and wanted me dead. At one point, I was given an ultimatum: The chemo I was on was destroying me, and I had become anemic. The doctors said I needed a blood transfusion or I would die – and given my upbringing, this became a point of contention.
I refused the blood transfusion because I didn’t want to hurt my parents. I also wanted to put my trust in what I had read and discovered on my own: that there were medical alternatives that could be used, no matter how costly and time consuming they might be. With all the hate and angst that I felt for becoming someone that I wish I wasn’t, I found that I still wanted to live. And I did.
For most people, surviving cancer would perhaps turn them around – they would most likely try their best to be as healthy as possible afterwards. But not me. I couldn’t. I was still gay, and I had no idea how to deal with it. So after getting "better" again, I turned back to drugs, alcohol, and having lots of sex for the majority of my 20's.
Going into my 30's, it was much of the same:
I did a lot of drugs.
I drank way too much.
I had a lot of unprotected sex.
I became dependent and hooked.
I ended up getting 3 lifetime DUIs.
I went to prison for 14 months.
And I got diagnosed with HIV.
Still, nothing would change me. No one could talk sense into me. Until one day when I finally looked at myself and said, “Do you want to live? I mean – do you really want to live, Joshua?” And I did. I really did... I was 32 years old, and just became sick and tired of being sick and tired.
I had to learn how to fall in love with myself and be content, and happy, with being different. Today, I am so proud to say that I am not oppressed by my own beliefs. I am, instead, freed by them. No longer will I be that person who plays the victim. No longer will I allow anyone, including myself, to convince me that I am hateful, that I am unworthy, that I am not special, or that I am not as great as anyone else on this Earth.
I do not share my story for pity, or to denigrate anyone, or any religion. If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t do anything differently. I have a great family, regardless of what we agree or disagree on. That is the meaning of unconditional love, something I have finally been able to apply to myself thanks in part to my upbringing.
I may not practice any religion, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the value in having faith and believing in something or someone greater than us, even as I near the end of my journey in completing a scientifically-based doctoral degree in business psychology, at the ripe age of 38.
One of my favorite Bible verses that I will never forget is from Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”
When we truly fall in love with every aspect of ourselves, and have the ability to authentically live in congruence with that, everything else will have passed away, and every tear that causes you pain from being different will be wiped from your eyes – I promise you that.
Everyone has a past. We can either run away from it, or learn from it, and I refuse to run away anymore.
I am NOT a sickly person. I AM A BEAUTIFUL SOUL.
