If you were here, we'd eat chips and salsa together. We'd sit around the new dining room table with the pretty rock inlays, on the dark wood chairs, and we'd eat.

The past seven days have been difficult, with last Friday as the heaviest, highest-pressure point. Poor-performing quarter at work; staff changes; dropped balls. Not enough sleep. Not enough decompression time. Too much train travel.

This happens from time to time. Too many negatives and a switch flips somewhere inside me. There's a threshold that I haven't quite pinpointed (or that moves?), and if I don't have my guard up, life sometimes pops me in the face.

What's interesting is how my response has evolved. Back in the day, when I was freaking out over these new and unpleasant feelings of hopelessness and weighty pressure, I just sort of flailed. I blogged pages and pages of angsty prose. I cried. Called my mamma. Hurt myself. Dug into a book. Wrote pages and pages of angsty fiction that you should pray you never have to read.

As I came out (but separately from coming out?) I learned to put words to feelings. "Anger" was a hard one. I have a temper, and I had kept it so tight under wraps I hadn't realized. "Hurt" was another, since I was so invested in an image of myself as powerful and on top of things. "Anxiety" became my catchall for the waxing, waning, hopeless pressure. To some extent I started understanding where the feelings came from, after admitting their existence. They came from laziness. They came from weirdly incomplete mental models of how things should be, and human-faulty examples of how to live, and from an unfortunately milieu of fakeness that's endemic in the world at large and also in mormonism.

With the new knowledge, I began adding to and taking away from my coping repertoire. I learned to talk with my roommates about serious things. I asked my home teachers to check in and bless me. I stopped hurting myself. I set down my books and screens and walked outside. I dove in to yoga, and responsibility-focused introspection (as opposed to angsty complaints).

I can't say that it's made the bad times not bad. Every three or four months, I still feel for a week or two something drawing off my hope and happiness and trying to crush me. The roommate talks and the outside walks and all the rest, those things bridge the gap between the crushing times, where I feel so alien and disconnected, and the rest of the times. The rest of the times are good, or at least normal. Having faith that those will be the times again--that saves me. Anything I can do to build my faith--that saves me too.

If you were here, we'd go to a nice cafe to sip tea and chat. I've grown quite fond of tea, since Japan.

There's so much going on! Life seems to have begun expanding at a faster rate. Talking today for the first time in a year or so with my dear old BYU friend Kyle, I focused almost exclusively on sharing my happiness. There's always unhappiness, in low moments or stressful or physically painful times. That said, what used to be an ocean of sorrow choking and drowning me has drained down to a shin-high sea. Most of my life is dripping with sunshine and glowing feelings. The wet cold sorrows make me pause and consider before sloshing forward, but there's no doubt about sloshing forward, not even a hesitation.

The past year has seen me more and more involved with and at peace with the LDS church, first attending very little, and then regularly, and then accepting a calling and facilitating both official Mormon events and unofficial but pro-Mormon events. I'm now an "active" member of my congregation by just about any definition. I think about why that is, after the dark black drowning that was adolescence through BYU.

Part of it is simple forgiveness. I want to be clear: I do not trust the leaders of the church at large. They are responsible for an amount of anguish that makes me tremble. Five years ago, that was all I saw, and forgiving it was literally impossible. But with time, age, and study, the pain--great as it was and is--has stopped dominating my life and taken its place in a much larger context. Forgiveness is possible now, and I work at it.

Part of it is a desire to represent 'the gays.'

Part of it is a hunger to be useful, bringing my professional skills to bear on passion projects like FHE activities or the weekly yoga classes I help organize.

And part of it is the people here. I've begun reading Les Miserables again, and something like the first 20 or 50 chapters are about the priest M. Bienvenue, long before Jean Valjean even comes close to entering the picture--such simple, elegant depictions of Christlike humanity! My bishop is like M. Bienvenue, and I bless him for it. My roommates are intelligent, funny, acerbic and sweet. My ward is full of people who want to be better than they are.

The result has been that I've started taking Mormonism back a little bit at a time--judiciously--and testing it in my life to see if it was good. And it's been good. (The judiciousness is critical. If I tried to swallow everything about Mormonism, I would choke.)

I still wouldn't be able to get a temple recommend. For me, for now, that's not a problem. I have a direction. It seems to be leading me deeper into the LDS church, but that's not the main thing; the main thing is that it's leading me to more happiness, and more growth.

And roads wind: the path toward the church might curve away, or it might not. I'll continue moving in the direction of happiness.

If you were here, I'd sit down with you on my bedroom floor so we could catch up. I live in a house with five other guys, down on the Bay Area peninsula. Bed-nightstand-bookcase-closet; all mine. Two paintings, done by my more artistic family members. Two framed issues of Life magazine, bought on a bookstore-and-ramen date with a man who I won't forget. Single. Employed. Happy.

When a BYU friend and roommate visited last week, I couldn't help but think of the sad, sad 18 year old boy I was, who just didn't understand why things weren't working out the way he expected. (Happily.) Thought of that boy, mentally hugged him, remembered how the roommate hugged him in the kitchen when it felt like the weight was going to pull his face off and push his guts inside out. Remembered the books and the trees in Provo, the sunny days. The hours, lying on a blanket in the sun. The apprehension at leaving the U.S. for the first time. The persistent, ever-familiar feeling of being alone, apart, and unaccepted.

Nearly six years after finishing my degree and driving out of Provo, the face- and gut-pulling weight is mostly gone. The alone-separateness I've made peace with (some). It's also been replaced by trust and self confidence. It's the hug-warmth and the sun-warmth that I have in my life most.

I've been attending the Mormon church again, for months and months now. Today I was given my first calling in eight years. Somehow, here, it's working for me. I don't worry much about word of wisdom things, and I don't want a temple recommend. As I said to my bishop a month or two ago, there's still a gaping hole where trust for the general authorities should be. What I do have, though, is a place and time and community that I am open in and a part of, one where I can focus on being a better person--not a more productive person, or a healthier person, or a wealthier person, but a better person.

I need to take more time to savor my life, because it really is delicious.

I look forward to so much.

If you were here, I'd share my bowl of watermelon ice. We'd sit by the pool at my parents' place and let it melt in our mouths on this warm-but-cooling summer night. I've been to a lot of places, but this is my favorite. I'm out here now alone composing this.

The front of my thighs are sunburned because I spent the day floating down the American River with 20 people from my singles ward, 100 people from singles wards round about, and bunches of strangers. I must have been showing more skin than I planned. I must have been enjoying myself too much to notice.

I'm taking them at their word: I, like everyone, am welcome. I'm 25 and gay and inactive and welcome, and my ward lets me feel it. They are somehow unafraid of me believing differently, and I am somehow unafraid of voicing different beliefs.

Not all the time. Not, usually, in public. But during the chitchat times when people ask what's up I tell them I'm visiting my boyfriend in Boston next week and waiting patiently for him to finish his summer internship and be nearby all the time, and they say, oh cool, what's his name? When they are the church for me, I am happy with the church and it is something I want enriching my life forever.

Starting August 1, I will be moving out of my lovely, lovely ward, the Berkeley university ward. I'll miss it, and them, and I will probably come back to visit a few times, but my new ward will be out on the Peninsula. It will be great. I am apprehensive.

I will try to remember the confidence and pride that helps me here. It will be great.

It will be great.

If you were here, I'd ask how things are going for you. It's been so long since we've talked. I haven't been keeping up with the blogs, so some of you I've never known. For many months now I've been caught up in living life, not taking the time to consider it or share it. In the past I considered too much and lived too little; maybe this time I'll find some thin gold line of balance.

And you? Are you balanced? Are you happy?

I passed through a rite of passage for literate gay Americans yesterday, finishing my first Dan Savage book. He makes happiness look so very easy. He makes balance look easy, with a few decisive words about Catholicism and back to the soothing but not in and of itself convincing mantra that gay = good.

I hope we all get to that knowledge eventually, of course, but there's something about the way he presents it that glosses over the choking, scratching process of knowledge development and makes me feel silly for not being quite there yet, sometimes.

If you were here, I'd make you walk in the rain with me. We could have an umbrella, if you insisted, or we could just get wet.

Out in the rain we'd just be quiet except to say how beautiful it all is. Haha! Look at the clouds trying to cover the mountains! Look how full the river is! It sure is beautiful. With you here, it wouldn't even seem so cold.

Back in the apartment, after turning on the heater and either changing into dry clothes or putting on more (I would put on my blue 'old man sweater' that I bought in a WA thrift shop years ago), I'd talk to you about the future.

I don't know what it is about the past few days, but I've been full to bursting with how things might be. When I leave Japan in two months, everything is going to change. Thinking about it makes me feel like I've been eating Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs. After being hobbled by my low language abilities for so long, I'm going to be swimming in English like a merman in water. After pretending to be straight for the past two years (mostly) I'm going to date again. Maybe fall in love or something.

The whole prospect is really exciting, and even though I would feel bad for repeating myself to you about the same things over and over again, that's what I would do if you were here.

God dammit, I'm comin' home.

The sadness passed, and came again, and passed again, etc. etc. It's life. I try not to get too hung up about it these days, make it into a bigger thing than it is. As a whole, this last year has been thoroughly satisfying.

Today, I put my futon in the sun and read for hours. There were workmen outside doing something to the street with a jackhammer and a dump truck, but I tuned them out.I made a huge pot of curry, easily enough to get me through to next weekend. I found new little sprouts on my houseplants, and I ate a spatula-full of brown sugar. I didn't go outside except to hang my laundry, and I didn't see another person except on my computer screen. And I don't mind that.

I made plans to hike in the national park tomorrow, possibly with an officer from a kind-of nearby Navy base. I found a contact in the Navy's 'family,' and they've done a good job of reassuring me that I'm qualified, English degree notwithstanding, and that being gay in the Navy really isn't the big thing it once was. Once I submit my application package next week, I could potentially know if they want me or not before I come back to the States in April.

I'm coming back to the States in April. Leaving is going to be like waxing my life. Pain so bad it'll make me squeak, but probably for the best.

If you were here,we'd go for a walk. As it is, I'm staying in where it's warm.