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.

If you were here, I'd tell you I'm sad again. It was bound to happen. What a glorious long stretch of happiness, though. That felt so good. I wish it weren't over.

I can't sustain optimism anymore. Whatever it is that's been making it possible for the past while ran out. I can do short bursts, but then, phthbt. Went to karaoke last night. Finished at eight. Been dead ever since. The world is just cold and heavy now and I want to sleep and sleep and sleep.

In two minutes I'm leaving for expat Thanksgiving, which I keep telling family and friends that I'm looking forward to in the hopes that if I keep saying it it will be true. I just want to sleep. I don't want to see people. I don't want to go to work tomorrow.

But I will. I always do. Sadness passes.

If you were here, I'd nod and walk away.

If you were here, I'd ask you to do all of my things for me, because I don't feel like doing them.

Kyle was here for a week, and we exhausted ourselves having fun. Now I need to be making worksheet activities to teach these kids how to say "Could you ask him to call me?" and I don't want to do it. I should be studying for my Navy test next Monday, but all I want to do is sleep. I ought to be writing the speech I'll give at the city English festival on Saturday, but instead of that I spend the afternoon and evening reading Wicked. And then there's the Japanese homework I've been neglecting.

Neglecting the things I should be doing has made me antsy and uncomfortable and I really wish you would just do it all for me, okay? Okay.

***

Being here with Kyle was surreal. It was almost like we were in college again, except now we're both out and we've both left the church behind as much as we can. We wandered around and he took pictures. We watched a movie. We stayed up late and talked a lot. We explored.

And we laughed. We laughed so much. We're both so cheesy.

***

Sometimes I get a schedule from hell at the school from hell and I have to remind myself that I'm totally up to this. It's just performance. It's just being goofy. It's just making faces and big gestures and tricking kids into doing work they don't want to do by adding a thin veneer of "fun." Totally within the range of my abilities. It's really just a question of energy, which is maybe a problem after this last excellent week burning the candle at both ends and also in the middle.

***

You know what? I really like Josh Weed. I think he is awesome. I read his Circling the Wagons speech the other day, and I just hummed with pleasure the whole time. He makes sense to me. He seems like the epitome of a guy who is trying to do his best with what he has, which is what I want to be. I guess you could say he's one of my role models. Not for the "married to a woman" thing, but for the "living his truth" thing. It helps that he does okay with words.

***

I just ate a green tea flavored kitkat. It was pretty much identical to white chocolate flavor, with just the slightest hint of green.

***

Wicked is such a depressing book. Kindle says it has about ten percent left to redeem itself . . . not sure if it can do that satisfactorily. I've got the soundtrack playing right now, though, remembering that exquisite night when I watched the play performed at the Orphium theater in San Francisco.

That, plus having written this post, makes me maybe calm enough to go back to putting together handouts for tomorrow.

Good night.

If you were here, I'd just grin for a bit. Years ago one of my oldest friends called it my "crooked little grin," and then I started paying attention to it and notice that yes, it actually is crooked. I smile mostly with the left side of my face. I guess? Feel free to contradict me.

***

Kyle is in Japan. (Forgive me for not combing through the archives to see what I've said about Kyle before. Be content to know that we met when we were BYU students a few years ago and that he was the last person to hug me before I left California for Japan.) Right now he's up on the north island, Hokkaido, with another friend, but then he's coming here for a week. I'm incandescent about it.

***

The friend who told me my grin was crooked: I miss her. She and her husband, another old friend, live in Utah, as do so many of the people I care about. He works for the church; she's a hairstylist. Kyle and I crashed in their basement once. Once she and I walked around at night in the neighborhood around my parents house and talked about painful things that people don't talk about. I have emails I wrote to her when I was fifteen that are painful to read because I was trying way too hard to be witty. We post some variant of "I miss you!" on each others' Facebook walls every few months or so, but that's it. She's one reason I have to go to Utah after I finish here.

***

This weekend we're going to Kyoto. The last time I was there was with another friend who was visiting. But she was here on business and I didn't speak or read the language yet, so we sort of squandered the opportunity. This time will be different because I've had oh-so-much practice now, and Kyle has his own unspecified knowledge of the language gained through his major at university. Most of my days here are pretty average, full of work and commuting and internet TV, so I'm really looking forward to a big touristy trip. And the fall colors in Kyoto are supposed to be the kind of things that make poets give up.

***

I'm still happy. It's unusual. I don't remember the last time I've been steadily happy for months at a time without a deep trough somewhere in the middle, a cluster of days when I go about business as usual but hating everything. Maybe it's the wine? At a rate of about two weeks per bottle, I've gone through one sangria, one cabernet, one malbec, and just tonight I started a bottle of tempranillo. I don't know.

The abs are still in there somewhere, hiding behind donuts that I didn't resist.

***

Today as I was walking to the post office / bank, a tall, well-dressed young man walked past me. (I'm a saunterer.) He walked very well, and I enjoyed that for a minute. Then he bent down to tie his lovely leather shoe, and I walked past him. His footsteps resumed and I expected him to overtake me again, but he didn't. He just stayed behind me, his original pace be damned. I like to think he was enjoying the way I walked. The thought made me grin.

Note: I feel like I have to explain that while being followed by a tall stranger might be creepy or unsettling in the US, Japan is just so darn safe. That there could be nefarious reasons unrelated to aesthetics didn't cross my mind until I thought about you reading this.

If you were here, we'd talk about salad. We'd talk about salad because I ate a salad today, and I'm eating a salad tomorrow, and I think that sometime soon I hope I hope I hope don't jinx it, I'll be able to see six pack abs in the mirror. Totally vain, but this morning I looked in the mirror and saw the ghost of them and it was the most energizing thing. The rest of my day was just lovely after that.

Getting over this last hill (mountain? I don't know, I've never gotten this close before.) is mainly a matter of not eating every sweet thing I can buy, which is surprisingly difficult. Japanese bakeries are like bakeries everywhere in that everything contained in them is both delicious and unhealthy, and there's a bakery between me and my schools no matter which of the four I happen to be teaching at. The thing is, though, in the past when I've told myself "Ok, this time we're gonna get that six pack!" I ended up wanting the donuts / maple loafs / melonpan / other-things-whose-names-I-don't-know more than I wanted to see the muscles. This time that doesn't seem to be the case, although I may be speaking too soon.

I don't know why this is, but I know that red wine helps. I think wine is gross, to be honest, but like all alcohol it makes interesting sensations and I can't stand to drink it too fast, so where before I might have sat down for an evening of internet tv, cakey things, and soda or milk, I've recently been writing or studying with a (tiny) glass of wine and a few squares of dark chocolate. (Seriously tiny, I can't do more than 100ml or so at a time, it's just too gross. I don't think I'll ever get drunk,  or at least not on wine. Gin, maybe.) And maybe watching some internet tv too. Modern Family = gold.

The point of telling you about my salad and abdomen and cake and wine is that I'm feeling good. Like, really good. I feel like I have people who like me and care about me, and while I'm pretty sure cerebrally that this has always been the case, I haven't always been able to feel it. It's true than most of them aren't in my geographic vicinity, but some of them are, and some of them will be, and you take what you can get, right? Nothing wrong with that.

There are angsty things lurking around in my brain like always and I could talk about them if I really wanted—there was this abbreviated discussion I had about the responsibility to feel loved versus the responsibility to make love feelable, for example—but I don't really want to. Is this okay? Can I end here, happy? Happy with almost visible abs, a nearly empty bottle of wine, progress on my personal goals, and a general sense of well being?

It came on so suddenly.

If you were here, I don't know what I'd say.

Oaks gave a talk yesterday. I didn't hear it, of course, I haven't listened to GC in years, but I heard about it through lovely facebook, and then Deseret News, and then the blogs. He came down on abortion, abuse, divorce, and adoption by gay parents. You know, all those things that "harm or disadvantage" children.

My parents were with my older brother's family doing who knows what in Texas on Saturday, so they didn't hear that. My mom and I were chatting this morning and she beamed about the Sunday sessions she'd listened to and dropped her customary hints that, "y'know, sometimes if you're feeling spiritual, you could always listen to GC."

I guess I just don't understand how something that sets off a million little bombs of anger and sorrow inside me—not Oaks' talk in particular, although that too—makes her so happy. Makes my sisters so happy, my childhood friends so happy. I don't understand how their balm of Gilead can be such [    ].

***

I talked with a dear dear friend yesterday about sex. She suggested I find someone experienced and very gentle to teach me about it. She said I'd know when I'm in love. She hinted strongly that the Mormon ideal I'd adopted—meet the love of your life, date, get married, then have sex with that person only forever—doesn't really work.

This is a problem because it seems to be working for my parents and 3/4 of my siblings, and many of my Mormon friends. But then, so does Mormonism. Something about me is apparently different.

***

From time to time gay friends have told me I just need to go out and sleep with a bunch of people and my views on sex will heal right up. I don't believe this. Maybe I won't only ever sleep with my true love, but I like the part of me that thinks of sex as special and important. And I guess I'm just afraid I'm a bit too much of a snob.

***

My dear dear friend also said that when I'm ready, I'll know. She said to trust myself.

Maybe what I resent so much about Mormonism is that in matters of sex and love it taught me to trust twelve old men instead of myself, and that early wiring is hard to redo.

If you were here, I might not feel like I've just done something very wrong. Maybe I would.

The first thing is this: I've lived in Japan for a year and a half and in this particular apartment for eleven months, which apart from my parents' house makes it the residence I've lived in the longest. But when four students on bicycles yelled "Haro misuta Peri!" across the street at me and I yelled "Hello!" back, a little old woman at the bus stop in front of me noted it and asked as I passed "Are you a teacher?"

(But in Japanese.)

And I said yes, and we conversed for a few minutes with me feeling a rising sense of panic the entire time. I ended the conversation at the first possible opportunity by edging away and finally just nodding and turning my back. And this was not a conversation that was dragging on and on—it was perfectly brief, and she looked terribly nice, like what my grandmother would look like if she had been Asian and not had a stroke when I was three. Nevertheless I ran from it like that time when a stranger pulled over to the curb and asked my seven-year-old friend and I to come over to the car so he could "ask us a question."

(Found out later he was my friend's uncle and was looking for the house we were playing in front of. Still freaked me out. Why couldn't he just ask from where he was?)

Why? I don't know. I'm hypothesizing that it has something to do with how in this country and this town in particular I am a cross between a washed-up celebrity and a circus attraction, or how my job is to speak about mundane things in the simplest terms possible  in front of generally unimpressed twelve-year-olds. I feel like my situation here has been training me to believe that human contact is onerous and difficult. I mean, moreso than it was in the states. I feel like it's starving any outgoing impulse I might once have had.

***

Today I finished reading The House of Mirth, by Evelyn Waugh. It was a cross between Pride and Prejudice, Anna Karenina, and The Great Gatsby. Overall I give it a 7/10, but there were some excellent phrases, like this:

Some men are strong enough to be good by themselves, but I needed the help of your belief in me. Perhaps I might have resisted a great temptation, but the little ones would have pulled me down. And then I remembered--I remembered your saying that such a life could never satisfy me; and I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could.

(Originally the second word was "women." Judge me if you will.)

The little ones would have pulled me down. I was ashamed to admit to myself that it could. God that's beautiful.

***

I chatted my angst to my sister not long ago and she said that no, really, it'll be worth it. You're growing in ways you can't know yet.

***

The feeling of wrongness comes I think from seeing this change in me. I'm not a person who shrinks from grandmas . . . but I did. I'm a fairly strong conversationalist . . . but not here. The person I'm seeing myself become is in many ways great and overall I'm happy with him, but this weakness and fear feels both wrong and inescapable. I hope but am not convinced that it's a fluke of circumstance.

If you were here, I would just hug you for a minute. I hope you'd hug me back. It's kind of a vulnerable time and I feel small. (I'm not small. I'm like six feet tall and I live in Japan. It's weird to feel small.)

There's a picture of me when I was nine or so on my bookshelf. I was small then. Super skinny. In the picture I'm shirtless and wearing a cowboy hat. It was probably summer. The kitchen stools are stacked up, so it was probably Saturday—chore day. It's a good reminder of who I used to be. I almost wrote something about how I used to be light and happy and carefree, but I haven't really been that way as long as I remember. Certainly not when this picture was taken. My face is so serious.

I mean I had fun, of course. There was always a sick feeling in the background, but I did have fun.

***
It's one in the morning and I probably won't go to bed tonight. See if I can make it to eight or nine o'clock tonight. It's summer vacation for another week, so I can do that.
***
My mom used to give us pajamas and slippers every year at Christmas. (Another picture in the same frame reminds me of this.) I'm glad she made that tradition. Even though I thought they were dorky at the time (I tended to just sleep in my clothes and walk around barefoot . . . don't judge me), it's a happy thing to look back on. One year they were all Taz slippers, even though none of us really liked Loony Toons except maybe my older sister. I clearly remember the way they glommed on my feet. They were very warm. I kept tripping over them.

I think the tradition stopped after my second year at BYU. That was the first year I didn't go home for Christmas. (So maybe it was just that I didn't get to participate.) But by that time I was pretty fiercely exerting my independence by coming out and fighting with myself about the church, so I didn't really notice.

***
Mostly if you were here I'd just want to be with you for a bit. I'm lonely. I'm not interested in making Japanese friends because I'm not very good at Japanese and I don't know how to be out in a foreign and homophobic country. The first takes time and work and discipline and the second, I don't know where to start.

That's a lie. Yes I do. I need to find out if I can be fired for coming out.

I should have done that a year and a half ago, but everything was so new and frightening then. I wasn't bold enough.
***
The last picture in the frame is my little brother when he was five or six. Now he was small, especially standing next to my dad. Even though he's tall and strong now he's always going to be little to me. Always there for me to watch over and protect and tease and hug. He's always been a cuddly little guy.

I don't understand how my older brother can think "It's better if we don't have a relationship."

Maybe because I'm taller than he is.

If you were here, we'd listen to the Killers. We'd be laying around the apartment enjoying the air conditioning because it's hot and wet outside. And loud. Cicadas are everywhere.

The summer after I graduated from BYU, I spent a lot of time laying around my parents' back yard, reading by the pool. I resurrected my library card from a desk drawer and checked out mounds of books from the local library, and one of those was Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion.Mostly it was interesting in the same way that looking through a box of old photos is interesting; I'm sure the essays were extremely topical at the time, but fifty years on they don't connect much.

Except one. I remember at BYU saying at one point that I couldn't respect anyone because no one could see what a fraud I was, which was a natural extension of thinking that I was a fraud yet not getting called out on it. So when I read this selection from Didion's essay "On Self-Respect" that first summer and again yesterday, it resonated:

The tricks that work on others count for nothing in that well-lit back alley where one keeps assignations with oneself; no winning smiles will do here, no prettily drawn lists of good intentions. One shuffles flashily but in vain through ones' marked cards the kindness done for the wrong reason, the apparent triumph which involved no real effort, the kindness done for the wrong reason, the seemingly heroic act into which one had been shamed. The dismal fact is that self-respect has nothing to do with the approval of others—who are, after all, deceived easily enough.

And I suppose that when I was younger and maybe even today I looked for self respect in the approval of others. Because when you're young and you grow up in an environment of people you trust and respect, you expect others' judgment to reflect reality. But people are deceived easily enough. I feel like Didion is tapping into and articulating something that I thought was just mine, like how I used to think I was the only guy into guys.

***

The Killers, man. That's good stuff.

***

Well, she goes on. "Character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life—is the source from which self-respect springs."

Maybe most people don't need to read that, but for me the connection wasn't clear before. We all have responsibility for our own lives, but we don't have to accept that, much in the way we don't have to accept that our credit card balances gather interest. Reality goes on whether we accept it or not, but not accepting it sure can make things harder for us.

I feel like I have more character now than I did at university. Taking responsibility for my own life meant doing what seemed best to me, which is easier living on my own and away from BYU, being financially independent of my parents. I still do dumb things and sometimes I still try to duck the consequences, but less, Cause-and-effect doesn't mystify me like it used to.

***

You'd have probably fallen asleep by now, if you were here. But it's good for me to articulate these things.

If you were here I'd want to talk about two of my siblings, one of whom says I'm one of the best men she knows and one who said it would be better if we didn't have a relationship. I just erased five or six paragraphs, though, because I guess I've found something too private or possibly just painful for me to put on the internet.

So that's off the table.

Today and yesterday I climbed Mt. Fuji. Mm, it was pretty? The entire hike down was miserable? I don't really know what to say other than that, but I have a strong urge to write something here tonight.

How about David. David was sitting on the ground, bandanna tied around his head, looking out over the view from no-longer-the-summit of Fuji when I met him. He looked over at me and watched me for a few seconds as I experimented with a sidestepping gate that kind of kept me from slipping with every step. (Three-fourths of the path we took down Fuji was covered in half a foot of loose gravel and dust. And it's really steep.) He looked away when I reached his corner of the switchback, and my friend sat down to dust her backpack, and I thought, aw, what the hell.

I sat down next to him. He's about to start medical school in Washington. This is a last hurrah trip, up from Kyoto to Fuji, from there up to Tokyo and back to the states. He taught English in Ecuador for six months.

That moment was right. We shook hands and said goodbye ("And try going down the path in zig zags, you'll keep your forward momentum," he said) and I don't imagine I'll ever see him again or that I'd recognize him if I did, but the view was right. Forever and the tops of clouds. The ease of the conversation felt right. He picked it up as soon as I started, as if we were at a high school reunion instead of meeting for the first time purely because we'd climbed the same mountain and he looked at me and I thought he was cute. Speaking English felt right.

I saw him two or three hours further down as well, but he was talking to someone in his group and I had nothing else to say except "Please come home with me now," which I thought might come off wrong.

***

I fell asleep while trying to think of a good way to end this post. It was fantastic, exhausted sleep.

If you were here, we'd go for a walk. We'd walk to a shrine, because even though I just visited one, there are four within a half-kilometer of my apartment, and in their own ways they're all beautiful. We'd go to the one with the gentle little river running through the side garden where I met a guy named Toshi who was adorable and possibly gay and very friendly and definitely with a woman.

Japan has its gorgeous moments, when the whole country looks open and smooth and smiling like Toshi's face. So did Washington, California, Utah, and even frigid New York.

There's part of me that's convinced that a new place will make everything better, but it won't. In every place I've ever had a computer I've binged on internet TV. I haven't held down a constant exercise program since my weight training classes at community college. Given the option I don't talk to people, which might explain my lack of progress with Japanese. I don't like alcohol or loud music except very rarely. Sometimes I let the dishes go unwashed until I have to use chopsticks to stir my chocolate milk. These are the things I feel are holding me back, and they're not location dependent quirks.

But maybe understanding small talk and being openly gay again will make a difference. I hope that at my next job I'll be able to make friends with my coworkers a little more effectively. I hope that at my next job I won't feel my soul slipping away from me a bit at a time.

My roommate Jeff once asked me what my greatest fear was. I said "That nothing will change." What I meant was "That this feeling that I'm wasting my life will never go away." 

Same fear.

The world just goes on forever.

The thing about reading is that you get exposed to ideas that are terrifying, and then you can't unthink them. I read A Short History of Everything the other day, just before my kindle exploded. That was following on the heels of some Hitchens tripe. Somewhere along the way in Japan I turned into an atheist.

Or maybe it would be more correct to say I stopped not being an atheist. Because it feels like belief (or trying to believe) took work, and atheism is what's left when I stop trying to cover it up and distract myself.

My mom smiled at me and said "Some day you'll realize what a big mistake you're making." I smiled back and changed the subject to something about a movie, I think, because what other response is there? "Fifty years from now you'll be dead and then you won't exist anymore?" Hardly appropriate, even if it's true.

The days are so hot and sweaty here I smell sour half an hour after showering. It's pretty gross.

There are only four more classes in the semester.

I'm climbing mount Fuji in two weeks.

If you were here, we'd stand on the back porch and listen to the rain. We'd be leaning on the balcony wall, my right arm about six inches from your left.  We wouldn't say much for a while.

***

My parents are visiting.  Every day, I see them when I wake up. And just before I go to bed.  It's weird. I'm so used to being alone.

They're so proud of me. I never doubt this. It's obvious all the time, when they look at me, when they talk with me, when we laugh. The fact that they came across the planet to be with me, and that this is the second time. The way they trust me to lead them around everywhere. It feels very healthy and loving and I like it a lot. Being an adult kind of rocks.

Today we went to a mountain and walked around a garden on top. Then we came home, and the rain started just as we walked up to my apartment. It's a soft, gentle rain that happens every few days this time of year. The last typhoon was a couple of weeks ago. I kind of hope we get another before the padres go home.

***

I dunno, for the past while it's felt like Mormonism isn't that important to me anymore. I guess I'm getting comfortable with my disbelief. I guess I've reached a point where I can stop mourning the things I'm not getting from mormonism.

***

My parents know this, I'd tell you.

***

Can I say the worst is over without jinxing it? Because I think that in the future we might talk about beauty and truth instead of just mormonism.

Or not. I can't really say.

If you were here, I'd tell you what I thought at Mormon church today.

I wasn't planning to go, but on Friday I saw I'd missed a call from the missionaries, so I texted them back that I'd be free in an hour. But since I suspected they were calling to see if I was coming to church on Sunday, I thought about my answer to that and added "or I'll just see you on Sunday." They texted back that they'd see me then, and also that there was a ward barbeque Saturday.

Very kind, but no thanks on the barbeque. Whatever it was once, the way I'm engaging with Mormonism now is definitely not social. 

When I got to the church building today, I felt really awkward and out of place as people tried to talk to me and find out where the elders were. My Japanese is good enough now that that wasn't the reason things were awkward, but I couldn't put my finger on what the reason was.  People smiled and shook my hand and introduced themselves, and they even dug up a youngish guy who spoke English really well and had just gotten back from living in Angola for a year. 

The missionaries caught up with us just as I was being herded into one of the Japanese-speaking Sunday school classes, and the American one took me aside with a ward missionary while the Japanese missionary took an investigator into the gospel essentials class. Our lesson was about baptism.

The thing that struck me and that I want to talk about is that as we read scriptures and the little manual, I thought that it made sense. It felt true to me. Not true in the scary, one-true-church style of the Mormon church, but true in a way that was just true. Why get baptized? As a sign you're willing to focus on living a life like Christ. Because that's what we promise when we get baptized. And the things God promises back are the consequences of trying to live like Christ. Makes sense to me.

I chose to ignore the part where the elder talked about authority because as far as I can tell, that's really just a formality that has nothing to do with the ordinance itself, and God can figure all that out later. 

As a result, I took the sacrament for the first time in years. Maybe since before I graduated from BYU, I don't remember. Because even if I don't believe in the authority of the church and it's priesthood (or at least that it isn't all it says it is), I also don't believe in the need for that authority. It's the commitments I make that matter. God looketh upon the heart and all that.

But then I left Sacrament meeting early, because I realized (duh) where the awkwardness came from: the organization sponsoring the service says that one of the desires closest to my heart is Wicked, capital "w." That meant that to interact with anyone there, I had to either pretend to be straight or be the poster child for Gay, and neither one appeals.

So instead of finishing the meeting and sticking around to socialize, I went and bought sushi and a couple of fruit sours.

I don't think I'll go back next week. Maybe when my parents visit next month.