In high school I was one of a few members of the LDS church. My freshman year there was Jeremy, Greg, Tonya, Travis, Jared, Me, and a girl whose name, for a couple of days now, David, maybe one or two more. We all went to the same ward. We all knew the same people even though we also all really had our own social groups. By the time I was a senior the group consisted of Tonya, Jared, Travis, that girl whose name I can’t remember, me, Rebecca, Justin, Steven, Jaime, and a couple of others. We were a small group. Travis was the Golden Hubble. He and Jared were in the band. Rebecca, at that point, was a junior and as I recall had made it onto the JV Drill Team and was relatively active in theatre. Tonya was Varsity Drill team. I was on the newspaper, yearbook, news channel, I lettered in football, Academic Decathlon, and a half dozen other things, including band (I don’t play a band instrument and I’ve never played football) and orchestra. Most of the other members of the church had similar accomplishments.

We were an interesting group. But it wasn’t the group I hung out with on the weekends and did things with. From freshman year forward I hung out with Mike, Jason, and Mark and we occasionally added different people to our group. By senior year Jared was in the group. The others would add the various girl and we’d do things. I am, somewhat infrequently, reminded of some of the more illicit things we did during those years and before I spent two years serving a full-time LDS mission. I can honestly say that I don’t have many fond memories of high school.

It was an interesting timeframe in my life. I disliked high school I felt it a waste of my time. I didn’t, and don’t, have any close friends. And when people talk about leaving home and never being able to return, I believe them because I left home and while my parents were still living in Temple, TX the only reason I ever went back was to visit them. I tried, after my mission, after driving semis, to hook up with the people that I’d associated with in high school, but that seemed to be a waste of effort and a larger waste of time. I had grown beyond them, or in a different direction, and by placing religion in front of person I had effectively ostracized the people I’d thought were important to me in my high school developmental years. I have to admit that I find it interesting to hear from people who place a lot of stock and a lot of emotion in the lives of their high school friends. I don’t fit into that category.

You’d almost have to be me to really understand that I’ve moved on. High school is in the past and being forced to relive those memories isn’t always a positive experience. Being forced to relive the mission experiences isn’t always pleasant either. It’s not that either experience was devoid of positive and uplifting emotional elements, it was that the overall effect of that life on me has left a sour taste in my mouth. At the same time I believe, wholeheartedly, that all teenagers need to be in a public schooling environment; and I believe that all young men, and when appropriate young women, need to serve an honorable LDS mission. I just don’t like to talk about it.

That was one of the biggest fears of having this new roommate live with me. I don’t care that he is young. I care that he is young and will need someone to positively promote a mission. Granted, he is young enough, now, that I don’t think I need to worry about it, but at some point someone is going to need to sit down and talk to him about the benefits of serving a full-time LDS mission and that person will probably not be me.

And yet, I don’t want to be negative either. Negativity gets people nowhere.

Mom and Dad (and Jared and Emily) came to see the play on Saturday and then I went to church with the former on Sunday in James’ ward. I don’t know which one was worse, my ward with the children playing Frisbee with the tithing envelopes or James’ ward with the too-young men and women trying to give meaningful (?) talks on prayer. You wouldn’t have been able to hear in either situation, but at the same time the outcome might’ve been different.

After I got tired of church Mom took me home, since they drove, and we talked. She handed me my copy of 24 back and with it the Jack Weyland book, Alone Together. It is a book about a few young people in different parts of the United States who go to school alone and who find trials through not having any very close friends because they are LDS and because they don’t party and drink.

I’m not done with the book. However, I hit a part where one of the characters asks a question, rhetorically, about popularity and her standards. Paraphrasing, “Why can’t I go out and party. If I did I would be popular.” And yet, she lived the standards. At least, the first chapter, which is starting at the end… more or less… would imply that that is the case. Why can’t I forgo my standards in order to obtain popularity or something that I want almost as much, and possibly more than, life itself? Why?

Some years ago now I had to cross that same bridge but in a very different way. Instead of dealing with teenage parties and alcohol I had to deal with my spiritual self. I had to stand up and decide whether or not what I was waiting for was worth waiting for. I was 28 at the time. An old single man in traditional LDS custom. And yet, there I was, standing there, outside of a temple of God, asking myself a question that had never come up before. Why? Why am I torturing myself when all I have to do is give up and choose to live a different lifestyle? Why?

To my problems there was a very simple answer: Quit. Stop doing what I’d been taught and trained to do that I knew was right and start living an alternative (to my way of thinking) lifestyle. Stop believing that there is a purpose to life, to my life, and start living the way many of my family members choose to live their lives. Stop. Stop going to church. Stop reading scriptures. Stop praying. Stop being the person I’d been raised and trained to be and start being someone else. It’s possible. I knew in that moment when those questions and the options were being placed in front of me that it was as easy as saying, “Yes,” to change my life and my fortunes. I knew in that moment I would’ve found immediate successes that had, up until that time, been kept from me. I knew as well as I know the sun will rise tomorrow and that it shines today, that my life would’ve been completely and totally different and I would’ve found a lot of what I’d been looking for.

All I had to do was give up. Give up my standards. Give up my convictions. Give up my life and everything would’ve happened for me. And I knew, in that moment, that if I’d given up and done what I felt I should do at that moment that the one thing I really want out of my life would be gone forever. I would’ve found success and failed at the exact same time. The choice was easy and hard all at the same time because I stood there wanting my life to be easy and I chose to go over uncharted territory and past uncharted waters only to end up where I thought I’d started ten or so years ago.

I could’ve turned out like my friends in high school.

By the time we were seniors Jason and Mark had both found women who wanted to sleep with them. By the time we were seniors Jason had already gone through one AIDS test. By the time we were seniors they’d found ways of buying, or stealing, alcohol and on many weekends they would go out and get drunk. I was rarely, and then never, invited along on those weekends.

My life, even then, was different from theirs. I can name all of the girls I’d ever gone out with. It started, at 17, with Joanna. She was a member of the church. She lives in New York now with her husband. Then there was Kristen (I think) who was a Jehovah’s Witness. Well, her mother was. We went out a couple of times and then broke it off when I wouldn’t kiss her after a church dance. During those years the memory people kept of me, from the church, was my outgoing nature at youth activities when (especially at dances) I would dance with all of the girls and talk to all of the people. I don’t, I didn’t, forget people nor did my alleged or supposed social standing really affect the way in which I chose to interact with everyone. Jock, cheerleader, nerd, whatever, I associated with everyone and no one.

After my mission there was Amber (not her real name), and then a red-headed girl I only knew passively but, like Amber, was hellbent on getting married and wasn’t what I was looking for. A girl name Patience (who had none) thought we were an item, but I’d never done more than dance with her at an odd activity or social outing. And then we jump several years to Stephanie, who married a guy six months after I moved from Dallas to Salt Lake City. Then you jump a couple of more years and I went out with several girls and I can give many of their names, but we’d only go out once because I was being set up on blind dates, and then I’d rarely and never call them back again. And you hit Mary. Mary was, I thought, a love of my life and when she broke it off I fumbled for a couple of months and landed with Kristin and then Malissa, and then there were a lot of girls I asked out simply for the pleasure of their company and I thought to myself, “I am finally over being shy around women,” and then we hit Kishel who decided she needed to date my roommate and the both of them hid it from me for about ten seconds before I put three and three together and came up with what was happening and they got married before I moved to New Hampshire. While there I went on one date with a girl named Christie and then she told me she was moving and couldn’t see me anymore and then I come back to Utah after trying and failing a lot to ask girls out on the east coast only to have been on one blind date that went so poorly for me that I am surprised I am even willing to associate with the person who did the setting up (okay, I don’t anymore, but you get the picture).

In high school many of my friends were exploring sex and sexuality and in that way they left me behind. After high school I have siblings that have done the same. And in that way they leave me behind. I have friends who tell me that in order to get over some of my “hang-ups” all I need to do is give in to what is natural and everything will take care of itself. And yet, these same people have issues in their lives that forgo the idea that they are actually happy and content with what is happening to and around them. They want something they are not likely to get because what they want is tied to what they give so freely, themselves through sex.

I was offered drugs in high school. I had a gun pulled on me. I was threatened. High school isn’t the type of place or experience that I thrived in because, in part, the structure was so stiff that you couldn’t get a word in edgeways. I couldn’t wait to leave high school. I couldn’t wait to get on with the adult life that I wanted to be a part of. And I don’t imagine, even now, more than ten years later, that I have any regrets about not taking more out of high school. I can see what my parents always said about participating, and I can see how that might apply to a lot of people, and even more I can see how it didn’t really apply to me.

I was alone in high school. Even with friends I was alone. I was the lone gunman. The solitary figure. The enigma to everyone else’s fun and games. I was the responsible party. The one who wanted to do what was legal and right; and the one who normally planned what was illegal and not right. We were kids. We were in high school. We had a license to play and have fun even if, during my junior year, the law no longer looked at me as though I were a minor and I could be charged with felonies and crimes if we committed them.

Back then Mark wanted to own guns, and lots of them; and he claimed he had contacts that could get them for him illegally.

Back then Jason wanted to drown out the sorrows and the pain through alcohol and various sexual contacts and conquests.

Back then Mike wanted to be considered athletic and smart and popular and did anything he could to be just that and failed because he tried so hard.

Back then I wanted contact and couldn’t find the kind of contact I wanted.

Back then some of the people I knew and associated with had figured out how to be the person they thought they wanted to be. And they went out of their way to do what the world, what their peers, thought was right and good and appropriate.

Back then we were all different people and I find it morosely humorous that we have people, now, here, today, that have never left the back then. They’ve never grown older. They’ve never gotten smarter. They still look at the world as though it were high school in 1993 or 1962 or 1985 or in any of a hundred million years that we’ve all existed.

Back then what mattered was what people thought about you and not what you thought about yourself.

And back then I didn’t care any more about what they thought of me than I do now – and I know that I partially lie in both cases because I did care and I do care and I don’t allow it to affect who and what I am.

Growing up I was a loner. The lone gunman. The one on silent vigil. I could wait and wait for what I wanted to have happen because somewhere deep inside of me I knew that sooner or later, I don’t know when, it was going to happen for me. I didn’t need Mark, Mike, or Jason I need Jack, Kim, Jared, Rebecca, Justin, James, and Jordan and my Mom and Dad. I needed my family and I could survive knowing they were there for me. Friends are come and gones. They are here today and gone tomorrow. I knew that then, I know that now. Not every friendship will survive an argument or even every argument. I don’t keep in touch with the past and I don’t feel I should be expected to. I do try to keep in touch with my family and I do feel that is an expectation that should be a part of my life.

As I child I dragged the younger siblings on adventures. I was bored. They got to go with me. We did a lot of things and got into a lot of trouble and, I would hope, had a lot of fun in the process. I have to be entertained. I have to find things that entertain me. I have to explore and adventure and find new ways of looking at life and that was true then as it is now. Now, though, I am at a small loss in that I don’t have the perspicacity or the financial resources necessary to adventure as much as I would like to, to go scuba diving, to rock climb, to spelunk, or to do one of hundreds of things that, over the years, I’ve discovered that I really enjoy doing. I don’t have family members I can just call up and drag along. They are all busy with their lives. I don’t have roommates that I can drag along. They are too young, too old, too committed, too involved in work, too a hundred thousand other things.

I am the lone gunman. The wanderer walking the roads at night searching, searching for something and never find it. I am a nomad.

I don’t have a problem stating that I have no connections in most places and that is exactly what I am looking for. I am not looking for friends. I am looking for a friend. I am not looking for fleeting romances. I am looking for a romance. I am not looking to date every girl on the block. I am looking to date one girl. I am not looking for a thousand homes in a thousand places and never living anywhere for more than eight months, I am looking for a place to hang my hat and call home. I am looking for that thing that completes me, that makes me whole, that allows me to get up in the morning and work hard until it is time to go to bed at night. I am looking for my paramour, my inspiration, my muse.

This is not an easy task for me. It never was. It may never be. I was alone in high school. I didn’t know people and I seemed to know everyone. I was a part of a lot of things and yet I was never with anyone or anything. I am not a joiner. I don’t look for things to participate in. I know what I want and I go after it. When I can’t get it I change tactics and go after it again. I am patient and willing to wait. My patience isn’t without price. I expect results. I want tangibles. I need to see that I am getting somewhere. I have to know that there is more out there for me than merely my standing on the sidelines watching Mike, Mark, Jason, Jared, Jack, Kimberly, Rebecca, and almost every girl I’ve ever date move on with their lives. Make something. Settle. Get caught up in a world I don’t inhabit because I can’t inhabit it yet.

There are a lot of reasons I am single. There are a lot of reasons I am the loner. The nomad. The lone gunman. There are reasons that I can’t, and won’t, share that make me who I am, what I am. I am the man standing before you wanting to make the most out of his life, and I am the man standing before you unwilling to bend when the ill wind blows.

I knew the moment I made the choice to follow my conscience, my heart, my religion instead of giving up, I knew at that moment I would spend a lifetime struggling. You get to a point in the struggle where you don’t always see it anymore. You get to a point where it is set in stark relief. You watch people you thought would never get what you wanted, the people you measure your life against in some odd, fastidious way, and you watch them succeed because what you want is what they want, you just can’t have it together.

You meet people, I meet people, and the answer to the unasked questions comes in seconds and not hours or days or weeks or months. You know because you chose to walk a path that is long and hard and difficult and you know because you’ve tried to live your life in a way that a living, knowing, caring God is willing to share with you just enough information, just enough feeling, just enough intangible or tangible that you are willing to walk another 100 paces in pitch blackness or another 100 inches in tremulous terrain because you know going back is no longer an option and sooner or later you will see the smallest speck of light and will head toward that. Hope.

I am alone. I would give almost anything not to be. And yet, I have given everything to be exactly what I am. I have offered my talents, my skills, my life to have what others in my world have had for many years and yet I stand alone. Sleep alone. Work alone. Go to school alone because I cannot accept less than what I am paying for, and paving the way for, because there is more to life than Mark or Mike or Jason or a dozen plus girls some of whom wanted me to be more to them, and others who I may have wanted more from than they could offer.

Here I sit, writing, reading, pondering, writing, searching for the answer and answers to feelings and I cannot, for any length of time, accept an answer that is not right or proper. I can accept feelings, intangibles.

I heard, once, that Plato indicated that the bellybutton is the scar where your soul was torn in half and that we, in this life, are in search of the other half of our soul. I don’t know if Plato really said anything of the sort or if it was someone who wanted to sound smarter than they were, are. I don’t care. I do care that I am searching for what makes me whole. I’ve been on that search since high school, since my mission, since driving semis, since working in computers, since writing professionally, since every major life change that has taken place for me. I am searching for what will make me more of a person than I am today. I am searching for compassion and a companion.

You know, I can go back to high school, mentally, and reflect on what happened then. Occasionally I do. However, life isn’t lived in the past. We can learn from what we did, what was done, back when, but we have to live now, we have to try and progress. We have to be better than we are because the moment we stop trying and stop trying to try then we have failed.

Religiously, God doesn’t ask us to succeed in most things He just asks us to try and then, when we’ve tried and possibly failed a few times, he stands in and assists us so that we can succeed. Personally, I have tried and failed and I will try and fail again. High school was trying and failing. I couldn’t do what I was asked to do by my friends and my parents. I still can’t, in a lot of areas. But I still try to try. Sooner or later Providence or God or karma will step in and I will be lifted higher than I can make it on my own.

I have never walked any single path alone. Now, with that said, you will rarely see my companion with me, but I have never walked alone. Sometimes it feels that way and in those moments I cannot complain – even though I sometimes do or would like to – but I know that I am not alone. I know that I am being buoyed up, helped along the path, guided, direction, assisted.