Hold Fast

Savannah. Oh my poor Savannah. This whole thing has gone from a triggering video to an international news story. I can no longer simply choose a side. I'm more just stressed about how terrible and divisive this situation is becoming. I'll admit, at first, I was triggered, and I was all about protecting Savannah. Now I'm just stressed. Now I'm thinking, "Goodness, the stake presidency counselor who shut off her microphone is probably hiding away, and could be staving off death threats...who knows?" This is all just awful. Personally, nothing makes me more stressed about finding my way through my own intersectionality of being LDS and LGBT than hearing the common refrains of "Just leave the church!" from the left or "You can't be in a relationship!" from the right, which are the only things that pop up when a situation like this occurs. As soon as these attitudes start creeping up, I start to not be able to sleep. So I'm goi

When you experience a paradigm shift, brought on by a sudden realization that you are not what you were hoping you were, a lot of cognitive dissonance occurs. One must reconcile what they held to be true before the paradigm shift, with the added information gained from this new personal insight. Thus it was when I came out. It was a shift, a serious one. I mean, sure, some would argue that I always knew  that I was gay, and I would agree that somewhere in the back of mind (or in my web browser history as a teenager) was something saying "Yes, Sam, you're gay. Stop denying it." But I just kept denying it anyway. So when I finally accepted it, I had to bring these two facets together, because if I didn't, I would be stuck in a never-ending cycle of confusion. And honestly, considering how I felt in the first month after admitting it to myself (this would be February 2016), I think that the spiritual and cognitive dissonance may have led me to extreme depression and