Tell me if you’ve heard this one— “I’m sorry you were offended.” Because of my past tendency to be drawn to narcissists, this statement and many like it were peppered liberally throughout my life, and I wasted many years trying to communicate to those who spoke this way that they had hurt me and not succeeded in repairing the damage.

When I was a young man struggling with my homosexuality growing up in the midst of a bigoted and conservative Mormon community I was constantly perturbed by stories in the scriptures of God either relieving or sending plagues upon the various characters in the stories and their communities.

When I was fifteen years of age and struggles with my parents began to reach a fever pitch, my mother one day came into my room after a row and told me she was afraid I would not be able to provide for a family when I grew up. She was not concerned about an abundance of employment opportunities or the decreasing trend in wages compared to inflation and the const of living..

Like most people in Western societies at this time of year I will be traveling to visit my family, and like a great portion of these people I found myself experiencing some intense anxieties about my upcoming trip which were making my daily life at the moment a bit unbearable

“You look so ugly when you talk like that,” said my mother one day when I was seventeen, “I wish I could record you so you could see how ugly you are.” I don’t remember exactly what we were fighting about—I had recently been discovered as homosexual and our relationship had become yet more strained under their dismissal and increased persecution. I was a very good kid—I got the best grades in my family, never tried drinking or smoking, was still a virgin…

I spend much of my time ruminating on the possible origins of who and why we are as human beings and the various dynamics that might have lead to establish everything from the size of our brains to the reasons we enjoy fried potato chips (it’s because they resemble crunchy bugs which roughly four billion people on the planet still consume).

One bright, beautiful summer Saturday when I was twenty-eight I was at a party in the Hollywood Hills. My friend's pool was once Walt Disney's, though this contemporary house had been built between Walt Disney's actual house and the pool so we were not in the same rooms that Walt used to walk. The house looked over the whole of Los Angeles, and since there were only about twelve people at the party, all of us familiar with each other now for a number of years, there was a more intimate feeling than usual L.A. pool parties.

One Saturday when I was sixteen our family was driving home from my Dad's office buildings doing janitorial work where we earned extra money instead of having normal summer jobs. I was staring out the window like a proper brooding teenager, dreaming of all the ways life could be better than it was while my five siblings, tired from the day’s janitorial effort were silent and nodding off in the back.