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| My name is Eric Leocadio. I am an Ex-Gay Survivor |
By the time I reached my freshman year in high school, I tried to kill myself. I was a teenager and the message that I received for so many years by my friends, my family, my classmates and myself, was that I was not acceptable because I was gay. I looked in the mirror and I hated that guy. So I wanted to die.
I was tired of feeling rejected. I was tired of feeling different. I was tired of feeling like no one really knew who I was because there was a part of me that had to stay a secret. The closet is a lonely place.
I was 14 years old when I cupped both my hands together, filled them with pills (asprin, Tylenol, and such), swallowed every one, and washed them down with water. Then I fell asleep. Three hours later I woke up in complete regret as I began the process of having my body involuntarily spew out the contents of my stomach. I vomited for several minutes, divinely timed, from 7:00 PM through 5:00 AM every hour on the hour on the dot. These were grueling sessions with what I refer to as my “porcelain punisher.” I experienced 10 hours of bile-filled hell. After living through this, I wanted to die!
I didn’t tell anyone at home what I had done. No one would have taken me to the hospital. So God, before I knew Him, pumped my stomach for me. I realized, then, that He wasn’t done with me yet...¨ please read it all, HERE
· Thanks to Beyond Ex-Gay, sidebar
· Thanks to Eric Leocadio
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5 comments:
God bless and protect Eric. Many thanks for his witness.
I wish him well too. But I don't understand the ongoing phenomenon of Gay suicide (it seems to be mostly boys). It's 42 years since Stonewall; why does that not matter to them? Gay marriage is legal in 9 states and half of Europe; why doesn't that matter?
I can fathom a hate-filled environment with no support anywhere; I grew up that way too - 42 years ago. There was no "It Gets Better" campaign - no supportive school counselors - no cool Gay characters on TV - no GLSEN chapters - no anti-discrimination laws anywhere. Subsequent generations have created all these things. But they don't seem to matter to these kids who hate themselves. Do they need the whole world to tell them it's okay? Mommy, daddy, church, school, friends, media, courts, cops, everyone unanimous, it's okay to be Gay? Or wouldn't that matter either?
I don't blame them; I'm saying I don't understand them. The rest of us can't devise support services for them if they can't tell us what the problem is.
(I wouldn't leave this comment on Eric's page, I figure it's safer here.)
It seems to me that deciding what "God" gets blamed for, or exonerated from is a very iffy, if not arbitrary habit common among us. As for trying to "fit in", sooner or later one may notice that people pleasing, aka approval addiction, comes at an unacceptably high price. Preferably sooner to enjoy more of the freedom & liberty which comes with being fully integrated within.
Interesting. I understand the confusion, the selfloathing, the desire to end it all as a Junior High School kid...but then, I figured I would be dead and that wasn´t a favorite choice...so then I decided to drink myself to death, or drink myself into having the courage to tell others I liked/loved them (yes, that took courage for me as for many years over a decade I often pretended I didn´t like the person I was attracted to--safer that way) or even simply have SEX! (I know, I know, I got over *it*) But, alas, my boozedriven selfhate remover turned on me and I wanted to kill myself (again--damn)!...in my case I cried out to God, almost dead and drunk on my living room floor for God to ¨take this away from me¨...God did and that was in 1978...my God does, in fact, and so far, work hard for me...it is a fact for me that God does move in mysterious ways.
great that you have told your story Eric. Here are some more http://exgayaustralia.blogspot.com.au/p/survivor-stories.html
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