felt frozen in time. No one would have celebrated my feelings, had I expressed them. No one would have celebrated my milestones if I’d gone on dates, brought a female partner to church, gotten engaged or married. For straight people, finding a spouse and starting a family were viewed as blessings from God. For anyone gay, these exact same steps were seen as sinful and something to be ashamed of.
Because of this, I’d never acted on my feelings for girls—not so much as even the briefest kiss, despite the fact I was nearing thirty. All of it was locked away inside as I tried to impeccably do the right thing by my Christian values. As I saw it, I’d chosen God instead of these attractions, pursuing holiness instead of sin. I’d boxed my feelings up and put them on a high shelf in my psyche, leaving them there—I believed—permanently. But I had no idea how deeply it would damage me.
Slowly but surely, over the years, all my emotions began shutting down and switching off, like a giant factory closing up until every machine is still and every light is out. My heart stood like an abandoned building. Empty and echoey. Uninhabited, unvisited, with doors and windows all boarded up. A monument to someone I used to be—or maybe could have been. I felt like a shell of a human being.
My life seemed a monotonous drone of work with no one to come home to. I kept my friends and family at arm’s length, because my core identity was something they couldn’t know about, and most likely wouldn’t understand. I asked my music manager to book gigs on as many holidays and special occasions as possible, so I never had to be home alone—especially on my birthday, Valentine’s Day, and New Year’s Eve. Since I was always on the go, my undecorated apartment was simply the place I did laundry, repacked my suitcase, and left again.
Weighed down by these thoughts, I stared out of the plane window as we descended into London’s Heathrow airport and taxied on the tarmac. Soon I was inside, lugging my equipment off the baggage carousel. I slung a heavy guitar case over my shoulder and wheeled a large suitcase behind me, heading toward a train bound for central London.
Fifteen minutes later, the Heathrow Express train pulled in to Paddington station. One more quick journey on the Underground, and I’d meet the conference runner who would take me to the event. The idea of stepping into the busy, upbeat energy of a worship conference felt utterly overwhelming—I had cried all night; I could barely speak, let alone sing.
On the Underground platform, the first train to arrive wasn’t going to my destination. It rushed in at breakneck speed, and I felt the whoosh of air as it sped toward me. People boarded, and then with a release of energy it sped away into the blackness of the tunnels.
I dropped my luggage next to a bench and sat with my head in my hands. My mind kept returning to the same question: “What’s the point anymore?” This frightened me to the core. I was usually a stable, balanced person, but this inner struggle with my sexuality and the incessant cycle of brokenheartedness had brought me to the point of breakdown. Embarrassed to cry in public, I tried to brush the tears away as they fell down my cheeks, but no one was watching anyway. Busy, faceless commuters stared into space, lost in their own worlds as they rushed past.
I was so incredibly tired. Every cell in my body, every fiber of my being was exhausted from carrying this emotional weight since my teens. Growing up, I hadn’t known a single gay person and had had no LGBTQ+ role models; social media didn’t exist back then in the early 1990s, so finding solace in YouTube’s coming-out advice videos—as young people do today—was a universe away from my teenage experience. I’d felt utterly isolated back then, and all these years later, I still felt the icy grip of loneliness; the passing of time only made it harder to bear.
I stood up, rubbing my bloodshot eyes and my tear-stained cheeks, and walked to the edge of the platform. This could be it, I thought. I don’t have to do this anymore. I don’t have to live this cycle of heartbreak, shame, fear, and isolation over and over. I don’t have to do this anymore—it could be over so easily.
I moved my feet forward inch by inch on the concrete floor, stepping past the line of yellow paint that marked the safety point. I looked down into the tunnel and saw distant lights. Tears were streaming down my face again. I knew if I moved another inch forward, at just the right second, I could step out onto the tracks as the train thundered into the station. It could all be over.
The lights blinded me as the train approached. My feet moved another inch closer to the edge. But just before I stepped out, I thought: The last hands that touch me and carry my body will belong to total strangers. My whole life I’ve felt alone. If I die here, it’ll be with people who don’t even know my name.
Dying that way, falling onto the hard steel of the train tracks, to be carried away by total strangers, seemed too lonely to go through with. In that split second, I’d found a thought more painful than carrying on with life, and it had distracted me long enough for the train to thunder into the station with my feet still firmly planted on the platform edge.
I staggered backward, returning to the bench where I’d sat before. My heart was racing. I tried to slow my breathing and recover from the shock of what I’d almost done. No one noticed. Hundreds of pairs of feet continued to rush past, on their way to their next appointment. Surrounded by this chaos, I sat, and breathed, and cried as relief washed over me. I don’t know how long I stayed there; it could have been minutes or maybe hours. I just sat and sat, until my breathing relaxed and my heart rate finally slowed.
Eventually, feeling as though I were moving in slow motion, I took a deep breath, grabbed my belongings, and boarded the next train. I had only minutes to pull myself together before I’d arrive at the worship conference and be plunged into a busy week of meetings and rehearsals. There would be no one safe there to confide in—any confession of being gay would be a one-way ticket to the end of a career. I just had to hide my pain and keep going.
Desperate for change, my heart ached. I couldn’t seem to die, but I also couldn’t seem to live.
Baby photos are supposed to be treasured keepsakes, showing you at your very best: wide-eyed, angelic, and utterly adorable. Unfortunately, in my first baby photo I resemble a small, startled alien. My hair stands straight up in jet-black spikes as though I were auditioning for an infant rock band. I’m told that I’d been fast asleep when the hospital photographer arrived. In a hurry, he’d clapped his hands loudly to wake me up, and the moment I’d stirred, he’d snapped the shot. Thanks to him, the photo of the startled spikey-haired alien has been displayed on my parents’ living-room wall ever since.
My early years were carefree. In my favorite childhood photo, I’m six years old, wearing a bright-red t-shirt and yellow dungarees, and grinning like a Cheshire cat. My hair is cut in a bowl-shaped bob, and my green-gray eyes have a mischievous twinkle. Back then, my favorite hobby was reciting the latest joke I’d memorized from my collection of joke books. Making people laugh was one of my favorite things, and more often than not I had a big smile on my face.
I grew up before the wonders of the internet. My family lived in the countryside, so instead of PlayStations or Xboxes, my days were filled with playing in tree houses, building forts, damming rivers, and running through fields. It gave me a love for wide open skies, the smell of forests after rainfall, and the rustle of wheat as you run your fingers over it like a golden, waist-high carpet. If I’d owned Mario Kart or Zelda back then, I probably never would have left the house.
Perhaps everyone grew up more slowly before cyberspace came along. Today, kids’ minds can be exposed to wonderfully diverse ideas and perspectives at the click of a button. But back then, education and socialization happened organically, not digitally. I learned everything from the small radius of my everyday life, from teachers, schoolmates, family, and the other huge influence in my life: church.
My family lived in a small village of four hundred people. The local school was tiny too, with only forty pupils, aged four to eleven.