5 Regrets After 5 Years of Struggle Central

Five years ago on my 26th birthday at a Starbucks in Fullerton, California, I hit the button on a book that transported me to a new course in life; apparently, Struggle Central has affected others, too.

I heard from dozens of people in those first few weeks of publication: family, friends, that one college guy to whom I’d once said maybe six words. In the five years since Struggle Central, I’ve heard from dozens upon dozens more. People finding my book via Your Other Brothers or word-of-mouth or Google search.

It’s been humbling. It’s been super supportive.

Writing Struggle Central five years ago was absolutely the path God intended for me eons ago. My path as a human, my path as a writer. The gateway to my wildest dreams as an author.

Also, a nightmare. A foreign world with implications I’d have never otherwise encountered.

As I turn 31 today, I realize more than ever that my life will never be the same as the 25 birthdays before Struggle Central. It’s the jaggiest jagged line running down the middle of my life. My most resounding and haunting should I really have done that? moment.

Originally, I wanted to take this special anniversary to wax on all the great things about Struggle Central from the last five years. But that’s boring. Who cares.

I’ve actually been pondering this post for many months, if not years — and so, here are my 5 biggest regrets after writing Struggle Central.

1. I can no longer come out to people. Or when I do, it’s a hundred times more awkward.

Opening up to others used to be special. Sacred. I longed for those palpitating, intimate moments with family and friends. The terminal to connection on some previously unmet, unrealized, soul-melding level.

The chance to close my eyes and let someone into the deep, dark parts of me, reopening them to find he or she still remains. Sits even closer.

Forever gone are those days now that my life has become a literal open book. When I “come out” to someone these days, the faux-moment comes with this bizarre new reality that the other person most likely already knows my sexuality from my book or countless blogs.

Sure, connection and even intimacy can still happen without any more control of that coming out moment. But finding intimacy feels more difficult now. More convoluted.

Most friendships don’t work this way: starting from the deep end and then swimming toward more shallow waters. I’ve seen most people drown at the start.

Something has been lost in the last five years.

All sacredness is gone.

2. People can Google me and form their own opinions without ever saying a word to me.

I once heard that somebody read my story (or my “testimony,” as it goes in Christian circles) and that I was no longer welcome back in this environment because of it.

Which. Whatever. I wasn’t planning on returning to said environment anyway.

But still. Declaring something so definitively without even talking to me directly — thank you, Internet.

I honestly don’t have many negative stories about the reaction of Struggle Central. For every one negative or semi-critical comment, there have easily been 100 resoundingly positive ones.

But still. Those negative ones sting.

I can’t help wondering who else has read my book or a handful of blog posts and have formed this new vision of who I am without ever having directly reached out to me. People I once knew or even knew well or people who I could have otherwise befriended on a more “normal” trajectory — only to be altered or even aborted by my book and my “testimony.”

The endless potential would-be relationships in some other life kills me some days.

3. I’m the “struggle guy” now.

Perhaps a huge reason why I’ve gravitated toward wandering and travel memoir in recent years is because I’ve felt the need to overcompensate from the messy persona I assumed after Struggle Central.

I don’t want to be known as the struggle guy. Mr. Struggle: the one who yearns and groans for all to hear.

I mean, I enjoy writing vulnerably. I do. I saw great value in vulnerability when others wrote that way, and I certainly see the fruit when I do it, both for my own soul and my audience.

But I’m not all those gross, uncomfortable things. Not completely. I’m more than homosexuality. I’m more than inferiority. I’m more than envy and lust and selfishness.

I am a traveler. I am a photographer. I wrote another book mostly not about my sexuality. I am a writer, a podcaster, a content creator. I am a friend. I am a brother.

I am a follower of Jesus, and I want my readers to meet Him both in my groaning and my growing.

4. I have to hide even harder.

In recent work environments, I’ve shied away from discussing the content of Struggle Central, because it’s just so polarizing.

I’ve had to downplay my own memoir, describing it more generically as a “coming of age tale” or a bunch of childhood stories of bullying and isolation at a Christian school.

I mean, it’s not not those things. But that whole part about my being gay / having same-sex attractions while not pursuing them romantically or sexually in light of my faith — that’s kind of a big theme of the book. The elephant in the pages.

But I don’t want to be judged by people — outside my faith or even within it. And I really don’t want to engage in endless arguments about theology and politics and personal preference.

So, I’ve often disregarded that whole bit about my sexuality when “pitching” my book — and my writing/faith at large — to others.

You’d think coming out to the world via memoir would make it easy to disclose my sexuality to whomever I choose wherever I go — coworkers, students, churches, grocery clerks, Lyft riders.

Alas. I don’t want to be judged. I don’t want to be boxed.

I just want my space again.

The spotlight flashes around my soul like a new car dealership at midnight, and I feel more pressure to hide than ever before.

5. I’ve created new pain.

I could have never conceived what I did on my 26th birthday, starting a chain of events that changed my life and many others. Without Struggle Central, there never would have been Your Other Brothers: an online community birthed two years later. A community that has introduced people as friends all over the country and even around the world.

Some of these brothers would enter the fold and stay. Some would come and fall away. Some would hurt each other. Hurt me. I’m certain I’ve hurt others, too.

By writing a book and creating this community out of thin air, I’ve also set in motion a new path of unavoidable and unquantifiable pain. Disruption.

But Tom, I have heard. You’ve also provided so many with hope. The reassurance that no believer is alone in his wrestling with faith and sexuality. You’ve provided an arena for lifelong friendships that would have never otherwise been. You’ve helped instill love and joy and —

I know, I know. I get it. I took one leap of faith that led to another that led to lots and lots of “God things.” Praise Him.

But that doesn’t erase all the hurts along the way. This pain that still remains.

Would it not have been better just to leave everything as it was — sad and lonely but safe? Did this big safe void need my disrupting?

In Closing

I’m an over-thinker. I overthink clothing and haircuts and grocery items and decisions to live here and move there and everything in between. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve regretted writing this book the last five years.

But I do shudder more at the thought of having not written this book. Of where I’d be today otherwise: lost in yet another dead-end job that takes me from city to city, state to state. Road to roaming road.

Struggle Central indeed led to Your Other Brothers, and I now walk with a purpose never before lived: of telling genuine stories of faith and doubt, friendships and fallouts, triumphs and tragedy. Of finding financial supporters and writing books and blogs and recording podcasts and filming videos and even speaking at conferences.

Desperate to share even a sliver of this Hope I’ve found in committing my life and my story to Jesus.

Despite the negatives resulting from this book, I can’t discard all the people who have reached out to me in the last five years. People who have thanked me profusely. People who read my book in one night. People who wept while reading it. People who told other people who then told me their own journey with my story and how it connected with theirs.

People who have summoned some unknown strength to come out to their parents because of me. People who have reached a greater level of connection with others, connection with God, and connection with self because of me.

Because of Struggle Central.

Five years later, this little book with the fish and the waves and the parting clouds is still making the rounds. I still hear from people who discover it for the first time.

I’ve now seen Struggle Central sold at two separate conferences, and an adapted excerpt is even featured in Lead Them Home’s second edition of Guiding Families of LGBT+ Loved Ones.

People still take it upon themselves to rate and review Struggle Central on Amazon. 74 ratings/reviews and counting for a nobody, self-published author like me? That’s incredible.

I go back and reread some pages now and then — cringing at my 2013-era writing and how I’ve evolved in the five years since. But also nodding in self-affirmation that I actually wrote some damn good lines in that book.

Sure, I have plenty of regrets from Struggle Central (though using the f-word is not one of them). But I am so grateful for these messy memoirs.

I close my eyes. I tell my story. I open them.

And I wouldn’t change a thing.