Content warning: suicidal ideation
He was the quarterback of his high school’s football team. The homecoming king and the prom king. He served in student government, did a musical, learned several instruments, played five sports, earned his associates degree while still in high school, and quickly advanced to Assistant to the President status on his LDS mission. Never wanting to draw attention to himself for anything unbecoming, Caysen Crum earned his nickname, “Mr. Perfect.” He felt, “If I did everything exactly right, no one would suspect otherwise.”
Along the way, Caysen dated girls—a lot of them. But the majority of his dates were with girls from out of town, where it was easier to limit physical contact. He only kissed one girl in high school, often presenting the excuse he was preparing to serve a mission. On his mission, Caysen promised God he would be exactly obedient if God would make him straight. But like so many who have tried before, Caysen learned that perfect obedience does not undo what he’d known about himself since 12-years-old.
As a tween, Caysen discovered that his attractions leaned toward males, but he convinced himself boys were just admirable and he wanted to be like them—buff, handsome, tall. He brought it to his parents’ attention at this young age, telling them he wasn’t sure if this meant he was gay. Caysen feels his parents “did the best they could,” but remembers his mom saying the day of that revelation was one of the hardest of her life. Witnessing his parents’ reaction, Caysen determined he never wanted to cause another person to feel that way, so “Mr. Perfect” was born—a young man who tried everything to not be gay.
In the plea bargain phase of his mission to New Hampshire (French speaking), Caysen only told three companions about his orientation. While respectful, they each responded with more of an apologetic, “Oh, I’m sorry.” While he didn’t struggle with morality issues on his mission, he would wake up after having dreams that brought on shame as well as the constant reminder he would need to address this. Caysen had already developed a love for Jesus Christ prior to his mission, but says on his mission was where he gained a relationship with God and learned to really follow spiritual promptings.
About three weeks before he returned from New Hampshire, Caysen asked his mom to pray for him because he knew he’d really struggle coming home. But he kept the reason discreet. When he arrived, he found himself feeling jealous and bitter of his family’s adoration for his younger sister’s boyfriend turned fiancée as they celebrated his birthday and their engagement. Observing how easy it came for his family to do that, he wasn’t sure he’d ever get the same thing in return, which would often put him in dark moods.
Thus, Caysen threw himself onto Mutual (the app), trying to date girls. He had his first girlfriend in college who he says was “an angel.” After four and a half months of dating, she told him she felt like she was a checkbox item on his to do list. He couldn’t argue that and thanked her for her patience as he’d told her he had some things to work through. He wasn’t ready to admit to more quite yet—even to himself. (She is now happily married and the two remain friends.)
A short while later, Caysen met a fellow runner who he presumed was gay. He would try to coax it out of him on long runs, with questions like, “So… who are you dating?” One day, Caysen felt ready to tell him he was (also) attracted to men. Their short, simple friendship eventually blossomed into a relationship. Caysen says, “I remember kissing him and finally being able to understand why people want to date.”
Caysen battled complex feelings internally over the next year-and-a-half as he experienced both pain and growth. Passionate about humanitarian work and travel, in the summer of 2022, Caysen returned from being an HXP counselor in Hawaii. He had a heartfelt, bitter conversation with God the whole 40 minutes home, crying “What do you want from me?” Caysen needed an outlet but had told no one besides his bishop about the relationship with the runner. Caysen was called in to meet with a stake presidency member, and was sure he was getting excommunicated. Instead, the leadership shared they wanted YSA to serve on their high council and were considering Caysen to be ordained to a High Priest so he could serve in that capacity.
Struggling with the second part of the second great commandment, to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” Caysen’s self-loathing had soared. Yet he felt seen as the stake shared that the other person they had just called to the high council happened to be his favorite former mission trainer, who had always emanated a Christlike love for Caysen. While Caysen considered the call, he ultimately didn’t feel right accepting it due to the crippling shame he was battling. At the time, he considered how the Savior had possibly died of a broken heart. While he figured his own heart wasn’t broken in quite the same way as the Savior’s, he felt it had “cracked a lot.”
One Sunday, Caysen gathered with his family to witness his younger brother be set apart for his mission. Several family members asked about his new presumed stake calling. Caysen wasn’t willing to share it wasn’t happening. Instead, that night, he had made a plan to take his life as his bereft loneliness took its toll. His plan was to leave the family event to attend the viewing of a friend’s father who had passed, and while in transit, drive his car so fast, he could roll it and “pray it kills me.” As he walked out his parents’ door, Caysen looked back at them and had the thought that he’d hope they’d be ok. He was unsure if any of them had any idea of the pain he was enduring trying to be their perfect son.
As he pulled out of the driveway in his car, Caysen heard his grandma’s voice say, “Caysen Marc, I’m coming with you.” While this was always the name his father’s mom had called him, she was deceased, and it was actually his maternal grandmother now stopping him in his tracks. She was barefoot and without her purse and still insisted on going to the viewing of a man she didn’t know with Caysen at that moment. And she wouldn’t take no for an answer. In reflection, Caysen knows she had help from beyond to keep him here. While standing in line at the viewing for an hour and a half, Caysen contemplated what his plan would have done to those around him, and decided “today is not the day.” His mom called the next day and suggested he should go to therapy.
Caysen spent eight months working with a therapist whose only agenda was for Caysen to find happiness. He went in saying, “I’m so hellbent on being straight, I’ll do whatever you want me to do.” Over time, he realized there were things he couldn’t change, including the attitudes of people around him. But he decided to live with grace and patience, recognizing, “It took me 21 years to wrap my head around this, so I’m willing to give others the time to get to the acceptance phase.”
Last summer, after serving as an HXP counselor in Africa, Caysen was housesitting at his parents’ Minersville, UT (near Beaver) home. While on the back porch one night contemplating, the dust settled and a weight lifted as Caysen allowed it to sink in that every detail of his life was crafted by God who had made him intentionally. Caysen realized, “He knew I was gay. I knew I was gay, and I knew God was at peace with that because He created me.” Caysen called his therapist to share the experience. The therapist replied, “I knew you’d get there.” They laughed and had a good conversation, then Caysen called his bishop who confirmed that was the path Caysen had been on all along.
Having only told his sister at that point, Caysen then decided to come out to each of his family members, one by one—first his parents, then his brother and other younger sister, then extended family--an exhausting process with mixed results. While a student at Southern Utah University later that fall, Caysen boldly decided to honor the tradition to gather in front of the Old Sorrel horse statue and kiss someone to “become a true T-bird.” The person Caysen kissed this time was a man. His friends filmed the experience, and it was posted on Be Real. Caysen says, “You would have thought a bomb dropped, so many people came up to me and said, ‘Was that for real? Wait, you’re gay!?’ It was a shotgun way to be done with it and come out.” The news spread like wildfire in Beaver, and Caysen’s not sure his family appreciated that so much. But he figured, “What better way to say who I am than to kiss a boy?”
Caysen marked last year as a year of miracles, with his Africa trip, college graduation, coming out and starting to date according to his attractions, finishing therapy, and finally understanding how God and the Savior really feel about him. He’s since had one serious relationship with a man and is now enjoying the dating scene while working as an exercise therapist at UVU and an American Fork hospital, helping patients recover from cardiac-based events, while he prepares to apply for med school. He also works as an onboarding specialist for an orthodontics company. Caysen’s ultimate dream is to pursue expedition medicine. As his patients are often much older than him, when he helps them get up to walk down the halls, shuffling their feet, Caysen often reflects how this is much like how the Savior helps us along.
Caysen’s often asked by coworkers how he navigates being LDS and gay. They prod, “If there was a button you could press that would turn you straight, would you?” Caysen has realized he prefers to “keep my Gethsemane,” this part of him that he has learned to love. Caysen believes in the idea that “the Savior kept his scars. That’s who he became.” He continues, “I believe in the Resurrection and that the Savior has the power to heal and fix every affirmity. If I get to the other side and this is taken away, who will I be? Who will I have come to love? I really don’t know what my future holds nor what my life will look like, day by day. But where I’m at now is where I need to be—a place where I have come to love myself, which has allowed me to more fully love and serve others.”
