I was born in the Year of Our Lord, 1976, to a GOOD, Christian family in the heart of conservative East Texas.
And for as long as I can remember being a human being, I remember being “different” from others around me.
Other misfits might say the exact same thing about their own experiences as outsiders or “black sheeps” of their families…
Human Beings can feel outcast from their families of origin for all sorts of reasons.
For me, it was because…
Well, I suppose, some of the things I was learning in church (mostly about My Sins & Me) seemed to be, both, integral and opposed to my very existence…
I didn’t understand a LOT of I was learning about what it meant to be human in this world.
I knew, for sure, that I never made an actual choice to feel the things I’d always felt about myself.
In a similar way to instinctively knowing other things—like, knowing how to hug my loved ones. OR knowing how to breathe. I also, always knew the inner truth of my-self.
No one had to tell me or ask me or show me how to embody my differences…
They just were. They’re part of me.
I was the way that I was. And I AM the way that I AM.
I’ve only just (relatively) recently allowed more of my truth to be visible to others.
I never wanted or tried to make my differences happen.
I actually tried to make the opposite (with decades of effort) happen—because I actively resisted my truth.
Eventually, as It came to be, to me, My truth and my identity equated sin & hell.
So, it seemed—to me—that I was actually created in the image of something else, besides God, entirely. Certainly not in the image of the God that I being taught to both honor and fear. No, not in HIS image.
It was sort of spiritually excruciating to grow-up with such confused beliefs about your own existence.
I was branded a sinner before I could understand what it meant. And over the years, it became increasingly impossible to reconcile my existence with my religious beliefs.
I remember feeling how unfathomable it seemed to me that I was granted life at all…
How could God have created me when, it seemed that God actually hated who I was?
Had God made some sort of mistake with me? I knew that I did not create myself, but I also knew that God COULD NOT EVEN… with me… How was I LIKE THIS?
Why had I even been born?
Why was I alive at all?
How could I ever be a child of God when the essence of WHO I AM is a sin?
And how could I possibly be worthy of love or forgiveness from God (or from anyone)? Ever?
I internalized all of those unspoken and impossible questions and all of the sinful labels. At much too early an age to be contemplating these ideas and identities. ALL given to me, unknowingly, by family and friends at home and at church…
Homosexual, gay, lesbian, butch, dyke, queer… Sinner. Evil. Lost. Hell-bound for all eternity.
I held it all under my skin and out of view. I stored those secrets and labels away, inside deep, dark closets of shame and fear.
Pretty soon, I learned to hate the sin and hate myself.
I was not like the others…
I was something else, underneath the lies I felt I must tell.
I must not be lovable or unconditionally loved—not like the others. Not if they knew who I really was.
I was an abomination and bound for hell, fire, brimstone, and eternal suffering—for sure.
Hell, I was (already) suffering.
For the life of me, I could not reconcile my existence with my religion or my already deeply seeded beliefs about myself.
I was afraid for (both) my life and my death.And I’m not talking about some, casual fear of a nebulous notion of nothingness after death…
I spent nearly every waking moment for years of my childhood deathly-afraid of burning in hell.
And despite of everything I was learning about Jesus and forgiveness, I knew those parts of His teachings didn’t apply to me… I figured, I must actually be a spawn of Satan, since I was so, clearly not a child of God.
So, I was also deathly-afraid of my beliefs about hell.
I was especially, afraid that I really was unworthy of salvation (or love) of any kind.
I learned to feel unworthy in my bones—unworthy of love from my family, friends, lovers, and especially from GOD. Or at the very least, I learned that I had to work hard to earn love.
Of course, I was always afraid of “Him” who was also supposed to BE “LOVE” because I knew it wasn’t love meant for me.
I was so ashamed of my-real-Self. And I was especially ashamed of the human being I really was. The human being that had been created to be?
Underneath everything others believed to be true about me, was the REAL truth and the True Me.
I felt like a rotten apple. So, I hid myself and my truth.
And I pretended to be someone who was good. Even though, I didn’t exactly know what it meant, I knew the others could NEVER know the real me.
I had to learn the things that would make the others happy. Then I had to do those things. And only THEN, might I somehow become worthy of life (and maybe even love).
I had to learn how to BE someone else—never my real self. Not the real me. The true ME was a mistake, see.
I could never let the others know me or see me. And I wanted those who were already fooled (like my parents) to still love me. So, they could never know the truth.
Instead, I had to find ways to be someone they might love.
I sincerely believed that I was probably God’s first mistake.
I contemplated that VERY LIKELY possibility—a lot…
It’s a little hard to describe my early experiences of religion as a (closeted, lonely, and deathly afraid) queer kid…
Especially one with extremely limited access to information. Or any examples of other human beings resembling me. I never saw any outer experiences that resembled the truth of my inner reality at all.
I didn’t even know anyone else like me existed until I was in my twenties.
How could I have known, back then. How I could I know that I wasn’t actually ALL alone in this world?
Up until then, I truly believed I was a broken being. And I was terrified to let anyone see the “real me”.
I isolated my-real-self until I couldn’t bare it anymore. And by the time I came out as a lesbian (way back then) for the first time, I was about to burst with my secrets, confusions, and self-doubts.
It was 20-years of bottled-up and internalized self-hatred.
I had no one to talk to about any of it for a long time. There was no other human in my world who could possibly understand. There was just me and my beliefs about God and my sick, shameful sin.
I had so much unraveling, unlearning, and unbelieving to do before I could even think to begin the process of healing…