Frank Paton - Witness My Act And Deed (1882)

Frank Paton - Witness my Act and Deed (1882)

my college essay i wrote about queer religious trauma

- @/finchmoment on tiktok

Growing up religious, the realization of your own queerness is also the realization of a betrayal. It will be argued two ways- either you are betraying God, or He is betraying you. Either way, you lose. When you are both the Betrayer of God and the Betrayed by God, you will, inevitably, become the Exiled too.  Is it my fault? When Judas only played the cards he was dealt, is he really to blame? Is there something we could have done, something to change the course of time, to write ourselves out of condemnation? And would we have done it, if there was? I was young when I was eviscerated. Foolish, too.  To this day, I still don't know why I expected things to be any different. I was raised this way, after all. I was raised knowing queer was a synonym for wrong, knowing gay was a synonym for sin. And still, when I realized that I was a synonym for all those things too, my entire world fell away from me. Daughter turned disappointment. Classmate turned outcast. Friend turned disgrace. Human turned abomination. I found myself alone, not for the first time, but for the longest time. Nothing would ever be the same, and I have spent my life since reeling with it. The church will argue that I betrayed God and I won't disagree with them. It's true- that I was His once. That I made promises to Him I couldn't keep. That I swore my life to someone I would later abandon. But it is also true that I am human, and I am small, and by saying I betrayed God you are either handing me supernatural power or shrinking God down and admitting to His weakness, admitting to His fallibility. Maybe those are the same thing.  If at the end of my life I am wrong about my beliefs, I hope He is as merciful and forgiving as they say. Because I tried. Because I spent my childhood trying. Because I need those years to matter. God, I am sorry for growing weary and giving up. I am sorry for pulling away and choosing myself, my little life. Call that betrayal if you will. In The Last Days of Judas Iscariot, Judas asks, "Why... didn't you make me good enough... so that you could've loved me?" I see myself in him, then.  I've never understood how it was fair. Being born this way, having no say in the matter, doomed from the start. If God truly is omniscient, if He truly cares about his creation, then why were my pleas for redemption met with a deafening silence? Why did God make me so unrighteous that He could not bear to be in my presence? Isn't that betrayal? Promising everything, ripping it away? Why did He choose Judas for the role of the traitor? Why did he choose me for the role of the pariah? Why weren’t we good enough? I have been reborn since. Not in the way of a baptism, but in the way of a phoenix. Deconstructing your religion will turn your anger biblical. It will send everyone running and leave you standing alone, spark turned flame, burning yourself and everything familiar to the ground. You will be alone, smoking, until your body returns to the dust from which humanity was made. It will be up to you to recreate yourself, then. To craft your bones from the wreckage. To make a clay to smooth on like skin. In the church, a burning is a death. But wasn't hellfire always my fate? Here's the Truth— the fiery furnace is the ultimate act of faith. Faith not in Him, but in me. I am reborn in these flames. Belonging to no one, owing Him nothing. Yes, I was His once. But I am Mine now.

women need gnocchi

"i love lgbtq people, i just don't support them" yet the fruit of what you call love is death.

the intimacy of sharing old memories with someone new. check out the places i visited before i met you. i wish you were with me. maybe we can visit them together and create new memories? look at the pictures of the sky i took before we met. now you share the same view with my past self. look at the photos of my childhood and let me look at yours. have your facial features changed? your smile stayed the same, and i love it. look at my right cheek, i have the same birthmark as my grandmother. this is the child in me that you are healing with your affection. i am glad we met. all these years i was without you but now you know about all those years and even help me to grow. your love took roots in my past pain, and reaches out to my future happiness. please don't stop smiling.