Weird Cult Stuff

I’m not mad that my brother got a wonderful wedding and a great start in life. I’m not mad that they left from a wedding full of both their families and all their friends, to go on a honeymoon in a gifted car, and return to their apartment rented to them by a church member for way below the going rate, furnished with all the gifts my sister in law complained about having to write so many thank you cards for. I’m not mad that they got to have wedding photos, and engagement photos, and cookouts with extended family, and that my grandparents bought them an air fryer. I’m not mad that my sister in law was actually allowed to have friends as a kid and was able to have 10 bridesmaids for her wedding at age 19. I’m not mad that she’s in the family group chat and that my S/O isn’t.

And I’m not mad that I don’t get all those things, not really. I chose the way I went. I chose to make my start far away with a suitcase and a backpack. I chose my S/O and I knew she wouldn’t be someone I could bring home to meet my mama, at least not without a lot of groundwork and it would be a strained event not joyful. I chose to take out a loan to buy a crappy old car, to buy my own toaster, to take my own selfies with her to hang on the fridge instead of having framed professional wedding photos of us with our families. I chose my twenty different friends in sixteen different cities in three different countries, none of whom could afford to travel for a wedding if I did have one.

I’m not mad that I tackled most of my starting-out problems alone. That I paid three extra months of rent instead of getting my dad to co-sign on my lease. That I had to rent a uhaul and figure out how to drive it, so we could throw out most of my girlfriends stuff at the dump because we couldn’t afford to haul it to the new state and city we were going to, instead of borrowing my dads flatbed trailer and my brothers pickup and having church friends load and unload everything. I’m not mad that I was the only supporting person for my girlfriend’s recent surgery, that while my family was texting each other about my little brother’s broken wrist from playing outside I was sitting in a waiting room alone wondering what I should do if anything went wrong. This is the life that I chose, and I don’t regret it.

But I hate, I HATE that the narrative is that I chose all these things because I’m rebellious, a poor steward, a little kooky, a little lazy, a little unprepared, a little irresponsible, choosing playing around over settling down. None of those things are why I chose this way.

I chose this way mostly because of choices my family made. My parents chose to be homophobic. Chose to be the type of Christians that cry and mourn the eternal death of their kids’ souls when their kids say they aren’t Christian anymore. Chose to do the whole early childhood abuse/neglect/isolation route that gave me literal diagnosed PTSD. Like, I didn’t want to watch my mom cry and be afraid for me. I didn’t want my girlfriend to experience weird homophobic bs. I didn’t want to go to a Christian counselor with no education beyond a high school diploma anymore, I was losing my mind a bit and I needed a therapist and medication for my ptsd. I take responsibility for my choices, but I just wish they took responsibility for theirs too, I guess. Like it’s not as straightforward as it looks from their perspective. I’m not just some hare-brained kid learning what consequences are. I knew how this would all go, I chose it anyway. Not because it was easier, but because I wanted to live.

I heard a lot of derogatory things about gay people when I was growing up, but you know which one stuck with me the most?

It wasn’t that gay people are going to burn in hell, or that they all deserve to get AIDS, or that in the old days gay people used to be ‘hung from the trees,’ or that being gay is against god’s plan, or that gay people make horrible parents, or that gay people might turn you gay if you become friends with them, or that gay people are pedophiles, or that gay people are vain and ridiculous, or addicted to sex, or are vulgar, or any of those or a hundred other things I heard.

What stuck, really deep into my self-image, was that being gay is lazy, weak, and selfish.

And in my experience it has been none of those things.

I remember my dad saying that “being gay is lazy: it’s easy to love someone who is like yourself, you don’t have to work at it,” but I also remember him saying, “love is the opposite of selfishness.” I think I’d rather remember him for the latter. Being gay has not been selfish for me, it has been moving across the country and changing jobs and changing my life for someone I love dearly. It’s meant midnight phone calls, and double shifts of overtime, and working through panic attacks, and having to be brave to hold hands in public, and a hundred other things and it’s meant receiving all those things too, in return. It’s required so much bravery and facing ridicule and saying “okay I’ll deal with the shame.” It was never weak, it was never lazy. And it hasn’t been selfish. Just because it hurts the church or god’s or my parents’ feelings doesn’t make it selfish: they just stake their feelings on the wrong things.