Fruity Friday

🍇🍉🍊 Religious trauma check🍐🍒🍍

What’s God got to do with it?

In my senior year of high school, I wrote in my notebook for class about how I didn’t think gay people should have the same ability to marry the people they love.

In my sophomore year of college, I yelled at my best friend after we watched Moonlight together, and I felt like she was pushing me to talk about gay love.

In my junior year of college, a close friend came out to me and told me about their summer romance, and I withheld my judgment.

You see, my parents weren’t the religious kind to host elaborate Easter dinners, but the kind that went to church in people’s homes and worried about how going to public school instead of homeschooling would affect our learning. God was our respected guide, and our chastity was our promise to follow. Or at least that’s the message I held onto for years. Follow God = be straight, no sex, and all will be good.

It’s not as simple as you think

In my orientation for my first year in a Quaker program in Philly, I sat in the straight affinity group.

In my second year in Philly, I opened up to friends in a house in Manayunk.

In the wintertime, I came out to my siblings.

Being gay was never an option. It wasn’t a thought, a musing, a fear, and not a good thing. I was so deep into the internalized homophobia that I failed to know myself. I was so focused on what love was between a man and a woman that I didn’t see myself as someone whose love looked different. More full, elaborate, deep, and with less rigid boundaries. But for years, I would hold onto the love that wasn’t my own. A self-protective love.

Finding myself by losing others

Last summer, I sat in the car with my sister and felt deeply rejected for who I was.

In the spring, I got off the phone with a family member who said they loved me, but I wasn’t going to heaven.

Bisexual. Pansexual. Queer. Or just me?

I never imagined what it would feel like to feel so far away from a sibling whom I used to consider a best friend. How was I sitting across from her in a car we packed together, driving four hours to her wedding location? Similar to the five-hour drive we used to make to college. The sister who would cry/laugh for hours about nothing and everything. Maybe a part of me knew this day would come, and that’s why I held in my feelings for so long. It was the same person who used to have the same beliefs, values, and friend groups in college. And somehow, now I knew she couldn’t fully accept me.

Sex(uality) is a sin (outside of marriage of course)

I think it’s been a long time coming for me to write about this, but also, it’s been a part of myself that’s felt judged, suppressed, denied, over-sexualized, complicated, and a huge source of shame.

Growing up in a hyper-conservative and religious family shapes your sense of right and wrong. My parents were kind but also had a lot of shame around body image, sex, relationships, and everything in between. As one of the youngest members of my family, it was imperative to learn from my siblings. Especially when they made mistakes, so I strayed away from anything “bad.” And because of that, I closed off the chance to be me. Mostly so I could make other people feel more comfortable or less threatened by my age, body, and sexuality. Purity culture at its finest.

There’s a lot I could say on this subject because it’s been my life for so long. The act of people pleasing, making other people feel comfortable, wanting to follow the rules, appear a certain way, fit into gender norms, and be more palatable for people. For parents, friends, grandparents, employers, etc. So when I finally had friends and peers who cared about my pronouns or wanted to understand where I was in my self-discovery, it felt like the first time I didn’t have to perform to be accepted or loved.

Perfectionism under the moral guise of Christianity means when you follow all of the rules, you are still constantly questioned. As a young woman or girl, your existence is monitored, judged, and seen as tempting. Like what. I’m just a teenage girl trying to wear an outfit, and an older male family friend chastises my parents for the shirt I was wearing. Or the time my Spanish teacher told me to fix my shirt and pull it up? Or the times I decided to wear a sweater and baggy pants because I didn’t want to deal with being perceived by men. Or the time my employer’s fifty-year-old friend groomed me, but yet my parents blamed me at first? I was seventeen.

I went to bible study, was pretty tame in college, I hardly drank, and yet I was still silently judging myself for not being a better type of Christian. There’s always more you can do, and there’s always more shame for you. But for straight men with binge drinking problems and inability to ask for consent, there’s forgiveness and Sunday morning brunch.

Celebrating a love without limits

Gender and sexuality are aspects of myself that are certainly not a threat to anyone else. If anything, they are expressions of myself. My being. My personality. They inform how I view people, accept others, and ultimately, love and further understand myself. Does God fit into the mix? If so, where?

God used to feel limitless to me. Until people put limits on who / what / where God could exist. I’m a little burnt out from God in the Church, the dogma, the news, the rules, etc. I find God in the leaves and sidewalk cracks and the people who choose to love me back. I find God in my fantasies about dance parties with all my friends, in communities full of people resisting systems that oppress people, and I see God in my mistakes.

I’m celebrating love without limits, and to be honest, finding God is less important to me than treating those around me with love. Because I’ve always found God in my connections with others instead of trying to control them. You might not catch me in a Church these days, but you will find me thinking about ways to celebrate love wherever I go.

Happy Friday, Fruity Friends and All :)