Last night I told a friend that I was haunted and maybe that truly is the best way to describe it.  

I don’t think I ever came out. To be fair I was forced out in an effort to force me back in but at that point the damage had been done. I spent another year in denial until I moved to Germany where I found the space to reinvent myself. I found the space to figure out how to be myself.

In college my life was a limbo. My entire life up until that point felt that way but college is where it all came to a head. Back then I referred to my sexuality as a spiritual stronghold, my battle with the flesh. People who knew were proud of me, proud that I boldly took a stand in the face of the devil for the cause of Christ. Proud, whether they knew it (whether I knew it) or not, that I hated myself. What they didn’t know was how often I cried. Every night. Not for days, not for months, but for years. I prayed God would make me different. And I did all I could to prove to him that I wanted to be different. There’s a joke among my friends about how many life groups I was a part of back then. Tuesdays, every other Wednesday, Thursdays and a few Sundays out of the month. I was a youth group leader, a small group leader for my campus ministry, I had an accountability partner and a mentor, I volunteered for the church nursery and babysat for a military family in the church whose husband was away in Afghanistan I believe. And of course, I read my bible. Morning, day, and night I read my bible. I even kept one of those pocket sized New Testaments in my backpack to read in between classes. I was giving, I was kind, and I was faithful. And with every life group, every moment I spent giving time to someone else, every scripture I recited, with every single day I had the audacity to inhale God’s clean holy air I wondered, “will this make me whole?”

It didn’t. And I did what every Christian does and I chastised myself. It had to be because I was self seeking, only looking to God for one thing, or my prayers weren’t genuine enough, or I didn’t truly accept Christ into my heart when I said that prayer, I wasn’t bearing my cross. Something, I don’t know what but something went wrong along the way cause you should be fixed by now. That’s what I told myself, you should be fixed by now because it’s been over fifteen years.

I’ve known since I was five. Grasped that it was an abomination or at least a really really bad thing God didn’t want you to be around six. And I lived the rest of my life to uproot the terrible thing deep down inside me that I’d found one day playing boyfriend and girlfriend on the school playground. Sometimes I wish I’d left it there, buried in the sand for someone else to find.

Caribbean families, I won’t say they mean well, I’ll just say they repeat what they are taught and act on what they believe. Needless to say,  there were things said to me, around me and about me that informed my self perception. Made me afraid of myself, of the opinions of others what they would do to me if they found out. There was a constant nitpicking of the way I dressed and carried myself, reminders that I was too masculine in my appearance and way of being that always made me feel there was an ideal type of woman out there and I just didn’t make the cut. 

So growing up was hard. Honestly, I don’t think I grew up. I just spread and dripped all over hoping I was the spilled milk God felt was worth crying over. Maybe he would clean me up, pour me into a cup where at least I’d have a shape. I’d have lines that went someplace, and a form that wasn’t a shapeless void.

College is where I thought that would happen but things weren’t always so cut and dry. Although I was a hero of some sort for denying my sexual desires, it still put Christian people off to even know the desires were there. I remember opening up to a friend and later that day she requested I stop hugging her since she felt it would be a temptation for me (it wasn’t). Others would find a way to add it into unrelated conversations to ‘see if I was still dealing with it’. I once applied to be a counselor at a christian summer camp, and after a horribly invasive interview in which the male interviewer kept asking sexaully inappropriate questions he decided I wasn’t fit to serve at the camp because I needed to wait until God totally healed me. I’d like to add that he accessed my contact information from my application to send me a Hallmark card with his cell phone number in it to call him ‘if I needed prayer’. And things like that happened often. You could sense there were people around you ready to exploit you because there was this ultimate sin you had looming over your head and it was far worse than anything that they could ever do to you. 

And that feeling of exploitation wasn’t just with Christians.

As I said, college was a limbo. The world really is your oyster on those campuses. You can be anything you want to be.

But then again you can’t be. 

Christian students were mostly popular among themselves in a world growing ever more liberal. I can remember getting into debates with professors, classmates and friends about my faith and the audacity I had to be open with it, share it even. That came with the territory and I was proud of myself. I still am even now as someone who doesn’t identify with any faith at the moment. I’m proud that I was willing to stand up for anything and be hated for it. But there was a weird aspect to it when it came to being christian around queer and LGBTQ+. Especially those who could tell I was struggling with my sexuality without me saying it. 

As we’re learning, the queer community is becoming a more inclusive environment in the way that it recognizes the plight of certain individuals over others. For instance, the push now to protect and advocate for black trans lives who are brutalized and murdered every day. Causes that were still swept under the rug a few years ago by the very community that owes much of it’s liberation to Marsha P Johnson and Silvia Rivera, two trans women of color. But like I said we’re learning, and there are actions of love I’m privileged to see now that I wasn’t privy to then. 

Queer people/allies weren’t as kind to the closeted folks, especially the religious ones. There was almost this infatuation with calling them out, bullying them into admitting something even they couldn’t understand. There wasn’t much patience or love, no genuine understanding that we’d gone years believing something about ourselves is deplorable and our opinion wasn’t going to change over night. It wasn’t going to change by them hurling backhanded words of sympathy like ‘You’re suppressed’. There was one young lady in particular who had a crush on me back in college. One night in my car she opened up about it and I naturally rejected her and it turned into a barrage of words exclaiming why my religion was a farce and it was the only reason I continued to live a lie. I realized then that all she wanted was my affection. She didn’t care about me or what it might cost if I were to come out. She just wanted to be right.

A lot of people at that time did. And I’m sure a lot of people who knew me back then look at me now and think ‘told you so’. And you did. You were right. All the berating and closet shaming all for the benefit to say you were right. It’s bittersweet to watch the love poured out to those questioning and afraid to come out because I wish I’d received that.

I wish the queer community knew back then that I felt like a monster. That it wasn’t as simple as letting myself explore my sexuality. And it didn’t feel simple with people bashing you for not being ‘proud of who you are’. Insulting you and grouping you with those who persecute the lgbtq+ plus community, not because you did, but because you dared not validate them or yourself. Which yes, is its own form of persecution, and the language of the bible has been used to justify deplorable acts against queer people no matter how softly its been recited but not everyone who’s a Christian is a persecutor. And not every restless growling thing locked away in a closet is a monster. I had reason to be afraid, to hide. There were costs to it. Traumas I’d inflicted on myself that couldn’t easily be solved by coming out. The amount of times I slept with a man to see if he could fix me. Laying there disgusted and disassociated from my body. And after several attempts and still feeling nothing going to the gynecologist and telling her ‘I don’t know, I just think there’s something wrong with it’. At 20 something years old, laying spread eagle on a cold surface thinking a gynecologist could fix my vagina. Coming out wasn’t going to make things easier, it made things harder. After a church and community I’d loved and considered my family disowned me, let me know I was no longer welcome and took it upon themselves to make and spread a church wide email about it so that I was shamed by handfuls of people until I finally just skipped town, after all this there was no comforting hug awaiting on the other end.

Just an ‘I told you so’. Just the vindication that you were right. I’m still wary of these people. People who are so overjoyed to see ‘how open minded I am now’, who could care less the hurt it took to even reach this place. People who knew what happened, but never asked if I was okay. You were just satisfied in being right.

I wish christians knew back then that I felt like a monster. There was so much vehemence towards sexuality, the posts about how gay people bring are the cause of just about every calamitous event in the world (Sandy Hook massacre or 9/11). I remember the Sunday service I attended after gay marriage had been legalized and for nearly two hours the pastor lamented on how the hearts of men were waning cold, how we needed to protect children from homosexuals and use the church to uproot their evils from the world. I remember going to the bathroom because I was so afraid for anyone to watch me cry. Watch the guilt that washed over me even though I’d yet to act on a single desire. The same guilt that washed over me everytime one of my friends got married and I knew deep down that would never happen for me.

I wish I could have articulated back then what it felt like to be a monster. What it felt like to always be somebody’s monster. The internal isolation, constant lingering of feeling alone was nearly unbearable. I lost myself. I lost myself trying to please Christians, my family and even God. To quote ‘Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimise humiliation and prejudice.’ I did that. Played so many versions of myself that as an adult woman I spend more time trying to unpick the parts of me that are real and the parts I fabricated in order to protect myself.  

So when I say I am haunted, I don’t think it’s just the pains and traumas of my past that follow me, it’s these versions of myself. 5 year old me, 12 year old me, college me crying at the altar for the fifth time that week. The me who stood up to an entire congregation but fell apart the second she got home. The me who blamed herself for a whole year after and continued to believe I was the cause of their hatred. The me barricading herself in a closet, and the me clawing at the door to pull her out. The me who just wanted someone, anyone to listen. The me who wanted someone to tell me that I wasn’t a monster. I’m haunted by every part of me that yearns for love I didn’t know to give because I had no clue where to find it.

I’m haunted and that’s the best way to describe it. 

But I’m okay. Really I am, despite how all this may sound, I really am okay and being haunted isn’t inherently negative. I’m dealing with it all, expressing as opposed to suppressing. Loving each phantom as she appears, loving her until she finds rest. Growing. Actually growing into something with shape and form.

I’m okay, I just wanted to get it all out there. Say it and be heard.

P.S., please do me one this one favor today;

Love Yourself.