Dear Queer Religious Teenage Self,

You don’t remember this, but you once told Mom that you liked girls at a young age. The reason that you don’t remember realizing that you are queer at such a tender age is that your parents are pastor’s kids and Pentecostals. Their reaction to this information about you led to prayer and fasting. You learned that being gay, though you did not know the term for it then, was something to be ashamed of. To cope, to stay safe in your family and community, you repressed any hint of queerness. You became homophobic and transphobic with a religious zeal that only a self-hating closeted gay could possibly possess. You hurt your friends and yourself with this because you were fighting so hard to deny a critical part of yourself.

There was a lot of agony surrounding the delayed realization of the truth. Accepting ourselves and leading an honest life would result in the loss of your family and faith community. To retain those relationships, you would have to condemn yourself to a lifetime of lies and repression that could only have negative long-term effects on your mental health and well-being. Years went by as you examined every facet of these choices and all of the possible consequences. You begged God to heal you, to take away your homosexuality so that your family wouldn’t view you as an abomination. You prayed, fasted, cried, screamed, etc., but nothing worked. The religious trauma had you believing that you were unnatural, wrong, and perverse when your queerness is a beautiful, natural thing to be celebrated, not scorned and hidden.

This back-and-forth cycle of rejection and acceptance of self leads you to some dark places, but eventually, you make it out. You’ll leave Christianity, you’ll go through the painful process of orphaning yourself by going no-contact with the majority of your biological family, but you also gain a chosen family.

Teenage self, you may struggle now and in the future, but with time you will be able to make decisions that honor who you are and bring you closer to who you want to be. The journey is in no way easy, but it is wholly worth it. Stay strong, be brave; you’ve got this!