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I came out to my sister last week on the steps of the back door. We were eating food I had prepared earlier in the day. I underestimated her chillness, I predicted wrong. How can I be wrong like that? I did not trust what she said, I did not trust her humanity to be stronger than her religion. But she told me quite frankly that she doesnt care, and it wasn't harsh or unkind. The way she said it was kind, and later that day she asked me if I would dress gay and if I would get a pride pin for my bag and if I would get a girlfriend and if she can make gay jokes now and it was funny and fun and she almost seemed pleased.

But still. She is part of a relgion that excludes me from the graces of its god. I am not one of them, even if I wanted to be, because I do not believe that it is wrong for girls to kiss girls and men to go on dates together and people to decide not to live as their assigned gender at birth, to disregard gender entirely if they want. Simply wanting to do those things is seen as perversion, and any catholic who doesn't hold that view is not representing the majority opinion or teachings. My family is part of something I cannot be part of. For so many years I grieved in church before the candle sticks and old prints of Jesus and Mary in gilded picture frames. I grieved because my life was hard and if I was just holy enough then God would listen to my begging for an ease to things. God never listened. God wants me to keep praying until I die. God made me to need him and Mary, but he in his omnipotence made a place for me to suffer in all eternity if I decide I don't want to need them. God wants me to not be gay. I do not believe any of that any more, but my sister does.

People who were not raised Catholic or who were never really invested in catholicism as a member cannot understand how consuming it is. I can say the rosary without thinking. I can zone out to know exactly what part of mass it is when i come back. My back knows the feeling of pews better than it knows the feeling of a loving hand. I have recieved communion more times than I have seen friends. I have rung a bell at special services more times than my father has hugged me. I have felt the awful watching presence of God for as long as I was old enough to believe in it. Since I was seven till recrntly I have thought of my wrongs as sins, and of my sins as venial or mortal, and of the amount worth confession or not. I don't feel it anymore, but sometimes still, when I am anxious about something, I will default to make the sign of the cross and beg Jesus for help. It's like when I jumped off a bank into a river and felt myself rush through the air and couldn't help but say a hail mary as I splashed in. The smell of incence and the feeling of cold holy water on my fingertips won't leave me. My body will know how to genuflect until I die. But I hope that one day I will be able to go to a church and not feel dread, and instead just sit there in a disconnected perspective and think about how the people there just want something to believe in.

So tragic that their belief birthed so much pain for peope like me. It is time to not let the churches hold power over us. They don't even want us, anyway. They want us stripped of our perversion, repentant, renewed in grace so that we want to be heterosexual and follow gender roles and live in their idea of peace. Their peace is violence for us. Their harmony is unnatural. Their god will not save us. Their love is lies. Their precepts are control.

It's not wrong to be queer. I think my sister feels that in her heart.

#postcatholic #deconstructing christianity #lgbtqia #gay #siblings #big sister little sister #coming out #religious trauma #religious imagery #catholic #queer story #poetic

More of 'The Same': Ireland, Quebec flex their 'post-Catholic' muscles

More of ‘The Same’: Ireland, Quebec flex their ‘post-Catholic’ muscles

Pope Francis at Mass in Phoenix Park, Dublin, 26 August 26 2018. (BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images) Social issues aren’t enough: In ‘post-Catholic’ societies, writes Charles Collins, governments want the Church to know her place. When is an attack on religious liberty not an attack on religious liberty? According to many governments, the answer is: when religion is treated just like everything…