When I was 12, I read the Bible standing. I stood until my limbs were numb and then I leaned against the wall. I don’t know why, I just felt like I had to. I prayed and I read and I cried and I hurt. I felt like I needed to hurt, like if I didn’t hurt, I wasn’t devoted. I don’t know if I really knew what that word meant then. Sitting down felt like falling into hell, into the pit of fire with the snakes and the sinners and the wailing and the skeleton ghosts cold and hot screaming “Help me! Help me God!” These were the thoughts that consumed my mind, and I was afraid. Of course I was afraid.
The day I told my dad I liked girls he told me it was wrong. He told me it wasn’t God’s will. Later that night he came down to my room and saw my Bible open on my desk. He asked me if I tore the pages on purpose. I didn’t, it was an accident. I told him that, but I knew he didn’t believe me, the skeptic with his fingers on the ripped page, Isaiah 44:21 through 24. I hid. We talked about it twice, and never again, but we talked about God again. I asked him if he thinks that He’s happy, up in that sad throne in the sky, and he told me I’m smart. My father thinks I’m smart, my father thinks I’m a sinner, our holy father, Holy Father, loves us very very much. Cue piano.
Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
I don’t know how I could’ve turned out any other way, growing up listening to songs like these. My father was the son of a preacher, that preacher was my grandpa, the only one I ever really had. Well, I had a grandfather on my mom’s side for about four years before he died, but all I never knew of him was a specter in a rocking chair with the army tattoo and the blank stare. I don’t even remember when he died.
The preacher grandpa was big and tall with kind eyes and a passionate, booming voice. He was like God himself, yelling up on that pulpit with his thick, white beard. His wife, my grandma, was a small woman who played hymns on the piano. She had a rickety old piano in the back room of her house that she taught my sister on, but never me. I was a nervous little wreck that hated being away from home and I never bonded with her much when I went to her house. We picked mulberries from a huge tree in her huge, wild country yard and made pies out of them.
Their church was the classic type. 80s built, yellow walled, and distinctly midwestern. It had the various names of the Abrahamic God in tile along the walls of the kitchen area, but I never knew what they meant. I remember Yahweh, I remember the name. Do I know him?
When I was 12, my godly grandfather gave me a copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress, a modern adaptation made for modern readers. I read it, feeling extra pious and secure in my heavenly destiny. I was glad for the supplement to my Bible readings. I followed Christian (pretty on the nose naming conventions) through the deadly sins, my skin catching on lust. Madame Bubble, after failing to lure in Christian, lured in me. I think my book was illustrated, but I don’t really remember. The visual was equally vivid either way. I imagined her as a tall, commanding woman, with a large bust, a red dress, and shiny, black hair. One could say that this was my gay awakening. I was ashamed of it, and I pushed her to the back of my mind forcefully, barricading the door with Bible verses and self torture. This is an old and tired story.
Eventually, my mother caught that I was reading the Bible and told me to stop. “It’s too intense for you,” she said, dragging her fingers tentatively over the open page on my bedside table. I felt almost relieved. I can stop, I have permission from the authorities to stop, it’s not my fault if I stop and I won’t go to hell if I stop because it’s one of the ten commandments to obey your parents after all so I can stop. My dad flipped to Psalms, suggesting I read there instead. Okay. Okay. So I did.
I read Psalms, then I read the rest of it, I spent my days worried sick about the rapture, thinking about it constantly, thinking “the Bible says it will happen when we least expect it, so if I think about it every day, it won’t ever happen.” I prayed nightly, for everything I could think of. If prayer works, then I have the power to help people just by praying for them, which means I am obligated to do as much good as possible. I listed off every person I knew in every prayer, and everything I was thankful for too, for good measure. The weight of the world is on my soldiers! The end of the world! Holy hell.
Anyway, I was scared of the dark too. Shameful, I know, and I wanted to be brave so bad I stood in the middle of my pitch black room at night with my arms outstretched thinking God will protect me, God will protect me, God will protect me. I sang Amazing Grace, my dad’s favorite song. There was nothing for God to protect me from except my own fear, and He failed. Poor guy. God has no control over the anxiety-ridden brain of the 12 year old bisexual girl, head filled to bursting with thoughts of demons and hell and Madame Bubble, no! God has no control over it, I have no control over it.
Eventually the levee broke. The poor little angel is gay, and there is nothing she can do about it. It was hard, but liberating. I started thinking about the Bible differently, learning about translation errors and interpretation differences. I was eventually free, free from the obligations and the anxiety. It didn’t take much, just time, I think. But there’s things I’m still unlearning. My heart still screams about the virtue of pain, telling me I have to suffer for everything good, suffer to prove that I deserve happiness. I still pray nightly, and though I tell myself it’s a gratitude exercise, I know it’s still out of fear. But mostly, I am free. I like girls and I know now that I know nothing. I don’t know if there is a God, I don’t know what they might want from me if they do exist. I think they just want me to live.