(From the August Issue of the Quack!)
When I first started seriously grappling with my faith and my queerness, I started to keep a diary where I would write letters to myself to cope with the loneliness I felt. Looking back, I could try and put into words how that pain felt – how completely paralyzing and isolating that loneliness made me feel – but to do so now seems almost like a betrayal of the experience, So, I will let my past self speak for himself:
I remember one day happening upon a website when I was trying to search the internet for something along the lines of “gay Catholic,” one of the few times in the early days when I had enough courage to do so. I don’t recall exactly what the name of the website was – I don’t even know if it’s still up on the internet.
Nonetheless, it was a man’s blog about his journey as a gay Catholic, coming to terms with it, his struggles, his difficulties. He had an email displayed so that others could reach out to him. I quickly scanned some of the posts and came upon his latest entry. It had been posted about four years earlier.
It was a sign-off letter. In it, he thanked everyone for the support, for reaching out, but that ultimately, he was going to stop posting. He said how hard it had been these past few year, but that he hoped his posts helped someone. As no one had contacted him in a while, he felt alone. He was now signing off – it felt more like surrendering – unsure about what the future held, unsure how he would make it out in the world.
I felt like I had come across someone’s camping ground on a desert island, where previously I believed I was the only inhabitant, only to show up four years too late. He was gone, the campsite had been abandoned. All that was left were some crinkled pages of his journal and a final note of surrender – of farewell – on its last pages.
It was like I was a survivor in the zombie apocalypse and had picked up on a four-year-old radio signal of a fellow survivor. He also was alone, believing himself to be one of the few survivors left in the world. But by the time I heard his transmission, he was no longer anywhere to be found. Only his farewell message, his hopeless resignation and weak determination to continue going through the world alone and fight the good fight, were left of him.
It felt like I was in the caves of Mordor, when the fellowship comes upon Balin’s tomb. Gandalf starts reading the log of Balin’s convoy, reading out loud the final pages of the convoy’s journey – “no escape it will be a horrible fate to suffer, but I shall hold.”
I felt a sadness for this man that I couldn’t explain. Maybe because I saw so much of myself in his words. Maybe because I saw my dismal life sentence written in the paragraphs of his posts. I recognized the desperation in his words, the same desperation that I had felt for so long. He tried his best – fought the good fight – but with no support or contact he ultimately retired back into obscurity to face it alone. A man on a quest to figure out answers, surrendering to the bitter cold of a compassionless wilderness.
That is the life of a gay Catholic. Facing the bitter cold. Isolated. In the dark. Alone.
This zine is a radio signal, a love letter – not a tragically-unanswered one unearthed from years past, but a joyfully radiant one emanating from the future – to that lonely kid whose shouts seemed to echo endlessly into a void.
To that kid I say, you were never alone.
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