Deconstruction

Faith is a funny thing.

Most people find it later in life. Maybe a family member dies, maybe they hit rock bottom, maybe someone who has it sits next to them during their lunch break and tells them all about it.

I was raised by it. My parents both came from a Christian background. They met at a Christian college and were leading a congregation by the time I was old enough to form thoughts. There was a zero chance I was going to be raised anything but Christian.

Most of my core memories from childhood are tinged in Christianity. My earliest memory - the sight of my Hello Kitty velcro sneakers under rushing water and, after my father scooped me from the water, my mother’s soft voice praying, “Oh, thank you, God. Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Standing and watching my father baptize my best friend as I wait my turn at four years old. Our pipes frozen during Christmas and having to run to the church to use the restroom there. Moving to the “Bible Belt” as a preteen and being forced to silently have panic attacks due to my social anxiety at the youth group my parents chose for me. My parents breaking up and my father leaning into the church.

At thirteen, I began to understand that worshipping in a church was not for me. I had already begun to understand that I was different. Puberty hit, and I looked at far more people of my own gender than what my family considered “normal.” I went every Sunday because I wasn’t old enough to articulate that feeling, but sitting in that pew the Sunday after gay marriage was legalized was more than enough to show me I was right about not belonging.

When I decided to describe these feelings, this desire that filled me with an unnecessary shame, bible verses were used in an attempt to dissuade me. I was told that God felt it better that I be alone and lonely than ever find love in someone of the same gender.

This is where I began to understand that Christianity as a whole was not for me. If this God thought I was disgusting for existing as He made me, then I didn’t want Him either.

As I got older, I was only proven right and right again.

My father and I moved back up to New England, and I found myself further isolated from my previous faith. There were very few kids my age that had faith and, if they did, they would say such horrible things to me, about my body, my weight, my face. I couldn’t imagine even trying to connect with them, so I didn’t.

Instead, I turned to people who were kind to me. I joined the Gay Straight Alliance club and the “Nerd” club, where the venn diagram of members was just a circle. They accepted me, answered any questions I had about differing thoughts than what I was raised with, and I felt more at home with them than I ever had in any church.

And though my entire family I was surrounded by were Christians, I still wanted to be connected with them. So I sat down with them, listened, let them pray. One time, I sat with my grandmother and tried to describe what brought me to move north with my father.

I described to her my depressive episodes that never really went away, how I never really felt like I fit in, and how I suffered an intense episode of suicidal ideation while living with my mother. The episode was so bad that I was found with the means to follow through and sent to a nearby psychiatric hospital.

Instead of compassion and understanding, I was met with a familiar response. Bible verses about why that was wrong, and the idea that God would not accept me into heaven if I ever decided to follow through.

Again, I found myself struggling to swallow a familiar pill. God, who had made me with these feelings, did not accept me because I had these feelings. But if God, who I was always told did not make mistakes, made me with depression and bisexuality, why could He not love me?

Throughout the rest of my teenage years, my faith shrunk further and further. I can think back to little moments here and there where it shriveled and starved.

A conversation with my father where he got mad at me for pointing out that people don’t necessarily live by the bible anymore. Sitting through fire and brimstone sermons from my grandfather. Falling in love with a girl I went to school with and having to hide our relationship out of fear. My other grandfather passing, and not being able to go to his funeral. A strained relationship with my mother. Coming out to my father a second time and receiving an almost identical reaction to the first time. Not letting him force me to hide it this time, and facing an emotional abandonment from him due to my backbone. A video sent to me by my sister about a woman who chose to deny her sexuality because of the bible. Getting engaged to that girl from school and taking a phone call from my father where he tells me I’ll regret it.

By the time I was twenty, my faith was smaller than a mustard seed. It was still there, but so, so, so small. The only thing keeping that frail, little thing alive was my then-wife smiling at me and encouraging me to thank God for the little things. To thank God for the beautiful sunrise we saw as we drove to work. To thank God for the bigger paycheck than usual. To thank God for the apartment we just signed for.

The only place I could draw faith from was that which I was told God hated me for.

And then our relationship was as brittle as could be. We’d fight all day, and then I’d spend nights on our futon so she didn’t have to sleep next to me.

Soon enough, we’d agreed to divorce, and she moved states away to be with her family. I was alone, completely isolated from faith, from love, from happiness. I became familiar with rock bottom.

And I want to call back to a previous point - some people find faith, find God, at rock bottom.

But God was nowhere to be found for me at rock bottom. He didn’t come to pull me up. I pulled me up. I found the strength in me to stand from my bed every day, to go to work and keep living. God didn’t give me that. I gave me that.

And now, where my faith is gone, I am okay. I can see how some people need God, how it helps them day to day. But that faith is not for me. It’s been easier to get up day to day since I finally let go. I rely only on myself, no one else.

So yes, faith is a funny thing.