Damned
By: Chitara Smith
Tags: LGBTQ, Love, Christianity, Women, Coming Out

Damned

I’ll be who I am until the death of me

Photo by Francesca Zama from Pexels

It was hot outside the day I finally decided to stop lying to myself, really hot. 112 degrees to be exact.Typical Arizona heat. There’s something about praying hard in honest heat that makes you tell the truth. I was being baptized in salty sweat as it dripped down my forehead. There was no way to tell the difference between sweat and tears.

I have wasted too much time being someone I am not. I was someone for my mother, my brother, my teachers, and my lovers, but I was not, in any way, myself. “Of all the damn things you could have been, you had to be fucking gay?” I said this to myself in a bathroom mirror. I could not shake the attraction I’d had for women my entire life. My reflection shook its head in pity before morphing into a much younger version of myself.

I was six. We lived in Gary, Indiana. On the curve of my street lived another girl who had a cherry tree in her backyard. She had light brown skin and pink rosy cheeks. We sat on the checkered picnic table in the backyard in the late afternoon. She held my hand. It made me feel warm, even though it was 90 degrees. She kissed me, and suddenly, I knew how to spell butterflies. My mother has always been a devout Christian and, as I ran back home before the streetlights came on, I knew I had done something wrong.

I put on my white-laced socks and a pink-frilled dress my grandmother had bought for me. The pastor at the Church in God and Christ gave a fiery sermon on the sins of being gay. Perfect timing. Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve.

As my reflection aged, the girl staring back at me became more fearful. I’ve feared damnation just as long as I’ve been damned. I’m a foot taller. The barrettes in my hair are gone. My shoes no longer light up as I walk. I see my thirteen-year-old self, looking back at me. It’s harder to hate her when her round eyes and soft smile sparkle. I was a freshman in high school, full of excitement and new fears. I went to church religiously, every Wednesday and Sunday. Most of my friends consisted of people from my church, that is until my freshman geometry class. There was a gay guy in my class who I sat next to. His name was Caleb. He was so comfortable with himself, relaxed, happy, open about his sexuality. For a fraction of a second, I envied him, before quickly dismissing the thought. I prayed twice as hard that night.

In the middle of my freshman year was the first time I realized I liked men, too. He had dark green eyes with flecks of hazel, light caramel skin, and he was in his last year of high school. He surprisingly liked me back. I felt elated. God had cured me of the terrible gay! I was no longer “sick,” “perverted,” “nasty” or “wrong” anymore. I wasn’t going to hell anymore. He was my first kiss and the first time I felt relieved in my entire life. What I didn’t know was that wasn’t how attraction worked. I still found women attractive, even though I was with a man. I was deeply confused and even more so, exhausted.

I look away from the mirror, a lot less angry at myself. “I didn’t choose this” I whisper as I turn the shower head sharply to the left. “I am not wrong,” I whisper into the ice-cold droplets. “ I am not sick.” My voice is raw as warm tears mix with cold water. What I couldn’t say to myself was “Jesus loves me.”

At 16, I cut my curly hair chin-length. I cut the permed parts off and then washed my hair. The tight curls graced my head like a crown. I’d finally let go of the parts that weren’t me. My hair isn’t naturally straight and neither am I. I’m bisexual and I’d finally accepted it. I even had the haircut to match. I didn’t come out to anyone else for another two years, but at that time, it was enough for me.

I joined my high school’s LGBTQIA club. Everyone had coming out stories. The white kids’ parents accepted and embraced them. The colored parents were a different story. From being kicked out to spending hours in church trying to ‘pray it out,’ colored parents were notably less accepting. For the longest time, I thought LGBT meant lettuce, gay, bacon, and tomato. It was time to learn more about who I am. In that club, we learned about LGBT+ history, from the Holocaust to Stonewall, and I couldn’t help but think how proud I was because that history is my history. Suddenly, I was ashamed I hadn’t had the courage to accept it.

I didn’t come out until June 13th of 2018 and let me just say, I came out in a suit and tie. I’d spent so much damn time in the closet, I’d learned how to dress immaculately. That was the day I finally told my mom. There was no planning, just a couple of quickly abandoned Google searches on how to say it. It was June, pride month, and Juneteenth; it was a month to celebrate all of my identities. It was honestly just a burst of courage one afternoon. I’d spent so much time afraid that fear finally got tired of me. I wouldn’t have told my mother if I still lived with her. Fortunately, I was grown and on my own. I had nothing to lose.

Telling my mom I was bisexual was like throwing a vase into a ceiling fan. You hold your breath before the crash. She reacted exactly as I’d expected. Everything was exposed, raw, shattered. Confusion, disappointment, anger, and then finally, pain, from both of us. She told me it was a spirit. To me it was Raphael, to her it was Beelzebub. “You weren’t raped, how are you gay?” As if the only way to own my sexuality is to be violated first. A common misconception in black and brown communities.

“I’m not hurting anyone. How is it wrong?” I ask.

“God will judge you.”

“What is your problem with it? It’s not your body.”

“Everyone who’s ever hurt me has been bisexual.”

“Those people lied to you, I’m not them.”

“God will judge you!” she spews.

Sudden silence. It’s the kind of silence that comes when the wind is knocked out of you. The vase is still broken. I am still bisexual. I can’t straighten myself out, there is nothing I can do to change myself. I have no reason to be anything but proud now. Pride is all I’ve got. I have a flag as colored as I am in the dresser that I put on my wall. The colors are a shock against the enamel white walls. I’m brown and bisexual. It’s who I’ve always been before anyone knew, and who I’ll be after everyone knows it. I’ll be who I am until the death of me, even if I’m damned.