i was no longer allowed to play with becky. i guess my parents thought she was the cause… but she wasnt. i remember my mom sitting in the front yard SCREAMING at beckys mom about it – loud enough that the entire neighborhood came out to see what was going on. she never said anything specific… just that she should worry about her own kid, and to quit corrupting me. watching two adults scream at the top of their lungs at each other was unsettling.
things went along for a while and i thought everyone just forgot and moved on. christmas came and went, and everything was fine.
but, that peace came to an end. sometime that next summer after i turned 6 or 7, i was taken to the church to meet with the pastor. i had no idea why, but i remember i had to get all dressed up, and thought it was weird we were going to church at night and not on sunday. this building i was used to walking into and seeing tons of people, was eerily quiet, and empty.
once there, i sat as they explained that i would be meeting with the pastor every week for some ‘help with my problems’. did not know what the hell that meant, but i soon found out.
my parents left the office and i sat there alone with the pastor who started by praying for god to give me guidance. after the prayer… things got…. weird. the line of questions made no sense to me at the time – but in hindsight…. i now know what was happening. that was the start of conversion therapy – probably before it was called conversion therapy. it made me uncomfortable. i felt fear every time i went there.
most of our times together were him finding relevant passages i could understand and preaching to me. every once in a while though… he would seemingly just “wing it” and shoot from the hip. these were the worst times… and several of these times made lasting scars that took decades to unbrainwash myself from. (before i go on – he never did anything sexually inappropriate with me)
he seemed to slowly get more comfortable talking to me with more sexually loaded content, or at least skewing that way – especially for a kid under the age of 8. one of those times that left some scars was when he asked me to close my eyes. i did. then he asked me to picture my best friend who is a boy. i did. he asked me if i ever thought about kissing him and if i did, what did it make me feel like. EWWW NO. that grossed me out. i would never. (to be fair… he didnt ask about kissing a girl, and i would wager that my answer would have likely been the same at that age)
he used that answer against me. “see – that is proof right there. you are just unwell. you arent a queer”
i had no idea what a “queer” was – but that somehow made sense to my 7 year old brain. ‘i cant be a girl if i dont like boys – makes sense’ that must be it. i must be broken because i never want to think about kissing a boy again.
it took me a long time to break that thought. that one exchange stuck with me… and i remembered it every single time…. every single doubt… every single questioning moment… that one single exchange would justify me killing whatever thoughts and feelings i had on it, and defaulting to “i must be sick – there must be something wrong with me”
this worked for a few years. i just could not bring myself to go through that hell again. i didnt want the countless months to years of going back to that pastors office… i didnt want to feel the way all those people made me feel – like i was broken. those sessions with the pastor were traumatizing… i was there based on something i was supposed to feel shame for – and was reminded of it every damn week, over and over and over again – and told how i would burn in hell – and reminded that family wouldnt love me – and that others wouldnt love me. to a childs brain…. that is psychological torture.
but it stayed with me. maybe it was because they made it such a big deal, or gave it so much attention… but i can remember laying in bed at night – i would always think of something to drift off to sleep… and for YEARS that something was how i was so happy during those times and i wished everyone would just be ok with it or trying to think of some way to make them as happy as i felt about it. i would dream about being a princess, or playing with other girls… and those thoughts just kept making me happy.
the sessions i went through with the church (and later, several churches) proved to be some of the most traumatic in my life. maybe not the top of the list… those spots are reserved for my mother – but certainly close seconds. there were entire years of my childhood that i would lay awake at night terrified of what transpired that day. it really wasnt the words that were said, because most times… they made no sense to me. but the tone in those words… the fact that these were people my parents and others at the church looked up to… and these people had words just riddled with hate, and pointed at me. i remember starting to think after learning about satan in sunday school, that they seemed to talk to/at me with the same ferocity and vitriol they used when talking about the devil. i just could not understand why. it made no sense to me. my brain could not connect the dots. i would have had an easier time solving calculus problems at that age than trying to understand why i was so hated.
one day…. the desire to be happy overruled the fear and feelings i had from getting caught.