POV: You’re a fruity foster kid
Reliving three homes, PTSD-style.
You’re a child and you’ve just met your new parents for the first time. There’s a cross in their living room. There’s something in their face that tells you they’re surprised, but it doesn’t matter right now because you’re as excited to love new people as much as you miss loving others. They tell you that you’re bright; that you belong; and that you’ll outgrow a word they don’t know how to say kindly.
Every night ends with a hug and a prayer together.
But you don’t outgrow it, it grows throughout you. This nameless something that wasn’t meant to be there but is, and they talk about it and ask, who says that it’s not worth loving too? Isn’t that what God is, love?
You’re a child still, but only this time, you’re a little older, and you didn’t realize that you’ve just met your new parents for the first time. There’s a cross on their porch. You ask when you get to go home, and they tell you that you are in your new one. There’s something in their face that tells you they don’t like you, but it doesn’t matter because you’re too busy wondering what’s wrong with you to have caused the move. Then they tell you what is wrong with you — over and over until you don’t remember how to be bright.
Every night ends with praying alone to wake up a different version of yourself, or not wake up at all.
You never wake up different and you can’t help but love to wake up. This nameless something has been named, and you beg for forgiveness. You grow until they realize they cannot change you and you realize that you are worth staying the same. You finally leave after four years of them threatening to make you go.
You’re a teenager and you know who your new parents are. You met them before. Your new mom is the daughter of the first mom to truly love you. It’s a little confusing because now the woman you used to call mommy is your nana, but you’ll get used to it. Your new dad is Catholic, and he listens to your struggles with being a certain kind of man.
You can’t look at people in the face anymore, but they don’t need you to because they tell you right away that they waited for you; that you’re dark now and you still belong. They give you a nickname and you stop believing that the night has an end or the morning a beginning.
It was never about you. It was never about God. It’s only ever been about the willingness to love.
Putting aside my personal beliefs about the validity of LGBTQA+ identities being a sin or the validity of sin systems at all, I find the following to be true: one of our flaws as people is that we are bound to sin. One of our gifts is that we get to choose what sins. I’d rather the sin I choose be to love than to hate. If sin is the cost of love, then I’ll give away the rest of my quarters so that someone else can afford how they choose to spend their time too.
But really, I don’t care much whether it is sin or not. Regardless, all I am is all I am. I could consume my days carrying guilt passed onto me by papercut hands. I could beg for forgiveness until my bones forget I had a throat.
But I won’t, because I refuse to die as miserably as I was raised.
The lesson I learned for parents is this: the difference between a good parent and a bad parent is the willingness to love, and to practice the pain of it. Your beliefs matter, but hatred won’t get you to heaven, though it may get someone else to heaven too soon.
The lesson I learned for myself, and people like me, is that when you’re taught to hate yourself — implicitly and explicitly — it’s safer to close yourself off than it is to reopen.
But don’t fucking do it! You will find people who will love you even if you must fight tooth and nail to do it. Hell, Tooth and Nail may even be the people who end up loving you.
