Re: The forbidden feelings

That sounds about right.

It's hard to remember what happened at what age, but anywhere from about three to seven I gradually learned a few things, and most of all I learned that adults would get very upset if they knew I had any sexual feelings.

I do remember that a local swimming pool had a spot where warm water came into the pool maybe about 18" to 24" below the surface, at just the right height that it felt very good to hang on to the side of the pool there. Then an older sibling mentioned that they knew why all the little boys liked to hang out there and by that time I already knew to be very ashamed of my feelings. Maybe five or six?

Despite all that I knew that one day when I grew up I might fall in love and get married, but then one day - and I know that I was seven at this time - I saw something on the news where they were making a fuss about a movie that had come out and saying it was very controversial, and all I knew was that the controversy was about a girl in this film (older than myself) that I thought might have been the most beautiful girl I had ever seen. Then a woman news anchor expressed her outrage and disbelief that there were men who found this girl attractive. This of course surprised me, but it was my first clue that there was deep social disapproval of finding girls beautiful. My father was there and I asked what that was all about, and he looked over to see what they were talking about, walked over and turned off the television, and he told me that that was the most disgusting thing in the world. Again I didn't understand why so I asked him for more explanation but he flatly refused to discuss it. That was when I realized that my father hated me, he just didn't KNOW that he hated me because he didn't know that I found that girl attractive. But if he had known he would have been so disgusted with me that it was not even possible to talk about it. As you might guess I never quite trusted him again after that - it definitely created a division between us. I realized that I was too small to live independently, so I would have to never let on that I was attracted to girls as a matter of survival.

It still didn't set right with me, but when I looked around at all the other boys in school they expressed their disgust with girls. Over the following years I investigated the matter at church and found that Jesus said it was a sin to even be attracted to a woman outside of marriage (Matthew 5:28). Of course I knew that it was acceptable AFTER marriage, but no one would ever say anything about how a man was to get married without being attracted to someone first. I figured I must be misunderstanding something, but I looked up the definition of "lust" in a dictionary (which said it means "desire"), and when I asked a Sunday School teacher for clarification she confirmed that it was a sin to look at a woman with lust (desire) in your heart.

I think it was the first time I took communion I remember confessing (silently) to God my attraction to girls which I just couldn't shake, and my desire for repentance before taking communion, but I also recognized the impossibility of avoiding that sin on my own - and God never removed that desire.

By the time I was in my teens I realized that no one at church - or anywhere in society - actually followed the rules they loudly espoused. Far from it, they looked down on anyone who DID attempt to follow their rules. But by that time I was locked in - it was part of my identity - and in any case no one ever said how one was supposed to get married without having any attraction. And of course I still liked the same age girls, who were by this time younger than me - and by this time I realized that no one in church or elsewhere actually believed their own bullshit but they WOULD in fact hate me for being attracted to girls.

I later found out that people at my church just assumed I was homosexual, which was downright insulting. Here I had done my best to live by THEIR stupid rules which none of THEM ever attempted to live by, and they thought less of me for it. So eventually I stopped going to church because why would I want to spend any time around assholes like that?

And then I just generally checked out of society. Work and home, not much else - because why would I want to spend time with people who hate me? I'd rather be alone than be with such people.