Stained.

Stained. - A piece on Religious Trauma and LGBTQ+

Glass had littered the floor. Bits and pieces of a beautiful stained glass window, once a depiction of God, now shattered and left to become dust amongst the ground of the alter.

He stands there for what felt like eternity. He stared, and stared, and stared. His eyes bleeding into the makeshift hole that his fist left behind within the portrait. 

He remembers reading about this image, he thought. The one story about how the shepherd lost his lamb, and that of a holy being appeared before him and guided the poor man back to his animal companion. 

The memories were blurry. He couldn’t remember much, anyways. It wasn’t like it mattered. 

His hand hurt. The way his nails left behind crescent shaped indents into his palm, blood pooling at his fingertips from the impact he left just moments earlier to the stained glass window. 

“Forgive me, God,” He whispered beyond chapped lips, “Forgive me for I have sinned.” 

Maybe it was true of what the Old Testament wrote. That his love for another man could not be true, that his love for James across the street wasn’t even real.

His eyes were Jade. James’ eyes were Jade, so lack lustre and full of emotion that he even remembered the blue ring around the centre of his irises. He could paint a picture of his smile, crooked front teeth and a lopsided top lip. But it’s what made him unique, he thought. 

He remembered when he held hands with him for the first time, too. They were watching some kind of fish swim about in the neighbourhood pond; perhaps a koi fish or a little carp. 

James made a joke about lily pads; and he laughed. Oh god, he laughed. Like there was nothing that could’ve separated them in that moment when he brushed his palm over his.

Maybe even the time they went to the movies. Some romance comedy about happy endings and fairytales; but they were too busy kissing in the back stall to notice how the credits had already rolled and everyone within the crowd that night dispersed.

The times he held dear to his heart, when he wasn’t suffering. The times where he felt truly alive, the times he would never forget. He would no longer deny his feelings. That when he was with James, his world became a better place. HE became a better person.

He even dreamed of a future with him. That somewhere, in the countryside, they’d share a laugh over iced tea and live on a little farm in the south. Full of cattle, chickens, and pigs. Maybe they’d even have a sheep dog. Things that left a bittersweet feeling in his heart.

Though happy times do not come without darkness.

He remembered the look on his mother’s face when he told her. Shock and disgust forming on her face, a scowl that forever would be imbedded in his brain as she shouted the horrors he thought he’d never hear from his own parent.

”You’re ill!” She shrieked,

”God himself would be ashamed!”

”You are not welcome here!”

”You are the embodiment of Hell!”

The words stung. That his own mother would pierce a wound that he could never heal from, a scar he would have to carry for the rest of his life. He was not accepted in the eyes of the woman who brought him into this world, and forever would he remember the shouting and shame that filled the air that night.

The lack of emotions he had since then were still surprising. That with every word he spoke, every tear he shed, he was numb. He felt like a shell that had been cracked over and over with the amount of pressure that had been applied to it. He never fought back.

Even his friends didn’t think right of him. Sally was married, a woman who wore her wedding ring with pride and gave birth to a healthy set of twins. He remembered the way she scrunched her nose up, freckles crinkling and how she slammed the door in his face.

Then Henry stopped calling; a man of his word and his best friend since grade school. The same boy who shared his lunch with him at recess and brought Hot Wheels to show and tell.

Whinny, his co-worker at the café and the only one he vented his problems to, eventually found out and left him to rot. She switched positions, working kitchen staff instead of cash and refusing to look him in the eye.

Was he destined for this? Who knew. Maybe fate had decided to leave him at the doorstep like everyone else did; maybe he just wasn’t good enough for anything.

He was a mixed drink of tragedy and over complicated feelings, a cocktail of tears and cuts that would sting every time he rounded the bar. He was left with nothing but pity and drought; lucky enough to even still have a silver lining of the man he came to love.

Church bells.

The ringing of church bells brings him back to reality, realizing the horror of his actions. That the glass under his boots would crack with every step he took, that his blood littered the sleeve of his jacket and tile floor of the church.

Like the wind, he was gone. Echoes of footsteps and a door slam, and nothing is left behind but a broken window and broken memories. 

He would never be the same, never tell a soul of his inner demons of which he came to hate. That his love was not attainable in the eyes of God himself; that he was nothing more than a vessel meant to live on this earth with regrets and hardships. Heaven or Hell, he would spite them. Spite every higher being or whoever put him here, forcing him into a box where he could no longer escape from.

He didn’t believe in freedom.