A few years passed where I repressed pain, guilt, and my natural feelings.  In sixth grade the mind block fell and I soon felt the only way to feel whole was to become openly gay.  Rumors spread quickly through the loose lips of my very “best friends.”  I was ridiculed, but resilient.  My friends were there to listen to my deepest worries, to comfort me- oh and to tell all my secrets.  Even some teachers seemed to think of me as less worthy. 

Reason rustled underneath my skin and the match that had been struck in fourth grade was lit.  The hostility of my peers and educators confused me.  I could not help my feelings and yet they condemned me for them.  God is said to be an understanding and caring deity, who will forgive us any sins we repent for, is He not?  As His children we strive to be the image of Him, do we not?

Hours and hours of religious teachings were finally useful in an argument against it.  We had been taught to treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves, we learned tolerance, and not to pass judgment.  My classmates and mentors exhibited none of these lessons.  Here I decided that friends do not tell secrets or speak to your back rather than your face and role models were not to be prejudiced or cross. 

These are behaviors I saw most commonly at my Catholic school and therefore I would label myself as Agnostic.  When asked to write reflections in religion I spoke my mind about its faults and in mass I would sit quietly without following procedures.  And with logic to strengthen my backbone, I stood next to my newly formed beliefs firmly for one more horrible year.

It may seem strange, but through hypocrisy I’ve become bluntly honest, loyal, trustworthy, and intelligent, not because I know it all but because I will always ask why.  I have Our Mother of Sorrows and its premium inhabitants to thank for my willingness to question authority and go against the grain to do what I believe is right, no matter the cost.  I suspect that if you dissected one of my former classmates, you would find machinery and where a heart should be you would find a detailed painting of what one should look like- the metal would clink and hiss, but never beat out the sounds truth, passion, or fear.  Even though it is a long jump from seventh grade to my junior year in high school, I believe that my experiences in Catholic school gave me a heart that beats with enthusiasm and bleeds out mortality.