Michael Marano, 129 TESS
A BigGay Peace Corps Spiritual Journey
A story of strength, peace, belonging, healing, pride, freedom, forgiveness, and acceptance.
I love you, but…
I sat in the church I had grown up in, where I was baptized and attended my father’s funeral, where I placed plastic Easter eggs in crayon-decorated, brown paper bags and played Joseph in a Christmas Eve cantata, where I was handed religion but fought for faith. It was the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a month before my departure to Thailand, and the sermon had segued from thankfulness to the sins and deceit of the homosexual with such ease that it chilled me.
Barely audible over my heartbeat were the same words that had extinguished my light before, blindsided as a 13-year-old, trapping me between 4 walls built on the foundation of a lifetime of religious teachings. An anxiety written out of my…
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