Days 14-16: Oh look, my latent anger is being all un-latent

The last few days have been difficult.  I continue to feel under the weather but have a shed-load of work to do, so I've been working from home when I'm not being sick or sleeping.  Mrs McGingersnap is wonderful when she's here but, alas, she works full-time and has yet to master the art of bi-location.  As a result, I've been feeling rather isolated.  I've also felt anxious: it's hard to work with a brain like ether-drenched cotton wool.  And I have to deliver a 2-hour talk on Thursday morning.  Yay!

I think the praying is stirring up old feelings too, mostly about evangelical Christian teaching on homosexuality.  That old chestnut "Hate the sin, love the sinner"?  To a young gay person, that sounds like "We'll love you even though you're repulsive - aren't we gracious?!"  If you tell a young person (a) that their love is perverted and disgusting and (b) that you can tell a tree by its fruits, it doesn't take much skill in deductive logic for that kid to work out that, hey, they're disgusting!  Cue: self-esteem in negative equity.

Churn out all the hair-splitting distinctions you want: there's a reason why so many LGBT youth from conservative religious backgrounds come to believe that they're worthless.

Do I believe I'm worthless?  No, but that's thanks to the love of a good woman and - let's be honest - one heck of a lot of therapy.  Furthermore, that doesn't mean I'm completely free of the consequences of my upbringing. 

While I've been praying these last few days, I've felt uneasy.  How much of that is because of what's happening in my life and how much because praying is associated with some painful memories and destructive beliefs, I don't know.  But that's what's been going on.  I'll probably have a good old word-dump in my personal diary to get this out of my system, but I'm not convinced that revisiting those feelings at this stage will have any therapeutic value.  It's just running electricity down neural pathways that need to dry up for good.