Catholicism, faith and fury

Did Catholic school ruin my daughter?

My mother muses,

as she flips through the pages of fallen angels

and villainous Gods

as charcoal and lead in my sketchbook.

Well, I suppose the answer is 

no.

Catholic school did not ruin her,

but only, in fact, because I am not

your daughter.

I am a child,

and so many have tried to pray that out of me.

I don’t conform,

and so many have tried to threaten that out of me.

Catholic School was salt in a wound,

religion was alcohol in a laceration,

it was the final straw in a flimsy house.

Oh, yes, Catholic school destroyed my spirit,

my faith,

my optimism.

It ruined me.

but it did not ruin my art. 

The fallen angels look much more realistic now,

when I feel like one myself.

The brutalized Gods seem much more barbaric

when I’ve lived through their self-righteous fury.

Authors note:

This piece was written very late at night, inspired by an art piece I handed in at my new school. I suppose people find converting their traumas into art comforting, finding a way to represent beauty in cruelty. I create simply so I can process my own deeply afflicted existence. Some Catholic Schools exist in their own right as pillars of light, to teach the doctrines of love and acceptance, and others destroy students seeking love. The school I attended opted for the latter, drilling into my thoughts and the pondering of my friends that their mere survival was unholy or sinful, that their inherit nature was unnatural. As a queer, non-binary teenager, I have felt wrath at the hands of a religion that preaches tolerance, and judgement in the hearts of individuals sworn not to be condemnatory. If I had just been a cisgender woman, as I so wholeheartedly prayed to be as a child, I may have emerged this experience unscathed. I am not. I did not. It’s important to me that every LGBTQ+ child recognizes that somewhere out there, beyond Gods and Angels, Heaven and Hell, they have a community to be safe in. That there is nothing wrong with them. I hope to convey that in the above piece.

edited & published by Gayatri Noor Choudhury