Blue

I heard it again today. "Love the sinner, hate the sin."

It was from one of the older ladies at church, someone who should know better. She’s kind, I suppose, but she looked at me with that familiar pity, as if my very existence was something to be "fixed." She said it softly, like it was meant to comfort me. I’ve heard it before, of course. Most people who know I’m Catholic try to tell me that, thinking it will make things easier. But how can it?

How can you tell someone you love them, but also hate the very thing that makes them who they are? How do I reconcile that with my faith when the thing they want me to "pray away" is me?

My tail. My appearance. The way I look at the world. How can I separate all that from the man I am? How can I "love the sinner" when the sin is the very essence of who I am?

I don’t even think they understand the contradiction. If I were to give up my tail, my appearance, my faith—if I were to give up all of who I am—would that be the "good" that they want? Would I finally be acceptable to them? Would I still have faith?

So much of my faith comes from being a mutant. If I was not blue, I wonder, would I have even found the church to begin with?

I feel like I am walking on a wire every day. Balancing between the man I am and the man they want me to be. But the wire feels thinner each day.

It’s all tangled up. The faith they tell me to hold on to doesn’t feel like faith anymore—it feels like a rejection of the life I live. They don’t see the way my heart aches, the way I fight every day to keep my faith alive while the world around me tells me it can’t possibly be true. That God can’t possibly love me like this.

And then there’s the guilt. Maybe if I were better at hiding it, it would all be easier. But I can't change the way God made me. I can’t just snap my fingers and be someone else. So every time I hear those words, it’s like a weight pressing on my chest.

If my sin is something I cannot change, then how can they ask me to love a God who hates it?

I don’t know what to do anymore. I wonder if I’m just meant to fall, and if that’s all I can ever do. To fall and keep falling, but never hit the ground.