Further Along The Road Less Touched

by The Former Sapphist

Instead of saying, “That person gets on my nerves, think, that person sanctifies me.” — St. Josemaria Escriva

A couple of years ago, Pride month would have been a month-long feeling of excitement, of intense feelings of liberation, and gender-equated ambition. This is not the case now, since renouncing the lifestyle. This time is more silent. For one re-establishing her identity that is in line with the Lord, it is only right for one to feel ambivalent.

I started my deliverance session several months back, in an attempt to cleanse myself of spiritual residues from the life I left behind. Part of the process is to undergo extensive counseling sessions, to help establish one’s mental fitness prior to receiving the rite of exorcism.

I met my counselor, who is all of 60. In that small face is an oriental beauty peering from behind the charm of crow’s feet and laugh lines. My eyes met hers and despite her elegant stance, the years show.

She would have been the same age as my first lover now. I brushed the idea aside, for what could be more sobering than the thought of making out with your shrink when you have worked so hard to remain chaste with others all this time?

My counseling sessions with her came and went. And I am still a person with same sex attraction. The past two weeks have been sleepless, with sleep finding me only in the wee hours of the morning. I apply lotion on my arms and legs after shower before bedtime in an effort to supply myself the feeling of touch which I missed from my father as an infant — a coping mechanism recommended to me by a previous psychotherapist some 20 years ago. In bed, I hug my pillows, wondering how it could be like had it been her body pressed against me.

I am tired. I am tired of wrestling with these feelings of longing for someone who could have filled the gaps of a broken childhood; of labeling my demons based on the spirits that argued between my body and soul. I am tired of trying.

I drop her hints of the struggle that I battle with in our sporadic exchanges of messages on viber. She never cautioned me. She never probed and she never rejected it. She understood and she knew too well. Somehow, something in me knows that something in her knows that I am trying my best to get through it.

We exchange surprise presents of religious items that would help us both in our growth in prayer — as if purifying the intention of why we are here. However, what used to be a deliciously dangerous dance of sexual tension between two unlikely strangers is now a harrowing thought. I fear that the Holy Spirit is watching.

I cross the distance between this earthly life and the next on a tension wire, balancing good versus evil with the weight of my body and soul on each end. My balancing pole is the cross that was given to me, long before this madness began.

A part of me wants to love her. Maybe a part of me already does. But a greater part of me knows that this cannot be, if I do not not want to suffer a much longer longing that will see the farthest stretch of eternity.