On Self-Sabotage, Sappho, and Sin

In the late fall of 2020, I discovered a Google Doc entitled the “Lesbian Masterdoc.” It’s a compiled explainer of the theory of compulsory heterosexuality — the idea that our culture attempts to force heterosexuality upon us. As I read through the document, pieces began to fall into place. Reading the line you have abstract crushes that you don’t actually want to progress into romantic and/or sexual relationships, I saw four years of Irish-Catholic Republican debate boys who talk over me at tournaments, four years of Conors and Connors and O’Connors. 

I suppose there’s something rather Freudian about the list of Catholic schools boys I’ve imagined relationships with. I, myself, am a recovering Irish Catholic. My mother tells me that I would have gone to the Catholic school many of these boys attend if I had been born male — my cousin attended it years ago. I’m one of the only people in my family who did not spend twelve years in Catholic school, but I can still speak the language of Lords Prayers and Hail Marys and rosaries and bless me fathers for I have sinned. I can speak the language of these Catholic school boys even as my friends know me as a leftist atheist who disavowed religion before her Confirmation. Because when I ignore the sexist undertones of the Catholic schools I debate in, I recognize a familiarity in those spaces that I cannot find elsewhere. I should have wanted to leave the building at the first leer, the first sweetheart, the first older-male-hand-on-shoulder. But I didn’t. I kept going, until I built a strange affinity for the granite walls and khakis and crucifixes on classroom doors. Because it’s like walking back into years of Sunday school at my conservative Long Island parish, walking back into bless me father for I have sinned and anti-abortion posters and praying to God that I’m not gay. 

Now, when I think of Catholicism, I think about my experience in Confession. Although I must believe that telling an eight-year-old they’re the most wretched of all sinners is the perfect recipe for Catholic Guilt, there is something so beautiful and so satisfying in the idea that saying the Hail Mary can make all of your sins go away. I found comfort in kneeling in front of an old white man and telling him that I’m the most wretched of all sinners. I found comfort in the fact that the old white man could wash my guilt away and leave me as a blank slate. I found comfort in the ease of it all. And now, even as I hold little appreciation for the Church, when I am at my most anxious there is a part of me that wants to run to the church across the street and yell bless me, father, for I have sinned! and leave fresh and reborn and sin-less like a child. 

Despite having left the Church, I have internalized the idea that sin and pain can be washed away with symbolic gestures. 

I have been mentally unwell for a very long time. I understand that modern psychiatry believes that depression is caused by a clinical chemical imbalance. And I understand that medication and therapy can cause depression to go into remission, but the disease itself does not go away. My life can get better, but I will always be depressed. I’ve read enough to understand all of this. I’ve read enough to understand all of this, but at the same time I have always imagined my senior year self in a glassy, bubbly, happy haze of relationships and deep friendships and good times. 

So while I am spending winter days reading the lesbian masterdoc, gender theory, and Adrienne Rich’s writing, I am also talking to a boy. Every day I text my best friend that maybe I am a lesbian and every night I text the boy soulless messages. We go on three dates and while we are walking through the Columbia campus, he mentions that his parents think I’m gay and I want to laugh at the irony of it all. And I spend all three dates feeling broken because I don’t like him at all and he likes me enough to take me on three dates.  

And then he kisses me in The Ramble and I don’t even remember it. My internal alarm bells — the same ones that lead me to faint during blood tests — take over, and I black out. On the subway ride home I feel empty and angry at myself because he likes me and I don’t deserve it. And when I get out of the subway, before I head home, I walk up and down Christopher Street. It is a beautiful March night and I feel like there is three inches of plexiglass between me and the wealthy yuppie couples who inhabit my neighborhood, sipping Aperol Spritzes and laughing as they dine on the street next to the Stonewall Inn. Looking at these couples, I am imagining the heterosexual D.C.-pantsuit-yuppie version of myself that exists somewhere ten years in the future, but I am also thinking about how the boy likes me and I can’t tell if I’m gay or hate myself or both. And then I am thinking about how I have always known the Ramble as the location of illustrious queer trysts and I think of how ironic — how goddamn ironic! — it all is, as I imagine the mid-century boys who met there under the cover of darkness and fear. My best friend and I throw around the term “self-sabotage” on the daily, but it is at this moment that I realize the extent to which I manage to sabotage every avenue for growth. 

The next day I’m wandering around the East Village with a friend and I Facetime the boy’s sister. She’s one of my close friends and I am suspicious that she is so invested in this pseudo-relationship because she wants a way to mend a broken friend who is slipping through her caring, loving, adoring fingers. She’s happy that he kissed me in the Ramble and she wants to talk to me and I just want to get it over with. “I’m so happy for you. Are you happy?” she asks, and all of a sudden I’m so, so angry because it is the most complicated question in the world even though it has the most straightforward answer. 

 “I’m never going to be happy,” I respond, “and that’s just how it is.” And I watch how her face crumples and I realize she doesn’t understand — will never understand — so I sit down on a stoop and feel so empty that I start to cry. I stand up and I cross a deserted Avenue A and I decide to curse the names of all of the boy’s closest friends even though they’ve done nothing wrong. I am the most wretched among all sinners. 

Fuck you, Phil. Hail Mary full of grace. Fuck you, Nick. The Lord is with thee. Fuck you, Stephen. Blessed art thou among women. Fuck you, Alan. Blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. 

My psychiatrist tells me that it is progress that I even went out with the boy. She tells me that I am afraid to let people into my life, to be emotionally vulnerable. I’ve always known this, and perhaps the performance of compulsory heterosexuality — the starring role I played over dumplings in Chinatown on dates with the boy — is just another manifestation of this idea. But I always thought I would be wiped free as a clean slate when I checked off enough boxes on my to-do list — see the finish line of high school, get into top-choice college, start a relationship with a boy — to feel that all of my adolescent pain was worth it. To distract myself from my racing thoughts and glassy eyes, I type “progress” into Google while my psychiatrist speaks, mindlessly reading the definition: move forward or onward. This definition makes my head spin because it does not actually mean anything to me, because to me progress is the defined action of checking off a box on a to do list, creating a clear cleavage in my life and looking towards what is next. I have a knot in my throat when I realize that I was so deluded to think that things would get better out of nowhere, because if this is progress,  it means that there will be so much more pain moving forward. 

This is the first time that I cry during therapy, because for the first time in my life I really understand what it means when I say that I won’t let myself be happy. For the first time in my life, I understand that “chronic chemical imbalance” is more than just textbook jargon, that “chronic chemical imbalance” is more than just my unhealthy work habits, that “chronic chemical imbalance” feeds on every aspect of my life like a parasite. And I do not know where to go next — I have not checked off a to do list, I have not created a cleavage in my life, and I do not know how to embrace this type of progress. Two weeks later, I am already talking to another Catholic school boy on Instagram, like a career actor booking another role. But all the while I just want to kneel in front of an old white man and say bless me, father, for I have sinned and I want to say three Hail Marys and I want to emerge from the confessional sin-free and clean like a child.