My confirmation and Dealing with my sexuality

If you haven't seen any of my vlogs on youtube or read any of my previous blog posts, I have been in the process of converting to Catholicism and this past Saturday, the day before easter, I was confirmed and had my first communion (well, my first communion in the catholic church). It was a very positive and moving experience for me. My mom came, which meant a lot to me. The Easter Vigil service was a night I have been looking forward to for several months.

The process was actually very difficult for me personally because there are things the Catholic church believes that I disagree with and it has taken a lot of praying, studying, really thinking about what I believed and why I believed these things. I didn't want to just take what my deacons and priest said as an end all be all and have that be it. I wanted to understand why the catholic church followed and believed certain things. Although the learning process never ends and I am still doing research. I have found that it has taken more soul searching than anything and realizing who I am as a person. Because of this process, I have started becoming more comfortable with who I am.

One of the things that I have started to come to terms with is my sexuality. At the age of 14, I started to realize that I may be bisexual. Growing up, I think it was normal to be attracted to both boys and girls, I never thought about it but I never knew there were terms for being attracted to the same sex, opposite sex or even both sexes. Although in middle school, I learned that being attracted to the same sex was termed "gay" or "lesbian." Which I never gave a thought about. Once I hit high school though and I started becoming more involved with theatre and started going to booker high school for musical theatre, I started trying to figure out who I was and realized that it wasn't "normal" so to speak to be attracted to both men and women and that there was actually a name for it. Again, at this point though, I didn't really give it much thought until I was 16 when I started going to church and becoming more religious. At this point, I became afraid of "going to hell" and being judged by my peers, so I went back in the closet so to speak. So, if I had told anyone I was bisxual at this point, I started denying it until I was 19 when I started backing away from the church.

At this point, I was taking a class in college and started to re- realize my sexuality when I realized that I was attracted to another woman in my class. Over the next 4 years, while I had come out to several people, I never fully accepted myself for my sexuality and didn't know how to be ok with my faith and my sexuality. Part of me wanted to reject faith altogether because I knew I couldn't suppress my sexuality to myself any longer. Up until a year and a half ago, I read Ryan Buell's book "Paranormal State," where he briefly discussed his bisexuality and I watched all 5 seasons of paranormal state and admired how Ryan seemed to be comfortable with his sexuality and still be a practicing catholic. While Ryan isn't the only one I've admired in regards to this, I have several friends that are Christian and gay/ lesbian/ bisexual, I started to slowly come to terms with my faith and my sexuality and that it isn't a bad thing.

So, going back to the main point of this post, in regards to my faith and my own self discovery, these last few months have meant allot to me and my confirmation was basically a pivotal point in my spiritual journey.