Before I Break

by Alec John Belle

  “We hear you’ve been banned. How long have you been coming to this church?” the reporter went on.

  “I’ve been here my entire life,” Melissa said. “I have come to see that the church is twisted in their beliefs and my friends and I strongly disagree with discrimination.”

  “Thank you, Melissa. Back to you, George.”

  A man, who I assumed was George, was on screen then, saying, “Thank you. While Pastor Morrison is displeased with the situation, officials cannot stop the pride rally due to it being across the street from the church and not on church property. With the freedom of speech, some say it would be unconstitutional for officers to invade.”

  Unconstitutional my ass. I couldn’t let Melissa continue on with the pride rally like this. Grabbing my jacket, I said, “Come on, Jake. We have a rally to interrupt.”

  The hardest part about not doing weed anymore is the fact that I was now responsible for Jake, even though I really didn’t want to be. We pulled onto the street of the church as he sang really loudly the entire way, giggling like a two year old playing Peek-a-boo.

  The march across from the church continued and I got out of the car, trying to get passed the officers, but they wouldn’t let us through.

  “That’s my girlfriend,” I lied. “I’m here for the rally.”

  The officer nodded and let me go by and I dragged Jake along with me, and the officer stared him down, probably knowing how stoned he was but brushing it off. Melissa saw me and smiled brightly. “Are you here to show your support?”

  “No,” I said, sounding a little harsher than intended. “I am here to stop you from doing this, ‘Lissa. This is drawing attention to you that you don’t need.”

  Melissa was angry, that much was obvious. “Then go home, Cy. We don’t need you here if you’re going to be just like them.”

  “I’m not trying to be! I am not trying to be like them, but as your friend, I want to stop you from embarrassing yourself.”

  She threw her sign down as the others all stopped to stare at us. Several cameras were pointed in our direction and I was sure this was going on live. My nerves were really getting to me and I just wanted this all to stop.

  “Is it me you’re worried about,” Melissa asked, “or you?”

  “Why would you ask something like that?” I demanded. “I am not embarrassed.” Even as I said it, I wasn't quite sure it was true.

  “Then let me embarrass myself if I want to. Goodbye, Cyril.” Turning her back on me, she went back with the others and grabbed her sign off the ground, leaving me alone.

  “That went well,” Jake laughed. “Look at all the rainbows!”

  “Oh, just come on,” I replied angrily, grabbing onto him and tearing through the crowd to the church. “I’m not done here.” Walking over to the officers, I shouted, “You guys can’t do something? This is ridiculous!”

  “Freedom of speech,” one of them said.

  “I don’t give two shits about freedom of speech! That’s my girlfriend out there and she’s setting the wrong image for herself. Damn it!” I kicked a rock hard across the street and knew what I had to do. So much anger was building inside of me and there was only one person to blame for this. Stomping across the street to the church, I pushed through the crowd and threw the from door open, looking for the chapel.

  “What’s going on?” Jake asked, completely oblivious to life right now. Oh, how I wished I was him at the moment. Inside, there was a whole group of people, and from the looks of it, they were holding hands and all singing Kumbaya. All eyes turned to me as I stormed down the aisle, seeing Pastor Morrison on stage.

  “You bastard!” I screamed in rage. “What the hell is wrong with you?”

  A couple— who I identified as my parents—got up from the front and walked over to me. “Son, enough of this,” my father said. “We have this under control.”

  “Under control?! You call this under control?” I didn’t even know what I was mad about. I wasn’t even mad at Morrison, or Melissa, or even Avery. The whole world was to blame right now. I was sick of the fighting, the arguing, and the condemning. “That’s right, I forgot, we’re all just going to come in here and ask God to strike down my friends, aren’t we? Because that’s what real Christians do, right?”

  “Cyril!” my father yelled at me, making my heart stop. “Let’s get out of here. We’re going home. Now.”

  “I’m not done here!” I screamed as my dad took a hold of my arm and dragged me out. “Do you hear me? This isn’t over until you all give it a rest!”

  Jake followed as my parents and I left the church, but no one said a word once we left. My parents got in their car and I got in mine with Jake, but no one seemed to really know what to say. My throat was sore from all the screaming I did back at the church, but I couldn’t help it. Once I calmed down, I realized that probably wasn’t going to be very good for my reputation once that was seen on the news.

  So much for saving our reputations.

  Gay rights aren’t rights if they aren’t given

  Just like any of human right.

  A human right isn’t a right

  If others are trying to take it away.

  If others are trying to take it away

  Then freedom is not an accurate description.

  When freedom is not an accurate description

  Then what is this world we’ve so terribly created?

  At home, as I was getting ready for sleep, I couldn’t help but replay all the events from that day in my head. I had embarrassed myself terribly, just like I had intended not to do, and I was at a complete loss. Downstairs I could hear my parents arguing about something, but I didn’t really care enough to listen. About twenty minutes later, there was a knock on my door.

  “Go away!” I yelled angrily.

  My mother stepped right on through, smiling softly, and closing the door behind her. “How are you feeling?”

  Feeling annoyed, I asked, “Have you never heard of ‘go away?’”

  Mom looked genuinely upset, but she didn’t say anything at first. As I sat down on my bed to go to sleep, she sat next to me and smiled sadly. “I know today was hard for you, honey, but you can’t lock yourself in your room forever.”

  “Watch me,” I replied harshly. Pulling the covers over my head, I wondered how I could ever feel so down. Why was there so much going on in my life right now? There was so much anger that I needed to release, but luckily I was able to calm down not that long after. Now here I was, moping in my sadness over all of this.

  But what exactly was this?

  The warmth of my mother’s hand touched my arm as she said, “We need to talk about something.”

  “If you’re going to ground me forever, I understand,” I told her. “There’s no need to discuss something we both know is entirely inevitable.”

  “Awww,” my mother said, leaning over and hugging me tightly. “I always knew you were a smart kid. This is just all a big misunderstanding.”

  “Yeah, it’s just a huge misunderstanding that I am going to hell for cursing at the Pastor of a church. I forgot, our God is supposed to be all-loving.”

  My mother was silent for a couple minutes, leaving both of us to drown in my statement. Right now I didn’t even know if I believed in God anymore, mostly because there was so much hate. So many terrible things that wouldn’t go away no matter what. Did God really just hate everyone? Maybe it wasn’t just the gays, but every living thing that walked this Earth.

  “He is.”

  Her words were so soft, I almost didn’t hear them. Lifting the covers off of my face, my mother was staring at me with tears streaming down her face, and I sat up to touch her arm. “I’m sorry, Mom, I didn’t mean it…I just…” I didn’t know what to say. My heart ached and I felt so ruined, so hurt, and so dead inside.

  “He’s supposed to love us,” she said, wiping the tears from her eyes. “I just don’t know anymore, sweetie. I
really don’t know.” Her arms flew around me, pulling me to her as she continued on. “Cyril, we don’t have the answers to everything as humans. We pretend like we do and we pretend like we’re on the top of the world, but it’s true that we don’t. For a while now, I’ve felt like the way we’re raising you may be wrong.”

  I didn’t quite understand what she was saying. “Mom, what are you talking about?’

  Sighing, she said, “I’ve been doing some reading since you met Avery. This whole last week I’ve been tearing apart the Bible, trying to find scriptures strictly on homosexuality, but do you want to know what I found?”

  “Leviticus?”

  “No,” she cried. “Nothing, Cyril. I went on this search because I realized that my whole life growing up I was told that it was wrong, but no one ever explained why. There answer was always, ‘Because the Bible says so,’ and I never had enough courage to question it. All the verses about homosexuality mean something completely different when looking at the context of the whole chapter. Over time…over time I started to believe it for no good reason, and now I feel like something about it is wrong, so I went searching. All of the things speaking about homosexuality aren’t speaking against it at all. In Leviticus, it was a holiness code, so they made those laws in order to honor God. In Romans, it was speaking of a town full of prostitutes having sex with everyone and was not just targeting homosexuality, but sexual immorality. I realize now that things have gotten so twisted with the translations over the years and I want you to know that I know that now.”

  It took me a while to understand exactly what she meant because it all came out so fast. Was she telling me that homosexuality could possibly be okay?

  “Mom, you don’t mean this,” I told her. “That does against everything you believe.”

  “Sometimes you learn that what you believe isn’t really true,” she explained, hugging me again. “That’s why your father hasn’t been around lately. We’ve been fighting.”

  Ah, so my suspicions were correct. My family was fighting over something that I had brought into the house. Pulling the covers back over my head, I said, “I need sleep. School’s tomorrow.”

  She leaned down to give me a kiss over the blanket. “Goodnight, honey. I hope you feel better tomorrow.

  Even though I didn’t tell her, I was sure I was going to be okay.

  The next two weeks were absolutely amazing. Things for me seemed to be turning around, not that it was really unexpected. Mom said that we all were just “in a funk” and that was no joke. Thankfully the funk was over.

  Melissa and I got back together after some careful talking and working things through. When I told her about what my mom said, she asked me if I agreed with my mother. After telling her I did, and that my mom and I were going to try to figure this homosexuality thing out together, Melissa offered to help.

  Even after being banned from seeing him, Avery and I became friends again, and I could tell he was genuinely happy about it. I was happy, too, but it felt different now. Everything felt kind of different, not just with him.

  Melissa and I were together.

  He and I were friends.

  Mom and Dad weren’t fighting.

  What was going on here? My life had just taken a total turnaround and back in less than a week that this seemed so unexpected. But Mom told me funks happened.

  Since we became banned from our church, Melissa, Avery and I came up with an idea that we wanted to propose to my mother for all of us to do. Dad was out at work and the three of us were sitting in the living room, waiting for Mom to come downstairs after her shower. I sat in the middle of them on the couch and felt a little weird about doing this.

  “Are you okay?” Melissa asked me. “About asking your mom of this? We don’t have to, you know. It was your idea.”

  The truth was, it really was my idea, but that didn’t necessarily make it a good one. There was so much change going on with me at this point in my life right now that it was overwhelming. Three weeks ago I would never have been doing this.

  “I know it was my idea,” I told her. “I’m positive that I want to do this. We need to find some answers, don’t you think.”

  “If this is for me…you don’t have to,” Avery said. There was a genuine sadness in his voice that kind of struck me in the heart, making me feel like I’d done something wrong.

  “It’s not for you,” I replied honestly. “Well, it’s not just for you, anyway. It’s something that we all need to do, don’t you think? If we want to believe in something, we need to have our reasoning behind it, and we will if we do this.”

  “Do what?”

  We all turned to find my mother standing there, a hand on her hip and head tilted to the side in wonder. Her long, dark hair was pulled out of her ponytail for the first time in weeks, showing her beauty, despite being as old as dinosaurs.

  Just kidding. I think.

  “We need to talk,” I told her, standing up to face her directly. “Wednesday is tomorrow and we came up with an idea that we want you to be a part of, since we can’t really go back to church…”

  Even though my mother had forgiven me, I could tell she was a little angry with me still. Avoiding confrontation was like her, though, so she asked, “What do you need, sweetie?”

  Avery and Melissa nodded for me to go on.

  “Remember that talk we had about two weeks ago? In my room?” She nodded in curiosity and I said, “We were thinking about trying to start a Bible Study of sorts, but a…LGBT friendly group. We want everyone to be welcome. Is that okay with you?”

  Mom smiled brightly and said, “Why wouldn’t it be okay with me? You know me better than that. So what does this have to do with me?”

  “We want you to run it,” Melissa said, standing up as well. “To be our Pastor of sorts. We like your opinion on the matter of…well, everything in the Bible, and we don’t know enough to do it ourselves. We just know what’s been told to us, and as you’ve recently pointed out, it’s not all entirely true.”

  “I don’t know,” my mom replied, seeming suddenly shy. “I don’t want to interrupt the teens with my elderly self.”

  “You’re not old,” I laughed, silently thinking about the inner joke I had made in my head moments before. “Listen, we want you to do this for us, but we’re not going to beg. We all need something to do, and I think this would be a great way to make Avery feel accepted.”

  Avery nodded but didn’t say I word, shying away from my mom.

  “Is this going to be a strictly youth group?” she asked Melissa.

  “No, Mrs. Hayes, it won’t be. It might be at first, but we want to eventually expand it among adults if their open to the idea.”

  “Would there be anyone else besides us?”

  “Eve,” I interjected. “She said that she wants to do this as well, and I think it’d be a great way for all of us to connect. Our goal is the same for all of us, isn’t it? Leaving a mark on the world? It has to start somewhere, and it can be with us.”

  There was such—joy?—in my mother’s eyes as she said, “I am so proud of you, honey. All of you. You’ve come very far these last two weeks and I want you all to know that I feel this way. And to answer your question, I will help lead the Bible study.”

  My heart leapt with joy as I ran over to hug her. I threw my arms around her saying, “Thank you, thank you, thank you! You won’t regret this, Mom.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Hayes,” Avery said softly from the couch. He smiled sadly and said, “This really means a lot to me.”

  When I let go of my mother, something amazing happened. She walked around to the other side of the couch to where Avery was, she held her arms open, smiling. “Come here,” she offered. Looking unsure, Avery stood up and hugged my mother tightly and she said, “It’s okay, Avery. We’re going to be here for you. We’ll all figure this out together. You’re family now.”

  Melissa came over to my side, wrapping her arms arou
nd my waist as we watched the touching moment in silence. The last two weeks, I had been questioning the idea, hoping that maybe I could convince myself not to do this, because as much as I’d changed, I still had a hard time accepting things as they really were. I had to understand that being gay was okay. I had to learn that love was all that really mattered when it came to God.

  At that moment, I knew I made the right decision.

  Acceptance is something that doesn’t come often

  And leaves many people lying in coffins

  Wishing that someone they knew could accept

  The secret that was despised by all of the rest.

  With friends by my side and a God I know cares

  I know I’ll stand tall amongst all of their stares.

  Sometimes I feel lonely despite all that’s changed

  But I can’t help but feel like this is all gonna change.

  Love is something I’ve always wanted to feel

  And for the first time in years, I think what’s coming is real.

  Please don’t leave me standing all alone

  When all of my past is finally exposed.

  “No.”

  It was Wednesday afternoon during our lunch time and I was trying to convince Jake to come to our Bible Study with us. After all, he was my best friend and I wanted him to be a part of it, but he just kept giving the same thing.

  “Why not?” I asked. “The idea can’t be that bad answer.

  Jake laughed and took a bite of his burger. Melissa and Avery were also at the table with us and Avery was staring Jake down watching him eat. Melissa sat by my side, eating her salad. “Trust me, it sounds like a bad idea. Everyone here knows you’re pro-gay already—there’s not really a Bible Study about it.”

  I couldn’t imagine that everyone knew, and even if they did, why did it matter to Jake? The answer popped in my head almost immediately—he was my best friend, and whatever I did apparently had an impact on him.