The Affectation - Overcoming Shame and Removing The Mask

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The Affectation - Overcoming Shame and Removing The Mask

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Excerpt From The Preface

From the very beginning as far back as four years old, I was drawn to men. I knew then that there was an attraction, not sexual of course, but a special type of fond preference for men nonetheless, which later, through pubescence, developed sexually. It would have been ideal to have been able to talk to someone about those feelings, but I was surrounded by an environment of antipathy for the homosexual lifestyle. So as an only child, knowing that my parents would not be exactly fond of having a gay son, I, like many other gay teenagers, tried desperately to suppress my homosexual emotions in order to be considered normal. The teasing and isolation that I suffered from my peers also made me feel compelled to live my life as a heterosexual—all in the name of acceptance. I had also grown up serving the Catholic church as an altar boy, having to stomach scripture stuffed down my throat stating that homosexuality was a sin. Even though I was not engaging in sex, I still knew that I was gay, which ultimately led me to questioning whether or not I was hell-bound and wondering if I was a moral abomination in the eyes of God. Of course, the church told me that I was, so I ended up suffering from some serious psychological issues about my role in life. I knew that I didn't ask or prefer to be a homosexual, that I just was without choice—perhaps born into it. But the church and other messages that were circulating from the mouths of homophobia were conveying to me that no one is born a homosexual; that it is a matter of choice.

As a result of all this confusion, I was constantly trying to determine whether I was good or bad? Most of the time I felt that I was bad. So I reinvented myself as that special someone who, in the eyes of God, my parents and the world, was good, normal and accepted—a heterosexual person who was now worthy of love. Pathetically, I had convinced myself that was all true, and I eventually led myself down a sad road of unhappiness, degradation and depression. When I reflect on it now, I realize that the Church brainwashed me to believe that God hated me so much that I began to hate myself. How dysfunctional!

Later on, when I resigned from organized religion and connected spiritually with God on my own, I realized that I had repressed into my subconsciousness a disturbing episode from my childhood which had also attributed to my cycle of self-hate. That realization eventually laid the path to a miraculous journey of evolution, and I was able to appreciate the path my life had now taken and acknowledge that God did, in fact, love me.

This book takes you on that journey—detailing my emergence from self-hate to self-love. If I had to describe this book, I'd say it is my cathartic renegade of truth and evolutionary healing, mainly because it is an open invitation to the pain and growth that has encompassed my life. Told through a chronology of poems, mini-screenplays, memoirs and prose, The Affectation - Overcoming Shame and Removing the Mask is my personal journey of same-gender loving discovery from childhood to adulthood and the misery that I endured because of religious and societal constructs, along with the jubilation I discovered through spirituality and God. Please read this book with an open mind and heart, from the very beginning to the very end. Enjoy.

Paperback
Publisher: Chuma Spirit Books
ISBN 10: 1-934241-00-8
ISBN 13: 978-1-934241-004
139 Pages
Publication Date: December 2006
Editor: Alisa Daniels-Tinnin
Cover Layout Design: Chuma Whahid Rasul
Book Layout Design: Chuma Whahid Rasul
Photographer: Dammeon B. Marshall

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