The prayer ended, and he thanked me for dropping in. Surely, I thought, God would see how brave I’d been in speaking out this deeply held secret. Surely, the Catholic priest, with his spiritual authority and the powerful words of the liturgy, would have the ability to change me.
Stepping out of the room, I closed the heavy wooden door behind me. I heard it shut with a loud thud and believed I’d left my sins—my gay feelings, my gay identity—behind that door. Forgiven and set free, I’d stepped out of an old life and into a new one.
But it didn’t take long for me to realize nothing had changed. The feelings remained and with them came the rush of embarrassment and fear. I was crushed—my prayer hadn’t been answered. My moment of courage and honesty with the priest had been for nothing. Perhaps God had forgiven me, according to the priest’s absolution, but he certainly hadn’t set me free.
My head spun with questions, but I had no one to go to with them. That priest had been from another town, and I had no idea how to contact him; to be honest, I was so embarrassed about telling him that I hoped we’d never cross paths again.
I must be so rebellious and sinful, if just hours after the confession I’ve had my old thought patterns return, I thought tearfully. God must be so angry with me. I felt utterly alone and saw no chance of an end to all of my struggles. If even a priest couldn’t break off these chains of sinful feelings, who could? It seemed to me that I must be too broken for even God to fix.
Transfixed, I stood in the music store, gazing at the most beautiful electric guitar I’d ever seen. It was red and white, modeled after the famous Fender Telecaster—a cheaper version but still stunning to me. The gregarious salesman grabbed a stepladder and got it down, the weight of it surprising me as he handed it over. I plugged it into an amplifier and began to play. My face lit up, and my mother, watching from nearby, could tell I was desperately hoping we might take it home.
We’d only planned to buy a basic, cheap classical guitar that day, something for me to learn on instead of always stealing my mum’s acoustic. But she could tell my heart had attached itself to this red-and-white electric. I agreed that I’d gladly have it as birthday and Christmas gifts all rolled into one. So we left the store with that gorgeous instrument, plus a small practice amp, a tuner pedal, a capo, and all the cables and plectrums I could wish for.
With this new guitar waiting for me each evening when I returned home from high school, I practiced even more than before. Once homework was done, every night I’d close my bedroom door and play, teaching myself from a book and asking Mum for help if I got stuck.
One evening, shut away in my room playing and singing, something unusual happened. Usually I only made up worship songs, taking my lyric ideas directly from parts of the Bible, like the Psalms. But that evening, rather than singing about faith, I found myself writing a love song. And it was about a girl.
After five minutes, I blushed, stopped, and put the guitar away. It felt as though I’d used my musical gift for something wrong and dirty; I’d polluted the beautiful talents God had given me. I put the guitar down, switched off the bedroom light, pulled the curtains open, and stared out at the stars. “Sorry, God,” I whispered. “I won’t do that again. I promise to use my music for one thing only: to glorify you.”
That was the last time I sang about a girl.
Music quickly evolved from a hobby to something more serious. I recorded my first demo during a high-school summer break—a cassette tape with eight of my songs on it. I borrowed the school’s four-track recorder, a now-ancient device that can record four different layers of audio on one cassette. This was long before easily affordable laptops and music software came into being; as I look back, it feels like the technological Dark Ages.
Proficient in several instruments by then, I played guitar, drums, and piano and then layered vocals and harmonies on the four-track tape. Finally, I finished it off with synth pads and some harmonica.
My parents and sister could barely walk around our living room for weeks, as I’d filled it with cables, wires, amplifiers, and instruments. A piece of paper taped to the door, scribbled in my handwriting, read: QUIET PLEASE: RECORDING IN PROGRESS. I’m grateful that my family was infinitely patient and supportive of my musical quest.
Once the finished demo tape was in my hands, I sent it to one of the UK’s biggest Christian record labels. It was a shot in the dark, but worth a go. To my amazement, they chose one of my songs out of thousands of submissions and featured it on a CD. A copy of the album arrived in the mail, and my family and I sat around and listened to it together. My crazy summer of cables, wires, and recording equipment had opened a significant door.
Spurred on by this, I worked on other songs, hopeful that they’d be published and recorded too. The following year, at one of the Christian youth camps I attended, the leader brought me up in front of five thousand attendees and spoke about how impressed he was with my songwriting. After that, other teenagers came up to me all week, saying hello or asking me to sign their copy of the CD. It was heady stuff for someone still in high school, but instead of making me develop an ego, it just fueled my desire to be the best Christian I could be. I didn’t want to let anyone down.
I discovered that plenty of people made a living recording Christian music and touring across the UK, the US, and Canada. Once I knew this, I wondered if it could ever become my full-time career; I certainly hoped it might. It felt like my childhood dream of becoming a missionary, but through music. I want to be a musicianary, I joked to myself. This dream brought up lots of insecurities too—I worried that I wasn’t good enough at singing or songwriting—but most of all it brought up embarrassment about my “secret personal struggles.”
Amid the growing musical opportunities in my teens, my sexuality hadn’t shown any signs of being a phase. My feelings for girls were real as ever. Daily, I played mind games with myself to silence the thoughts. Who you’re attracted to isn’t a big part of life anyway, I told myself. I mean, it’s just one small fraction of what it means to be human. I can shut it out, stay single, and have a perfectly happy and fulfilled future … I was trying to compartmentalize my heart, and silence my emotions, but it was a struggle I couldn’t seem to win.
Because of this, despite the exciting musical doors that were opening, I was feeling less and less enthusiastic about life. As I segmented my identity into good and bad parts, I felt like I was fragmenting. A dark cloud fell from the sky and settled over my mind and heart.
In my anxiety, I created long, detailed prayers that I would recite to myself each time I felt attracted to a girl. It was my own private liturgy—my internal confession booth—in which I told God how sorry I was ten times a day. My mind became a complex place, a far cry from the mind of the simple, happy child I had been before.
Friends in my class noticed a change in my previously carefree personality. I became aloof and felt awkward in my own skin; I slouched my shoulders and didn’t look people in the eye. Mostly I had my Walkman headphones plugged in, shutting out the world, with my midnight-blue denim jacket buttoned all the way up to the top like a suit of armor.
I began throwing my packed lunches away and stopped eating during school hours. I didn’t know how to relate to my body anymore. It seemed to be betraying me with its sinful desires, so I didn’t want to give it food. My flesh and blood were now the enemy; I was fighting a battle against myself.
Do you think there’s any chance he likes me?” one girl asked, looking hopeful, as she ate her sandwich. “I mean, he did sit next to me on the bus the other day—and I could’ve sworn he was looking at my hair and my outfit. I just can’t stop thinking about him.”
I never knew quite how to handle these conversations. I wanted to be part of the crowd, so I listened to my classmates sharing their latest stories. But when someone casually asked me, “So, Vicky, which of the guys do you like? Anyone you’ve got your eye on? Who have you been