As for me...

For one of the most outstanding experiences of a lifetime, let us turn back. some years ago when life was filled with faith and hope and love. A convert to Catholicism escaped society's fangs and took refuge behind convent walls. Up to this point I had glanced at the lesbian world from a distance at various clubs in San Francisco, huddled under the protecting arm of my brother. These women frightened me and made me wonder if all lesbians take on all the crude masculine traits so appalling in men and even grotesque when found exaggerated in women. To be a lesbian, was it first necessary to be tough? In my imaginary and to this point secret love of women, I turned to those who were gentle, warm, sincere and beautiful because of their feminine charm. Was it great wonder that the dear Sisters attracted me? They are indeed a living personification of these ideal attributes, I had an insatiable desire to join these women in their flight to God. My existence now for the first time took on real meaning. God made me a little different' so I would be free to devote my life to Him, and my art, and to the task of helping, with understanding eyes, other souls lost in loneliness.

The happiest moment in my life (now looked back upon with a smile) was that first night in the convent. Kneeling alone at the side of my bed in a small cubicle, I thanked God for a dream fulfilled in that I really had a place in the world; for love fulfilled in that I belonged to someone and that someone loved me. I could hear faint sounds from the other cubicles youngsters in their late teens, sobbing, away from the protecting mother's love for the first time, as they embraced a new, strange life. I wept too as joy and peace overflowed. Five years past, and it was decided by a confessor that because of homosexual tendencies, which had no personal satisfaction in any way, I would forever be a victim of frustration that would and had begun to form a neurotic personality. I was to return to the world and although my life would always be grey, I should just make the best of it.

I used to look with sadness upon those who had left the Church because there was no room for them in the inn. Now, having joined their ranks, I look with sadness at the Church, wondering when she will open her eyes and lend a helping hand to her lost sheep.

Miss M.