Vernica Vargas Guadalupe Rebecca Agosta English 1101-039 February 7, 2014

My conflicted identity I was born and raised in Ponce, Puerto Rico. My mom was always working and my dad was living in the United States so my grandparents basically ended up raising me. They are the most religious people I know and they passed their beliefs on to me. In every memory of my childhood that I have, there is God, Jesus, La Virgen del Rosario del Pozo(Virgin Mary from Puerto Rico), guardian angels and etc. in them. I remember that every Sunday I would go to church and every Wednesday I would go to La Misisn, which is a catholic group that does community service and tries to get more people to go to church and be more aware of God and La Virgen del Rosario del Pozo. Also, almost every Saturday I would go to El Pozo de Sbana Grande (El Rincn), the place where La Virgen del Rosario del Pozo appeared in Puerto Rico in 1943, so it is a sacred place. All of these places and activities are part of my religion and me. I am Catholic, or to be more specific Roman Catholic. That is what my grandparents have taught me all my life for as long as I can remember. I did not choose this, but it is still a big part of my life. I am the youngest of 6 kids. My first couple of years I was a very happy girl, until my parents got divorced. Thats when my life came tumbling down. My dad decided to move to the United States and take my oldest brother and my sister with him. A year later he took my other

brother. Then, it was just me, my twin brothers, my mom, and my grandparents. After a while my dad decided to take the twins away also. I was in a depression state for a while because I was completely alone all of a sudden. If I think back to those moments, I can remember one person that was there for me always, John. He was my confident, my friend, my brother, my

everything, and even after I moved to the US, he moved here a year later too. So we have basically been together our whole lives. I have four blood brothers and a sister and if add him to that list, I can honestly say hes the closet one to me. I was baptized when I was just a few says old. I did my First Communion, my

Confirmation and I went to catecismo, which is catholic school on the weekends, throughout all my childhood years up until I moved to the United States. Since I was little, I have been My

taught the difference between what was right and wrong, good and bad and etc.

grandparents taught me the 10 Commandments, and I learned about all kinds of sins and the consequences if I ever committed one. There was this one sin that my grandmother was always talking about, and that was homosexuality. She would tell me bedtime stories that ended up teaching me something, but there was one in specific that she would tell me very often. It was about these two cities that were filled with sinners and the most common sin committed was homosexuality. God sent an angel to warn them but they did not listen so he punished them by sending a wrath of fire and destroying both cities. This story taught me the consequences of not following Gods orders and not repenting your sins. I have honestly never agreed on the hate against homosexuals. I would just go with the flow and obey what my grandma would say. I never really put that much thought into it, but then I moved to the United States. I started to grow up and develop my own thoughts and my own opinions. I started doubting all of that because I was not living with my grandmother

anymore so I was not subject to her daily lectures. Another reason was that here in the United States there is a lot of diversity so I met a lot of people with different backgrounds, beliefs, and preferences. I recently learned that John, the most amazing person I know, the one I mentioned earlier, is gay. Like I said before, he has always been there for me. We were raised together, we went to school together, at some point we have even lived together. A lot of people say we are very similar, but I think its because we spend so much time together that we started acting the same. I love him, he is part of my family, but now I know that he is gay so if I follow everything that my grandma has taught me and everything that the Catholic church has taught me, I should not be having the same feeling towards him because he is a sinner. In my mind all I can think about is Arent we all(sinners)? and that no one is perfect. The conflict that I am having is that I have been taught to not accept homosexuals my entire life, but now that my best friend came out of the closet I cant feel that way. I accept him for who he is because I have known him my whole life and I know he is not a bad person. Who am I to judge him?, especially when I am not a saint. I do not know if accepting him makes me a sinner too. Or if I keep contact and keep hanging out with him I will be banned from my church also. I cannot help but think of myself as a hypocrite because I keep going to church every Sunday. I just wish there was an option other than my religion or my opinion and

thoughts about accepting homosexuals, in this case my best friend. I cannot help but think how my identity will be affected if I chose one or the other, or if possible both.