0: Born and baptized in a Vermont federated congregation in a church building that's now a dance studio.
5: Watches Bertolucci's
Little Buddha at way too young an age and becomes intensely interested in Buddhism. Starts reading sanitized Western texts on Buddhism; precocious reader, reads these texts at about a middle school level.
8: Moves from Vermont to a suburb in South Jersey. Immediately becomes intensely interested in Modern Paganism after no longer having immediate access to woods, fields, etc.
11: Reads some R.C. Zaehner book and begins attending Unitarian Universalist church with mother. Starts to believe in one god.
13: Becomes serious Anglophile after reading James Herriot's vet books. Starts going to Christmas and Easter services at local ultra-High Church Episcopalian parish.
14: Has mystical experience at Christmas Eve service. Takes communion for the first time.
16: Stops going to UU church and becomes semi-regular casual Episcopalian churchgoer.
17: Starts regularly attending a strongly left-liberal college parish. Somewhere around this point, realizes mild gender dysphoria.
19: Confirmed in Episcopal Church. Develops vague interest in becoming an ordained minister. Gender dysphoria intensifies.
21: Graduates college. Accepted into divinity school, albeit not on an ordination track due to several preexisting priests' and ministers' advice not to. Comes out as trans.
22: Starts divinity school. For about a year, dates a woman from a much more conservative faith background. Relationship is extremely physically undemonstrative. Gender dysphoria begins to lessen.
23: Watches
Little Buddha again and somehow gets less out of it. Develops strong comparative theology focus in divinity school. Stops self-identifying as trans. At the time, attributes this to some sort of theological crisis; later realizes that it was in fact part of a natural psychological evolution with little specifically religious content. Gets dragged over it on Atlas Forum, including by OP of this thread. Girlfriend comes out as a lesbian and relationship ends. At divinity school, develops even more High Church theological opinions, eventually trending towards markedly theologically conservative forms of Roman Catholicism.
24: Received into Catholic Church via eyebrow-raisingly conservative RCIA process. Nasty falling-out with conservative/trad friends over their increasingly bigoted and MAGA-bot political opinions about six months later. Receives master's degree in theology.
25: Integrates into faith community of (normal, sane) center-right-to-center-left young adult Catholics among grad students at undergrad alma mater. Beginning of chronic low-level crisis of faith over abuse scandals. Visits Assisi and Rome.
26: Crisis of faith over abuse scandals continues, but still committed to Catholicism. Stops caring about theology of sexuality almost entirely. Realizes own bisexuality, actually starts acting more "queer" in everyday life than when trans Episcopalian. Goes on a few dates, including one with a much older man (the rest are with a woman my own age); none of them go well. Still not sexually active and with no plans to become sexually active in the immediate future.
27:
