The letter slipped under Elijah's door.

[[Content warning: severe internalized homophobia. Click here for an important message.]]
 

Dear Elijah,
 
if I may call you that. I realise that I have hurt you and wronged you in more ways than you probably know. Rest assured that you shall not have to deal with me anymore, for I am leaving Whitby. But I owe you an explanation for what happened last night, and I must beg your forgiveness for how I’ve mistreated you.
 
Please know that I am not angry with you, and never was. The reason I could not speak to you last night was because I was overcome with emotion and assailed by my inner enemies with such force that it took all my strength to stay in control of myself at all. I dread to think what might have happened, had you seen me cry. You, with all your kindness and compassion, would probably have tried to comfort me, and I would have unleashed the evil I’ve been battling for these past few months and betrayed your trust and my own nature. 
 
And here I must make my shameful confession: When you came to me and first confessed your darkest struggle, I felt a connection with you, one that one far too strong, and which I ought to never have felt. It was not merely the purity of heart with which you presented yourself. It was the fact that your struggle was my own and has been for all my life. Only once did I fall, when I was in the seminary and I swore never to fall again. I have never wanted anything so much as to serve God and the Church and the people in the Church. I believed that giving myself to it completely would draw my mind away from the sinfulness inside of me and make up for it. But it’s always been there, ready to attack in moments of weakness and despair. 
 
And then you came along like a Bathsheba, such beauty you displayed that day, not even in body, for I could not see you, but in soul. And I could not look away, and I knew it would be my downfall. Forgive me, Elijah. I am deeply ashamed to confess this, but I desired you from that day. And as I got to know you better, your beauty only seemed to grow, and I knew that I would fall and do terrible things if I did not cast you out of my life. I know I have been cold to you at times, but it was because I did not want to feel what I felt for you. I would rather hurt your feelings and keep my distance than betray the trust you had so earnestly placed in me. But even that one thing I could not do for you. Much as I told myself I was avoiding you, I sought for ways to be around you all the time. And more than that, my mind was on you all the time. I prayed, I fasted, I did penance in every way I could, but I seemed unable to extinguish this terrible passion. The more rigidly I tried mortify this flesh, the stronger my inordinate desires grew. Can you ever forgive me for such a betrayal of your trust and the conflicting messages I have given you in these past months? I am truly ashamed.
 
But my sins against you did not stop there. For when you confessed your feelings for this other man, and I should have been there to guide you and journey with you, my own feelings got in the way. I have told you what the Church teaches and I told myself that it was concern for your soul that guided me. But even then, I knew that that was not the whole truth. I have searched and searched my soul, and can no longer hide this evil from myself, and ought not hide it from you: I was consumed by jealousy and sought to drive you away from him. I may have told you what I was supposed to tell you, and my words may have been true, but it was said out of selfishness and jealousy. I did not want to save your soul for God. I wanted to save it for myself. Forgive me. I wish I had been a better man.
 
Last night, I was delighted with an opportunity to go see you, even if it was over this poor man’s back. And then that turned round and hit me in the face, though that was no less than I deserved. It made everything so obvious to me: how I had been feeling all this time, and how I was hurting for what I could not have, and how I should not desire that to begin with. I was jealous. I kept seeing the way you had so tenderly taken that man’s hand and could not put it out of my head. It is as if the evil within me was unleashed at last to the full extent. Forgive me, Elijah. At least by not opening my door, and by sending you away, I have done you one favour.
 
I can no longer be a priest or serve the church. I feel like a liar. Everything has come apart. I will go on a retreat and pray for mercy, and perhaps God will find me and lead me again in the desert, if I repent. I no longer know who I am or what I believe in. But know one thing: I never condemned you. I never hated you. For these past months, I have come to doubt everything. And now my doubt is complete. I do not know why some people’s natures are disordered like ours. But the teachings I have been taught and have taught no longer seem to suffice. This very church has become foreign to me, no longer my home. It is as if its language has become strange to me and I can no longer understand my live and the lives of the people around me within it. I have no answers left. You must make your own choices before God and stand by them. I cannot condemn you. There was a holy beauty in the way you took that man’s hand. Let me be damned for saying it. 
 
I hope you will find it in your heart to forgive me. If I ever meant anything to you, I ask that you burn this letter after reading it. I need not tell you what harm it could do in the wrong hands. But I stand under your judgement now and will leave it to your mercy, for I know I cannot ask for more. Farewell, Elijah. I, for my part, am grateful to have known you, even if every shadow within me was marked out so much clearer in your light.
 
G.R.