Your anxiety attach in the church sounds like a compromise formation. A what? Your unconscious wants to express the pain you feel about your own lo… - Alison Bechdel

Your unconscious wants to express the pain you feel about your own lost innocence. But your ego wants to keep it repressed. To the compromise is anxiety.

At thirteen, I was so paralyzed with self-consciousness that sometimes I'd get home from school and realize I hadn't spoken out loud all day. Later, I would blame my social awkwardness on my homosexuality. But now I speculate that being a lesbian actually saved me... If it weren't for the unconventionality of my desires, my mind might never have been forced to reckon with my body.

The sudden approximation of my dull, provincial life to a New Yorker cartoon was exhilarating.

I did not draw a conscious parallel to my own sexuality, much less my father's. But the immersion — like green dishwashing liquid bathing a cuticle — left me supple and open to possibility.