by Katherine Kelaidis  |  ελληνικά  |  ру́сский

Last August, the first real friend I ever made at church took his own life. Jonathan (not his real name) was a year ahead of me at Cal where we met my freshman year. He was received into the Orthodox Church during the weekly liturgy our Orthodox Christian Fellowship chapter held in a chapel located in a literal upper room. Jonathan and I quickly became friends. We were both sarcastic Classics majors with a penchant for drag queens and Baroque music. We bonded in the easy way that freaks who have found their tribe so often do.

This was despite the fact that by most appearances we were very different people. I was a Greek girl raised in the suburbs of Denver, Colorado by upper-middle-class parents, cherished and doted on in a world where I was free to worry about my grades and whether that boy in Physics liked me. Jonathan was an orphan raised in poverty in California’s Central Valley. He was biracial and gay in a place that was segregated and straight. If my life was defined and frequently limited by the ties that bind me, his life was about searching for a place where he could be entirely himself, loved without condition or expectation.

That search brought him to the Orthodox Church. And we failed him. Continue Reading…