A sad chapter, but one I can relate to in a way.
Chris is currently in a very dark place, and I'm not sure just what he can do to get out of it. I'm tempted to say that he must confide in Kay, ("A trouble shared is a trouble halved" sort of thing) but I'm not sure he currently has the strength to do so. I don't think he will ever be able to recover just by himself, though. Maybe ringing an LGBT helpline might help? But would he even have the courage to do that? Perhaps - if only because at age sixteen he had had the courage (or do I mean stupidity?) to contact The Release Trust (and later to talk to Pastor Clive). And sadly, because of the way that all turned out, he may feel a reluctance now to seek help from other organisations.
I'm just wondering whether Chris ever spoke to his older sister after his suicide attempt. And if not whether an approach to her might help. All his mum said was that dad had decided he wasn't welcome any more. There's nothing so far in the story to let us know what his sister's reaction might have been...
I see there are only another three chapters left. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that Chris does find a way out of the hole that he is currently in (if only because I'm a sucker for happy endings). I suppose the only way to find out is for me to keep on reading.
++++
As I have come late to this story, I am deliberately not reading any of the existing comments to any chapter before making my own, because I don't want my thoughts to be influenced by what others have already said. If that means that I am repeating things others have already written, all I can do is apologise.
++++
I turned my back on the (RC) church when I was about eleven, and by the time I was sixteen I was (and still am) a committed atheist, so I didn't go through exactly the same things that Chris did. But homosexuality was still illegal at the time (I was reared in England). You could be put in prison for engaging in same sex practices; you could even be forced into aversion therapy "treatment". I knew about electric shock treatment that was in practice at the time. I had read about the Profumo Affair, so I knew that homosexuality was definitely frowned upon. I had read newspaper reports about unfortunates who were in court for unnatural practices and, even when the reports were often vague in the extreme, I was intelligent enough to be able to read between the lines and understand what was being written about.
So I lived my younger life in denial. Nowadays it would be referred to as internalised homophobia. Even when homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967, a few months before my twentieth birthday, I still remained in denial. It would be a good few years before I would find the strength to come out to myself even; and then it still took me another few years before I was able to come out to anyone else. I was fortunate. I lost no important friends and, unlike Chris, not a single family member ever treated me any differently once I did come out.
But I really can appreciate just how difficult Chris must be finding things just at the point of his story.
