Betcher ass. I can smell them. I can smell the cheap pulp paper they were printed on. Those tracts haunted my childhood, terrified me with their depictions of hell and Satan.

The illustrators depicted liberal Christians and gay people as physically disgusting looking. As I began to identify as both liberal and gay, I onboarded that sense of self shame and disgust.

Mostly I felt terrified. I first began to experience Chick tracts after watching a film in church (I was 9 or 10) about the rapture, end times, and the flames and maggots of hell.

When I say I could not sleep for a year, I’m not exaggerating for effect. I was out of my mind with fear. My mother would tuck me into bed, and I would squeeze my eyes shut and press my hands against them as hard as I could. My body would shake as my mind went back to that film and to the Chick tracts.

Only true exhaustion would let me sleep, and even then I often woke up in the middle of a nightmare.

Oh, and that was before I realized I was gay. After that realization, I suffered even more.