It has been an...unpleasant week.
Work has been worky.
People have been a trial.
Memories have stunk.
The worst part of hell will be the regret. Having to relive over and again the time you ultimately rejected Grace. And the times you made an utter and complete ass of yourself before the watching world.
An unpleasant week.

As to memories, I recall my upbringing, and the seemingly contradictory life I live today. My father was a homosexual, and a drunk. (Spare me the idiocy: "Well, YOU'RE here..." Think of me as an experiment in an alternative lifestyle.) His mother was a moderating-and perhaps causative- influence in his life, and upon her death, when I was in ninth or tenth grade, all bets were off. The charming, genteel, delusions-of-mint-juleps-on-the-veranda disappeared into a bottle. I say drunk because though he did the AA and State Hospital trip, he schmoozed his way through to release. He was charming, and knew how to answer the questions, and after his vacation, he would return to the bottle. Bottles. I lived with him. I know.

Couple this with his degeneration into crudity. The Pop Media Machine seeks to cast homosexuality in a soft-focus shot. Romantic, even. I have seen the Wine and Roses, and it is cheap vodka and tobacco and the twisting of the most innocent comment into sexual innuendo.
I have been propositioned by his pals -how sweet- and pawed at like the farmer's virgin daughter. Sophisticated and cosmopolitan, I'll say. The sheer ruttishness of what he became haunts me to this day, and I avoid my extended family mostly because of all the memory triggers involved. And let me tell you, there is nothing to establish one's self-worth like seeing your dad's exploits on your high school bathroom wall. Suffice to say that I give precisely zero pass to the "lifestyle".

As to my contradictory life, well, I have a surprisingly large number of homosexual friends and acquaintances. Good friends, who love and appreciate me, even with my being a believer, and all. I treasure them, pray good for them, and they know that they can call on me at need. I say this not to do the Pharisee Dance (blow the trumpet, watch me prance...what a GOOD person am I...), but rather to marvel at the redeeming work of Christ. I'm not whole, but I'm a lot less broken! Where hatred could dwell, there is...something better.

I also share this to show that Bad Upbringings can be triumphed over.