Sorting It Out - Part 1

At this point in my life I have spent more time out of organized religion than in it and I can definitively say that I feel a difference in myself and my quality of life.

I have way less guilt and anxiety and self-doubt and self-loathing. 

I’m part of a group chat with a few folks I went to bible college with and we all have the same kind of survivor’s guilt feeling about the whole experience. My experience church youth groups and bible college destroyed my self-confidence and self-esteem and filled me with anxiety, self-loathing, and guilt because I never felt like I fully fit in those places. 

As the parent now myself I have been processing through a lot of memories and emotions and realize and can see more clearly how absolutely fucked up some parts of my childhood were thanks in some part, but not entirely, to organized religion and how it was practiced around me. 

My former default was to just go along with whatever made the other person happy and would avoid conflict. That is what was modeled for me and it was and is not a healthy way to go through life and has not served me well in my life. It has been and remains a conscious effort to recognize and correct the just go along with it mentality and behavior. 

It’s a conscious effort to recognize and correct my behavior when I find myself in a situation where I don’t necessarily agree but also don’t want to risk any kind of conflict. Not going along with something I don’t agree with doesn’t mean the only response option is the nuclear option of blowing up and causing harm to the relationship (something else I saw modeled growing up). It has taken a significant amount of conscious effort to unlearn so much of what I learned and saw modeled growing up and I’m still working on it. 

When I was a sophomore in high school and had given up and didn’t care about school anymore my mother started going to a new church which meant I had no choice but to go. I was compelled to get involved with the youth group. I soon discovered that the typical “don’t ever leave the house” rule did not apply if it was something church related. Doing church stuff was the ONLY acceptable reason to not be home so I used this new loophole to my advantage to be gone as much as possible. 

If there was something going on at the church, I was there. Not out of devotion to the cause but the desire to not be at home. 

When the time to go to college was approaching I got it in my head that I had to go to bible college. Again, because that was the only way I saw to get out of the house and completely away from the dysfunction I did it. Once there, I never felt like I truly fit in or even belonged there. 

Years later I was finally able to put my finger on why I felt this way: I never actually believed or bought into the religion stuff. Going along with it was necessary for survival in my home situation so it was not really an option to not go along with it. 

I knew what to say and how to act but deep down I never fully believed it. It was the only way to not be at home. 

Growing up all the adults around me used yelling and shame (in the name of god) to control my behavior and eventually it broke my will to do anything and I gave up. 

Looking back I see that I was “tended to” rather than “raised”. I was never taught about how to handle money. I was never allowed to have an after school job. Any mention of possible career paths was met with “you’re called to be a pastor” and never discussed further. Another example of how my future was stolen. 

It probably wasn’t the strongest sign that vocational religion wasn’t the thing for me when I had to be reminded that that’s what I was “called” to do with my life. My heart and mind were never really in it. 

This post was originally longer but I decided to end it here and save the rest of the original post for a part 2. 

Busy Q3

I’ve been kind of quiet on the old blogosphere lately because after two years of being cautious and doing everything we could to stay safe and healthy we had the opportunity to travel and we took those opportunities.

After over two years of being voluntarily homebound and avoiding people we felt confident enough to travel between vaccines and continuing to practice mitigation measures. So far this year we have been to New Orleans, Paris, New York, and Miami with another trip to New York planned before the end of the year. 

It feels weird to be traveling again and it also feels good. We missed adventures and fancy hotels and the Tiny Human hadn’t really been anywhere that she could remember except a local relatives house but that’s not really the same. 

The Tiny Human has already established herself as a fancy hotel and room service kind of girl and charms the staff everywhere we go. She is truly a force to be reckoned with. 

With the holidays coming there is sure to be a flood of feelings and memories - some good, some bad - that will need to be dealt with. 

Overall time and distance have helped with the healing and forgetting but there are still some that pop up that have to be dealt with every year. 

My main goal as a parent is to provide a childhood and homelife that will not require a therapist or blog of her own later in life. I can’t guarantee that but I can do my best to not be part of the reason. 

Next time, whenever that is, I plan on sharing why my obsession this holiday season is a vinyl copy of Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol II. 

If you’ve read this blog before and suspect it has something to do with Auntagonist you’re correct! Please see someone at the Courtesy Desk to claim your prize. 

I am working on (or attempting to) a handful of other writing projects and will try to be more consistent with my posts and venting in the new year. 

Boring Update

I realize it’s been almost two months since I’ve shared anything here and I’m sure it’s been lonely without my tales of childhood traumas. For those I have left unentertained, I apologize. With both of us working full time and wrangling a constantly growing Tiny Human free time to write or read or shower is at a premium and I don’t always have the energy or mental capacity to put fingers to keys and make the magic happen. 

I do have a couple of pieces in the hopper that should be interesting and hope to have those done and posted in the next couple weeks. 

Will it be everyone’s favorite thing? Probably not. 

Will it be scandalous? Also no. 

There will be more weird stories from my childhood coming soon enough. 

Out of sight. Out of mind.

Even though the current state of my relationship with my mother is not the best it’s ever been, I am not a monster so I texted my mother first thing to say Happy Mother’s Day, sent flowers, and let her know a gift card was coming via email. Again, because I’m not a monster.

Not wanting to just text, I called her around noon and by the conversations happening and hearing her Real Family try to get her attention while she was on the phone I clearly interrupted whatever she was in the middle of. 

No big deal. I’m used to it.

Then, unprompted, just after we had finished dinner she called her daughter-in-law to wish her happy Mother’s Day which I thought was a lovely gesture. 

It was nice until it wasn’t.

Her daughter-in-law put the call on FaceTime so her only grandchild could see her and wish her a Happy Mother’s Day. She did and my mother responded “oh, thank you [REDACTED]” and then her face went pale. 

She called her only grandchild the name of my cousin’s kid.

What the actual fuck. I know it’s been almost three years since she has seen her only grandchild in person but more than just a slip of the tongue, to me, it’s very telling of the level of actual priority that her only grandchild has in her life. 

She was looking at her on FaceTime. Looking at her. Fortunately, her only grandchild did not pick up on what had juts happened and I give myself a pat on the back for not yelling out “WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY?!?! YOU HAVE ONE GRANDCHILD!!! IS ONE NAME TOO MUCH TO REMEMBER?!?!”

I tried to call my mother about a half hour later and she let the call go to voicemail. I suspect she knew the reason for my call and didn’t want to hear it when she probably still had Real Family duties to attend to. 

I thought about this whole situation and wondered if I had lived my life like my birth family expected and gotten a menial job, never moved out, never left home or gone to college, and had moved with them to deep red Chucklefuck, Indiana if my relationship with my mother would be different. And then I remember that Middle Sister would still be around demanding her attention. 

So no. Nothing would be better. 

I am where I’m meant to be and with the people I’m meant to be with. 

The point that keeps coming around is that it is possible to outgrow even birth family relationships and that’s where I am with this. It’s a little surprising and not the most pleasant feeling but it is what it is. 

My nuclear family and our happiness and wellbeing come first and not everyone I thought would be part of it will be. 

And that’s ok.