Your Custom Text Here
Change is coming but it’s not as ominous as it may sound. I will be moving this part of the site off the main page but it will still be just a click away from the menu at the top by clicking Ramblings and all of my brain and heart dumps will still be here for your amusement.
The main page will soon be home to posts that are writing about writing. Sort of a public accountability journal and ideas sandbox as a work on different projects and stories.
In the last post, Incoming Doozy, I thought in a few days I would put into words all of the thoughts and feelings and memories that have been coming to the top but it’s been overwhelming and I’m processing it as I can. There will be much more to the story but this is as good a place as any to start.
Late in the afternoon on a spring day my future was stolen. Not completely, mind you. I did continue to age and have done things but recent revelations have brought to light the previously unknown significance of my mother deciding to pull me out of the school I was in at the time to put me in a school that she, in her extremely limited worldview, felt was “better”.
It was not.
To get into the school she was pulling me out of I had to take a test. I recently learned what kind of test it was and what the required score was to get into my school. Since I was also on the younger side because of a late birthday it’s a more significant achievement.
An achievement that was discarded because I would have had to take the subway and bus to school and apparently worrying about a 6 foot tall, 200lb person being kidnapped is a totally normal thing. In reality, I can see in hindsight it is because I would have been more independent and less under the ever watching eyes of my extended family (that I lived with) who never left home and didn’t think anyone should ever leave home.
See what I was up against? Not fun.
At the new school I was frustrated and bored depressed. Even though I knew it was her financial choice I didn’t care and I didn’t try. I did what I had to do to get through it.
Shortly after starting the new school we started attending a new church. It was fine. At first. Looking back with years of experience and wisdom I see how churches are similar to pyramid schemes and prey on emotion and fear of missing out and creating a sense of need. When I was in grad school a professor talked about a book that compared the “religion” of basketball in some parts of the country to pentecostal churches and found similarities in the whole group mood/emotion aspects of it.
I started going to the youth group and that was traumatizing at the time and in retrospect and does not need to be elaborated on at this time.
College was another matter where I was left rudderless.
No one in my immediate family had gone to college so there was no precedent or idea of what to do. At the new school most kids were going to one of a few Lutheran colleges nearby and that didn’t interest me at all.
By this point, the youth pastor had suggested I go to bible college. I went on a campus visit trip and thought it wasn’t terrible and if nothing else it would get me out of the house.
One thing (of the many blazing red flags I willfully ignored about the bible college) I did not consider is that the school was unaccredited which means that the credits earned there were useless at any non-bible college. I would come to regret this later.
This is the first of what will probably be many therapeutic brain dumps of thoughts, emotions, and feelings that I am only now able to recognize and process.
Lots of additional thoughts and feelings on all the years spent wasted in and on religion.
I started writing a post tonight and it felt like every sentence I wrote brought up another memory or bullshit situation.
Long story short and spoiler alert: my future was stolen from me and some crucial development seriously delayed because of my mother’s fear of me becoming independent and whatever shame or pressure that would bring from the rest of the relatives I lived with growig up.
It wasn’t necessarily about me rising above anyone it’s that they wanted to keep me down with them.
Opportunities were taken and I was treated like an ignorant child way too long. I will try to not let scope creep take over the post and it end up being thousands of words but this is definitely not a quick and easy post but I do think it’s something that needs to be said if nothing else for my own mental health and sanity.
Maybe all of the past events have something to do with why I had to literally yell at my mother to get on the plane a couple days before my wedding and why it’s been over 3 1/2 years since she’s seen her only grandchild.
One disturbing thing that is becoming clearer to me as I work through and process things is I’m not sure how important I am or ever was to my mother or the rest of my extended family.
Actions speak louder and some of the stuff that happened was deafening.
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.