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.