Good morning! I’m here to continue on the story of my life. Part 3
I felt like I had to earn my mother’s affection. That to make her proud of me, I had to conform to her picture of how my life should be. In my mind, it came down to two choices. I could change everything about who I was and have my mother’s praise and love, or grow into myself knowing I’d never have that mother daughter bond I so strongly craved. Whether consciencely or unconsciously, I chose to be who I am, but I was still too afraid to let anyone really see.
I moved out of my parents house when I was 19. I was desperate to leave, so my living arrangements weren’t great. I moved in with a coworker and her two sons. She was a pot head and alcoholic. We threw parties every weekend. This was also the beginning of my whore phase. I’d kiss anyone who asked. I was still far more reserved about who I had sex with, but I’d fool around with anyone I found attractive enough. The chasm between who I showed to church and who I was becoming grew deeper and wider with every passing day. I started having issues with my housemate. She’d do things while she was high or drunk and not remember it and deny it happened. She broke my hookah and didnt tell me then tried to blame the cat. After her 10 yr old son and I had to drag her back inside when she passed out in the front yard, I decided it was time for me to go. I moved in with my Grandpa. It was less than ideal for distancing myself from my parents, but it was rent free and a warm home to sleep in. Grandpa didnt keep tabs on me. He’d leave town for days or even weeks at a time and leave me in the house alone. The parties stopped, but the whore phase didn’t. That really didn’t stop until I found a nearly textbook defintion friend with benefits. We were both lonely and just needed some comanionship. I spent a lot of time at his apartment. He was precisely what I needed at that exact point in time. Until he found a girl he was truly interested in and cut of the fwb to pursue her. So there I was living a double life, now alone, with only my friends to keep me company.
I had two groups of friends, so opposite and different black and white have more in common. I had my school friends and my church friends. But I think only three are worth mentioning. My best friend, my now husband, and the Sunday School College Class parents.
I hated my best friend when I first met him. He was younger than me and he played the piano better than me. It was an unforgivable crime. For the next couple years the hatred turned to simple indifference. We didn’t become real friends until we started to attend the same school. There we formed an incredible bond, that was also incredibly challenged and nearly broken. We had to work to rebuild our friendship, and now they’re like family to us.
I remember clearly when a school friend invited me out to go rock climbing with him and some pals. Now, at this time I had sworn off men, especially friends of this person. I’d already dated his middle school bestie, I’d fooled around with him, and his current best friend was in love with me. I had a fun time that day, three of his other friends had been there, but like I said, I purposely ignored them. A little bit later, there was a Daft Punk tribute concert. Since Daft Punk doesnt seem to go on tour, and certainly never in the US, I saw this an an only opportunity. I had to go. So I got someone to go with me, but one of the three pals wanted to come as well. No biggie I thought, he’s cool then. But I remember actively avoiding eye contact. Not speaking to him. I wanted no connection with anymore of this guy’s friends. We got in and it was crowded. Once the concert started and everyone started dancing we got pushed, it got hot, we lost my friend. He says to me, we’re going to need to hang on to each other so we don’t get separated. I agreed. We ended up dancing together the rest of the concert. So much for no contact. About a week later a big storm rolled in, so everyone piled in the truck to chase it. He talked to me, I brushed him off. He’d lean up between the seats and start conversations. I had been told (by a more than likely jealous third party who wanted me to hate him) he was just a playboy. He couldn’t care about me, I was just sex for him. But by that point I didn’t care, if this was a one time fling, so be it. He was too charming and he’d gotten to me. So after we got back, I stayed the night with him. We started dating after that, and as they say, the rest is history. Looking back and hearing some of the things he said to me, I know he had decided from the beginning this was it for him. I took a little time to figure it out, but he knew from the start.
The church classes had a teacher, usually a man and wife, and then class parents. They were there for company and encouragement. Our college class had an older couple as parents who had kids our age, but whom we’d never seen because their kids were never around and never visited. A lot of the class became close with them as sort of their “adopted” children.
I was still living at Grandpa’s house still attending the same church and still seeing my now husband, and I was still too afraid to leave my old life. Even though I wanted to I was consumed by my fear and it overpowered any other desire. During this time my friend kept encouraging me to leave the church but I hadn’t done it. She told me that attending a church because you’re too afraid not to is not a reason to attend a church.
The class parents took me out to dinner at some point during this time. I went because free food. They told me they were my real friends. That they loved me and they would be there for me no matter what. My other friends, they wouldn’t stick around. They were flakey friends who’d stop caring for me if I stopped going out with them. Even my other Christian friends would forget me, my only true friends were within the church. This is a conversation I still play in my head.
It was also around this time that my best friend and I had a bad falling out. He had made me very angry and I decided I wasn’t going to call or text him until he called or texted me first and we didn’t speak for nearly a year. My boyfriend asked me to move in with him, and I agreed, which was of course an absolute disgrace to the church, so I lied about who I was living with. The friend who’d been encouraging me asked me instead to come to church with them as support so I wouldn’t feel as though I was alone. I finally did only with their backing could I have enough courage to finally leave. But yet that was still the most terrifying experience that I have ever had. It doesn’t sound like much when you hear it but understand that it was all mental barriers that I had to break out to make leaving even possible.There were a lot of emotions are going on at the same time. I remember laying in the floor of my boyfriend’s apartment and crying in the dark.
But of course the years and years that this has been building up is not what anybody saw because none of them knew what was going on all they saw was I had a new boyfriend and now I had gone and so they all blamed him. My mother actively tried to set me up on dates with other guys that she liked better. She would interrogate me abouy why I liked him and yet no answer I ever gave was good enough. Alternatively she’d interrogate me why I didn’t like the guys that she had picked for me and none of those answers were ever good enough for her either. I also heard some horribly racist things come out of people’s mouths. Things like, I don’t want any brown children in my family, he can’t be loyal to you because he’s Mexican, and he’s going to cheat on you because I’ve never known a Mexican that didn’t cheat on his woman. Subtle things like discovering his great grandfather was Spanish and then on telling people he was actually Spanish, or being shocked he had a good job.
I’d never left church going or God or religion and yet somehow I was still falling away from the Lord and needed saving. I was told that we needed to just elope that we couldn’t have a wedding anymore because we lived together, that we were going to have a bastard child. As though that would’ve made the childs life less valuable. That my life could not truly be fulfilling unless I came back to the Lord, by which they meant come back to that church and fall back into line. Then, as time went on, no one even tried to keep in touch with me. None of my church friends so much as texted me. The people who claimed they’d be there for me all dissipated as soon as I didn’t attend church with them, as though they forgot I ever existed. I remember back to that dinner, and our class parents claiming to love me, but they also left me behind without a second thought.
All of this just made me more and more and more angry. I never did lose faith in God because I don’t believe that these things were fueled by God or a devotion to him. I’ve lost faith in people. Christian people who claim to follow Jesus because they say words with their mouths and yet don’t follow the actions of Jesus. But they’re showing to the world that this is what our faith looks like and so that is how the world defines Christian. So I guess you could say I’ve lost faith in Christianity.
Dose of Sunshine 