Making My Religion: Part 2

The years passed slowly after my first heartbreak. When he broke up with me I felt like it was my fault. I did everything I could to keep holding on to him. The night we broke up I was in shock. I didn’t even see it coming. I partially think that his peers were the driving factor in the breakup. He was a junior in high school and I was an eighth grader still in middle school, so his friends would make fun of him all of the time. I remember holding it together on the telephone and asking him to please not hang up on me. I was holding onto something toxic with all my might. I knew when he hung up that was it. That was the end. Only it wasn’t.

We kept in touch all through my high school years. When he went to college he came to tell me goodbye and in that moment I felt like he was lost forever. I don’t know why he kept holding on to me for so long. He always knew he would never date me again. But I thought there was a chance, somehow. This was in fact, what I was convinced, was the love of my life. I thought after the first time we had sex the pressure would be off. I wouldn’t have anything to worry about or wonder about anymore. I was so incredibly wrong. It became something that was expected of me. Even after we broke up. I take full responsibility for that. He never pressured me or made me do anything I didn’t want to do. My fucked up mind just told me that it was something I had to do. So eventually he did begin to expect it. No matter how many relationships I had or what I was going through, he was there. It wasn't all sex. He was there when I needed someone to talk to, but usually afterwards, sex was a part of it. It was like a dog waiting to get it's bone after doing a trick.
         
At this point in my life I was STILL going to church, but I had switched to a different one. The Baptist thing was getting pretty boring so I tried the whole Pentecostal thing. It was something new. I was praying every single night. I read my bible every night. But I still felt empty. I tried to convince myself that God would eventually give me some sort of sign that I was on the right path. Or some sign that I wasn't. The environment had such an effect on me I just went with it, and pretended like I knew what I was talking about and what I was feeling. 

I don't know if I ever mentioned it or not, but I am a child of divorce. So. my views on love and fatherhood are so fucked up anyways, the whole God being your holy father sounded appealing. I mean, I never really had a real one so why not give this thing a shot - again.

Back to the whole daddy issues thing - I am now on good terms with my father, but it wasn't until after my mother died that I agreed to speak to him. My sister always would go and visit him and talk to him but I refused. Before Mom died, every time I saw him it made me so angry. Why would he leave us? Why did he never call? Why didn't he come to my prom or graduation or any of my birthdays? Was I to blame? I felt like at one time that I was the reason that my parents split up. Now that I am older I realize that they never had a healthy relationship to begin with. Maybe that was the reason why my concept of loving was so twisted?

I remember him beating the shit out of her every single night. As soon as he would come home he would tell us it was time for bed and dare us to come out of our rooms. We could hear her screaming. Every. Single. Night. As I got older I became accustomed to hearing my mother and father screaming at each other until he passed out in his food. After he would wake up he would sneak into our room and give us a kiss goodnight and tell us that he loved us. I always wondered what he loved more - us or the alcohol.

One night, I got brave. Maybe too brave. I told my little sister to stay in the room. I knew my mom had been acting unusual and she was feeling sick. I heard my dad screaming at her like he did every night and noticed she wasn't arguing back. So I snuck out of the room and discovered that she was lying in the floor covered in vomit. She couldn't breathe. She was having a seizure. He was kicking her as hard as he could all the while. It was a miracle she didn't have internal bleeding after that. I hit my dad and he told me if I called 9-1-1 he would beat my ass. I begged him for the phone but he wouldn't give it to me. He was so drunk he passed out in the bed and there I was, probably 8 years old at the time. I didn't know what to do. I bent down to see if my mother was still breathing. She choked on her vomit as I tried to roll her over onto her side so she wouldn't aspirate. I knew I had to do something. So I went into the room to make sure my sister was sleeping and didn't know what was going on. Thank goodness she was. I sprinted to my grandparents' house. It wasn't too far but it seemed like 10 miles to me. All I remember after that is flashing lights of the ambulance and my sister and I moving in with my grandparents. Everyone talked for weeks about how I had saved her life. But I didn't feel like a hero.

After that night she finally filed for divorce. My dad didn't even know until he got the papers. I remember feeling so relieved to be rid of him. No more brutal beatings for my mother. No more cleaning his face off from the food he passed out in. No more picking up beer bottles so my sister wouldn't drink the beer. I thought the divorce was the best thing that could have ever happened to us. Until it did happen.

Don't get me wrong. I love(d) my mother. However, she was a very unstable human being. Once the divorce went through and she had time to heal up after having extensive back surgeries, she went wild. Every night she would go to the bar and bring home a strange man. At one point she was in a relationship with a sex offender. He was always very touchy feeley with my sister, but he always gave me the creeps. He knew I didn't like him so he left me alone. He used to bring my sister tons of presents. More presents than he would bring to my mom. A week after they broke up he was put in jail for molesting his ex wife's young daughter who was about 6 years old.

That wasn't even the beginning. Little did I know I would be bailing my mom out of trouble the rest of my life. I can't even begin to tell you how many fights I had with her (ex)lovers. One time I had to hit one in the head with some pots and pans to get him to leave the house. That was at about age 15. I'm getting off subject here.

Anyways, my point is that church made me feel like I was home - sometimes. At least, it felt more like home than my actual home did.  When I went to the Pentecostal church, I felt like I was welcomed into a big happy family. They truly treated me as one of their own. I even began speaking out at some of the services directed towards youth when I was about 16.

Since I showed so much promise, I was invited to go on a mission trip with the church to Georgia. At the time I was in a relationship with one of the guys I went to church with. It was very innocent and we barely would even kiss each other. We weren't big on PDA at all. In fact, most of the time that we saw each other it was at church. We prayed together almost every day and truly believed God wanted us to be together. That we were meant to be together. So, the two of us decided we would both go on the mission trip and see what the Good Lord had in store for us.

I remember arriving in Georgia in such a hurry. We were late, so we were ushered straight into the camp before the kids could get there. We worked in a camp for underprivileged and homeless children. The age range was from about 5 years old to 18. The kids were amazing and it was such a humbling experience to be there with the kids. We would give them our testimonies in hopes of saving their souls. We were there for two weeks. Two wonderful weeks. I still count it as one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had in my life.

When we got home, my boyfriend's mother came to the two of us and asked if we had done anything wrong on the trip. Of course we hadn't, we were 16 and on a trip with a church. You can say what you want about teenagers, but we were both brought up to be respectful. His mom handed us three letters that our peers had written about us to the pastor of the church. Apparently, the group leader, who was a 30 year old wannabe teenager had convinced some of the other kids on the trip to write terrible letters about us to get us kicked out of the church. The letters contained messages talking about how we were inseparable and kissing all of the time. They said we were lazy and disrespectful. The group leader even accused us of sneaking out of our cabins to see each other. I stayed in the same room as her and was never out past curfew. Ever. They said I wore inappropriate clothes and broke the dress code. I should have been suspicious. I noticed a few off things while we were down there but I thought nothing of them. The group leader did her best to exclude me from group activities among the other girls and one time she disconnected my microphone at a church I was singing at on purpose. Afterwards she said the sound guy didn't know what he was doing, even though I watched her do it.

I was sick with anxiety. And hurt. SO beyond hurt. These were supposed to be my friends. My family. People who loved me. We spent so much time together, and then they blindsided me like that. My boyfriend and I quickly drifted apart. He was talking to other girls from his new school and I was talking to my old boyfriend, as always. All of the hard work and effort I had put into being a part of this community was wasted. I didn't know how God could allow these people to do this to me. The pastor didn't kick us out of church, but it was very clear that I was no longer welcome there. People began making comments on my outfits again, even if they were perfectly modest. I would try to talk to my old friends and they would pretend like they didn't even hear me at all. Like I was a ghost. The elders of the church gave me the dirtiest looks I have ever seen. Seriously, if looks could kill I would have died a hundred times now.

After that I was pretty much done with organized religion. I still held out hope that God was real and he would watch over me, but it was so hard to trust in him after that. So I spiraled into a deep depression and immersed myself in things for distraction. My junior year of high school, I didn't even have time to sleep at night I was so busy. I was student body president, prom chairperson, class president, 4-H president, and the head of numerous other clubs - including the prayer club.

I stayed sick. My stomach bothered me all of the time. I had zero energy and motivation to do anything. I don't know how I made it through that year. Especially with a 4.0. I was in some weird kind of funk I couldn't get out of. The longer I stayed away from church, the more skeptical about God I got. He never answered my prayers. I never felt his presence. I was always skeptical to begin with. The community aspect of church is what drew me in. And now I didn't even have that anymore. So what more was there?