I began blogging at the age of 15 back in November of 2009. I was a sad, homeschooled, Duggar-style Christian, ultra-conservative teenager and completely isolated from all reality. That was over 13 years ago.
My first blog, My Father’s Daughter, was more of a public diary than anything else. I started a second blog, Passion for Poetry – which I referred to as a “literature blog” – in June of 2011 after befriending a group of girls who had blogs similar to the one I would eventually start and encouraged me to share what I wrote. Then, in March of 2014, I finally created my first writing blog, Barefoot in the Snow. I’d been writing my whole life but rarely, if ever, shared any of my writings with anyone up until this point, let alone post them publicly. The literature blog was mostly excerpts and quotes along with a handful of my own original content. Even the beginnings of Barefoot in the Snow were largely diary-like and though I grew more confident the majority of my content was in response to participatory posts others had made.
Blogging opened up a whole new world for me. For the first time I felt like I was part of something, part of a community, rather than a complete and total outsider in every aspect of life. I was able to connect with others my age who were being raised similarly and had similar life experiences, sometimes even had similar alternative ideas. For the first time I had an entire world hidden from authorities where I finally had an opportunity to explore my first small taste of self-expression and was allowed to engage in actual discussions about who I was, what I’d been taught, and some of the alternative thoughts or views or ideas I may have had without fear of being punished for not blindly believing everything I was told.
It was far from perfect. I was still expected to more or less keep in line with the worldview we were all raised to believe in. But it was something.
It wasn’t until I moved away at 20 years old in October of 2014, got my first job, and looked for a community of my own that I was truly allowed to have a voice, to question things and find my own answers, to challenge what I’d been forced to accept, to decide for myself what I believed to be right and moral and just. I kept my faith but discarded most of the puritanical standards that had been imposed on me and slowly began the process of what is now known as deconstruction. I began attending a non-denominational church in my new town and joined a Small Group – a free-form young adult bible study with no elder/deacon/authority – where every person, belief, background, expression, thought, idea, question, doubt was accepted and discussed as peers with open minds and compassion for each other no matter the subject.
Unfortunately, by the end of January, the family member I had moved in with turned on me and shipped me back home with no notice and no chance to prepare or even to pack more than what I could fit into my airline-approved carry-on and small backpack. I disappeared from that town, several states away, and found myself back where I’d started in my parents’ house. Every part of the life I’d only just started building in those three short months, all financial gain, every connection I had made, was gone aside from a Facebook friend or two; despite my cousins’ best efforts, I lost nearly everything I owned, including my phone and all its contents, and was left to pick up the pieces alone, expected to settle back into the good Christian life now that I’d sown my wild oats.
I stuck to my guns, ducked my head, and – against the direct authority of my father, my pastor, and everything I’d been taught to believe – waited for my “heathen” gramma to collect me. It was another month before she was able to make the three-hour drive to brave the wrath of my parents and take me home with her.
My gramma did everything she could to help me. She was the one voice of reason in my life and I wish I had listened to her more rather than the people I was raised to obey. I got two jobs and started saving, bought my first car, eventually rented my first apartment all within seven months of moving in with her. I quickly joined a Baptist church similar to the ones I’d grown up in and due to my lingering, previously strongly-held, worldview allowed myself to be pressured into a relationship and shortly thereafter pushed into a marriage – neither of which I wanted or was looking for – that started in June of 2015 and dragged on until the autumn leaves of 2018 began their descent, and me with them.
If it hadn’t been for the marriage in February, I would have ended the relationship on Mother’s Day, less than a year after I met my ex. Instead, it took another two years and a lot of pain, struggling, and emotional and financial baggage before I finally said “fuck it” on 19 March 2018 and left it all behind – my faith, my beliefs, my inhibitions – everything except for the manchild I’d been shackled to and providing for. I continued trying to make it work with him until the end of 2018 after he broke up with me via phone call on my birthday, changed his mind several times, and betrayed me by confiding in my family behind my back – a family he knew treated me like shit and until then had routinely trash-talked behind their backs so badly it crossed several lines – and wasn’t divorced until the spring of 2020, when Covid provided me with a stimulus check that made it possible for me to pay for it despite the enormous amount of debt my ex had put me under.
Nonetheless, that Monday in March nearly five years ago – a day that started with a suicide plan and ended shooting baskets with my first life-long friend – is where my life truly began.
– written 18 Feb 2023
Eclectic Shit & Other Fuckery 