I was born into large family 6 members of my immediate family and dozens of cousins on both sides that I saw very often sometimes daily. I also attended Sunday school and church on Sunday’s and again on Wednesday nights along with any other special church gatherings that might be held. I was raised southern Baptist so there were a great many gatherings including baptisms at ponds and rivers during summer months. During this time I was around a lot of other kids my age and had many chances to make friends. But invariably I would have but one or two at the most and as I grew up and my family moved around and I ended up in other schools and separated from my large family and from the church background that still was the story. I never felt the need for a large group of friends instead one or two real friends who would actually try to understand me was much better to me.
I think it was because at a young age I realized I was quite different from my brothers, sister and cousins. I didn’t look at things the way they did or want the same things they wanted and I most certainly wasn’t happy with the answers I was being given. The older I got the less respect I had for the church elders as I began to understand hypocrisy and how it was used by adults. This added to the lack of reasonable answers to my questions and a general humoring of my request for logical conclusions instead of make believe answers pretty much took care of my desire for organized religion. By my early teenage years I had quit church after trying many different varieties beyond the Baptist I had been raised hoping someone had the answers I was looking for but alas I kept finding fairy tales for a person of my age. I’m sorry that I wasn’t adult looking enough for them to understand that my mind didn’t think in Tinker bell terms but instead needed logic. When they didn’t provide it I went looking elsewhere.
For the longest time I turned away from any type of religion at all. Understand that didn’t mean that I didn’t have a complete and comfortable belief in a higher power I just didn’t know how to connect with it. I’ve never been sure why I knew there was something more out there but I have and I have even felt the power of it. At a time in my life when I was actually running for my life from a madman trying to kill me, I felt the presence with me actually protecting me and helping me to think of how to react and how to escape. All I had to do was listen inwardly and the answers were there, the guiding force to lead me to safety.
I have remained pretty much the same my whole life into adulthood still today I maintain only a couple of very close friends that understand me. I love them and trust them feel that as weird as I can be they will be okay with it. I can be pretty weird so that’s saying something. Part of that growing up was knowing that I was different from those around me. If there were others also like me they were hiding it as hard as I was from everyone else.
You know you need better stimulation when the best you have is bread crumbs in your bra!
What feels like lying by omission I find very distasteful. I know there is a reason and one that will become known in time but for one who does not care for this feeling it leaves a foul taste in my mouth.
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