My mom was obsessed with Jesus and wouldn’t even let me watch the simpsons when I was 14 years old. If people were kissing on TV she’d force me to change the channel. I wasn’t allowed to own any music because she disapproved of everything. I sometimes was forced to go to church 3+ times a week. She’d force me to go to confession so often the priest told me to stop coming. She’d take me to weird spiritual healers to “heal” me of my dyslexia.
She’d throw holy water on me and say “begone Satan in the name of Jesus of Nazerus.” She’d do this against my will whenever I was angry or having a temper tantrum when I was a little boy. She even did this to me at 20 in public outside a hotel. I had just recently made contact with her and had not seen her since I was 16-17 or so because I refused to talk to her or see her.
Do you think this might have affected the way you perceive things now?
When I was a teenager she’d tape religious objects on the inside of my clothes and hide them in my room. It made me feel like I was going crazy. I would burn any religious object she taped inside my clothes and when she pushed me I would tell Satan to come inside me and that I hated God, even though I was an atheist, just to try to shut her up.
It’s given me a love hate relationship with religion, let’s just put it that way.
I can definitely understand that.
A lot of the things you describe sound similar to what she used to tell you. I don’t see how anyone could grow up around that and not feel the effects for a long time afterwards.
She’d literally take me to church at 2 o’clock in the morning and literally lie down on the ground inside the church for hours.
Wow. Do you see her at all anymore? If so, is she still the same? Did she act like this to any of your sisters?
She was obsessed with religion with all of us, and now she still talks about Jesus all the time, but luckily she can’t force her views and rules on me now, so she’s tamed down.
Good. She can’t force her rules and beliefs on you anymore. Still, with any parent, it takes a long time to untangle their voice and beliefs from your own. With someone as autocratic as your mother sounds, as fanatical, I can’t imagine how difficult it would be.
If you don’t mind me asking, how did you find your faith? You mentioned that once you were an atheist.
I was an atheist for the vast majority of my life. I explored religion on my own terms years later and I don’t believe everything is just the product of my upbringing. I have my own ideas and religion is bigger than my family. They did not create it. That reminds me of what my family does. They act like everything I believe, say or do, must have been taught to me by some other (corrupt or faulty) source. Then they would say they want to talk to the “real [insert my full name here]”, that he is not the one speaking and they want him to come back. Both my parents have played that mind ■■■■ on me multiple times.
Sorry if I made it sound like I thought all your views were the same as your mother’s - you obviously have put a lot of thought into what you believe. I’m not surprised that some of the torment you’re going through now has some echoes of the torment she put you through then, though.
I think that, if we are forced to an extreme, when we are younger to believe in something that our parents believe in, that we will rebel in a way that forces us in the other direction of the other extreme just to break away , and hopefully we will find some balance, if we are able to, later on in our lives.
And when I say a love hate relationship I mean it. A while ago I destroyed every Christian religious object in my room. I got more stuff and just a few weeks ago I had another purge. I got my holy oil and poured it outside and pissed on it, as well as ripping up my king james bible. LOL
I have a split personality.
Time to move this puppy to Unusual Beliefs.
Pixel.
(Wearing moderator hat)
Seriously, just a few weeks ago? You weren’t kidding! What triggered it?
I felt suffocated by the religion. Sometimes I consider Christianity a slave religion like Nietzsche and find modern Catholicism feminized and pacified.
And I am somewhat emasculated and pacified by my entity, and I feel Christianity can feed into that kind of tyrannical system I am in.
But at times I am my true self. It will last a while and then the constraints will be put back on my body and psyche. It is a sick program. My true self is an ■■■■■■■!