Author's Note: As I pen this post, I am channeling my angry energy into the written word. While I've gone "no contact" with my parents, my mom has started selling my address to Catholic charities. I now receive frequent, passive-aggressive reminders of her God/god's "love."
I'll go into more detail in a future entry, but know that going "no contact" is never a one-step or easy process. If you are considering doing so or have already done it, know that I am proud of your bravery!
When my mom first decided to home school me, she tried to do it on her own. I'm assuming she wanted full control over the curriculum, which included a catechism from the 1950's, complete with relevant, modern-day examples of morality:
"It was a fine summer day. Billy had just arrived home following school and decided to toss his shiny new baseball around the yard. Well, as it just so happens, Billy accidentally hit the ball out of the park, so to speak, and right through Gladys Johnsons's living room window! Oh no!
'Gee willikers!' proclaimed the frightened boy. 'Whatever shall I do?'
Such was the dilemma little Billy faced. Should he knock on Mrs. Johnson's door and confess to what happened or run away and pretend it never happened?"
This is just an example, but not far from the truth. You get the picture.
My first year of home schooling was marred by frequent arguments. I struggled to learn the English composition materials my mom tried teaching me, and we constantly butted heads. As a result, she enrolled me in a Christian online home school (yes, remote learning existed in the late-90's). There, I would complete any readings and homework offline, and then use an internet chat room to discuss the work with my teacher and classmates.
I remember conversing with a few of my peers through chat, but I wouldn't say I developed any close friendships. For the most part, my socialization options were extremely limited. I had my mom, with whom I held a love/hate relationship due my secret, my brother, whom I typically saw weekly (we played together in a bowling league), and a friend from my 4th grade stint in Catholic private school (I only saw him infrequently).
After my first year as a social hermit, my mom introduced me to a Catholic home schooling group: her solution to help me meet new friends. My peers and I would meet at a former convent and participate in various activities, such as going to mass, praying the rosary, playing sports and tinkering with computers that were even considered archaic by 1996-97 standards.
By this point, I was fully aware of my same-sex attraction and found the Catholic church and anything pertaining to the faith to be downright stifling (my mom forced me to go to weekly mass until I was 18). I also had no interest in "sports ball" of any kind, whatsoever. As a result, the majority of my time was spent alone in the computer lab, marveling at the mammoth size of a circa-1990 10 megabyte hard drive.
At one point, I got roped into playing the Ghost of Christmas Past in the group's religious adaptation of A Christmas Carol. Though I had one standout line, "Scroooooge!" the thought of getting on stage and delivering it set my newfound social anxiety ablaze. Thankfully, the production got canceled for some reason or other.
After a year or so, my mom stopped pushing me to meet with the group. I briefly retained one friend, a good little stalwart of Catholicism. His parents presented as eccentric and hyper-religious, forbidding him from listening to anything but classical music (after all, rock and roll is the work of the devil!). At the time, he planned to enter the priesthood. Last I heard, he finally came to his senses, left the seminary and got married. We stopped talking long before that happened. If my memory is correct, my mom had an nonverbal beef with his mom and decided she didn't like her.
This is a common thread. My mom's martyr complex and inability to play nice with people who don't share her values has caused her to sabotage most of her friendships. It's a behavior I, too, have exhibited, and is something that would later come back to haunt me. But I'll return to that in another post.
Check back soon for part three! I'll talk about my "dark years," the period during which I had few people to talk to and when my anger over having to keep my orientation a secret reached a boiling point.
Until then... It's the weekend! Be kind to yourself and Take a Selfish.
Comments