Opened Eyes

[KawaiiKoneko]

This is a really long story, so I advise against reading it if you lack the patience.


My mom was converted to Christianity before I was born but after my sister (May 21st, 80) had already been alive for a while. Which is why she got to dress up as She-Ra on Halloween and I was told it was a night of evil. -____-

When spirits rise and demons make the most mischief. In short, my mom believed that it was Satan's special night of the year. Just as Jesus has Christmas.
But before then she was agnostic.

Anyways. Her friend that did it was Vicky. Whom she now calls the best friend she's ever had.
She had her so caught up in Fundamentalist Christianity, my name was determined by it. Christina Faith Carrier... My mom told me specifically that God had told her the perfect name for me. Because she was a prophet and I was supposed to be one too.

My asking questions phase was slightly short lived and had almost diminished by the time of 12. The only thing that kept it alive was researching marine biology, sharks, to be specific.

But from as early as I remember, my mother fed me stories about God, Jesus' love, Angels, Demons, Satan and the Holy Spirit. Benny Henn was practically her idol. At age 4, I was pulled up onstage, in front of a couple hundred people, by a pastor who was convinced that I was a prophet of God. He called people out of their pews and told them that I was 'of God' and had the holy spirit in me or something. He was totally convinced that God was going to heal people through me because I was a "pure child" that had to be a prophet because of my name and how indoctrinated my mom had me.

My mom always held my sister and I to higher standards than other kids. But I think that's true for the most part with anyone's parents. At least to a degree. But with my mom, it was crazy. She was convinced that I had a prophecy that had something to do with "will do something great for the Kingdom of Heaven."
Before I even had a chance to find out what my thoughts and opinions were, my mom had shoved so much down my throat, I was convinced the rest of the world was full of sin, hate, anger and demons. I was so scared of demons as a kid. I was scared they would make Velociraptors come back to life and eat me, my friends and family.

My mom was convinced God had called her to Corpus Christi to be a foster parent and help 'lost and hurt souls find God.' So we moved out of our new home (I was 2, my sister 12) and moved to Corpus to begin a new life. **Note** We still have the home, we just rented it out. But it's ours again.

She put my sister and I in a living situation that was not only unhealthy because of how she stunted my mind with religion, but the constant chaos with the kind of girls she would accept. I remember my mom taking classes to learn hot to restrain the girls. Because some were deeply psychologically disturbed from their previous environment. A lot of them were gangsters, psychotic, retarded, etc,. But she always took the most troubled of the girls, convinced God wanted her to help them.

And so I was brought up in a home with an average of 12-14 older sisters at a time, never knowing how long they'd stay or if I'd ever see them again. Which is probably where my abandonment issues come from, or are at least rooted.

At age 7, the foster sisters were gone. I was alone most of the time, struggling to find friends and 'do God's work.' My sister was in her experimenting age, and did a lot of things I'm sure I'll never know.
At 18, on Halloween, my sister was raped by a few guys and fell apart. My mom slowly followed, but remained glued to thinking that "God would work everything out" She is convinced the reason bad things happened to my sister is because she "stepped out of God's boundary." According to my mom, as long as my sister and I do exactly what she says and don't disobey, nothing bad can ever happen to us, and as long as we "step out" of the boundary, only harm can come. "Because, if we take a step towards sin it's our fault God can't protect us" or some kind of bull crap like that.

After my sister was raped she started doing heavy drugs, tried to overdose on heroin and crack a couple times, had an abusive boyfriend whom got her preggy and she still had him, my nephew. She didn't stay with the boyfriend, but she's still friends with him. And by that point, my mom convinced herself she was dying. I was closed up inside my house without any friends and limited contact with the outside world. My mom would get on the phone and beg, break down and cry trying to get people from our church to pick me up for service. And almost all the staff had to drive right by our house to get to church.

So, from 11-15 I was alone. I wasn't allowed to use the internet because my parents thought I would look at porn. And I did try, haha. Actually the first porn I tried to see was just pictures of women in g-strings. lol.
And when they found out I looked at it they asked me about it and I said "I thought it was guys in g-strings" because I didn't want them to know I liked women too. They seemed to have bought it.

At 16, I met the person who would open my eyes to the true beauty of the universe. No religion to wash it down and make it seem important only because it's 'God's work,' but the actual beauty behind the science. He constantly challenged my beliefs and made me questions myself. I was starting to believe in evolution.

At 17, I was agnostic. I thought that there had to be something up there because then, how would the universe have gotten here. I believed more firmly in science. Even though I've always loved science. I believed in evolution by then.

At 18, I got really high one night and just thought about it, really hard. And realized that what I had seen as so complicated to cope with, was actually quite simple. I came to the conclusion that religion and gods were filled in gaps where we lacked the scientific evidence to know anything about yet. And I noticed it through time. The Mayans believes the Sun was a god. Science later proved that it was not a mystical being at all, but a large star. And that the stars in the sky weren't spirits of our loved ones who've passed from one world to the next, but burning hot gasses in space. And it suddenly became very plain to me.

Placing a god into the answer of a question without any evidence for why we should apply such an entity in the first place, takes away from the beauty behind it. It does the opposite of what mystical thinkers believe. Most people believe that by 'de-mystifying' things that we make them bland. But I actually learned to feel sorry for them. Sorry that they need to attribute mystical qualities to something in order for it to qualify as beautiful.

And so, now I'm 19. Going on 20. Still barely know anything about evolution or evolutionary psychology. In fact, I'm quite ignorant when it comes to academics. I was homeschooled my whole life. Enrolled in a church program at 15 where instructors told me I could pass my GED. I waited a year and a half, enrolled myself in a community college program, and graduated at 17. I had to relearn math and proper grammar. But I did it in 4 months. :] Oh, I also taught myself my abc's and how to swim at age 2. Just to boast a bit. lol.

Since everything I've just told you (that is, assuming you read all of it) is not even a little bit impressive, by my honest opinion. Well, aside from teaching myself how to swim, that still strikes me as cool lol. I just had to include that. Lol. I have nothing to show for educational accomplishments, so phear my 2-year-old self reciting abc's and causing chaos with mah waves of d00m! >:3

Lol. And that's my story.

If I messed up anything or made it hard to read, etc,. Let me know. Because I can change it. It's just that I'm very sleepy and tired. so, yeah. And that took a lot of energy to remember all of that. I pretty much have been typing whatever pops into my head without much discretion. So you'll have to forgive me if I come off weird in any way. :|


PS.

I chose the rainbow icon for this thread because rainbows are pretty! <3