- Oct 1, 2005
- 13
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- Faith
- Christian
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- US-Republican
Every so often my lifes takes a turn which in turn makes me examine my beliefs. I've testified many times before, and will probably keep doing so. I am a spiritual failure.
My story starts in 1988 when I was born. I had a happy childhood, but there were a fews things wrong. My mother was an emotional fragile, physically disabled woman. I took care of her as much as she took care of me. At five years old I cut her nerve pills daily. My father is a retired police officer who despite all his bad qualities, has a heart of gold.
My first major trauma, or one that forced me to lose my innocence (metaphorically), was when my aunt came to live with us while out on parole. She was a drunk, a crackhead, and a convicted felon. All my mother's sisters turned her down and my mom was the only one kind enough to take her in. She would get drunk and high and verbally abuse me. Telling me I was fat, needed to grow up, that I should hate my mother. I was about 9 at the time. Worse than all that, she hurt my mother. Yelling at her until she ran away crying, making up lies about their dead mother. She eventually moved in with an old boyfriend of hers leaving my family dazzled but alive. Crack is not good, when your aunt tries to get her 11 year old daughter to date a drug dealer...you don't forget that.
All the while in school I was being tortured. I'm fat, not too bad, but fat. I'm working on it and have lost 25 pounds this past year. But people were so ugly to me those formative years that I fear I'll always have a complex. I look in the mirror and smile but then think about all the times I've been called ugly. It hurts so bad.
A brief break from this came in 6th grade. I lose 20 pounds, grew two inches, and went through puberty. Suddenly I got attention from guys and I LOVED it. None of them wanted to be my boyfriend but catcalls were good enough for me. I used to dress sexy just trying to get attention, any sort of attention. If guys want to have sex with me (although I never did), then I must be pretty...right? How wrong.
This stage ended when it started getting creepy. Having grown men hitting one me all the time, following me home from school, it went from fun to scary. I once was corned by 6 guys and got away, but it scared me to death. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought "how ugly." I began wearing baggy clothes and gained a lot more weight.
The next major struggle is one I can't fully express in words. After an extended illness and a two week hospital stay, my mother died of congestive heart failure at the age 49. I was about to turn 13.
Everything sank away and suddenly I was born into this new person who couldn't feel reality. Seeing my mother in her coffin, giving away her clothes, visiting her grave. I hated it and still do. My mother wasn't perfect. She was nowhere near. She smoked, cursed, hit me occasionally, and was racist. But I loved her. Despite all our fights, I loved her more than anything. She was a Christian and I knew where she was...but it didn't matter. If my mother is in heaven, maybe everything I've always wanted is a bullet away. Or at least that is how I viewed it.
I repressed my mother's death and began to fill my head with anything to keep it occupied. And guess what the first thing was. Paganism-of course. Or more like seeing a cool Wiccan movie and wanting to have that sort of power. Wanting to have physical proof any sort of spiritual world existed (and that my mother was still around).
And one of the worst things I think I ever did was put a curse on a teacher. It wasn't really a curse more like a summoning of the "dark lord" (I thought it was a god!) to get rid of her. It was a joke. But lo and behold, and God knows this to be the truth, a couple days later she wasn't in school. Weeks went by and she still wasn't in school. Eventually I heard two teachers talking about how she was sick in the hospital and was near death. When I heard this I turned around to look at my best friend who had her mouth gaped open. Had I caused this? Is this some kind of sick irony?
Whether I helped cause it or not...and I'm still not sure...I was sorry for ever cursing this lovely old woman. I prayed to God to be forgiven and to heal my teacher. He did but she went on retirement. I still feel bad.
This was what caused me first encounter with Jesus. I had to meet the force that seemed to affect me. I began going to church and was eventually baptized. I stopped going soon after, the reason? People pushed me into church when my mother died. But after I accepted the message, it's like they cared less. "Alright she's a Christian, she's fixed. Let's stop going to church now." That's how I believe they felt about it. And I dared not go to church alone. I'm much too shy (I know that's stupid.)
It's almost a cliche now when a teenager talks about cutting. But that is the next part of my journey. I couldn't hold back feelings of my mother so I started cutting myself. Once I cut my forearms completely and had about fifteen long slashes on each. It felt so good, as good as the girls on Oprah said it would. Actually these very wounds were still open when I got baptized. The water stinged them and they healed soon after. No scars (which is suprising). Since then I have done it various time for various reasons. The last time was this summer. I still have three scars from that which I doubt will go away. How embarrassing.
All this happened in 7th grade. In eight grade I became a complete shut-in. Withdrawled and broken. I dressed in baggy black clothes and went for days without showering. I felt so low. My grades suffered, I got kicked out of NJHS, got suspended, gained 40 pounds. Everything had a tint of distortion to it. My family began making lies about me saying I was a druggie, my father was a drunk, that I needed psychiatric help. Only the last one was true. Along this time I began upset with God and began finding great favor in Satan. Literally. I felt his presence but never said anything for fear of being mocked. I just fell deeper in the pit. I occasionally talked to God though, when the darkness got too intense.
High school represented a turning point for me. I came out of the darkness ever so slightly. My grades improved, I started showering again, I started to get out of the house more. I loved having a fresh start and loved having new friends.
At this point in my religious life I was Wiccan. Full blown. Or at least that's what I tried to be. Gym glass my freshman year was a great learning experience. There I met two girls who totally shaped me. Mary, and Kelly. Mary was a member of the local...can you believe it...coven. We found eachother out when I was telling Kelly (an atheist, poser punk) how to astrally project. She asked if I wanted to join and I said sure. How great.
But it wasn't. Those girls were crazy much more than I. All three of them had SEVERE problems. They made me feel lucky. Compared to them, I was. We never did a ritual and I'm glad. But I'm also glad to have known them and glad to have grown. God showed me a lot through these girls and we all know he didn't have to.
I continued with this halfway through my sophmore year. Along the way I became less Wiccan and more closer to God once again. I began wearing different colors again and took the covers off of my windows. What a great metaphor, I started to let a little light back in.
A turning point that year was Honors English 10. There I discovered my love (and small talent) of writing. It was the best class I ever had and I felt as though I had found my calling. I still remember the poem I had to do a report on, by E.E. Cummings. The main message was that death didn't put an end to love. How nice. I read the Great Gatsby and A Seperate Peace and fell in love with them. I made the only A in that class and plan on being an English major someday.
But this year still had it's fair share of pain. I began to experiment with drugs, smoking weed for the first time my freshmen year. I also started downing bottles of cough syrup, loving the trippy high. I did this until I leared that it caused holes in the brain to form. Nothing fun about that. I once drank half a bottle of Listerine because I was bored and watching Cheech and Chong with no weed.
The worst drug-related act I ever committed was when I stole 3 powerful painkiller pills from my uncle who had surgery. This was a low. I figured this is West Virginia, and I knew people who I could sell it to. But then were gone within an hour. I never did get high off them because, guess what, I had built up a tolerance (and this was only my second time taking it). I didn't know which realization was worse-the face that I stole narcotics, the face that I took narcotics, or that fact that I needed to snort a bunch more to get a high like my first high.
I since have quit drugs although I have stupidly been giving out signals to all the right people that I want to start again. But the most I do now is have a glass of wine on special family occasions. But I sometimes gag on that, remembering the Listerine. It's really a miracle I'm alive.
Sophmore year ended with me again accepting Christ as my God. I started praying every night and I still do. The summer was bad on my self-esteem and that's why I cut again. I hate how I look. I feel so ugly, I look at myself and see a monster. I can't shake the feeling that's it not just my imagination.
So here I am, at the start of my junior year. I turn 17 in a couple weeks. I'm still struggling but I want to be closer to Jesus more than anything. I really need his healing after the crazy life I have lead so far. I want to be a good Christian but I don't know how. I know God's here, I just can't feel him.
Thanks for reading, I'm sorry it's so long!
My story starts in 1988 when I was born. I had a happy childhood, but there were a fews things wrong. My mother was an emotional fragile, physically disabled woman. I took care of her as much as she took care of me. At five years old I cut her nerve pills daily. My father is a retired police officer who despite all his bad qualities, has a heart of gold.
My first major trauma, or one that forced me to lose my innocence (metaphorically), was when my aunt came to live with us while out on parole. She was a drunk, a crackhead, and a convicted felon. All my mother's sisters turned her down and my mom was the only one kind enough to take her in. She would get drunk and high and verbally abuse me. Telling me I was fat, needed to grow up, that I should hate my mother. I was about 9 at the time. Worse than all that, she hurt my mother. Yelling at her until she ran away crying, making up lies about their dead mother. She eventually moved in with an old boyfriend of hers leaving my family dazzled but alive. Crack is not good, when your aunt tries to get her 11 year old daughter to date a drug dealer...you don't forget that.
All the while in school I was being tortured. I'm fat, not too bad, but fat. I'm working on it and have lost 25 pounds this past year. But people were so ugly to me those formative years that I fear I'll always have a complex. I look in the mirror and smile but then think about all the times I've been called ugly. It hurts so bad.
A brief break from this came in 6th grade. I lose 20 pounds, grew two inches, and went through puberty. Suddenly I got attention from guys and I LOVED it. None of them wanted to be my boyfriend but catcalls were good enough for me. I used to dress sexy just trying to get attention, any sort of attention. If guys want to have sex with me (although I never did), then I must be pretty...right? How wrong.
This stage ended when it started getting creepy. Having grown men hitting one me all the time, following me home from school, it went from fun to scary. I once was corned by 6 guys and got away, but it scared me to death. I looked at myself in the mirror and thought "how ugly." I began wearing baggy clothes and gained a lot more weight.
The next major struggle is one I can't fully express in words. After an extended illness and a two week hospital stay, my mother died of congestive heart failure at the age 49. I was about to turn 13.
Everything sank away and suddenly I was born into this new person who couldn't feel reality. Seeing my mother in her coffin, giving away her clothes, visiting her grave. I hated it and still do. My mother wasn't perfect. She was nowhere near. She smoked, cursed, hit me occasionally, and was racist. But I loved her. Despite all our fights, I loved her more than anything. She was a Christian and I knew where she was...but it didn't matter. If my mother is in heaven, maybe everything I've always wanted is a bullet away. Or at least that is how I viewed it.
I repressed my mother's death and began to fill my head with anything to keep it occupied. And guess what the first thing was. Paganism-of course. Or more like seeing a cool Wiccan movie and wanting to have that sort of power. Wanting to have physical proof any sort of spiritual world existed (and that my mother was still around).
And one of the worst things I think I ever did was put a curse on a teacher. It wasn't really a curse more like a summoning of the "dark lord" (I thought it was a god!) to get rid of her. It was a joke. But lo and behold, and God knows this to be the truth, a couple days later she wasn't in school. Weeks went by and she still wasn't in school. Eventually I heard two teachers talking about how she was sick in the hospital and was near death. When I heard this I turned around to look at my best friend who had her mouth gaped open. Had I caused this? Is this some kind of sick irony?
Whether I helped cause it or not...and I'm still not sure...I was sorry for ever cursing this lovely old woman. I prayed to God to be forgiven and to heal my teacher. He did but she went on retirement. I still feel bad.
This was what caused me first encounter with Jesus. I had to meet the force that seemed to affect me. I began going to church and was eventually baptized. I stopped going soon after, the reason? People pushed me into church when my mother died. But after I accepted the message, it's like they cared less. "Alright she's a Christian, she's fixed. Let's stop going to church now." That's how I believe they felt about it. And I dared not go to church alone. I'm much too shy (I know that's stupid.)
It's almost a cliche now when a teenager talks about cutting. But that is the next part of my journey. I couldn't hold back feelings of my mother so I started cutting myself. Once I cut my forearms completely and had about fifteen long slashes on each. It felt so good, as good as the girls on Oprah said it would. Actually these very wounds were still open when I got baptized. The water stinged them and they healed soon after. No scars (which is suprising). Since then I have done it various time for various reasons. The last time was this summer. I still have three scars from that which I doubt will go away. How embarrassing.
All this happened in 7th grade. In eight grade I became a complete shut-in. Withdrawled and broken. I dressed in baggy black clothes and went for days without showering. I felt so low. My grades suffered, I got kicked out of NJHS, got suspended, gained 40 pounds. Everything had a tint of distortion to it. My family began making lies about me saying I was a druggie, my father was a drunk, that I needed psychiatric help. Only the last one was true. Along this time I began upset with God and began finding great favor in Satan. Literally. I felt his presence but never said anything for fear of being mocked. I just fell deeper in the pit. I occasionally talked to God though, when the darkness got too intense.
High school represented a turning point for me. I came out of the darkness ever so slightly. My grades improved, I started showering again, I started to get out of the house more. I loved having a fresh start and loved having new friends.
At this point in my religious life I was Wiccan. Full blown. Or at least that's what I tried to be. Gym glass my freshman year was a great learning experience. There I met two girls who totally shaped me. Mary, and Kelly. Mary was a member of the local...can you believe it...coven. We found eachother out when I was telling Kelly (an atheist, poser punk) how to astrally project. She asked if I wanted to join and I said sure. How great.
But it wasn't. Those girls were crazy much more than I. All three of them had SEVERE problems. They made me feel lucky. Compared to them, I was. We never did a ritual and I'm glad. But I'm also glad to have known them and glad to have grown. God showed me a lot through these girls and we all know he didn't have to.
I continued with this halfway through my sophmore year. Along the way I became less Wiccan and more closer to God once again. I began wearing different colors again and took the covers off of my windows. What a great metaphor, I started to let a little light back in.
A turning point that year was Honors English 10. There I discovered my love (and small talent) of writing. It was the best class I ever had and I felt as though I had found my calling. I still remember the poem I had to do a report on, by E.E. Cummings. The main message was that death didn't put an end to love. How nice. I read the Great Gatsby and A Seperate Peace and fell in love with them. I made the only A in that class and plan on being an English major someday.
But this year still had it's fair share of pain. I began to experiment with drugs, smoking weed for the first time my freshmen year. I also started downing bottles of cough syrup, loving the trippy high. I did this until I leared that it caused holes in the brain to form. Nothing fun about that. I once drank half a bottle of Listerine because I was bored and watching Cheech and Chong with no weed.
The worst drug-related act I ever committed was when I stole 3 powerful painkiller pills from my uncle who had surgery. This was a low. I figured this is West Virginia, and I knew people who I could sell it to. But then were gone within an hour. I never did get high off them because, guess what, I had built up a tolerance (and this was only my second time taking it). I didn't know which realization was worse-the face that I stole narcotics, the face that I took narcotics, or that fact that I needed to snort a bunch more to get a high like my first high.
I since have quit drugs although I have stupidly been giving out signals to all the right people that I want to start again. But the most I do now is have a glass of wine on special family occasions. But I sometimes gag on that, remembering the Listerine. It's really a miracle I'm alive.
Sophmore year ended with me again accepting Christ as my God. I started praying every night and I still do. The summer was bad on my self-esteem and that's why I cut again. I hate how I look. I feel so ugly, I look at myself and see a monster. I can't shake the feeling that's it not just my imagination.
So here I am, at the start of my junior year. I turn 17 in a couple weeks. I'm still struggling but I want to be closer to Jesus more than anything. I really need his healing after the crazy life I have lead so far. I want to be a good Christian but I don't know how. I know God's here, I just can't feel him.
Thanks for reading, I'm sorry it's so long!
