Everything Stays

My parents often excused any and all signs of unhappiness as just a facet of my personality. Now that I’m an adult who has access to proper help it’s startling to see how bad it was. It is impossible to look at my childhood and say I had nothing wrong with me. Or that my parents actions weren’t abusive.

And speaking to adults of their age, it was constantly dismissed. I presented all the signs of emotional abuse, and all the signs of my many mental illnesses. At no point did an adult approach me in concern. Never. I demanded help, me, not them, and I made sure I got it.

The idea that adults are infallible is incorrect, but often drilled into children. The series taught me that adults are seriously flawed. That adults don’t always (or even often) fulfill the promise of “doing what’s best for you”. Sometimes adults who are supposes to be caring for your well-being do a horrible job.

It’s not just hinted at in the series, its blatantly expressed. Its in your face and forces you to think about it. I’ve never seen anything else, marketed to children/teens, refuse to excuse adults for causing harm to children.

It was visceral, it was blunt, it was real. It made you uncomfortable, which you should be when you witness abuse. It made it very clear who was responsible for the things that happened to them.

The children never adopted a “be a bigger person” philosophy- in this case meaning the belief that you must, in order to be considered a good person, completely forgive, and take no action against the person who caused you harm.

They knew when things were amiss. And in the face of adult incompetence, they refused to be idle.

The article is ‘A Defense of Abortion’ by Judith Jarvis Thomson. Essential reading!

days of the week;

monday: snoozing your alarm clock, navy, seeing the moon in the morning, vanilla ice cream, writing poetry, blurry photographs, windswept hair, iced coffee

tuesday: seeing a cat on the street, a light rain shower, untied shoelaces, indistinct music from someone else’s earphones, empty coffee shops, denim jackets, long train rides

wednesday: pastel highlighters, drinking water, group laughter, plucking daisy petals, floral scents, counting down to a birthday, peonies

thursday: old books, a downpour, telling the truth, comfortable silence, hand holding, wrapping a gift, the smell of leather, reminiscence

friday: neon lights, sweet cravings, a little bit drunk, falling in love with a stranger, remembering your dreams, cherry red, late night showers, desserts at midnight

saturday: watering plants, childhood cartoons, a bowl of cereal, meeting someone new, waking up early and laying in bed, spontaneous plans, sitting on a rooftop

Not entirely willingly, mind. I was young, religious, and I made the naïve mistake in thinking that all Christians were like the ones I had encountered at my home church: warm, tolerant, kind. I fell in love, and we did what young, hormonal Christian teenagers did: rushed into a marriage.

I realized my mistake almost immediately, but it took far too long to get out.

Personally, I endured abuse at the hands of my new husband—mental, physical, sexual, economic, emotional. You name it, he did it. Brutal is an understatement. He systematically broke me down until I was a shell of a human being. I’m still dealing with the emotional fallout and physical side effects, and I probably will be for another decade at least.

That’s personally, but let’s talk his family. Because he was an extreme case, yes, but he was raised with the idea that women existed to keep their mouths shut and their legs open. I spit out two children faster than I could whip my head, because birth control wasn’t part of god’s grand plan for my life. I was fulfilling my purpose as a mother, and wasn’t that great? My husband didn’t want the first baby. He wanted me for himself, see? Abortion was unthinkable, but he fully expected to carry a baby—my baby—to term, then give it away.

Keeping him was my first rebellion. Keeping the next one was my second.

In the time I belonged to that family, I watched my mother-in-law endure the same, though less extreme mistreatment. I watched every young female family member be groped by the family patriarch. “That’s just how it is.” I was shamed for making a fuss about it. I watched an older cousin try to sexually assault my teenage sister-in-law and she was the one who felt ashamed. We women made family dinners while the men sat on their asses. My husband and I lived with his parents for a short time. She and I would go to work each morning—an hour each way—with our husbands sitting in their robes in the living room, playing video games. When we returned hours later, weary, exhausted, they hadn’t moved. The standard greeting? “What’s for dinner.”

That’s his family, and yes, some families are sexist, but let’s talk about church. That’s where all of this is validated, encouraged, taught. Imagine my shock, when I went to my new husbands’ family church and encountered muted xenophobia and racism, a heavy dose of homophobia, and some damned overt sexism (see above.)

Equal roles, but different. Sound familiar? This is still being taught to little girls today.

In church, I listened with quiet disgust as pastors preached about how awful my sister—one of the gays—was. I piped up and asked how that sexual sin was any different than the two young church kids who’d just been caught “in a bad way”, soon to expect their first baby. Sexual sin is sexual sin, isn’t it? I sure did get an earful for that one. We did church boycotts: Disney, Target. Every Sunday School class: Job, cookies, and lets pray God saves the moos-lims before they all come over and blow us up. We revered people with white savior complexes who went to be jesus’s hands and feet and save the poor, helpless Africans.

Hate and ignorance, wrapped up in the holy Scripture. Hallelujah.

Meanwhile, I endured this abuse. This abuse, and every door slammed in my face as my husband hit me, tortured me. “Stay true to your vows,” the pastor would say. “You have communication issues,” our sister-in-law would tell us. My mother-in-law: “Linds, you just have to accept it. Love is a choice.”

“But what about the part where it says that husbands are to love their wives like Christ loves the church?” I asked.

My brother in law, joking: “This is why women aren’t supposed to speak in church.”

This America is alive and kicking, kids. It’s never gone away; it’s just been lurking, behind closed doors. “Pass the casual racism and meat loaf, would you? And get me a glass of water while you’re up. Ketchup, too.” What I’m scared about, truly, is that I know this. And these ideas are now validated. Now mainstream. Almost 50% of our population believes this is a good idea.

“It’s our time to take America back.”

What in the hell, if they’ve been saying these things behind closed doors, and if they believe them In The Name Of God—what in the hell are they going to say in the open, now? What in the hell are they going to do?

The 50s are revered as the aspirational yester-year, days gone by. Progress, as we call it, is godlessness to them. We, the godless libs, took Jesus out of schools. We’ve gone wrong ever since.

This is the America people want back, and that’s my first fear.

The second is this:

I got out. And I’m terrified that this, my success story, won’t happen anymore.

I’m the rare statistic. I un-brainwashed and educated myself. I got counseling (against every Christian advice) to treat severe post-partum depression. In the process of becoming a healthier person, I realized what a goddamn mess I was.

It took three tries and a pastor-pseudo-therapist legitimately telling me, “You know if he hits you again, Linds, I’m going to have to tell you to leave.” 

All regretful, like it was bad news.

“Why should I stick around and wait for it to happen again?” I asked.

He didn’t have an answer. I left the next week.

It took a few boldfaced lies (it’s temporary, it’s just a separation), and a few miracles, and a large support system of family and friends who all but plucked me out of that hell.

For leaving? My price was excommunication. From his family, our friends, our church. I am the heathen who Divorced my Husband and broke our home. In that entire city, only three people talk to me now.

(No loss, but it took a long time to recognize that.)

I never, ever would have made it on my own. I had two small children, a new job that barely paid a living wage, and I was, as I’ve said, a shell of a human being. I left him and went straight to the human services office. Without subsidized childcare, healthcare, and food supplements, we would have starved or been homeless. It never would have been possible.

These are the services that will probably be cut first.

How will anyone in my situation ever be able to leave? They won’t. Not to mention federal funding for shelters, crisis counseling for families, healthcare for abused women, and legal services for domestic violence victims. Throw in a court system that doesn’t value women, and a cultural mentality that believes what happens behind closed doors should stay behind closed doors… What hope do abused, trapped women have? None in hell.

If this is what makes America great again, I want out. I’ve been there, done that, and I’m never, ever doing it again.

For three years, I was homeschooled (went from private grade school, homeschooled and got ahead on subjects, public high school with extra classes at a local two-year college, then state university) and during those years I ended up becoming good friends with a family friend’s daughter. She was a couple years older than me and I idolized her. We watched cool historical fantasy and sci-fi movies, made up fantasy stories, and wandered around her family’s property which was huge and had fields and woods and ponds. Perfect for acting out our stories and playing boys-against-girls adventure tag.

I started going to public high school my sophomore year and we kind of lost touch for a while. But I heard things from my folks. Her family was religious but they bounced around churches like they hadn’t found the right one yet. Dad used to joke that the father would make a good Catholic if his wife didn’t hate Catholicism (which was a shock to me because my family and our other family friends in our little friend group were Catholic). They eventually settled for a local small church.

Next thing I knew, I heard my friend was “courting” someone. It was explained to me that courting meant dating with the intent to get to know each other and then get married. I thought that was strange because my friend used to talk about going to college and then mission trips to Mexico and having adventures and adopting kids. But no, she was being courted by “the pastor’s son” which was a big deal apparently. My friend was 17. The pastor’s son was 25.

My family was a bit wary of some of the things they talked about. Sounded a bit cult-like just from what we heard from our other friends.

Then I got a voicemail saying my friend was getting married when she turned 18. The pastor’s son was 26.

Back then, even I knew that that was too young. Something was wrong there, but I didn’t know what to say. She sounded happy.

We went to the wedding in a church that was more the size of a small chapel. There were other young women with older husbands and they each had two or three kids. The wedding started and I was shocked because it wasn’t anything like marriages I knew. Because the pastor got behind the podium and ranted about how men go off to college to see how wicked the world was. Women who went to college were sinful and temptations. There were godless liberals and weak men and homosexuals and terrorists in the outside world. The pastor raged about them. But then he changed subject saying, the men came back home to their church so they could marry pretty pure young women of faith. And of course the girls were all married at 18 because how else could you keep young women from falling into the sin of sex before marriage? You couldn’t. Marrying them at 18 kept them from sin because at least the sex they had would be with their husbands.

Needless to say, my family and I were incredibly uncomfortable. I was studying to get into a good state college. What did that make me in their eyes?

The reception came around and it hit me then that all the fun my friend and I had in the sprawling fields was over. I wouldn’t be able to visit and hang out because she had “a duty to her husband.” I left to go cool down (cry) in the car. My family soon followed. Apparently the father of the bride approached my dad because two young men showed interest in courting me and wanted the bride’s father to ask my dad about it. Dad told him he only needed their addresses and a shotgun (to this day I appreciate that). We left early.

Our family drifted away from theirs. We weren’t invited to things anymore. Not that we minded. We had serious disagreements with them.

I went to university (learned a lot. Turns out I was in my own kind of bubble. Small religious towns don’t exactly have the diversity a state university does). I heard things through my old friend’s Facebook page. She had a kid. Then two. Then the third was on the way. She went to nursing school for a little while. Lived in the small house on her parents’ property. Made posts about the evils of college with stereotypes from movies. I commented with corrections on those because there’s not one kind of college experience. And I wanted her to see that the world outside her bubble was wonderful, not sinful.

She wasn’t the same person I knew as a young teen. She didn’t go on adventures. She didn’t do all the things she planned. Now she stayed at home and tended to kids and blogged about how wonderful it was to be a young mother and how wicked the world was outside her church. (I tried to tell myself that that was alright. She was happy. This was her choice right? She was older than me but why did I feel like she didn’t know what she was really doing? I was scared for her.)

a friend of mine can no longer make it to the boston concert, so i’m helping her resell the ticket. it’s for balcony 313 row 8 seat 12; we’re completely open to negotiating and selling the ticket for lower than the original price of $69.20 !! ($46.25 for the ticket + TD Garden’s/Ticketmaster’s fees). please send me an ask/dm if you’re interested and please reblog this if you can!

if i don’t answer your ask right away, tumblr might’ve eaten it, so just message again

a friend of mine can no longer make it to the boston concert, so i’m helping her resell the ticket. it’s for balcony 313 row 8 seat 12; we’re completely open to negotiating and selling the ticket for lower than the original price of $69.20 !! ($46.25 for the ticket + TD Garden’s/Ticketmaster’s fees). please send me an ask/dm if you’re interested and please reblog this if you can!

if i don’t answer your ask right away, tumblr might’ve eaten it, so just message again