#authoirty

When looking back on my life, I have come to the realization that I have changed my lifestyle and adapted a lot in my nineteen years of living. I have gone through the growth of a boy to a man, I have gone through the mental journey of basic cognitive skills to in depth thinking and processing, and I have spent thirteen of my nineteen years of life in educational facilities. Some things I have to take in account is the changes I’ve had in my life on an more internal level and why. I, first, can acknowledge the fact that I am atheist. But I wasn’t always a man of science and evolution; I spent a good majority of my younger years in catholic education schools. You think spending nine out of the thirteen years of my educational life, you would think I would be a devoted catholic, especially when adding in that my mother was a roman catholic. That wasn’t the case though. I was pushed to go into a catholic school for various things and looking back on them now, they were all very ignorant reasons. Being up close and personal with God, I learned that not all of his children were as kind as the son of God himself. It’s weird because you would also make the assumption that people who follow such a positive light would be bright and happy people. I often found that the people in my school were very judgmental more than the kids in my own neighborhood and it bothered me. I knew it was wrong. In third and fourth grade, you don’t know any better. You are taught that people with tattoos are sinners and people who get piercings are evil; my mother had piercings. She wasn’t evil. It wasn’t until I was about 7th or 8th grade when I started to piece that the reason my classmates where always so judgmental was because we were taught to hate and judge people by our authorities. I didn’t like that. It upset me because I remember falling off my bike as a child and someone covered in tattoos helped me up and carried me home. My mother told me not to thank him because “he was scum”. It’s just fascinating to me how I was raised in such a religious environment and it influenced me negatively and pushed me away from religion. If there was a God, I know he wasn’t happy with how some of his followers treated his other children. Once I could think more clearly and got things out of my head, I also learned that just because my parents are my parents, doesn’t mean they want the absolute best for me. They only sent me to that catholic school because they didn’t want me to hang around the “thug kids” in my neighborhood. I recognize that I don’t classify my personality as “ghetto”, but I don’t classify myself as “proper” either. I wasn’t allowed to hang around the kids in my neighborhood because my parents would warn me that I’d be a druggie if I did and I’d go nowhere with my life. I was struck in my teen years because I didn’t like the people I went to school with because they were so mean, but I wasn’t allowed to hang out with the neighborhood kids even though they were no nice and accepting of me. I realize that my personality is a mix between those two worlds. I just wish my parents didn’t cage me to one society over the other.

Mary Wollstonecraft