Not The Same Person

During later no contact, you may start confusing people. You start changing so much. People don't know what to make of you. I am confusing people lately.

The deconversion is just one layer, there's other layers too. I don't act the same, the people pleasing vaporized. I got a bigger mouth on me. I feel less afraid of everything. Life still has problems don't get me wrong--I have been sick for two months straight. Whatever flu is spreading nation wide, it lasts a lot longer. It's scary to be sick all of December and then all of January after recovering from the first illness. Religious me would have seen God as punishing me, scientific me, figures when they are warning of nation-wide flus maybe I should start wearing a mask when I go out. The second go around has given me extreme exhaustion. Grief over lost friends is affecting me too especially with those who have died.

Overall, it's strange. I feel like I am backtracking to the old me, when I had my first no contact and rebelled. I think then I was crawling out of the cage, but then due to trauma, got locked back in it part way. I was trying to become the person I wanted to become and then went back to trying to become what would be "accepted". I had gone metaphorically back to sleep under the pressures of low contact. I still wanted to earn their love, their respect. I hoped my life would "turn out" and I lived for the fantasy of a day where I would have a family who loved me.  The book Women Who Runs With Wolves may have said I became like the Little Match Girl with all the power inside suppressed.  This probably took me into extreme religion, all those years of trying to become "acceptable" and digging myself into a hole of repression and like a cage.

With my husband--things are fine, he always got the "real me". The "real me" is who I am returning to find.

God as Bart Simpson

                                             [source]

The deconversion road has continued. I've been able to return to the Unitarian Universalist church.  I was able to talk to them about how I was UU for most of my young adult hood and how I left and came back and get understanding. That helps a lot. I have noticed they treat my husband with a lot more respect then as the lost "hell-bound" soul. They are nice people. Class issues may still be rough ones in the UU, but I have noticed since I left, there was discussion about classism and more education along those lines in the churches. I can't believe in the God who throws most people in hell, that's long over with. We have been happier being back, the UU fellowship we attend is very interactive and friendly.

I spent 16 years of my life thinking there was a God that would care. I didn't believe in the prosperity gospel and didn't expect him to bring me suitcases of 50s and 100 dollar bills or even total healing, but I expected that instead of being ground down by stupid things of no meaning and years of poverty, there would be some meaning, focus and comfort to life. Maybe compared to my human narcissistic parents, I wanted a loving God the father. Well the treatment wasn't much different. Lots of silence and withholding. I noticed those characters were all merging together in mind. I had my own cognitive dissonance in that area. Any solace I did find or happiness was based in "breaking the rules":  activist causes frowned upon by the religious right, art, music, and nature.

 There's a lot of people I know calling out to God for hope, help and comfort. I feel for them. I am still technically theistic instead of total atheist and I hope "beyond the veil" so to speak there is a God or higher power that cares and can't or doesn't intervene for reasons we don't understand, but the idea of a God who demands blood sacrifices to have sin appeased, that's totally gone for me now and the evangelical lines of dividing humanity into lost and saved with the greatest percent going to hell. There's no God finding a parking space for you or sending down magic fairy dust to fix any of our lives.

I had one aunt my sociopathic family destroyed, and I prayed for help to change things for her. NOPE. Some who have read my blog long enough know that the seeds of the deconversion were spread long ago. The evil just grew more evil and got richer, while Mr. Yahweh sat back on his lounge chair and said "I am too busy." I think of others who have died, all good people I who cared about and had conscience and empathy who the evangelicals and fundamentalists would consign to hell based on their rules because they were not "born again" like my war protester friend who was not Christian and died 7 years ago. It is a relief to no longer live in the world of "hell" and end-times Doom.

My husband made a joke about God is was based on a cartoon I did during my youthful deconversion atheist days where I draw God with a Bart Simpson head, saying "Eat my shorts!" while watching struggling people. We still joke about this every time something bad happens like our car breaking down or other mishaps. One of us will joke "EAT MY SHORTS" which is code for God giving us the middle finger and laugh.  Hey you have enough dark stuff happen, sometimes you have to learn to laugh. We both have been sick most of this winter. He goes out in public to run errands, and gets the latest flu or cold and then I get it. I'm in bed with another one, and all of December was spent being sick too.

I was going into the pharmacy a few days ago to get 60 bucks co-pays worth of medication, had to go in since they screwed up an order, and husband had stomped back to the car and sent me in on my walker, and I walked in and saw all these signs they are selling in there. The pharmacists had ignored our called in order three days before.  I call this the "Middle Class and above Smug Christian Woman decor", those signs they slap on their living room walls always painted usually on barn wood that say things like...

"Thankful, Grateful, Truly Blessed"

"Truly Blessed"

"In All Things Give Thanks"

Well you get the drift. If I see someone with signs like that on their living room walls, I will know not to pursue a friendship not too heavily. What kind of people put things up like that on their walls? Do they feel really blessed or is it to brag about being blessed?  They fill living rooms of all my old church members, and some people around here. If I get in any pain I can't hide or can't wear the mask, they would dump me like a hot rock. That's someone to keep in politeness land and weather talk.
Hmm you mean like God? Think about a relationship where you are promised this figure will help you, and he simply chooses not to. Or refuses over and over to help people you care about. One reason I deconverted was so many friends died without "being saved", I figured heaven was going to be empty anyway, if there was one.

I can't wear the mask. And yeah the preachers will preach, "Oh God loves you" but all I know is when the pedal hit the metal, and when it was time for a God to step up. He didn't. Many people who deconvert, and I have seen this on all the deconversion boards, because I know we prayed and asked this God for help, and we also saw many loved ones and others suffering then we start to question.
One thing I think about, humans would probably help each other a hell of a lot more, if they didn't think there as a magic genie in the sky that was going to fix everything. I also believe a Cruel God makes for Cruel Men, and this is why the religious right has become so hypocritical and cruel too. 

Remember when Jimmy Carter got in trouble just for having lust in his heart?

Aspie Brains

Maybe that's why the "think positive" junk didn't work on me that well.

Farewell to my blogger friend "Q"

Mulderfan posted 

 IN MEMORY OF MY BELOVED BLOGGER FRIEND "Q"

It's with great sadness that I share the news that Q has passed away.

Might seem strange but, even though I never actually met Q, heard his voice or saw his picture, he was in many ways the greatest friend I've ever had. More like a brother than a friend, his daily emails, inappropriate memes, and constant stream of funny YouTube videos kept me going in my darkest hours, including a lengthy and near fatal illness.

Those who followed Q's blog will know that he was haunted by many demons but never lost his sharp wit or crazy sense of humour. I console myself with the knowledge that he is finally and peace and free of pain.

Sigh, I am so very sad to have learned this. I will grieve Q too, he was a great internet friend and fellow blogger and fellow ACON supporter. I have been worried as I had been writing him and not heard back. He would share videos and jokes with me and we traded emails a few times a week for years.  Because of his background he seemed to understand things I never could explain to others. He was funny, and one of the strongest people I have ever met considering what he had gone through. He was a great friend to me too, and always supportive, and we shared a lot of jokes, I will miss him dearly.

13 Siblings Held Captive By Abusive Parents

13 Siblings Held Captive By Abusive Parents

"A couple accused of imprisoning their 13 children in dark and filthy conditions in their Perris, California, home believed it was by God’s will that they had a large family, according to reports. The parents of David Turpin told ABC News their son and his wife Louise had so many children because “God called on them.” The couple is accused of using chains and padlocks to shackle several of their children to their beds, according to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Department."

Some of the religious narcissists and sociopathic parents are going overboard in the abuse. Authoritarian religion has paved the way for breeding as many children as possible as their parents produce them for the Army of God and turn them into trophies.

It's great one 17 year old daughter was brave enough to break away and report what was happening to her and her siblings. She told the police she feared her parents would kill her. In these Quiverful families like the Duggar family, the children are made into literal objects, you will notice they all have the same exact dresses and hair styles. What are the chances that all the girls would have the same exact hair color? They all wear that in the same style straight and parted in the middle and the boys are expected to match their father in the same horrible 1970s Prince Valiant hair style.

Narcissists often treat their own children like objects and trophies. One can tell easily even seeing the photos, that they were seen as part of the display, they were not treated as people in their own right. These parents were very religious and home-schooled the children setting up their own private school via California law. This was a fundie family that loved Disney and Elvis.

I don't support homeschooling and think it should be abolished or have very strong and strict state over-sight. There's too many abuses. Go to the website Homeschoolers Anonymous, and you can read the horror tales there, of isolation and young people with diminished futures from lacking education. A few educated parents do homeschool right with self-studies, co-opts and caring about their children but the door is far too open for abuse. The neighbors in all the news stories claim the children weren't allowed to talk to them and came out at night only like vampires. Some didn't even know of their existence.

What scared me about this story the most besides the extreme malnutrition and control, is that some of these children were adults, and they were well into their 20s. One was 29 years old! We see this like with the Duggars where their adult children like Jana and John David Duggar are 27 years old and never have lived on their own or in their own apartment and have their lives directed as much as when they were 12 years old. So some of the chained up "kids" were adults that weren't allowed to grow up or get mature adult lives. I saw the theory online that they did not allow these children to grow up and I believe it, the older adult-children look like they are severely limited and the starving has kept them away from attaining puberty.

Some tried to claim the abuse came later, and that the family "looked happy" at Disney and other tourist spots but I found that nonsense, it did not escape my attention they were all dressed the same, and in those circles "keeping sweet" is part of the formula, where the children are trained to hide all emotions and keep smiling. They look creepy like pod children and you can tell the control from their two parental sociopaths is already happening. Keeping up appearances is very important in fundamentalist Christian circles. This is why many would look at this family and ignore the skeletal limbs and awkwardness like the Elvis impersonator and think "What a happy family!".

The mother being "perplexed" when the cops arrived, she probably is one of those abusers who thought this level of parental control was needed and that she was not an abuser.  We know narcissists aren't very good at self examination or reality checks on their behavior. I would bet money of "To Train up a Child" was probably somewhere in that house.

If you google Turpin and wedding renewal on youtube, you can see videos of their wedding renewals. There we see the narcissism with the endless wedding renewals between this couple and desiring all that attention. I hope the adult children are able to get services, transitional housing and training to get jobs and lives and the other children are kept away from the relatives as well.

The aunt with her googly eyes, acting like it was normal to have all the kids hidden away from her all those years, I don't think much of her either. I hope the grandparents don't get them either:

"James and Betty Turpin said "God called on them" to have as many children as they did (referring to David and Louise). They also said the children were given "very strict home-schooling," and that the children had to memorise long passages of the Bible. Some of the children were aiming to learn it in its entirety, they said."

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42701311
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Don't Worry He Won't Get Far on Foot

They have made a movie about John Callahan, he was a cartoonist who was disabled and then drew cartoons, which were controversial but funny years ago. This is definitely a must-see!

John Callahan