I stopped writing at all about this several years ago. I had begun to internalize all the feelings I had - both positive and negative - about my deconversion experience, thinking that it didn’t matter if I said anything else, and that no one really cared.
Well I care. And I think it’s time to tell this story in full.
Before, I wrote carefully, trying very hard to not be outright offensive to those who had given me grave offence. This is a pattern with me. Even when I am deeply wounded I have a history of trying desperately to make sure those around me are not hurt directly by my words or actions.
But recently I read a little saying somewhere on social media that whipped through me, electric, when I saw it: Everything that happened to you belongs to you. If people didn’t want you to write about it, they should have treated you better.
I spent decades hating and doubting my words and ideas and values; my very self and experience of reality. This is a thing that happens when the one person who’s approbation you crave above all others tells you things like, “Nothing you want to talk about is worth talking about,” or, “If someone held a gun to your head and asked me to deny God, I wouldn’t,” or, “Your body belongs to me until you get married, and then it belongs to your husband,” or, “I wish you wouldn't say ‘I love you,’ it makes me feel obligated to say it back,” or, “you were both old enough to know better. get over it,” or, “how do you expect any of your relationships to last when you have no moral foundation,” or, “you are not my daughter.”
I spent hours and hours ensuring that my blog posts were clear and calm. That my discussion of the pain my father caused was careful to show he thought what he was doing was right. It shows in the limited amount I wrote; This story cannot be told without that pain and that anger.
So I’m done.
It’s time to heal. I have been so damaged by the conservative christian religion I grew up under - and it is under, not with or beside - and I have too many times burst into sob-choked tears as I brush my teeth or cook dinner or brush my cats because the words my father said “in love” have left such abysmal wounds.
So, welcome to my journey, let's see where it takes us.
