I’m not like everybody else

I’ve been thinking a lot about the shit going down right now, with a family member narcing on me to my Mom. I’ve been thinking about privacy, and family dynamics. I vacillate between feeling hurt and upset and feeling righteously pissed.

I’ve always been a very private person, and I’ve always felt I have the right to keep some things to myself. I doubt that many of us share all details of our lives with all friends and family. I wonder when it became a requirement that I be completely open about my beliefs concerning various subjects? Even more, I wonder when some decided that it was their place to not only judge me about something I’ve expressed here, but to go running to my Mom like a junior high school mean girl and tell her about it? Granted, this is a public blog, so anyone who wants to read it can do so (and yeah, I’ve still got my little family of stalkers...Bitter Bear, Hubby Bear, Sister Bear, and Mama Bear). But wouldn’t reason prevail in deciding what to share with certain people? Wouldn’t common sense tell you that telling my Mom about things you read here is going to hurt HER more than it would me? Are you so unthinking when it comes to the feelings of others that you can’t comprehend that?

I have struggled for many years with philosophical questions of all kinds, but especially religion. I’ve written some things about it here, but only a few people know the full details. Some things happened to me, things that I’ve realized recently that I blocked from my memory. No worries...I wasn’t sexually abused by any religious authority figures or anything like that. But I went through a period in my life that was so strange and so bizarre--like something from another universe--that my mind apparently decided to lock it away into a little hidey-hole, and it has only recently started to surface, some twenty years later.

So while I wasn’t physically abused, I most definitely was traumatized, and the root of it was religion. I spent a long time pondering this, trying to come to terms with what had happened to me, trying to figure out what I believed, what I felt. Trying to understand where it might fit into my life, what it all meant, where it might take me. I have spent much of my adult life truly thinking about these things; I have not taken it lightly, and I have approached it with gravitas and a true spirit of self-awareness. I really wanted to explore my feelings on the matter and come to the best conclusion I could.

As I wrote things about it here and on Facebook, I found a group of supportive friends who discussed things with me and helped me try to figure it out, at least as much as we can. Even those who don’t agree with me seem to either respect my right to come to my own conclusions, and to just agree to disagree; either that, or they decided to stop reading me. I respect both options, and I realize that I am not for everyone. I’m okay with that.

But I found a voice here, on my own blog, and also among my Facebook friends. I realized that others have had similar struggles, and I felt stronger knowing that I wasn’t alone. There were even a couple of times when I think maybe I helped some people, the way that others had helped me. In short, I felt accepted for who I was and occasionally respected for my opinions, rather than judged and ostracized because of them.

And here we are. I’ve got someone taking the things I write here and running to my Mom with them. I am once again a “family discussion.” Apparently it’s easier for my online friends to accept me for who I am than it is for certain family members to accept it...they seem quite prepared to judge me. Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ve pretty much had my fill of that. When someone tells you that they think you’re possessed by a demon, you tend to get a little inured to such pronouncements, you know?

I don’t fit in easily. I didn’t in grade school, I didn’t in high school, there have been times when I didn’t in my workplace...I’m that square peg you hear about. It took me a while to get to the point where I not only was okay with that, I was actually kind of proud of it. I still am. I’m going to keep on doing what I do here, and I’m going to keep on writing what I write and thinking what I think. I’m going to keep advocating for equal rights for all and for my gay friends to be able to get married; I’m going to keep railing against the abuses and hypocrisy of the church; I’m going to keep writing about the disastrous policies the Repugnicans are trying to enact that will erase years of progress and return us to the time when dinosaurs rich white guys ruled the earth. Same thing, of course.

Bottom line: I don’t give a rat’s ass if you don’t like my opinions. It’s your prerogative to dislike them, and you know what? You can even dislike me. But it’s my prerogative to keep on voicing those opinions, and that is exactly what I’m going to do.

I’m not like everybody else. And I’m glad.