I've totally screwed any relationship I have with my mother.
I need to establish that the woman is, in fact a batshit insane, verbally abusive religious zealot. That's not just me tossing superlatives around, either; she's bipolar on a very bad level and she refuses to take medication because she believes it affects her moral judgement. Consequently, my family (particularly my sister and myself) has been subject to her verbal abuse for the past twelve years or so.
But that's just how it's been and I can't change any of that now. The problem here regards her religious beliefs and my contact with them. My mother has been a Christian since long before I was born; she's a member of a small denomination with a particular set of beliefs. Those beliefs aren't really important to the telling of this story save for a couple of things:
1.) If you aren't a member of [this particular] church, you're damned.
2.) If you are a member of the church and you leave, you're damned with no chance of redemption.
3.) Oh yeah, and if you join the church and sin, you're out.
Three things that I don't buy in the slightest these days. The thing is, the majority of believers of this religion are legitimately great people. They live honest lives, they strive to be the best people they can be. They're the kind of people I would hate to disappoint. Which brings me to my next problem:
I joined this church.
About five years ago, mind. The whole ordeal was a huge mess. I was basically breaking down mentally at the time and then puberty and stuff was going on and it was a time of super weakness for me; I was desperate for something to cling to. In addition to that, pretty much every member of the church knew me as my mother's son and...believing that my only other option was damnation, they actively preached to me -- they wanted me, badly. And at the time, that feeling of being wanted just drew me in more. I caved.
So I became the model Christian teenager. The gay was the plague, abortion was a black and white issue, and fapping was a Satanic ritual. Since pretty much every church of the denomination was local and in small towns, most everyone knew my new deal at school and such. I can't say saving myself from damnation was a bad choice all 'round. It did pull me out of the aforementioned state of mental breakdown, and it did give me a strict set of moral guidelines to follow (something I desperately needed at the time). It also made me actively think about spirituality later on, and I don't think I would have come to the conclusions I have had I not joined up.
That being said, things didn't stay so positive. After about two years of my being a testament to righteousness or whatever, the rush began to wear off, and I very quickly started to realize the implications of what beliefs I subscribed to.
I need to clarify something for the next part of the story to have any impact. My father and elder brother are both non religious, though I suppose they subscribe to the general ideals of Christianity. My ten, possibly twenty closest friends are for the most part atheists -- none of them are members of my former denomination.
I believed that all these people I care about -- people whose good deeds I had witnessed firsthand -- were all going to burn in hell because they didn't agree with me. That didn't sit well with me. So I consulted my Mom, as she was the resident source of information. Her advice was for me to pray and ask God to draw these people in. To our denomination. Not any of that Catholic or Southern Baptist nonsense. That answer, as you might can imagine, didn't satisfy me.
It's at this point that I start having a lot of questions that my mother doesn't want to hear.
"Why should we boycott Pepsi for supporting gay rights?"
"Matt (my brother) is probably a better person than I am; why would he go to hell?"
"We're supposed to love everyone, so why do you talk about homosexuals like they're less than human?"
"The Bible was written hundreds of years after Jesus's life. Don't you think it might have been altered?
Et cetera. It's worth noting that most of these questions evolved into her giving me either guilt trips or scripture (which, as the last line indicates...uh...didn't quite do it for me), generally followed by both of us being in a shitty mood and/or her breaking down completely and storming into closet and praying...like, moaning in agony, praying. Audible through two walls. It...disturbed me.
It all went to shit. I've stopped attending church because if I tell the congregation I don't believe a lot of what is preached, I'm...well, fucked, and if I don't say anything, then if I'm called upon to say anything and I tell them what they want to hear, I'm lying, which fucks me by their standards anyways (and I couldn't deal with it myself). They either excommunicate me (which is chilling...you may as well be nonexistent to them) or they kneel around me at the altar and pray for me. Either way, I would be disappointing them, and like I said before, these are people I really hate to disappoint.
But even if the congregation wasn't a factor, my mother certainly is. To be blunt, I don't think she could handle it if I officially left the church. She loves me, despite her problems, and believing one of her children was damned to hell forever? I think she'd snap. She'd hurt herself. I'm nearly positive.
This entire ordeal spawned from my own weakness, and I feel obligated to resolve it. The thing is, I'm still too much of a pussy to be forthcoming about this to anyone who is actually involved. Like, the best idea I have, legitimately, right now is to hope my plans to study abroad in a couple of years come to fruition and I'll fade out of everyone's memory while I'm gone. Seriously. That's the best I've got.
So, to atheists or whatever, this probably seems like a really fucking stupid situation I'm in. I agree completely. But it's something I'll have to resolve eventually. Anyways, I needed to get this whole thing off my chest. If you made it to the bottom, thanks a ton, and I'm sorry for putting you through that.
