This forum is a crazy place in how much it makes me self-reflect. I'm looking at me, not an idealized dream of how I'll be when God has made me all better, not a part of a gigantic divine plan, not even... what, indeed, what am I, what am I not? Some days it's hard to say, because I viewed myself through such a weird lens when I was a believer.

I had a dream that's related to this. In it I found these new glasses of mine all bent and dirty. I was with the two people I live with, BF and Roomie, and Roomie paid for parking while I went to find someone to fix my glasses. I thought I was in an eyeglass store no bigger than the smallest studio apartment kitchen there is known to man, I had to in fact kneel down to fit in it, but then I somehow found a white, tall and long corridor that just went on and on and in the room at the end of it, there was someone who made my glasses perfectly clean and straight.

I put them on, saw well again, was happy, and went to find BF and Roomie. They were furious with me for taking so long with such a silly thing while they paid for parking. I snapped back, "You have NO CLUE how it's like when your glasses are dirty". We went to find the car, some drunk who looked like the Mario Bros with moustache and all had stolen its white top layer and a front door. There was an eyewitness who was as drunk, he tried to help but he kept falling over. I was thinking I couldn't drive because I'd fall out of the car. The eyewitness said that the guy who stole the door and the white top layer did it because he figured his wife would like it.

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Very easy to interpret, really, it speaks about my inner conflicts about deconversion, about how I sometimes feel bad about "obsessing" over it because I'm using resources that should go somewhere else. Then again this is important. Faith was more important to me than I even realised, until I had to let go of it. I had to let go of the white shiny God-layer of what I trusted would get me forward in life, someone else ("and their wife" too) have the layer now and the false sense of security I also had is gone (the car door). And without it I get scared to drive, to take my life into my own hands. Things still feel partly out of control (the drunk people).

But, in the dream I also called the police, but I didn't know where I was. My BF spelled out the street name to me. "Water park street". It was summer, there was a lake nearby, the street we were on grew grass. Water park street made no sense.

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I have quite bad social anxiety. When I pretend that it's gotten better, I notice that I've just been avoiding people. It's kind of sad.

I have it even online. I have all these ideas that I'd like to blog and start threads about, and I even do it, but when conversation starts flowing, I don't have the faintest idea how I can participate again. I get scared that I'll offend people, or that my English writing and reading skills get in the way of mutual understanding. I also am lately afraid of projecting. It's so damn easy to say "I've been there, I know how that is" when... really, have I? I may have been in a situation that I'd describe with the exact same words as somebody else, but that doesn't guarantee I understand all of it.

Like I know someone who's pretty heavily depressed. I "know how that is" because I've been crippled by depression before. I've been unable to get out of bed before, I've been unable to leave my home. I've lived on apples and ryvitta for some time periods because I didn't want to run into anyone I know in the grocery store or on the way there. I've cried because I've been completely unable to do the damn laundry even though I was supposedly "healthy".

But do I know why this person won't get out of her home? Do I know? Really?

Do I know how to reach in their world, from how I could have been reached?

There's no angel talking in my head guiding my words so that they're somehow healing and I only have to be there and let the words flow. I don't have the "words of wisdom" gift of the Holy spirit. I'd only blurt words out, assumptions, projections, maybe do more harm than good.

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As for the "anger" part of this blog... I'm in a phase where I'm angry with how my childhood was like. I've been angry with it many times and the Xtian way of dealing with it sure didn't work, nor have many other attempts at putting "meaning" into it and trying to tell myself that "only good things happen to me".

The way I feel now, with gods and other beings and higher meanings out of the thinking system, is quite different. It is more pure. I do think my parents made huge, terrible mistakes and wrecked me over many times. I can't even say "I don't know if I could do better as a parent" because there were some basic, very important things that I am already doing better than they did. I don't blame my father so much but I wish my mother would even once say she is genuinely sorry and not explain herself away.

My parents weren't fundie, but my mom, who was the "stronger" parent, raised me in many harmful ways. She'd sit me down to watch X-files when I was 10 or something and tell me it was all real, and that's just a part of a huge picture. Sometimes she'd be an ufo freak, sometimes she'd be a Jesus freak, then she'd say everyone who believes in anything was a fool - and then she would have a dream that she thought was a divine vision of someone's lies revealed, and started a fight that didn't end in apologies from her side, ever. This happened so many times that I can't even count, and I can't write some of the things I was accused of by her. Things I didn't even dream of doing.

Also, to her, I had no boundaries at all. I didn't learn at home what a secret is or what honesty means. She raised me to be a crappy friend, and yelled at me for crying when I was bullied and lonely. She dressed me up and insisted on combing my hair to a very old age, and also would yell at me when I didn't know how to comb my hair by myself. I was 15 when I learned to braid. 15!!

I wish I had been one of those kids who always felt that something was off in my home, but I didn't realise that at all until very late. I did think everyone's moms went crazy once in a while, and that everyone lied, nobody kept secrets except for their own (and that'd be a LOT of secrets), nobody was genuine, and that was how life was.

I remember being 13 and visiting someone I was pen friends with at the time, she lived in a nearby town, and I found myself shocked because I could hear her chew on her food. That may be hard to explain, but it never was quiet in my home. Everyone except my dad had a very loud voice, the TV was always on, and I also had an older brother with a severe mental handicap, who was unable to keep his mouth shut. I hated him, I really did, before I turned thirteen I took all my bottled up anger and frustration out on him, verbally and physically. He passed away some years ago. His passing was one of the most painful things I've been through and I still miss him in my dreams, I see him there and cry my little heart out that he'd come back, but I do wish my mom wouldn't have made me live with him when I was little.

I took till the damn old age of 19 to take the very first step to accepting myself and understanding why I had so much trouble getting along with people. It was when I realised that I may be on the high-functioning end of the autistic spectrum, with my motor clumsiness, my extremely good rote memory, my trouble keeping up with real-time conversations and seeing between the lines, and many other quirks, some of them more fun than others at least. I still think so, I've only taken this long to go ahead with the diagnosis. I did try to get it a few years ago, but my depression was too deep. Now the depression is less deep and I'm going for the diagnosis again. Some other diagnoses have already been ruled out, but that one hasn't been yet. It rather looks like I may possibly be right, but we'll see.

Though, my psychiatrist recently said that he thinks I was raised to be out of touch with the world and that's shaped very much of who I am. He's very experienced and very dedicated, and his words echoed in my head for a long time - yes, he's right, he is. It might still totally be that I am somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but it's hard to say at this point how much of me is genetic and how much is from the screwed up situation at home. Like, my senses are heightened all the time - common for autistics, but also common for people who have NEEDED that for a long time because the situation's been unstable. Also, good parenting can help many kids on the autistic spectrum, bad parenting makes them worse. Just like good and bad parenting affect any kid. And I had the misfortune.

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Looking upon what I've now blurted out... I don't blame myself for liking the thought of there being a "rock of ages" that would never change, never be unreliable, whose plan would turn out to be amazing in this life already. Who would love me, really love me, know everything about me without me making an effort to verbalise myself.

Except there was one huge problem with it all - it wasn't real. It was no more real than my mom's dreams about me being a part of a conspiracy against her.

Damn.

Then again there is something very calming in my history being just bad luck and nothing more.

Edited to add: Funny, a few minutes later I realised I didn't mention my first adventures in Xtianity at all even though it too did shape a lot of how I grew as a teenager and adolescent. I was fifteen, sixteen, and I was like "OMG IT IS REALLY REAL" after some personal experiences (which I now understand was me doing self-hypnosis) and dove head-first into Pentecostalism. Many things went wrong, the biggest one being that I never again considered that Jesus might not be real at all, not till my deconversion (which happened through 2014 - have I ever mentioned that either?).

I feel pretty funny altogether after writing all this. Hmmm.