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Goodbye Jesus

So Heres My Ex-C Testimony


Xerces

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Innocence is something that is beautiful, it’s blissful, carefree. Innocence is also easily manipulated and broken. My memories only travel so far back, to about the age of six, probably because it is quite an eventful and life altering year of my short existence. I remember a big old house with lots of fixer upper tasks that went untouched. Some claim it was a haunted house, everything from hearing ghost bikers and experiencing levitating mattresses to seeing demonic grinning children in vehicles parked outside. Some of these experienced by my family members, consisting of six, my eldest sister, older brother, younger new born brother, also of course mom and pop. I always really looked up to my older brother, I would imitate his clothing choices and I always would want to play video games with him, he was an ambitious hockey player aspirant, loved good music and had a way with women. Then there was my elder sister, the artist with adventure in her heart. There’s my mom, workaholic super star and avid smoker-and my dad the police officer glory seeker. The family that never could, known to some as the local adams family. Continuing on about 1996, definitely one year that I’ll never forget, a string of not so pleasant events, I was molested by one of my older brother’s friends, my older brother whom, was spiraling out of control due to the neglect of my parents, started taking drugs and formed his own gang, during that year he was severely depressed, kicked off the hockey team, lacked a proper education for a 15 yr old teen, because of a previous event in life where my folks pulled him and my sister from the public education system so that the school officials could not find out about the neglect. There was an occurrence where he took all of my sister’s medications, like the monster my father is, instead of taking him to see anyone he kept him at home and would just keep giving him coffee, despite extreme side effects to the extent that my brother was mistaking paper towels for food. Eventually they had to take him somewhere, the doctors wanted to keep him until he was better, but my dad insisted that it was not concerning enough to have him stay there, so he pulled him out. Soon after, my brother painted his room with brains, blood, and a bullet. Despite my parents believing in suicide being a automatic ticket to hell, my dad said he “had a vision” of god putting his hand between my brothers head and the bullet, saving his soul from hell. I can’t remember whether I cried or not, as a kid I didn’t really express myself a lot, I used to draw the situation out, as if life was a series of comic books. For example, despite being awake when they took my brother away in a black body bag, about the only thing I could do to cope was to draw a poor image of a dead person and show it to my dad, I remember asking my dad if my brother was dead, as if I was so shocked by all of it that my young mind couldn’t comprehend what was going on, I showed the drawing to my dad, and he sort of nodded at me. I remember a day when my sister came home from being away, only to be greeted with the news about the death of one of her brothers, she ran to his room in panic and all I could hear afterwards was screaming and crying. So was the year of 1996.

 

Fast forward a little bit to our new house that my parents used part of my dead brothers insurance money to get, not knowing about this at the time of course, but it sure was nicer than living back at that other house with the rat & roach problem, a black snake even got into the house once, I didn’t miss the awkward haunting bits of it either, although I believe it was more hysteria than anything. Things seemed as if they were going better, of course me and my younger brother were still isolated from the world and kept from any sort of public education, but we enjoyed having our own rooms, our toys and our video games. I met my first real best friend while living there, Aaron Byrd was his name, a military loving video game fan, enjoyed all the things I enjoyed, so we instantly got a long, his mom however, not so much. Didn’t really like us for awhile, especially did not like my sister for some reason. Thus to remedy this I would play with toys with my friend through the fence that housed their property, and their German Sheppard. Eventually the mother finally gave in, probably because of the friendship between me and her son, so she started associating herself slowly with my folks, and I finally got to actually spend time with my friend instead of having a big metal fence between us. We would role play soldiers and play with Pokémon & Gundam toys, we’d play video games and build club houses. All the while I was not being educated, the neighbors only thought that me & my brother were homeschooled kids, so nothing was really done about that, everything was really kept hush hush, I never told anyone because my parents told me if I said anything that bad people would take me away to live in an awful home. Most of my days consisted of playing outside, riding my bike, spending time with my friend Aaron, video games, television, and of course church, lots of church. My parents were particularly animated about the bible god. The best two words to describe them have to be: crazy fundamentalists. Although I believe both of them are mentally ill, and they both come from odd backgrounds in their own right, which might account for the oddities that followed their adult life. I still believe that religion played a key role, a scape-goat, they could use it to justify themselves and use it as an excuse to pray about a problem when something called for actions not prayer. I was told my dad once took a staff and went walking in the woods, claiming that god talked to him, and my mom was more of the “be a good xtian or burn in hell”. I remember sitting up with her many a night, and she would read a bible for children to me, she would also read heavens gates and hells flames to me, which graphically depicted hell from a experience the author claimed she had. I of course didn’t go without my heavy dose of religious fear tactics at a young age, all while learning watered down stories from a kiddie bible. My mom also suffers anger issues and would hit me & my brother on occasion, of course my dad didn’t care, he was more obsessed with turning me into a great athlete, which I will touch on. Back to my mom, chain smoking boot wearing industrial worker, was the one most adamant about taking me to church, which accounted for part of my social life, so it was good for something, but it was also full of things such as speaking in tongues, demonic possession, boring church music and loud obnoxious preachers. It all sort of didn’t catch my attention, except for the demonic possessions, oh and I had a tambourine to shake around during music time, one day my mom got PO’d at me for not shaking it enthusiastically enough, so she let some other kid who was obviously ADHD use it, and told me that I should be as happy to praise god as that kid. Other times she would tell me things like “you’re stronger in the faith than your friend Aaron because when he doesn’t feel like going to church at least you do” and yes this was the case, but not because of worship, but because there were kids to play with, and because I wanted to appease my mother. I remember having my first crush on a girl at church, her name was Sable, and I thought she was so beautiful; she was more interested in some quiet obedient church boy by the name of Adam however, so all I could do was dream. Other times, my mom would always make sure to take me to church hosted plays about the dangers of hell, depicting various scenarios where people would do something sinful and go to hell, awfully terrifying for someone so young, but my mother figured the more I was afraid the more I would cling to religion, and I really did. I prayed almost every night, I was always frightened of dark rooms because I was convinced demons lurked in the shadows, there were nights when I would be scared to sleep in my own bed, to remedy this I just closed my eyes and kept them shut and would replay the word jesus in my head, I would also do this if I thought I was having sinful thoughts, because I believed it was satan attacking my mind.

 

My dad wasn’t as diehard about teaching me the ways of xtianity, although extremely religious in his own right. He would make me run up and down the drive way and got me involved in soccer because he believed I was going to be a great athlete, he has done this with all his kids, from telling me Michael Jordan was going to show up at our door and confess that I inspired him, to telling my sister she was going to break the records for women’s and men’s track running, all while wearing white clothes with a red cross symbol. I heard stories from my sister that he actually used to be normal until his father died, then my dad stopped working for awhile, and my mom had to pick up three jobs for us to afford to live. Then, at our new location after the death of my brother, he had a job but eventually quit again and claimed it was something wrong with his lungs that prevented him from working, but never said what it was. Clearly an excuse. Never has worked again since. My mom kept us a float for awhile until she had to quit her job because of being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. We lost the house, I sunk into a mild depression because we were forced to go live in a cabin my grandma offered us in Tennessee, and thus I would have to abandon my best friend, the only way I could react to this was cry. I did not cry a lot but if there was one thing that resonated with me it was my friendship with Aaron, and leaving him behind was a blow to my young fragile psyche. We ended up in Tennessee around 2002, the cabin was almost a century old but the inside was nice, for the time being. My mom’s mother was the one supporting us and buying us food until we could get food stamps, then she paid utility bills. When my mom qualified for social security checks we were doing somewhat better, still poor but better. Some of the highlights of my time at the “cabin” include deeper descent into religion, the house being trashed by my parents and the various zoo of animals they collected such as 3 exotic birds, a few dogs and some cats. My relationship with my brother turning into more a parent relationship because of the fact that my parents did such a poor job, so I tried to take it upon myself to make sure he brushed his teeth and all the other little necessities. I suffered from extreme social isolation; luckily we had a computer with an internet connection, so most of my days would be as follows: wake up, eat, play video games, watch TV, or play on the computer, and or play outside. I especially enjoyed the online games as my special pass time; it was my world away from the pain and loneliness. I delved deeper into religion also, I’d watch a lot of xtian programming with my mother, and I tried to read more of the bible everyday. Most of my religious experience was fear though, hitting puberty I was in a constant crisis, I thought I was going to be sent to hell for my sinful thoughts, and I would constantly puncture holes in my self esteem for not having pure thoughts, I would cry and moan and ask god for forgiveness. I did the whole praying thing a lot, my mother made sure I prayed for Israel and I also prayed for the salvation of the world along with personal pleas to the “ all powerful” god to bring some kind of resolution to my bleak lonely situation. My father told me if I had the faith of a mustard seed that I could move mountains, I wanted to be the best xtian possible, so that god would maybe look at my life with favor and rescue my family from all the turmoil we were in. Never heard god, never saw anything change, day in, day out, nothing, ever, changed. And so between church, and my grandma trying to home-school us 1 day out of the week, I was awfully isolated, my portal to the world beyond was our computer, I would learn, read, play online games to meet people, this last for quite awhile even into my teens. Running away wasn’t an option; I was too afraid, afraid of sin, afraid of dying on the streets, afraid of the world. Things started to get worse, I struggled with social anxiety and bouts of depression, I hardly would smile, despite thinking I was saved by the grace of some god I couldn’t see, I never smiled. It was as if I did not exist, I was a puppet I the hands of my parents, I barked the same diatribes and hatreds they had for the world, they especially hated gay people and democrats, so they raised me to pray for republicans to get into office and to condemn gay people for their “wicked ways”, I was their xtian puppet child hidden away on 40 acres of land in a cabin, with nothing but a few things to occupy my time every day. At least with the computer I self improved my ability to read and I taught myself to type, it’s surprising they even let us have a computer, mostly because I think it was the fact that my dad had literally become obsessed with online contests, as if he was searching for a get out of shit card. My life revolved around the information super highway and mass media, my heroes consisted of Jesus Christ and Bruce Lee, and I had a fan boy crush on the pop singer Hilary Duff. Fast forward some, I was diagnosed with dermatitis on the scalp, it scared me to the point of where I got involved in quackery, and bought into the conspiracy theory that the FDA was out to make people sick and that these natural people had cures for everything. I was so infatuated with this idea I believe because my life was already shit, being diagnosed with an incurable disease put the icing on the cake, I had had it. So I tried everything from colon cleansing, to fasting, to taking supplements and trying to convince people of my conspiracy theory which only seriously pissed people off. Fast forward a bit more, I started playing World of Warcraft, and started to secretly doubt my religion through long nights of internet browsing, I become friends with various online people, to which I find my next true friend Helen, who in turn prevented me from shooting myself, (did I mention my dad kept 3 guns in the house all accessible to us?) I also tried swallowing a bunch of pain killers once, felt really numb but obviously didn’t kill me, thought I was going to die though. I started stealing cigarettes from my cousin living at my grandma’s house, smoking was one of my guilty new found pleasures, helping somewhat with my anxiety and depression. But trying to break free from the mental restraints my parents had brainwashed me with was no easy task, and I suffered even more depression, I pushed some online friends away, and I got mad at them if they abandoned me. I got to the point that I could not take it anymore, I told my parents that I would kill myself if they didn’t let me go live with my sister(I had originally tried something similar but it did not work out too well). I went to live with my sister and her husband, sadly leaving my younger brother behind… To my dismay no one had tried to save me and my brother from our horrible situation, I tried to keep in contact with him via internet chat, he was taking the same path as me, video games, TV, eat sleep etc… They enrolled him in taekwondo at least, that was his outlet as well as the internet and video games.

 

While I have been with my sister and her husband I have gotten my GED, done some college, I’ve left my former religion to become an atheist, from reading books and watching/reading things, and actually looking at the bible critically for the first time, I came to the conclusion that religion is a bucket of horseshit. I have a new life now, I can breathe, and I actually smile now, I have friends, a job…I am now 20 years old and my life has never been better. My best friend Helen has stayed with me through a lot of pain as well, and I am indebted to her for that, I could not ask for a better “soul” to share a friendship with. We’ve both been put through so much.

 

*(Another good thing that happened is custody of my younger brother has been handed over to my sister & her husband via child services. )*

 

I still struggle to heal from the damage my parents did to my life, but I feel that I am close to healing completely from what they did to me, my brothers and sister. The memory of my older brother is in my heart, and my future lies before me, I can only move forward and hope for a better tomorrow. I certainly will not be praying though. Although I believe my parents are both mentally ill, I believe if it wasn’t for religion they maybe would have sought help from professionals and not used religion as a scape goat. My story as it turns out is not so unique though, the children in the middle east, the children in the catholic church, the children of fundamentalist xtians in America, are all being force fed a destructive dogma that promotes self loathing, sexual repression, intolerance toward people that are “sinners”, hatred, bigotry, blind faith, theocratic government, hypocrisy, prayer that doesn’t work, self righteousness, animosity toward science, unwanted militant evangelism… etc. Some would deny this and say xtianity really is not that bad, it's even the best thing that a human could believe in! A quick look at the bible says this isn’t true.

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I definitely could have added more, especially more crazy bits regarding my folks but this is the best I can come up with right now. 3200 words and its about 4 am in the morning, I still need to clean the kitchen before I can sleep but I needed to get this out there I have been putting off my Ex-C testimony for too long LoL.

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Your testimony made me cry.

 

That doesn't happen very often, because I'm a hard hearted old bitch.

 

*hugs* :)

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Wow, Thanks for sharing all that. May I say, I'm VERY impressed with your writing ability considering your education was neglected! I admire the strength that you must have, to survive such a childhood. You deserve every bit of happiness and freedom you have now, and I hope you will continue to heal and grow. So glad you were able to leave that insidious religion behind as well.

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Guest Valk0010

Wow, Thanks for sharing all that. May I say, I'm VERY impressed with your writing ability considering your education was neglected! I admire the strength that you must have, to survive such a childhood. You deserve every bit of happiness and freedom you have now, and I hope you will continue to heal and grow. So glad you were able to leave that insidious religion behind as well.

 

Ditto.

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Seconding ilovemybrain, I'm glad, and amazed, you through that, and are able to live happy and successfully, and overcome the brainwashing.

 

Hoping the best for you in the future :) Thank you for sharing your story!

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Another ditto for what brain said. Although I was raised in a strongly christian household and forced to go to church, I can honestly say that, although it wasn't perfect, I had a pretty good childhood. As I get older, I realize that very many people did not. Hearing stories like yours makes me appreciate my childhood more and makes me want to try harder to make sure my own kids are raised right. Thanks for your testimony.

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While I have been with my sister and her husband I have gotten my GED, done some college, I’ve left my former religion to become an atheist, from reading books and watching-reading things, and actually looking at the bible critically for the first time I came to the conclusion that religion is a bucket of horseshit. I have a life now, I can breathe, and I actually smile now, I have friends, a job…I am now 20 years old and my life has never been better. My best friend Helen has stayed with me through a lot of pain as well, and I am indebted to her for that, I could not ask for a better “soul” to share a friendship with. We’ve both been put through so much.

 

(Another good thing that happened is custody of my younger brother has been handed over to my sister & her husband via child services. )

 

I still struggle to heal from the damage my parents did to my life, but I feel that I am close to healing completely from what they did to me and my brothers and sister. The memory of my older brother is in my heart and my future lies before me, I can only move forward and hope for a better tomorrow, I certainly will not be praying though. Although I believe my parents are both mentally ill, I believe if it wasn’t for religion they maybe would have sought help from professionals and not used religion as a scape goat. My story as it turns out is not so unique though, the children in the middle east, the children in the catholic church, the children of fundamentalist xtians in America, are all being force fed a destructive dogma that promotes self loathing, sexual repression, intolerance toward people that are “sinners”, hatred, bigotry, blind faith, theocratic government, hypocrisy, prayer that doesn’t work, self righteousness, animosity toward science, unwanted militant evangelism… etc. Some would deny this and say xtianity really is not that bad, it evens the best thing that a human could believe in! A quick look at the bible says this isn’t true.

 

That was a very compelling story. Thanks for sharing it. And the above quote is a good beginning to your new life.

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Guest Babylonian Dream

Welcome! Sorry about your brother and all the other crap you had to deal with. It truly is sad to see people have to deal with so much. *hugs*

 

I second that you're a really good writer. You should seriously look into that. Become an author maybe?

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Guest ephymeris

Wow Xerc, I had no idea you'd been through so much. I am so sorry for all the pain in your childhood and even more amazed you've come out of it able to think and live for yourself. Thank you so much for sharing!

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Sorry to hear what you went through Xerces, it's a truly familiar story and one that won't be the last. Hopefully, your experiences will strengthen you and give you a purpose and drive in your life...As an English major I encourage you to look into pursuing something like that...

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All the while I was not being educated, the neighbors only thought that me & my brother were homeschooled kids, so nothing was really done about that, everything was really kept hush hush, I never told anyone because my parents told me if I said anything that bad people would take me away to live in an awful home.

 

I was also regularly fed that line. It's an effective way to keep children complicit in their own vile abuse. As is isolation.

 

(Another good thing that happened is custody of my younger brother has been handed over to my sister & her husband via child services. )

 

That's good to hear.

 

My younger sister also got out early. What a relief it is.

 

You seem to have a solidness about you, despite so much loss and hurt. It's great that you have a place with your sister.

 

Phanta

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Thanks people, its only just a foot note to what is ahead of me, I'm very fortunate to have gotten out of it early so that I can enjoy the rest of my life religion-free.

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Damn good testimony Xerces.

 

My hat is off to you for getting out of that hell.

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Some would deny this and say xtianity really is not that bad, it evens the best thing that a human could believe in! A quick look at the bible says this isn’t true.

You are so dead on target here X ... The entire testimony was an excellent, well thought out and put together accounting of your life thus far. I am very glad to hear that you are on the mend now and have wind under your wings. You may someday be amazed at how much you come to value the difficulties you've managed to overcome and the strength and wisdom they will have ultimately endowed you with. Keep up the good work. I'm rooting for you.

 

Pappy

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