CHAPTER TWO: REBELLION

By the time I was 15 I started sort of rebelling against my parents.  I still believe they bought it upon themselves.  They split me up from my best friend for no real reason except that sometimes I didn't see eye to eye with my family and they thought my friend must be to blame and they even read my diary.  BIG MISTAKE!

I say, some people are like fire crackers when they get angry. They explode and then it's all over and done with.  Other people smoulder with resentment.  I am one of these! I became very bitter at my parents for their violation of my trust and for interfering in my friendship.  They even implied at one stage I might be gay!  (I'm not.  Not that it matters!)

So I wore a lot of make up (but then again, it WAS the 80s and I WAS a teenager!) and I got tipsy a couple of times although the first time was quite by accident! I and my friend were at a restaurant and I drank up the yummy juice with my fruit salad and started to giggle an awful lot! She soon figured out that I was tipsy and that the "juice" was actually Brandy! But once I drank some kind of alcohol at another friend's birthday party and went to school the next day feeling not drunk but a WEE bit wobbly! It may not have helped that I'd been "headbanging" to music the night before! I would hitch up my skirt at school and was quite cheeky to my teachers but only if they deserved it! I wasn't that bad a teenager really except that I also used to steal things. 

I even shop lifted - without getting caught - as well as stole things off my parents, my friend and from school.  I was angry and hurt.  But I DID return EVERYTHING even the pair of earrings to the shop.  Stealing WAS a temptation to me but it was also a way of saying Fuck you I'm angry, NEVER hurt me like that AGAIN! And - at 16 - I rededicated my life to Christ publically and told my parents what I'd done.

By the time I was 18, I went through another super religious stage that was more detrimental to me than the first one at 14.  But before that, and very shortly after I rededicated my life to "the Lord", something happened that later conflicted with my Christian upbringing and church's teachings.  Something happened that sowed some different kinds of seeds in me......

CHAPTER THREE: AN ALTERNATIVE OPTION:

I took Psychology in high school.  Yes, a lot of people pooh-pooh it, I know.  And of course there are some frauds out there! But in Psychology, we were told about Paradigms, including the paradigm of Humanism.  My parents were very into Behaviourism, without knowing what it was! They believed that children always end up like their parents.  I didn't like that idea. It seemed unfair and also - especially being a teenager! - I didn't exactly WANT to be just like my parents!  Humanisn offered an alternate viewpoint.  It said that we create our OWN realities.  My Psychology teacher didn't seem to like Humanism herself but I did.

However, remember, I'd been raised to believe - especially through my church! - that God was the one in control of my life and I didn't really have that much say about my future.  These teachings conflicted with humanism and in the end - well, for the short-term at least - they won the day.  And for a long time, they also stole my happiness too...........

CHAPTER FOUR: THE WILL OF GOD SUCKS!

So that became more and more how I lived my life.  Believing that God had a plan for my life, whether I actually liked or wanted that plan or not.  And that to rally against it was futile. So although I choose my career without God's supposed help, in my first job I believed that there was a chance it could be God's will for me to lose my job.  Because I didn't KNOW what his will was supposed to entail! Only vague generalisations, nothing specific.  And of course I'd prayed about it.  That goes without saying!

But in church I'd heard about women who liked city life and modern comforts being sent to Africa as missionaries.  Even though it wasn't what they really wanted but that it was God's will.

Well, I was very nervous about possibly losing my job.  I won't blame it all on religion.  I think I can be a pretty neurotic individual and I worry way too much.  But I really don't think the religion helped AT ALL.  Especially not my church's version.

What made things WORSE was being constantly told there that bad times brought us close to God AND that good times brought us further away from him so we should never really get comfortable! To me that was like your life SHOULD be shit or you're not a good Christian! And of course, I'd been raised to believe that I SHOULD be a good Christian!

So, my nervousness at work ended up being a self-fufilling prophecy, I got laid off, made redundant.  I found somewhere else to work for a while but I went through another super religious stage at one point which I now really regret! I mean I told one fellow Christian she should stay with the man she married - even though he was miles too old for her and she'd only married him to get a visa and didn't love him and had found someone she DID love.  I also told someone who claimed to be a white witch that "Satan masquerades as a angel of light, the Bible says."  Now, I just wish I could say sorry.  But I don't know where they are.

I got into University and attended a Christian club.  I prayed, read the Bible and so on.  At one stage I was going to mid-week meetings too and youth groups. So at one point, when I turned 21, I was going to church up to seven times a week! Three on Sunday, sometimes four if I went to the prayer meeting! And four more times during the week, although two of those were to youth or young adults' group.

CHAPTER FIVE: PICKY AND CLICKY

I haven't talked about the social side yet, have I? I will discuss more later but for now I will just say, I never fitted into that church. Not with most people there my own age anyway.  And also that when I went to high school, from the age of 14 I was teased and treated badly by the Christian girls from my own church.  They were the bitchiest, cattiest group of girls I think I've EVER known.  Later on they appologised but still, the damage was done to my self-esteem.  And also, I used to think, you're supposed to be Christians! WHY isn't Jesus helping you be NICE? And yet the non-Christians were a lovely bunch. 

When it came to church there were these little clicks everywhere among the young people.  I don't know why.  The older people were lovely, actually.  Younger people literally would stand around in tiny circles and talk to their own group and that was it.  Others were lucky if they got a "hi."

I haven't even MENTIONED the dating thing yet!.......................................

TO BE CONTINUED! (For anyone who's got this far!) (Sorry it's so long but it feels great to get it all out!!! And I NEED to!)

CHAPTER SIX:   SEXISM, SEXUALITY AND SO CALLED DATING IN THE CHURCH

Dating! HA! What a JOKE! It was a matter of when you're 18, if you're a girl, the guy if he's 18 plus can ask the leaders of the church if he can date you. Date? HA! It consisted literally of sitting outside church and talking to each other exclusively where anyone could see you or talking on the phone or well actually that was about it! Once I was friendly with a my best friend's brother and there was NOTHING more to it than that on either side. One day we stayed at church for lunch on a Sunday - yes, people sometimes did that too! - and ended up sitting on the steps and chatting. People started to hassle us, tease us because they assumed we MUST be a couple! Well, that was the end of THAT blossoming friendship! It killed it!

There was a men's side and a women's side and you couldn't even sit together until you were at LEAST ENGAGED!! If you wanted to go out somewhere - according to my then best friend who was in a relationship that had been church-approved - you had to ask the leaders of the church first, who COULD say NO AND you had to have a REASON you could NOT just say decide to go ice skating as a couple or you risked getting in BIG trouble. (By the way, two cousins and my best friend married at 20 or younger.  All three marriages are now broken up now.  I wonder if they initially married partially to be able to freely date!) (Also, eventually the church found out that members of the youth group were meeting at a burger bar - including me! - and they banned us all from that or any other similar thing! Even though sometimes say guys would go there in a little group, not knowing there would be girls there from the church and vice versa - the food was GREAT for fuck's sake!  It wasn't planned, just a BONUS if some cuties happened to show up!

Speaking of ice skating and BIG TROUBLE, once I got MYSELF in big trouble.  I wanted to follow Christian Rock group Petra's advice and take the "message back to the streets." So I joined the church's street witnessing group.  My intentions were good but I WAS "misunderstood."  BIG time! Me and another friend got chatting to a fellow Christian from a different church during a witnessing session who asked us if we wanted to go to Micky D's and get some ice cream sundaes. So, off we went. He was very cute, Christian - even wanted to be a pastor - and most people like ice cream! Well, turned out he and I liked each other and got each other's phone numbers. We chatted on the phone and he wanted me to go with him to a CHRISTIAN skating event.

Turned out I got in trouble for it.  It may have been a fellow Christian colleague at work who was six cans short of a six pack anyways but SOMEBODY told the leader of the street witnessing group about this potential relationship.  The next thing I knew I was being grilled about it by him and ALSO he, the friend who'd also had sundaes with and six cans short of a six pack were all telling me to "Be careful. He comes from a different church." Like that made him some kind of a MONSTER or something!

Next time I went with the witnessing group, Mr Wiggly Ears, the leader of the group, was on me like a HAWK! If a guy so much as TALKED to me - which I saw as a witnessing opportunity - he would quickly call me away, sharply.  Needless to say, I felt like I was being babied, like my good intentions were being misunderstood and I soon left the group! I went there with the best reasons - to witness to the lost - and ended up meeting someone nice. I didn't plan it that way, like everyone seemed to think! Anyway, I never went out with that guy to the Christian skate or anything, although sometimes after I used to wish I had and wonder what it would have been like to go on a real date!

As I grew up in the church and as I got more educated and learned about sexism and hidden curriculums and so on, I realised my church was actually very sexist in some ways!

For example, to camps we were told "Women bring some food and men bring a dessert or a drink." It was assumed that WE would cook, not THEM. And for years and years only the women would be put on a rota to clean the cups from youth group.  And there was even a song when I was a wee one about doing it all for Jesus that went something like this: "In the house and out of doors, chopping wood and scrubbing floors something something something else stereotypical too, these are things that BOYS can do.  I'll do it all for Jesus, he's done so much for me.  ...Washing plates and scrubbing floors, washing, ironing darning too these are things that GIRLS can do.  I'll do it all for Jesus, he's done so much for me."

It was pretty clear about what the church thought women should be doing! By the way, a friend of mine and I saw a big double standard in that while there were whole sermons on why girls in the church should not wear a short skirt! NOTHING was EVER said about the guy who liked to wear VERY short shorts to the Sunday School Picnic. He looked great in them but that's NOT the POINT!

On the subject of clothes by the way, we HAD to wear hats.  (Not in youth groups but all other services.) Us women. As a sign of submission to men. ALL men.  It didn't matter if we were married or single. I HATED hats. They made my head itchy. The flattened my hairstyles. They DID NOT flatter me.  And I did not like what this hat wearing represented! AND we were NOT allowed jeans or trousers or shorts!!! Once in the choir we wore these very classy trousers. They were not at all tight, in fact they were quite loose, without being baggy. And yet some people in the church apparently complained! So it was back to skirts and dresses for us! Even though a man - the choir director, who was a lovely person, had also agreed with it!

By the way, just in case you haven't guessed, ALL of the leaders of the church and people who spoke were men! I think literally ONCE they had a woman speak and that was IT! And that was only in my more recent years there, she spoke one time.  The rest of the time, we always listened to men. Women could speak at the youth group but of course men ran it.

One good thing about my church is I never got the whole women MUST get married and have babies thing from them. For which I'm TRUELY grateful! Although most women seemed to aspire to this. I knew a friend of a friend who went through serious clinical depression mainly because no men chose her and she was in her 30s.  And as you can see, the preference was certainly a man in the church and DEFINATELY ONLY a Christian!

Muslims were bad. ANY other religion was bad - in fact, it was SATANIC! Gays were bad and I admit I was one of many church members who signed a petition against more freedom for gays. I was 18. I didn't know better and the church basically implied that they would corrupt everyone especially the young. So I signed and now, of course, I regret it. I wish I hadn't. But I did NOT KNOW ANY better, noone in my whole life had ever told me.  There were no books about it, that I knew of, nothing said at school and no internet in those days. So I thought I was helping to do a good deed!

CHAPTER SEVEN:  QUESTIONING AND WALKING AWAY FROM THE CHURCH:

Two significant things happened to me in my 20s that changed things.  The first of these was that I started to question the church.  One of my best friends and I both began to find things about our church we didn't like. It all began on my 20th birthday. No, actually on New Year's Day when I was 20.  It was a Sunday so there was a sermon that day at church.  New Year's Day! I was feeling - like many people do - optimistic and cheerful about it being New Year's Day. A new year, with so much potential for being better than the last! I guess I expected a positive service, being that it was New Year's Day.

And yet they rained negativity on us. Be careful, the Devil is lurking! Beware of Temptation! And THAT was the GOOD news!

For the rest of the year, sermons seemed to get progressively more boring and depressing.  And me and my friends felt less and less like we fitted in to the church.  And less and less happy being there at all.

Our church used to preach against (among other things!) what it referred to as a "health and wealth gospel." Hey, I used to think, bring it ON! I'LL take a "health and wealth gospel" ANY day over your doom and gloom one!!

Looking back I also notice a pattern - that most of my life I have chosen those with a cheeky or rebellious side to befriend.  Not really rebellious sometimes but you know with a bit of a naughty side, or at least, those who questioned things.  Who at least privately liked to challenge - or at least make fun of - the status quo.

However, when I went through the second super-religious phase I had a friend who was super-religious too I guess. We would spend a lot of time talking about how there were hidden bad things in a range of music, movies and so on.  Until she said that was too depressing - and she was right. Of course it goes without saying that I foolishly believed the nonesense about non-Christian music being evil at that stage and I burned my non Christian tapes.  I regretted it later on and I've never yet replaced one of them. 

Anyway, by the time I was 22 or before, I had totally had enough of the church.  My friend who had agreed it was boring and depressing had left, as has my other best friend there.  They were experimenting with drugs and I didn't want to go that road.  Not because of the church! But becaue in my early teens I chose to do a project on drugs and found out so much information about their bad side effects.  I didn't want to go to that church anymore.  I'd had enough of the clicks, and almost every time I went to church I was lucky if a single person said hello to me.  They were too busy with their own little group to care. Sometimes people would talk about missionary work, which I never had felt "called" to but I used to think, hey, what about tending to your OWN "flock" now and then! You know it's like people thought, she's ALREADY saved, what do we need to talk to HER for?!

So I think I faked sickness a couple of times.  Then one night my dad and or mum were going on about people who leave the church because they want "a lower sandard." Cos that's the lie we were told, by the way, people only leave the church because they want a "lower standard."

And then I blew it! Without thinking I blurted out "That's not true! People don't always leave because they want a lower standard! That's not why I want to leave!"

I'd said it! I hadn't meant to but it was out and I couldn't take it back!

Initially mum and dad were shocked but soon mum said if I didn't want to go to their church, I needed to find one of my own. She took it very well being that her father had founded the church and used to be the pastor there!

I TRIED to find a church for me, BELIEVE ME, I TRIED! I just couldn't find ANYWHERE I liked! At one church I loved the music - we used to have those horrible screechy hymns that are like 200 years old or else things called choruses which often had lines repeated over and over with some people swaying back and forth by rocking on the balls of their feet very slowly and subtly which I always found mighty weird.  On that line, I noticed when some people prayed out loud it sounded more like they were talking to a two year old! It sounded a lot like baby talk with the tone they used!

ANYWAY! At one church I loved the music. It wasn't far from where I lived, they had gosple music which I like a lot and the services were positive and very good. But their youth group or young adults group was a DIFFERENT matter! The people seemed kinda odd and well, sorry to say it but BORING!

At another church, a friend of mine who was also church hunting and I attended a few times, the opposite was true. The young adults group was wonderful and so were the people. But it was quite far away and the services and songs were incredibly mind-numbingly BORING!

At yet another one (I TOLD you TRIED!) I liked the service and pastor but later on I asked someone who to talk to about the young adults group or youth group.  They pointed to a boy who they said was the oldest member of that. "How old are you?" I asked him. "I'm 13." he replied. "Hmm, I'm 23." Said I. Realising there were obviously a lack of young people in my age range at this church!

Finally I thought I'd found my niche. The pastor was lovely, so were the services, they mixed with other churches which I thought was excellent, we even went out on a boat once and had a candle light meet up at the beach another. I even would sing in the choir and they sometimes had a woman leading the service who was also a very good speaker, very interesting..BUT......

Three things! The old pastor got promoted to a different position - I TOLD you he was GOOD! - and a new one came and I found his sermons incredibly dull and to be frank pretty pointless!

Secondly, there was C and his Bible study group.  I found myself often debating with C about things in the Bible which shocked even myself! I found I just didn't believe in some things there or thought they were not always appropriate to all situations.  I think I used to annoy C.  It wasn't intentional!

I was one of these Christians who actually read the bible cover to cover - at least once, maybe several times.  And when I went through the first of my super-religious times at 15 I read the bible right through and found quite a bit I didn't like. But I reasoned that it was either old testiment stuff or that it was only metaphorical.  And then, after reading the thing through I returned only to those parts I actually LIKED, the feel good parts, of course!

Thirdly, there was P. 

P and I met at a Christian camp which in itself was fun and had some good bands and we started off as friends.  I would just like to interject here that Christian band camps, for lack of a better word, were wonderful!!! I mean, I've never been a big drinker or smoker.  It was like a summer band camp - Glastonbury, that sort of thing - without the crappy toilets or excessive smoking and drinking! So I LOVED it! And I even slept on the stage once because I had no place to put a tent.  It was cold and I didn't sleep much but it was amazing to think that only a couple of hours before bands had played on that stage! I didn't like the band that sang about "Breakfast in Hell" though. At ALL! I mean, people were singing along and moshing to it (this WAS the 90s!) And the lyrics were about people going to hell?!! HELLO?! So I really DIDN'T like that song! 

Anyway, back to P! So initially we were friends. We got chatting at one of these camps, but he also went to my new church, where I'd now been going for several months. In a moment of weakness, feeling sorry for P bawling his virtually lashless eyes out because I wouldn't go out with him I kissed him. Fool me, I know! We were an item for literally a week, if that. You see, I soon found out that P had PROBLEMS! BIG PROBLEMS! One day I was on the phone with P and he said his mum and dad were angry with him. I asked why and he said he had cut up the hose! When I asked why he'd done that he said he was angry. I asked why he'd been angry and he said he didn't know! He also admitted to throwing his father against the wall, simply cos he'd told him to turn the music down!  And he admitted that his cousin was diagnosed as mentally ill and he wondered if he might be too. (Ya THINK?!) ANYWAY I soon became afraid of P, afraid he might turn on ME! But how could I avoid him? He went to my church. Simple, I stopped going, terrified of a confrontation.  I also stopped asking the phone for at least a month - no caller ID - worried it might be HIM.

So instead of going to church I spent my Sundays usually going driving in my car.  I would often go to a beautiful beach area, sit on a near horizontal thick tree branch and think.  And what I sometimes thought about - apart from how lovely it was - was what in the WORLD was I going to do about my love life and the non-Christians in it! Because......

CHAPTER EIGHT: SECRETS AND LIES, MY LOVELIFE

Like I said, two significant things happened to me in my 20s that changed things.  The first of these was that I started to question the church. 

The second was that I started to have a love life (FINALLY!)

Mainly consisting of NON Christians.

My first boyfriend WAS a Christian.  He was cute too and sometimes funny.  He gave me a cross necklace.

He was also incredibly unaffectionate and liked to ignore me, which would often cause me to shout at him to try and get his attention so, as you can imagine, we DIDN'T last long!

Even before we broke up, but when I knew we were on the rocks, I'd fallen in love.

With someone else.

Someone who looked a LOT like the man of my dreams.

And who was most definately NOT a Christian!

Well, one day I went out with him or maybe a few times but it didn't take long to find out that he already HAD a girlfriend! Maybe even a fiance! So of course I wasn't having THAT! But it took about three years to get him totally out of my mind and heart cos I'd fallen head over heels in love for the first time in my life.  He was just the first. I dated a few guys in their 20s.  It got so that I would be six months without a boyfriend and I would get over whoever and think I could now be a good little Christian girl and then some TOTAL HONEY would charm me like crazy and ask me out and he was ALWAYS too good to say no too!

And it WASN'T like ANYTHING was happening with CHRISTIAN guys, even though I tried a penpal group, Christian personals, a Christian singles group AND a Christian dating site! NADA! I had some dates with some guys from that but they always liked me and I never was attracted to them.  In looks OR personality! (Or lack thereof!)  And I found some of them very old-fashioned. In a BAD way!  Like there was this ugly guy who said he had helped run some workshop on waiting to have sex till you were married. And I'm sorry but my first thought was WHO'D want to have sex with YOU?!  But instead I found myself arguing "What if people wait and wait and they never GET married?" Cos I actually KNEW people - men AND women - like that! I even knew men in their 40s at my ex church who were still single and as far as I knew, virgins.  And I WASN'T keen on being one of THOSE!

Then there was T.  He was Christian, gorgeous, intelligent, super sexy and he liked me back! And then, by the second date I'd found out he was also temperamental and didn't care about MY wants! Such a shame! Then there was D, who lied on the phone about things like his hair colour, body etc. and was ALSO temperamental - in fact, I spoke very agressively for MOST of our date - lucky it was a double date so the other 3 of us ditched HIM as soon as possible and went off for ice cream! Then there was R who came onto me in the creepiest way, even though I'd told him a million times I only wanted to be friends.  Then there was the jerk on the internet who answered my personal add demanding why I didn't want kids and sending me more and more agressive nasty emails about how I SHOULD!

Then there were the Christian guys I really liked who DIDN'T like me.  The underage night club owner who was super cool, gorgeous, flirted with everyone, The cool, cute Cornish guy from a different city who made me laugh.  I mean, they liked me as a FRIEND alright, but not even a close one. 

Yes, I had high standards with the kind of guys I wanted. But why not? The non-Christians who liked me met them!

Sex didn't happen till I was 25.  Not that it matters, really, but I WAS in a relationship and we'd been together for maybe nine months.  Of course, I REALLY LIKED him.  Gorgeous, sexy, intelligent, funny and so on.  And our relationship started off SO well! We'd also been best friends for at least a year before that but he'd been seeing someone else.  An incredibly jealous someone else who hated my guts.  Maybe because I was (then!) slim and she was NOT!  I was nothing but nice to her and she was nothing but a BITCH to ME!  There were four reasons I finally had sex (guys had been asking me since I was 21)

The first, obviously, was that I really liked him, but it wasn't like I didn't like the guys BEFORE him!

The second reason was that I decided one day to write down a "creed" of what believed and while most of my beliefs were still the same, when I went to write down I don't believe in having sex outside of marriage, I couldn't write it and I soon realised it was because I DIDN'T agree with that any more!

The third reason was one day my aunty told me about this good little Christian virgin who was "saving herself" for marriage and then she'd been gang raped!

I thought FUCK THAT! I am NOT going to save myself for marriage just to have someone rape me!  What's the POINT?! WHY wait if THAT can happen?

And the fourth reason was that one day he said the magic words:

"Well, you can wait till you are married to have sex. That's your decision.  You'll probably get married at 30 or 40, but that's OK."

I thought, FUCK THAT! I am NOT going to be one of those 40 year old virgins!!!

I call this chapter secrets and lies because I kind of had to live a secret life, lying to my parents about where I was, who I was with and what I was doing. Although, anytime I DID get caught, my mum soon burried her head straight back in the sand again. 

At one stage she found out I was sexually active. I don't know HOW and frankly I don't WANT to! She cried, so upset.  I said "Mum! I have turned down 30 guys!" She replied tearfully, "Why couldn't you have made it 31?!" I thought that was being unreasonable!

I had a friend who she liked though.  I never COULD decide whether she'd feel better and worse about us hanging out if she knew he was gay!

CHAPTER NINE: THE FAG-FRIENDLY BABE:

K was my first gay friend.  I didn't know he was gay when I met him or we started hanging out but by the time he actually TOLD me he was gay, we'd had some fun moments together.  Like singing together - he had a GREAT voice! - while he played his keyboard or dressing up for his party.  He was so cute and so funny!

I guess K was the first gay person I REALLY got to know.  Except I had a friend that people later said was gay who was a nice guy too.  And there was another guy at church me and a friend used to chat to who was friendly and would make us laugh and later people said he'd left cos he was gay.  Maybe. Maybe not.

But this taught me, gays weren't out to hurt ANYONE! That was lesson number one for someone who'd been told in church that being gay was a bad bad thing and would corrupt other people.  I wasn't corrupted! I just had FUN!

When I was 26 I walked into a kareoke bar and loved it so much I went back! Many times!  I soon got chatting to this gay guy who I had a lot in common with.  Well, initially we hit it off and we do have a lot in common and became friends but he can be also bitchy and manipulative.  But his friend and his friend's friends were a different story.  We got on very well, and yes I've danced a few times in a gay club with them, even shared a bed with one of them and I've also shared a cocktail with a drag queen and seen some drag queens in action.

We may live in different countries but are still best friends today!

But when they jokingly said I was their "fag hag" I immediately corrected them. "I'm no hag! I think I prefer to be referred to as 'A Fag-Friendly Babe.'

The reason I brought this up is I soon realised how wrong my church was to try to restrict the freedom of gays when really they don't (usually) hurt ANYONE and some of them are a hell of a lot of fun!!   I didn't like the verses in the bible against gays either.   WHY would God punish people like my friends?!