Why I Left Religion: My Catholic Church Breakup Story

/ dashtikalin / 1 Comment

It’s been many years now since I first stopped referring to myself as “Roman Catholic” whenever asked what brand of religious faith I subscribed to. My breakup with Catholicism was private, because I was raised in a devoutly religious community and losing my religion felt almost shameful at first, though I’d never felt more whole in my life. As a child, I had always assumed I would be Catholic forever because almost everyone I knew was Catholic, and I just could not imagine myself ever leaving that very religious setting. Cue my surprise when my (then) fiancé sprung on me his plan to enlist in the military. In an instant, my plan to raise my children in my childhood town went up in flames. I was distraught and at first mourned the death of my life plan. I suffer from anxiety, and going to new places is a significant source of anxiety for me. The idea of moving away from everything I ever knew to a place I had forever intended to avoid (California) caused much fear and stress in my life. With much reluctance, I moved because the military doesn’t really care how you feel and you don’t get a say in where they send your spouse.

After living there for over 4 years, I can say I’m still not a fan of California as a state. The traffic is wacky, the politics are horrible, and I’m so boring a person that I actually hate mountains and beaches. However, the personal growth I experienced there is irreplaceable and I’ll forever be grateful for that aspect of my time there. I no longer had a tight knit community to lean on and do my thinking for me. I had to rely on myself to draw my own conclusions about world topics. It was an extremely frightening time, and trying to navigate and process so much information alone was dizzying. I was forming opinions on politics for the first time. I was encountering perspectives on social topics that I had never even considered. Slowly, my opinions started to shift and mold into something completely new. I still kept some opinions from my past life, but a lot of what I fought for from the perspective of Catholicism now seemed ridiculous. I looked back on my life as a devout Catholic and realized there was so much I resented about my time in the Church. So many things had pushed me away, and while I hate that I experienced some of those things, I am also so glad it caused me to look at my life from a new perspective.

Let us take a moment to outline some of these experiences that woke me up to my encounters with the toxicity of the Church. Keep in mind these experiences are from the perspective of someone who was not only raised in the church, but was also raised in a homeschool group that was directly affiliated with our local Catholic Church. I am also currently excommunicated from the Catholic Church, which I personally find hilarious (more on that later).

Elitism: Our church and homeschool group had a very distinct pecking order. The wealthy families of course sat at the top, and this never sat right with me. It was always the elite families who had the problems with drama and scandals, but hardly anyone ever talked about it. The worst part was that those families almost always had a very obvious superiority complex and looked down their nose at the families who weren’t on their level. A very small handful of well-to-do families were genuinely humble and gracious. I’ll forever be grateful for the kindness from those families, because they’re part of the reason my faith in humanity wasn’t totally lost as a child.

The elite families were horrible. They would look down on you for any little thing. I grew up feeling like I was expected to turn into an embarrassment. It felt like the elite moms of the community assumed I’d grow up a failure in some way or another, like I was too trashy to amount to anything. I don’t remember any specific thing that was said to make me feel this way, but the way people looked at me, talked to me, and treated me made me feel like they though I was beneath them. That’s a pretty destructive detection to pick up as as child. There was even a period of time when I was very young in which close friends of mine were not allowed to associate with me because I had a different father than the rest of my siblings. Yep, you read that right. They were forbidden from even talking to me because their mom found out I was from my mother’s first marriage, which had been previously annulled. That was an extremely confusing and hurtful experience, and as I child I couldn’t wrap my mind around why my friends were being taken away from me for something over which I had no control.

Feeling judged didn’t stop there. It only grew worse as I entered teenagerhood. It felt like I was expected to be the promiscuous girl of the group, especially when a situation where a boyfriend and I exchanging pictures was publicized. I’m not exactly sure what was specifically said about me, but I know it spread around the group like wildfire and that one of the sources was actually telling people that I had “seduced” my boyfriend, which couldn’t have been further from the truth for two reasons: one, our relationship was 100% initiated by him and I turned him down several times before finally agreeing to be in a relationship. I had never been in a relationship, so I was reluctant. He was persistent, though, and I did like him so I decided to give it a chance. Secondly, this was my very first relationship experience. He, however, had experienced trouble several times in the past with “inappropriate” behavior with girls that was, as far as I know, similar to the trouble he got in with me. I could care less that he participated in typical teenage boy activities, but I fail to see how anyone could construe the situation as me seducing anyone. Even my now mother in law was told I had seduced the previous boyfriend before her son, and that probably pissed me off more than anything else. It was especially frustrating to have my reputation among the church moms obliterated when many of the elite moms had daughters running around having anal sex with boys so they could stay a “virgin” for marriage someday. However, this ties in to my next topic.

Gossiping: you’ll never hear as much gossip from a person as you will from a Christian woman who is allegedly trying to earn a place in heaven. I went to public and catholic school for one year each, but I can promise you the judgment and hateful gossip you hear from peers at school doesn’t even hold a candle to what comes out of the mouths of Catholic homeschool moms. And that’s really saying something, because children can be very cruel. I’m not going to pretend I’m above gossiping because I’m not, though I will say I definitely draw a distinct line regarding gossiping about literal children. But the fact that these women pretend to be so pious in public while contributing to the slandering of children behind closed doors is something that always really rubbed me wrong throughout my childhood.

Hate disguised as truth: If there’s one thing about religion that has growingly disturbed me, it’s the amount of people who are discriminated against in the name of religion. It took me a long time to shed the indoctrination that causes people to believe that consenting adults can be sinful for loving each other solely because they are the same sex. Coming to terms with my own sexuality was a huge first step in unraveling that damaged belief. Yes, Christians are called to not judge. Yes, they think that loving the the sinner, not the sin is a gracious response to criticism of their beliefs. Yet they are judgemental. They do look down in condescension on people who don’t hold the same beliefs as them. They assert that their “truth” is the one and only truth, and that any other truth is just sinful relativism in disguise. This is how they justify trying to discriminate against others. Because they interpreted a book, written thousands of years ago and translated thousands of times, to say that anyone who doesn’t follow their xyz beliefs is a sinner who will burn in hell’s flames for disobeying the ridiculous rules outlined in aforementioned book. I try to not care about what differing opinions others have, but when it gets to the point where these people are voting in a way in which they’re trying to allow their discriminatory religion to shape the country, I tend to have a problem with that. It bothers me, and I’m always saddened and infuriated when I see the tripe people come up with to defend things like wanting to discriminate against people who are gay or trans. They cling so hard to their antiquated belief system, which in and of itself isn’t a problem as long as they aren’t hurting others because of it. But they do hurt others, and I couldn’t align with a religion that behaved that way any longer.

Excusing bad behavior: Catholics are always quick to look outside their circle for sins, but the sins of their peers gets willfully ignored. People just look the other way because “they’re good catholics.” I remember there was one “good catholic boy” who everyone knew was a total creep with mental issues, but people kept pandering to him because he was so religious and his family was popular in the homeschool group. I even had tried to give him the benefit of the doubt and be painfully nice to him thinking maybe he would grow out of the creepiness. He tried to molest me in a swimming pool on one occasion, and I didn’t even dare try talking to any adult about it because I knew it would either get swept under the rug or I would be victim blamed for it because I was a few years older than him and being trashy was expected of me. The only people I told at that time were my boyfriend (who yelled at the guy about it and threatened him if he ever went near me again) and possibly my best friend as well. I’ve told more people since then because it weighs heavily on me that I could be responsible for him having the opportunity to hurt other women, but even now, many years later, I have had people close to me try to defend him after I tell them what happened. It disgusts me that people like that are protected, but decent people who aren’t the most religious are gossipped about and looked down on because they aren’t as religious as others. As long as you look pious on the outside, you can get away with almost anything.

Excommunication: I wish I had a cooler story behind how and why I was excommunicated, but the reality is really boring and stupid. Basically, they would not allow me to marry without going through their dumb/bullshit marriage prep classes. So I gave them a metaphoric middle finger and married my husband via justice of the peace instead of a priest. If a practicing Catholic marrying a non-believer does not get married in the Catholic Church and force their heathen spouse to sign a document saying he will only raise his children to be Catholic, you are excommunicated and can no longer recieve the sacraments. A lot of people think I didn’t try to get married in the church, or that I only wanted to get married fast because it was a shotgun wedding and I was pregnant. Neither are true. In reality, I did meet with a deacon to discuss our options, and he told us that getting married without doing marriage prep was basically impossible. We would have to get a letter from the Archbishop saying we were allowed to get married without marriage prep, which didn’t help us at all since we were on a time crunch and needed to get married soon. See, the reason why we got married fast is because my fiance had enlisted in the military and was leaving for boot camp on some unspecified day within the next few months. We wanted to be married before he left for boot camp, which ended up being an excellent decision later on. But the church wanted us to not get married, and just do the marriage prep online. The problem is my fiancé would not have access to computers for at least the next ~6 months, and then we would have to get through the classes over the span of several months. Then we’d have to plan a wedding long distance and try to schedule a time for him to travel back home from wherever he gets stationed just to marry me. I swiftly decided fuck that, he’s here now and I’m getting married. The church can kiss my fluffy white booty because they are absolutely not going to dictate who and when I can marry someone I love. Several members of the church belittled us for not getting married in the church, and even went as far as telling our wedding guests that they were sinning by attending our wedding. We’ve been happily married over five years now with no divorce plans in sight, so it appears that so far that we have miraculously made it in life without their frumpy classes on how to be married. I am forever grateful for how it all happened because we found out two weeks after our wedding that I was expected our first baby (conceived after being married, in case any of the snobs who accused us of a shotgun wedding are reading), and then a week or so after that my husband was shipped off to boot camp. The timing of everything was perfect, and it just didn’t make sense to wait to marry someone I knew I wanted to marry. I’ll gladly stay excommunicated for that.

Sometimes it hurts to be on a different wavelength than the community I grew up with. That community is all I ever knew, and just like with an abusive relationship, sometimes I miss all the good times despite the bad times. However, I am grateful for how far I have come as a person, and how personal my beliefs are to me now that I am not being told what to believe. I always knew deep down that I did not fit into the Roman Catholic box I had grown up in, but it took moving thousands of miles away for me to finally gain the courage to explore that side of myself. I don’t harbor any ill will towards the religious people in my life because truly, most of them are genuinely amazing people. I won’t ever expect to agree with someone on absolutely everything, and I’m grateful to have so many diverse people in my life to keep my perspective fresh. But just like it only takes one negative comment to turn an entire day of complements into a negative memory, it only took the handful of bad people and bad experiences to show me that I will never be able to, in good conscience, entertain religion in my life.

Anxiety: The Beginning

/ dashtikalin / 1 Comment

Everyone has ups and downs as a child. Certain things happen to you that shape who you become; some of those things are good and some can be bad. I was fortunate enough to have mostly good experiences. I had a roof over my head, both parents, enough food to survive, and a fantastic education despite my trying to escape the responsibility of school whenever I got the chance. I was able to live on a generously sized property where we had not only privacy but also the opportunity to experience things like farm animals and numerous pets. We were involved in a church that had a close knit community, and I grew up with the same best friends I had known my entire life. There were bad experiences sprinkled in, but nothing too horrific. There’s one experience, though, that affected me so badly it forever impacted my mental health. People who had a much harder childhood than I might read this and feel I’m pathetic for complaining about something that seems so inconsequential. I’d like to preface by saying you are entitled to however you feel, but so am I. I don’t have much control over how certain things affect my mental health, and that can be said for everyone who has their own unique set of troubles and bad experiences.

It started with my love for singing. The older I got, the more I realized how much I enjoyed trying to sing well. I would dance and sing absolutely everywhere: in the car, whilst doing chores, during grocery shopping trips, when walking to any room in the house, etc. I was involved in chorus during my one year I went to public school, and I absolutely loved it. So when I went back to homeschooling, my mom offered to sign me up for my church’s teen choir. Like I mentioned before, my church’s community was pretty tight knit. I knew probably at least half of the girls in the choir, if not more. It was so exciting to think about being involved in a group where I could sing with friends once again.

I passed the try-outs, which I’m pretty sure were just a formality. The teen choir director seemed way too nice to be able to turn any girl away from trying to join the group. Being able to sing for our church’s service was daunting but also incredibly refreshing. Our choir was much more technically advanced than my old chorus group at school. I was often confused by the different terms the choir director used. I had never before heard terms like “alto” and “soprano,” but I watched everyone else and learned as I went. My biggest goal in life at that time was to work on my singing until I was able to earn singing a solo at church.

Being in this choir made me practically feel like a celebrity. They had created a CD containing church hymns a few years prior to me joining, and many of the songs were written by the choir director herself. Was I in the presence of potential hymn music stars? My freshly-turned teenage self thought so. Never did I ever anticipate that the choir teacher would decide to start the process of creating a second CD right after I joined the choir. After hearing the news, I was beside myself with excitement. In my mind, my celebrity status was confirmed by the fact I was about to be recorded to sing on a CD.

The schedule for choir practice went from consistent to hectic. Extra practices were scheduled to get all the girls ready to record for the CD. It was all very exciting, but also hard to keep up. Someone said the choir teacher was trying to schedule practices around the schedules of all the choir girls. Unfortunately, this was around the time when my family was trying to figure out what was wrong with my youngest sister. We noticed she stopped hitting the typical baby milestones, and my mom was worried it had something to do with my sister’s extremely traumatic birth. With all that on our minds in addition to the frequent visits to doctors and therapists for tests and evalutations, I was not making it to every choir practice. We were trying, but our schedule was hectic, their schedule was hectic, and some days it was too hard to meet in the middle. In addition to bad scheduling conflicts, we lived far enough out of town to the point where it was expensive and a hassle to drive all the way into town just for a late night choir practice. We were already spending so much in gas taking my sister to her appointments that my mom tried her best to consolidate as many trips to town as she could. I made it to most of them, but many of them were at times when consolidation just did not work out.

I was totally oblivious to the fact that anything was wrong. Yes, I missed practices. But in my mind I was learning the songs, singing at church services, and having an all around great time with figuring out the ins and outs of the choir group. I was given a few singing parts that made me feel special and beautiful when I sang them, so life was good. I felt ready to take on the world with this CD and be a part of something bigger than myself. Now, looking back, I realize how easy it is to put out music. Yes we were doing something fun, but it was not nearly as extraordinary and crazy as I thought it was. Looking back, I wish I had not let myself get so carried away with being excited about this CD that hardly anyone outside our community would listen to.

I guess the choir teacher communicated to my mom that I was missing too many practices. At this point, the choir is way down on her priority list with all the stuff that was going on with my sister. We finally got close enough to where we only had a few more practices until we were going to start recording. I remember my mom telling me the choir teacher said missing any more practices would affect my singing on the CD. We missed a practice right after this. I don’t even remember the exact reason why we missed that practice. Were we busy with appointments that day? Did we not have the money for gas? Did we just forget it was that day? By the time I realized I had practice, it was too late. In my little teenage brain, though, I thought, “It’s okay, I’ll just try harder at the next practice and won’t miss any more.” I had no clue that the next practice would be one of the most terrible experiences I’ve ever had.

It happened so long ago, I don’t remember all the details. I just remember walking into practice and feeling like something was super off. The air felt different… so different I could sense it as soon as I walked in. I went to the usual spot I stood to sing the song we were practicing. I remember feeling like everyone was staring at me, but I didn’t know why. Maybe it’s just my imagination? I mean, it was obvious the choir teacher had rearranged the girls to sing different parts of the songs (alto, soprano, etc). I guessed she just decided to switch it up and try something new before we recorded for the CD. She switched us around pretty often, though never quite to the extent where it seemed almost half the girls were singing new parts. I just brushed it off and kept singing because I didn’t want to make anyone else feel weird in case the vibe being off was just a figment of my imagination.

Soon after I started singing, I remember the choir teacher saying whilst playing the piano, “I need to hear how the girls sound.” I had absolutely zero clues as to what the heck that was supposed to mean, so I think I responded with a nod or an “oh, okay” and kept singing. A little while later, she repeated herself. At this point I’m coming to terms with the fact that I was definitely not imagining things. The vibe in this room was so incredibly off. Girls I knew did not like me were sneering at me. Girls who were usually so nice to me just looked sadly at me as if I was a limping puppy. I didn’t know what was wrong, yet I felt like Alice falling down a deep, dark hole.

I couldn’t tell you how many times the choir teacher told me she needed to hear the girls sing. It didn’t click in my brain until one of the choir members, who used to babysit me, came over and repeated the choir teacher, but also suggested I go sit down. Suddenly, everything snapped into place: the girls were rearranged to make up for my voice being gone in the song. They got rid of me, and my trying to sing was screwing up the teacher trying to hear if she can make the song sound alright again. How hard was it to just tell me directly that I wasn’t allowed to sing? Why was I given the opportunity to humiliate myself in front of everyone like that when they knew I had no clue what was happening?

I sat down in a chair at the edge of the room and died inside. And I don’t say that sarcastically. A part of me really died that day. It took every single ounce of willpower to not break down sobbing right there in front of everyone and make even more of a spectacle of myself. My face was so red it felt like my entire head was on fire while the rest of my body was ice cold and numb. My limbs felt like they were laden with heavy weights. I stuffed my emotions down as far as they could go while my head spun to the point where I fought losing consciousness. That might sound dramatic, but you have to understand that I was only about 13 years old at the time. I was being bombarded with so many big emotions that I could not process what was happening. Disappointment that I wasn’t going to be included in the CD I had been over the moon excited to sing on, fear that I was going to ugly cry in front of so many people, hatred for myself for not helping my mom keep better track of my practices, worry that I was about to pass out and get drug out of that horrid place by paramedics.

I felt less valuable than dirt in that moment. I wasn’t a person, I was a piece of trash that can be flippantly tossed to the side the second I became less than convenient. I thought the group was about having fun together as a group of young women who shared a love for singing and music. I thought godly people were supposed to love their neighbor, not humiliate them during a very fragile stage in human development. God, why didn’t anyone have the balls to say something to me before I started singing so I didn’t end up so confused? I’m sure they were afraid of hurting my feelings, but the way things happened left me with so much more than hurt feelings.

By the time the girls were done practicing for the CD, I had successfully swallowed all of my emotions without passing out. I somehow croaked through practicing songs for our next church service and tried my best to put up a front that I was fine and totally not bothered by what had happened that night. I did not stay a member of the choir for very long afterward. I couldn’t. Hearing the choir sing gave me horrible panic attacks that made me feel physically ill. These were my first memories of ever having panic attacks. I started avoiding the services they sang at as often as I could. The times when I could not avoid their church services, I fought to keep my body language neutral even though all I wanted to do was run out of the church and cry like a baby some more.

I was told that the decision to remove me was left up to a vote amongst the choir members. Upon learning that information, I realized I could tell who voted me off based on how they were looking at me as I sang that night. One girl in particular, who had hated me my whole life, stood out in my memory. The thought that she voted me out because she didn’t like me and not because she thought I was technically inadequate was so hurtful. Girls at that age can be so cruel and hateful to each other. To be essentially voted out of a social group that young really can have a negative impact on a young girl’s psyche.

It mentally scarred me to the point where I still feel ill when listening to all female choirs, despite all this happening over a decade ago. I have had friends join that same choir throughout the years and I tried so hard to be supportive of them. I let them know I had a bad experience to try to keep them from experiencing the same fate. I forced myself to be friendly to the choir teacher whenever I saw her at church even though being by her really just made me want to sob. I tried so hard to just get over it. I mean, how pathetic is it to be traumatized by your childhood teen choir? But it’s not about the choir, it’s about how the experience with the choir impacted my perception of my place in society.

The older I get, the more I come to terms with my psychological struggles. A few years ago I helped admin a mom group on Facebook. I was voted out and my adminship was removed, but they neglected to tell me all this had transpired. I had to figure out myself what had happened and search for why they had done this. I could feel all the same emotions bubbling up again. I had been voted off yet another island and again, no one thought about telling me? Just a simple, “hey we revoked your adminship because of xyz, deuces.” I thought I had gotten over the whole teen choir thing, but this experience with facebook made me realize I definitely had not. I was having flashbacks and panic attacks and simultaneously hating myself for being so affected by something so stupid and unimportant.

Writing about all of this makes me feel sick and short of breath, but it also kind of feels good to get it off my chest. I don’t really feel like any one person is at fault or deserving of judgement for what happened (except that one bitch who hates me, she can go play with Carol Baskin’s tigers). I just feel like it was a situation that was handled poorly and I regret that it caused me so much psychological damage. I wish I cared less about what others thought of me at that age, because maybe then I would not have been quite so affected. Either way, what’s done is done. I’m working on improving myself and my anxiety so that hopefully someday I’ll be able to laugh about how silly it was that my first memories of having anxiety was getting booted from a dumb church choir CD.

If no one has told you yet today, you are valuable. Anyone who treats you less than the precious, unique person you are is wrong. They may treat you less than you are, but that doesn’t make you less than you are. How some terribly wrong people treat you does not define your worth. You have people in your life who love you for who you are. Keep them close, and remember there are resources out there if you need help. It’s okay to need help, we’re only human.

Horrible hormones

/ dashtikalin / Leave a comment

Can we just take a minute to talk about pregnancy hormones. I am so tired of crying over stupid things. Pregnancy hormones have the power to take a completely rational human being and turn them into an irrational, sobbing pile of goo. Thankfully the hormones with this baby haven’t been as bad as they were with my second pregnancy, but things still build up until I snap and have an emotional breakdown. At least this time around in crying about pretty fair things and not stuff like missing clothes or lacking unhealthy candy snacks in the house. Yeah, I’ve done that. My second pregnancy was an adventure. I definitely suspect I was that way because that was my one girl pregnancy but who knows if that’s how that actually works.

Crying isn’t the only horrible side effect of the hormones. Cue weight gain and acne. The weight gain is especially bothering me this time around. How does it make any sense at all that a woman’s most emotionally vulnerable tine is also when she’ll put on the pounds? If there is a god out there, bro what is you doing?! I just do not understand. I’m hoping exercising a bit will help with the weight gain this time, but it’s so hard to motivate myself to drag the kids with me to the gym in the heat. The weather has been just so gross lately. So sitting on the sofa feeling sorry for myself it is! Sorry summer bod, maybe I’ll see you next year.

Creative writing gig?

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I’m obviously not the best blogger on the planet. Shocking, right?? I mean, I’m bad about uploading on time, if at all. Schedules are my enemy. My life isn’t interesting enough to produce a lot of content for writing. I’ve discovered I’m all around terrible at marketing myself as a blogger. I’m basically the rebellious teenager of bloggers. I want to keep up for the sake of forcing myself to try something new and actually follow through with a project I started for once. I’m kind of tired of being the queen of projects started but never finished. However, I’m also discovering blogging is not the pièce de résistance of projects I enjoy.

Don’t get me wrong, blogging can be fun and a great creative outlet for me sometimes. But my true love when it comes to writing is creative writing. Technically this blog is a kind of creative writing, sure. However it’s not exactly the kind of creative writing I dream about. My creative writing love is found in the world of fantasy and fiction. Writing books about stories I created is the dream and goal I had when I majored in creative writing in college. I had even been working on a book for years before college. Now looking back, that book was pretty terrible in a lot of ways… But I loved writing it so much. I loved writing so much. Being able to create an entirely new world in my head and articulate it on paper for the enjoyment of others felt like my destiny and purpose in life, and it was a hobby I enjoyed with every fiber of my being.

These days, however, I don’t write much anymore outside of Facebook and blogging. It’s not because I no longer enjoy it, I just never feel motivated to start writing because I have this huge fear it will be another project I’ll never finish. And I hate not finishing books. I wish I could blame my lack of motivation on my kids, but that would be oversimplifying the real issue. My creative dry patch started in college. I had so many studies and so little time management skills, a lot of my creative hobbies flew right out the window. I joined an art class in hopes that it would help mold my artistic abilities and it burned me out so badly, I didn’t draw anything for years afterwards. I still rarely draw, and I used to draw every single day in high school. The same thing happened with writing. My English/writing classes were so drab and bland, I just lost all motivation to write creatively. I wrote well in my classes, but they were informative papers, not creative.

As far as my book went, I had a huge case of writer’s block. I think I still may have it a little. But something I read recently gave me hope. I had been poking around online to see what are good ways to make a little extra money online when I came across an article written by a man who had recently experimented in the business of writing short stories to essentially self publish and sell cheaply in online book stores. This made me so excited. I may not be able to sit down and write an entire novel, but I can definitely convince myself to write a short story. I could probably pump out a short story a week if I really wanted to. And now you’re telling me I could also make a little cash doing what I love? Sign me the heck up! This is exactly what I think I need to get my foot back in the door to the creative writing world. Even if I write these stories and make no money at all, I will be happy to at least get my creative juices flowing again. Fingers crossed writing again will help me get my passion back.

Debt, debt, and more debt

/ dashtikalin / 1 Comment

I’ve known of Dave Ramsey’s existence for years now, but I never really sat down and tried to understand his method. My mother-in-law is a HUGE Dave Ramsey fan and had made my husband learn all about Dave Ramsey’s methods and teachings and such. So when we finally moved in together after getting married, he just kind of naturally took over the finances and I took over the house. I trusted that he had better education on how to manage a budget than I did since my parents never really talked about budgeting with me growing up. I trusted that he would make sensible financial decisions and just went on my merry way living life and pouring all of my energy into trying to navigate my life as a new wife and mother. It was not only our first time living in our own place together, but we moved in with our first son hundreds of miles away from any familiar face. There was a lot of struggling on my end. I struggled with managing a household for thr first time. I struggled with all of a sudden being in charge of not only cleaning up after more people than myself, but actually feeding more people than myself. I struggled with not having any support other than my husband and long distance phone calls from my family. I struggled with trying to find compatibility with my husband who was, as most men are, totally different to live with than he was to date. I struggled with navigating my first child’s life with no family around to support me. And did I mention I am a horrible housecleaner and cook? I have always been that chaotic creative kind of messy person and there was one time I literally burned water on the stove. I burned it. But these things don’t mesh well with being a stay at home mom. You just can’t live in a trashed house when you have a baby. And you can’t starve yourself and your family just because you can’t cook. I was swimming in all these first time experiences and had no idea what to do with myself.

As I struggle with my new home life, my husband was struggling too. I love the man to death but he is far too attracted by shiny things… expensive shiny things. This was our first problem. Our second problem was that my husband saw how I was struggling and had no idea how to make things better for me. So he resorted to gift giving, the only love language he knows how to show me. And I don’t mean fine jewels and such kind of gifts. I mean like taking us out to eat so I won’t have to cook that night kind of gifts. Or cute small things I see at the local walmart that I like, such as makeup and sometimes even clothes. Somewhat practical gifts, but still expensive and not in our budget. And I was too self absorbed to realize we were living outside our means until it was too late. Even when I did start noticing suspicious things like him using what looked like a credit card, I didn’t say anything for way too long because I was afraid of offending him by second guessing his financial decisions. We were newlyweds and I was still lacking so much confidence at that point in my life. So I let these poor spending habits go on and on for too long until eventually my husband was the one to admit to me that we had a problem. I tried to write out budgets more than once, but none of them ever stuck. Looking back, I think I was way overcomplicating the budgets and it was just not working out for either of us. We also struggled a lot with communicating what/when we were spending money (I say “we” but realistically I was not the one spending money).

The budgets didn’t work and we essentially dug ourselves into a nice little pit. Recently, however, I have been in a position of unusual power in the household. I am now solely in charge of the finances. I sat myself down and watched videos on the Dave Ramsey’s financial freedom methods and have written up a comprehensive budget that does distinctly highlight savings, but also allows for a small amount of freedom money to have some fun. We are currently working on our emergency fund and then I will promptly start our debt snowball after that is finished. Sitting down and really adding up all of our debt was really hard for me. I am not proud of how far we’ve fallen, but I know what we need to do to remedy our problems and I am excited to start the process. Sitting down and put together a clear game plan has helped me so much. Knowing exactly what steps I need to take to chip away at our debt is exactly what I needed to move forward with really getting somewhere with our finances. I feel so relieved to finally know what I am doing with my life. This will be a long and difficult journey, but I’m ready and I will drag my poor husband with me whether he likes it or not. Our financial communication has come a long way and I am reallu proud of how we have matured together. I wish we didn’t have to build so much debt to get here, but that’s life. Know better, do better. Fingers crossed this budget and financial plan works for us!

RIP my blog

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I’ve been pretty noticeably quiet lately… Why? Well, for one thing, every time I sit down and muster up the motivation to write something, it’s an email to a loved one. This is something I did not consider when I started my blog. Such a dumb oversight on my part! Another reason is I am starting to get preggers as hell and surprise surprise! Pregnancy is slowly turning me into a miserable pile of snacky laziness. Seriously, I can barely muster up the motivation to keep up with basic household chores. It’s pathetic. Lastly, and probably my biggest but realest excuse, I SUCK at time management. Just absolutely horrible at it. So at the end of the day it’s easier for me to set my hobbies to the side for the sake of focusing all of my energy into keeping up with my kids’ needs.

Being a responsible parent is great and everything, but it kills me that I know deep down I could be a responsible parent and a bomb ass hobbyist if I optimized my time usage. And hobbies like blogging could be so lucrative if I could just put the time and effort into it! So I could do a hobby I enjoy (creative writing) and I would get paid for it?? YES PLEASE. But ya girl just isn’t quite there yet. Why? Because I apparently don’t know how to balance parenting with cleaning and Facebooking. I am inclined to believe this is a tragedy that is not at all unique to me. Time management seems to be a very relatable struggle in the parenting community. Nonetheless, I know it is something that can be overcome, so fixing it will be my new project from now on.

To start, I think I should admit that my plan to blog 5 times a week was a bit overzealous. Let’s be real, here. I have 2 crazy toddlers and I’m pregnant with another already crazy spawn that saps my energy and makes me fat. I’m tired of being that depressing chick who watches YouTube videos of other people practicing their beloved hobbies. It’s time for me to have hobbies of my own! So I’m thinking of cutting down to a Monday/Wednesday/Friday upload schedule and see if that’s more feasible for me. Uploading 5 days a week was a cute idea, but I’m no Tati Westbrook. That woman is a goddess. Specifically, Saraswati. Because there’s no way she can accomplish all she does without 1) being some kind of celestial deity, and 2) having multiple arms. Since I’m a mere, simple human, however, I will test out my M/W/F schedule and see how that goes.

So if you don’t see me update my blog, just shake your head at me. Because I’m most likely fine, I just didn’t organize my time well enough to fit blog writing into my day. I do see all these other social media influencers warning their followers before they go on hiatus and it makes me cringe every time because I know I absolutely suck at doing that. This is how I am in real life, too. I will randomly have an introverted brain fart and will just neglect contacting family and friends. What can I say? I am a terrible human. I’m sorry. I will try to give more warning before I drop off the face of the earth, but don’t consider this any kind of promise! Most of the time neglecting to keep people updated on my life is not on purpose. I am just accustomed to being private, so telling people when I don’t have time to blog just isn’t something that even crosses my mind.

Summary: I’m way too accustomed to being a hermit. Bear with me.

Reasons to leave

/ dashtikalin / 1 Comment

I know I talk about it entirely way too much, but I just cannot stop thinking about moving. The thought excites me so much. Even if it never actually happens, just thinking about and mentally planning for a big move makes me happy. Planning what furniture I’d take and what I would toss. Trying to predict where I’d put what furniture if we did move. Looking at adorable dog houses I could buy since I would finally have a yard for my dogs to run around and play in. Just so many things. So instead of blabbering about it in every other blog post, I’m going to lay out my reasons for wanting to move in this post.

1) Space

I’m not sure how many times I’ve mentioned it, but my house is small. Like, very small. It’s only about 600 sqft, and that’s including my patio. This is shared with myself, my husband, our two toddlers and baby number three who is expected to make his appearance at the end of this year. Obviously there are many people out there who survive with far less space and more people sharing the one house, but I spend most of my time at home, so the small space is really starting to wear on me. If I can afford to upgrade, I would really like to do so. Not only would we have more space to breathe, but the kids could really benefit from having more space to play.

2) Yard

I don’t have a yard. At all. I have a very small patio, and then the yard outside that is considered a “common area.” I cannot let my dogs outside my patio unsupervised, tethered or not. So if I am busy taking care of the kids, the dogs will just relieve themselves on the patio. Even though I clean the patio off several times a day, I hate them going to the bathroom on the patio. My oldest dog was trained to go on pavement because she was not born into a very good household (she was left in a garage to use the bathroom and do whatever else) and now our younger dog has picked up this bad habit as well. It has made house training/potty training very difficult because they are just dogs, so they don’t really understand the difference between flat floor inside and flat floor outside. I would like to be able to let them inside more often and not have to sit on the edge of my seat so I can hurry up and pull them outside when the try to pop a squat in the living room after being inside for fifteen minutes. I think having an actual yard with grass will go a LONG way with improving their quality of life. Right now I try to take them out on tethers several times a day if I can so they can potty in the grass and run/play together, but the tethers are pretty limiting, and the dog park near us is just absolutely disgusting. Having a yard I can easily clean myself will be so amazing for them.

3) Neighbors

As you can see from my first crazy neighbor series… Some seriously insane people have lived near me. After those people left is when I started having issues with a different neighbor. So far we haven’t had problems since the second crazies left, but I really don’t feel like waiting around until I get another psychotic neighbor! I know you can grt bad neighbors anywhere, but our neighborhood has statistics against them. We have a higher rate of police calls for domestic disturbance/violence and and animal control than any other neighborhood in our area. Why? Because our neighborhood is the cheapest in our area and is filled with a bunch of young newlyweds. Some of these kids are literally teens that married right out of high school. I have no issues with mature teens living around me, but a lot of these kids are bringing their high school drama and immaturity with them. In fact, not neighbors who caused issues for me were teenagers. I’m just really tired of it and am ready to move somewhere with a higher rate of mature adults living in the neighborhood.

4) Laundry/housing company

We don’t have laundry hookups in our houses, so we use communal laundromats in our neighborhood and it sucks. Not only are a lot of the other tenants very inconsiderate with their laundry, but the housing company in charge of my neighborhood is absolutely horrible at keeping up with fixing our laundry machines. So you have people leaving their loads running in the laundry room for hours at a time, but none of the other dryers work, so you’re pretty much screwed. Some people will straight up take your load out and toss it on a counter if you leave your clothes in the laundry room too long, because it’s ridiculous to have to leave your clothes sitting wet in the washer as you wait hours and hours for a dryer to be freed up so you can dry your clothes. And it’s not only the laundry rooms that housing sucks at maintaining. A lot of apartments also have issues with vermin, pests, and black mold. The maintenance people will come look at a spot of mold and with seriously tell you it’s just dirt or mildew, then spray/scrub it with bleach amd leave. It’s absolutely horrible, and the worst part is they are guaranteed rent each month because it’s a military neighborhood, so rent just goes straight from the government right into housing’s pocket. We have no opportunity to deny them rent if we are being mistreated.

5) I’m too fat for stairs

This is kind of a joke… But also not really. Pregnancy takes a toll on my hips, so stairs is really hard for me the more pregnant I get. Not only are they hard for me, they are dangerous for my mischievous toddlers. I just really do not like having to confine the kids to our teeny living room because of how clumsy they are on the staircase. The neighborhood I want to move to offers single story homes, so I am really hoping that is what we can get.

6) Air conditioning

Our current neighborhood does not allow any kind of air conditioning usage unless you have some kind of doctor’s note stating AC is medically necessary for you. I doubt I can obtain any such note, even while being pregnant. Our house gets surprisingly really hot during the long summer months, so moving to a neighborhood where AC is allowed would be so ideal for us. Heat stroke just does not look good on me, and it doesn’t look good on my babies either.

So yeah, there you have it. Pretty much all my reasons in a nutshell. I think they’re pretty good reasons! Let me know what you guys think.

Crazy neighbor 1: part 3

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Hey there! If this blog post is the first one you’re seeing, hold up dude! This is part 3, so you probably want to go read parts 1 and 2 before you skim this part of the story. Wouldn’t want you to get confused! Go check out parts 1 and 2 and then come back and enjoy this final installment of my first crazy neighbor series.

Erin’s command put into place a protection order. Erin was not allowed to come anywhere within a certain distance of his family or house unless accompanied by someone in his command with a rank of staff sergeant or higher. April lived with me for about a week after the police found the steroids. Her house was trashed from her husband throwing yet another tantrum and destroying everything, and she didn’t want to be alone. So she slept on my sofa for the next week or so. I did all I could to help her see this was such a good thing for her. She was finally free! We went shopping, we hung out, we had fun together. Anything to take her mind off what was going on. I encouraged her to abide by the protective order and cease all contact with Erin, but she had absolutely no self control when it came to talking to him. She confided in me that she had also cheated on her husband while he was in bootcamp with some guy from her hometown because she had a lot of people telling her a relationship with a military dude wasn’t going to work out. So she got lonely and slept with someone. This was a huge piece to the puzzle for me. No wonder she kept trying to justify this man’s horrible treatment of her, she was guilty and a hypocrite for expecting Erin to come clean about his cheating, yet she told me she had absolutely no intention of sharing her mistakes with her husband and swore to take her secret with her to the grave. Little by little she went from being so confident in herself and liberated, to falling right back for Erin’s manipulation. She had people like Erin’s parents pressuring her to stay with their son despite knowing many of the horrible things he had done. By the end of the week, she had lost all her confidence and was back to begging to work things out with her abusive husband. It was one of the saddest falls from grace I had ever seen. I went from being so proud of her and happy for her to mourning her loss of freedom and chance at a normal life for her son. She was selfishly planning on throwing her child right back into an abusive household. I should have seen this coming, I mean she did say some extremely immature things quite often. She told me once that she refuses to have children from different fathers, and that if she and Erin didn’t work out, she would still go to him purely for impregnation so she could have another child. She also shared that Erin had told her on multiple occasions that he would kill her and her lover if she ever cheated on him, and that she wholeheartedly believed he really meant that. I don’t know about you, but I would walk away from any relationship immediately if someone threatened my life.

Eventually I helped April move back into her house and helped her scrub things clean since it had been rotting in trash the whole time she was staying with me. We had things like glass to clean up because Erin’s last tantrum resulted in another tv being broken. April moving back triggered a sequel of back to back horrible decisions. The second she became lonely and started talking to Erin more, she pulled away from me again (she does this every time she comes to me upset, then runs back to her abusive husband’s arms). She started having Erin over nightly to climb in windows and be snuck into the house. This violated the protection order that was in place and concerned myself and the surrounding neighbors. Erin was an extremely dangerous individual. Not only was he mentally unstable in general, but his hormones were imbalanced due to his being deprived of steroids. So neighbors would call every time they saw him slinking around our buildings, which was an almost nightly occurance at one point. Police officers started to be able to recognize us on sight because of how often they were called to our housing area. He was never physically caught by officers for violating the protective order because he somehow always managed to sneak away.

There was one point when I met one of Erin’s co-workers by chance at a get together hosted by my friend, D. I was very curious to see what Erin was like at work as was asking him questions. April has told me a while back that she suspected Erin talked sh*t about her at work, so I asked this co-worker if he remembered anything Erin said about his wife at work. He didn’t really remember anything, so we all started talking about how prevalent abuse is in our neighborhood. D was telling us about one of her female neighbors whose husband shoved her through closet doors and pushed her down the stairs. We briefly chatted about how insane it was that women stay with men after being treated that way, and then eventually moved on to other conversation topics. Well I got a call from April days later and she said she knows I was telling people that Erin pushed her through closet doors and down stairs and that she didn’t want me to talk about her business to people at all, let alone lie about it. She said Erin was told by the coworker at work that I accused Erin of these things at the party, which most certainly did NOT happen. I wanted to slap this girl and shake her head while yelling “LOOK AT WHO YOUR SOURCE IS.” She was heavily insinuating that I was lying after I assured her repeatedly that I did not ever say anything of the sort at that party, and that someone was getting confused about who said what. To this day I wholeheartedly believe Erin purposefully lied to put a wedge between April and I. He was extremely upset when I started standing up to him and protecting April, and he said several times on several different social media platforms that April was “choosing me over him.” NO you stupid idiot, she was choosing herself over your sorry ass for once in her life, and it was beautiful!

His manipulation worked, though. I was shocked she believed her husband over me after all the lies she had caught him in over the course of the past year. Not once had I ever lied to her. Not once. Yet she believed him over me because he was on day 2 of “trying to change.” That was it for me. I had sacrificed enough for this teenager who just used me and didn’t appreciate all I had done to help her and her poor son. If she was dumb enough to run back to the man who didn’t respect her in any way, shape, or form… Well she could do it alone. I was done with holding her hand. I looked forward to the day she’d finally move out because that meant her trashy husband would have no reason to hang around the outside of my house anymore. My family’s safety was my biggest priority, and his existence was a threat to that safety. I focused on working with sharing the truth with investigators so they would have all right the information instead of whatever bullsh*t lies April would undoubtedly make up to protect Erin. I gave them proof that Erin was not only doing steroids, he was also dealing them to co-workers. Meanwhile, April was trying to turn out mutual friends against me. I now have proof of her telling people that I somehow caused her marital problems and that somehow I was the one responsible for her husband threatening divorce. She told them I costed her tens of thousands of dollars. First of all, I had absolutely nothing to do with her nasty husband cheating on her and abusing her. That is what caused their marital problems, not me. And I would like to see proof of this tens of thousands of dollars I costed her, because I can promise you my broke ass didn’t see a cent of this money I allegedly costed her. Hearing all these childishly constructed lies just confirmed that I was done with her. If she wanted so bad to stay with the mentally ill man who abused her and her child, so be it. I hope she enjoys this life of misery and suffering she chose for herself. I’ll keep my amazing husband who loves and respects me, thank you very much. My husband goes out of his way to ensure I am not being abused, to the point where he specifically requested I have not only access to his bank accounts, but that I have my own bank accounts to keep any money I make on the side from odd jobs here and there. He was very particular that I have a copy of every key that he has so we have equal access to absolutely everything. One of his cutest qualities is he is obsessed with making sure the kids and I are thoroughly fed, and even fusses at me when I forget to eat a meal during the day. It’s to the point where we’re all a little chubby because he’s so worried about our being fed enough. This is how a woman SHOULD be treated. No husband is perfect, but abuse is a deal breaker. If your man abuses you in any way, just throw the whole man away. Seriously. He’s not worth it.

The last I heard of April and Erin, they are still trying to force their gross relationship to work. She apparently thinks she’s some kind of hot sh*t for successfully sinking her claws into a gross man literally not self respecting woman would want. Despite all she has done to me with her pathological lying and her spreading rumors about me behind my back, I feel sorry for her. I really do. She’ll never know what it feels like to be in a truly loving relationship with a man who respects you. Most of all, I feel sorry for her son. He will grow up seeing his mom being mistreated and will have to fight so hard in life to not follow in his father’s footsteps. He’ll have to teach himself what a truly good relationship looks like, because god knows he won’t see any of that at home. I absolutely believe Erin will beat his son more and more as he grows older. All I can do is pray that kid survives childhood and doesn’t become yet another child failed by CPS, only to end up in news articles after being found critically wounded/murdered. People close to me have survived horrible, abusive childhoods and came out functioning adults with minimal psychological issues. So I’m really rooting for this kid to do the same.

You’ve finally reached the end! Thanks for sticking with it and making it this far! Let me know what you think of my experience. It’s insane, right?! Almost like something out of a novel or movie. But unfortunately everything I have written is 100% true and really happened. Hope you enjoyed!