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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.

Creative writing gig?

/ dashtikalin / Leave a comment

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!

Solution?

/ dashtikalin / Leave a comment

So I think I sort of figured the ad thing out. Maybe. (Hopefully?)

Long story short, I didn’t end up using adsense despite my fondness for google products. The advertisements are run directly from WordPress itself, if I understand correctly. So hopefully that starts to generate some revenue. My grand plan is to get an Instagram account up and running for this blog and hopefully I can utilize the hashtags there to attract more readers. But of course there’s a catch. A dilemma. Instagram is apparently being run by angry monkeys or something. Why do I say this? Because I already made an Instagram account for this blog a few days ago. And it was deactivated upon creation. Meaning I created the account and Instagram deactivated it on the spot. Why? I HAVE NO CLUE. I just wanted a freaking account for my business for God’s sake. Now I have to wait for Instagram customer support to answer my repeal request, which I have heard can take up to a week. That’s seven whole days I could be attracting followers! Seven whole days I could be bringing in revenue from my new followers! So I think it’s safe to say I’m a little peeved. Not to mention I have been really struggling with the insomnia thing so two nights in a row of only 5hrs of sleep is pretty much always going to make me more cranky and irritable.

I do feel a little better with the ad thing sorted out, though. That is the main reason I have stayed up quite so long the past several nights. Hopefully now that I have ads sorted, I can finally get back to starting to make myself get to sleep on time. I truly despite staying up all night because I hate when mt kids wake up before me. I mean, they are safe no matter when they wake up, but still. It makes me feel like a crappy mom to wake up after them. And it sure doesn’t help that my oldest is a dang early bird. They do have many toys in their room to keep them entertained so I am definitely glad for that. That makes my life a lot easier and I am happy that they are happy with having time to play in the morning. Fingers crossed this moving thing works because there’s a high possibly the new house will have enough room to have an entire playroom for the kids. I couldn’t be more excited! Now excuse me while I go to dream about what kind of toys to put in their future play room.

How the hell do I blog?!

/ dashtikalin / Leave a comment

I need to stop being so damn overly confident. I thought I was being so cool and on top of things by researching how to make money from blogging. Ha! I was so confident that I would figure adsense out that I upgraded to a premium plan. I’m not sure what y’all consider to be “a lot” of money, but I’m a cheap b*tch. So paying for a premium blog was a huge leap of faith for me. Now I feel stupid because it appears putting ads on my blog is way more involved than I originally thought. I know that there are more ways to make money on a blog, like product promotion, for example. But let’s be honest here. I’m an introvert. Sometimes a severe introvert depending on my mood that day. Being giddy enough to sell a product is just… I don’t know, uncomfortable? If I tried to sell a product, I doubt I could convince anyone to buy it. I lack that special salesman skill, which is why I have completely turned away from MLM business opportunities after making a fool of myself and trying one once.

I guess all of this is why I have turned to blogging. I can do this from the comfort of my own home at my own pace. And if I can figure this dang adsense thing out, all I have to do is gain traffic to at least start garnering income. Not only will I earn money, but I will be earning money for doing something I love: writing. I have missed writing so much since having children. I miss other hobbies as well. I’m 2.5 years into this motherhood thing and I STILL haven’t figured out how to balance my new responsibilities with things I enjoy. So for all the parents out there reading this who feel like they are fighting a losing battle and can’t seem to find a foothold, welcome to the family! I am not one of those parents who has my sh*t together so I can totally relate to your struggle.

Despite not being skilled at juggling parenthood and spouse related responsibilities, I am determined to keep up with my blog this time. And I feel better this time around because I am just going to write about my life and experiences and cross my fingers that someone out there will enjoy reading my craziness. Plus, it helps that I’ve had some interesting experiences where I live… So that will provide me with some VERY entertaining reading material to give you and I cannot wait to share those experiences with you guys. Also, feel free to share suggestions for future blog posts. If you have anything you’d like to know about me, by all means let me know and I may decide to answer questions in a future blog post if it’s a question I’m comfortable with answering. Like I have mentioned before, my goal is to post at least 5 times a week so that I can really attract viewers and keep everyone entertained. Some posts will probably be goofy and fun. Others will be serious. I’m just flying by the seat of my pants (per usual) so I guess we’ll see where this experience leads me!

Oh, and if anyone tech savvy feels sorry enough for me… I would appreciate any help I can get regarding establishing adsense on this blog. I stayed up about 4 hours straight the other night dedicating my time solely to trying to figure adsense out and ended up going to bed empy handed. So not only am I bummed, but I am cranky and sleep deprived too! Fingers crossed I get this stuff figured out soon.

Work from home… how exactly?

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As I shared in my last post, this momma is looking to upgrade her housing situation. That means I have to make at least 1k a month to make up for the money we’d lose, according to my agreement with my husband. How will I do this? Here’s my secret: I HAVE NO IDEA. Per usual, I am flying by the seat of my pants. I have been scouring the internet all day for ideas on jobs I can do from home. There seem to be a lot of call center options and tech support options. Then there’s babysitting/nannying. Teaching Chinese children how to speak English via online lessons. But if I’m going to start working and trying to make money, I really want to find something I’ll enjoy/be good at, otherwise this whole thing will wear me down. And I’m already pretty worn down as it is just from daily life as a mother of two toddlers and 2 big dogs. I know, I know. Beggars can’t be choosers. I shouldn’t be so picky when I really do desperately need to get out of my current neighborhood. But that’s why I’m giving this blogging thing a solid try again. And on top of that, I’m going to try to finally indulge my crafty side and start selling homemade items online. We’ll see how that goes. I am famous for making these ambitious plans, only to gwt burnt out and not follow through. My long term goal is to finish my studying so I can officially start the process for becoming a certified birthing instructor. Birthing instruction is just one of my passions, plain and simple. But that goal will take a lot of time and money, so in the meantime I will have to rely on etsy and wordpress to help me realize my dreams of living in a house that fits my family. I can just see it now… We finally live in a house that fits our family’s needs. No more small rooms overcrowded with furniture. I’ll actually have room to decorate with adorable things. We’ll have weekly meetings in my living room for birthing classes where I’ll teach new parents on how to navigate the ups and downs of childbirth. My kids will finally have room to play and dogs will have room to run in the house without knocking toddlers over and running into walls. Each child will have their own room and own personal space. It’ll be amazing. I’m honestly getting myself way more worked up than I should. Making 1k a month is a pretty tall order for someone working from home. Everyone nowadays wants to work from home, so the competition is fierce. So many people blog, too. And so many sell crafts on etsy. I have to admit, this makes me feel like I’m not very special or unique. At this point I might as well start a photography business so I can be even more run-of-the-mill than I already am. My greatest wish is that people who come across my blog and wares on etsy feel entertained by my services and come back for more. I want them to like me for me, not because I’m just another blog to follow or just another ship to love. The market is competitive, so I’m going to have to bring something unique to the table if I’m going to be taken seriously and build a business. We’ll see how all this works out. Hopefully by the end of the year I’ll be blogging from a new, spacious house!