Empathy and Growth
Growing up Christian means growing up inside a cocoon. You take for granted that your view of the world is infallible, that there is no need to look at other perspectives nor look for answers outside the prescribed viewpoints or narrative you grew up with. People outside the religion calls this idea “exceptionalism”. The idea that you’re different, better, or more “right” than everyone else.
Leaving the security of religion and entering a world of doubt forces you to confront astonishing levels of ingrained ignorance. Insidious assumptions and beliefs that were fed to you your whole life, that don’t directly relate to the religion itself but rather indirectly maintain the status quo. My church relied on the stagnation of ideas and freedoms to keep their grip on the faithful.
For me, that grip also came in the form of total violation of my privacy and bodily autonomy. My parents went so far as removing my bedroom door so they could see me at any time. If I protested, I was reminded that they had watched me come out of the womb, and I had “nothing that they hadn’t seen before”.
This only escalated as I aged. There was a noticeable double standard with my sister being allowed to have as much privacy as she needed, though that came at a cost of being shamed for her normal bodily functions. Neither of us really escaped.
We weren’t allowed the money from the paper rounds we were made to do either, that was “kept from us for own good” to ensure it was only spent it on approved items, and tithed of course. It further removed any agency for self-expression.
After my disfellowship the lack of rules really bothered me, me at first. The mental gymnastics required to process your own moral compass without the threat of imminent doom is very difficult for someone who has never had to actually ask themselves “why?”
It leads to this fugue state where you don’t know what is up anymore. And then you try to find new boundaries. You’re already lost, already destined to burn in hell for eternity, what else do you have to lose? You get to this point where you don’t know why you’re alive or what all of it is for.
This was hugely problematic when I was left to fend for myself. I had no concept of privacy nor propriety when I moved into a shared house. I struggled to communicate and more often than not, I would end up unable to process my surroundings, my feelings, my needs.
It hits some people significantly worse than others, as mentioned in my previous piece; drug abuse, homelessness, and general disregard for personal safety in young disfellowshipped people is extremely high.
I started drinking, a lot. It really helped dull the horrifying emptiness I felt inside, but this, unsurprisingly, lead to situations where I wasn’t safe, where I was taken advantage of and harmed, physically and emotionally. I was in a spiral, that I couldn’t escape.
While entering that shared living space was traumatic to begin with, it ended up saving my life. The people that I lived with were nothing like me, had completely different backgrounds and were for the most part patient and understanding. When it became clear that my drinking was a problem, they told me. They told me that they were worried. They made me feel like I had value.
Looking back, it was just basic human decency; they didn’t do anything exceptional, but it was exceptional to me. I was conditioned to think that people outside my religion are almost incapable of doing good things because they have no reason to; but these people were kind to me, worried for me, cared about me enough to ask me to sit down and talk about what was going on.
It was thanks to them that I stopped and took stock of my life. Stopped to think about what I was doing. Stopped hurting myself and feeding into the cycle of abuse that I was still suffering. It was thanks to them that I was allowed to have a childhood experience, where I was able to express my teenage angst, grow up, learn more about myself.
It’s a process. You can’t rebuild your entire identity overnight. You can’t even do it in a few years. Who I am today is unrecognisable from the person I was. Who I am now is the product of hard work, introspection, and therapy. While I still carry scars from the past, they no longer define me.
In the next part we will take a closer look at those scars, and how I started healing them.
Without a God.
