The Trial of Life

This is the story of my life. My parents became brainwashed by religion, and turned their back on everyone else in the family. Including me.

Time. You don’t really understand the meaning of the phrase “time flies” until you have your first epiphany. That sudden strike of realization of how times aren’t as simple as they used to be anymore. As a kid, you had very few things to worry about. The main focus obviously being school, but anything else was completely up to your character and feelings. Maybe friends and clubs were really important to you. Others found comfort in video games and fantasies. You could have been absolutely obsessed with sports and that's all you could think about. But, overall none of those things possessed substantial responsibility or consequences. When you hit that magic number of eighteen, that’s when everything changes, whether you realize it or not. As soon as you walk that stage, and take that diploma, the world opens up and is ready to suck you in. Debt, responsibilities, pain, anguish, financial trials and tribulations, and many other challenges of adulthood wait for you with open arms. You might think you are up to the challenge. You may think you have planned everything out in exquisite detail. That is where you are wrong. No matter how much planning or preparation you do, no one can prepare for the trial of life.

Without sugar coating it, this is my story. It starts much like anyone else’s. Your parents interlope, and boom, a baby appears. My parents were never married, so growing up was a lot of back and forth in terms of custody and visiting. To this day I still hear two sides of every story. My mother tells it one way how something happened, and my father tells another. I had plenty of aunts, uncles, and grandparents to look after me whenever my parents were not around. I mainly lived with my mother throughout my childhood and would occasionally visit my father. All the while they pretended everything was ok while they battled out who had custody in court. I of course was oblivious to all of this. That is until I started playing little league baseball. My step-dad was my coach and we were about to play our first game. All of sudden my father appeared out of nowhere, yelling and screaming at my step-dad. Things like “You’re not a real man, I should be coaching this team. I am his father not you!”. I don't exactly remember what happened. All I can remember everyone was screaming and yelling as I cowered in the dugout, afraid of what was happening. I’d never seen my father act this way. “Why was he so angry and filled with rage?” I would tell myself. The cops showed up shortly after the take my father away, and the rest of the memory fades. 

When I was 8 years old my mother took me from New York, all the way down to South Carolina with my step-dad. From there the custody battle was pretty much over. My father had never left the state, and was financially unstable from pouring all the money he ever had to fight to see his only child. As I am writing this now he has still never had another kid. Or so he tells me. I’ll never know how it really happened, but all I know is my mother stole me away from the rest of my family so we could be closer to my step-dad’s father, after his wife had just passed. That, and allegedly it was too cold in New York to do his line of work anymore, but that just sounds like some bullshit excuse. My grandmother and other family tried to plead with my mother. Begging her not to go, crying out not to leave her family behind. Looking back now I don’t think she cared. She was head over heels to have a man that had his life together. His own house and stable income. Neither of which my father had at the time. Mind you my parents were only twenty years old when they had me, pretty much straight out of high school, so they didn't have the twenty plus years my step-dad had to get their lives going. In an instant it was all over. The house was packed, tears were shed as we said goodbye to family members, and then we were gone. Before I knew it I was in the back of my mother’s car with our dogs and cats, driving 15 hours to South Carolina.

So there a new chapter of life began. A completely new state where I knew no one. I had no friends, no family, nothing but my mother and stepdad. Now my step-dad wasn’t a bad guy but everyone has their bad moments from time to time, and I still don’t know his complete backstory before he came into my mother’s life. But at the same time, I don’t really care to know. There will be a few times in this story where he shows his darker side, but we will get to those parts in due time. We started our new lives in this new place, enrolling into school and getting to know the town. But, everything changed when the local church group came to our front door. I guess it was a regular thing that they did in that community. Visit people’s houses door to door to check in on them, and try to get them to come to church. They introduced to my mother and I a basketball program called Upwards Sports. Essentially it was a basketball league, but every practice and game they would teach you about the bible and Jesus and what not. Of course I didn’t have too much say in the matter, but my mother being desperate for me to make friends and be happy, enrolled me right in. I didn’t mind the basketball portion, but the religious aspect of it is what changed my life forever. From there on out my mother and step-dad were pretty much brainwashed to love Jesus more than anything else, including me.

The next few years of my life were kind of a blur. I started going to school and occasionally making friends here and there. Elementary school was over before I knew it and the next year I was in middle school. I made friends with a couple of kids in my neighborhood that I would occasionally go hang out with. They didn’t stick around for long, and one of them started stealing things from me from behind my back. Needless to say those friendships didn’t last. It was about this time that I realized that my parents cared more for their religion than they did about anything else. They would force me to go to church because they thought it was for my own good. I’d sing these songs and read the scriptures they’d tell me to read, but all the while I couldn’t help but think of how cult-like these practices were. We were worshiping this “god” that was all mighty and powerful, and anyone who does not believe in him is doomed to hell. But, in the same token, he loves us all and we are all his children. Now this story isn’t a debate on whether religion is real, or what religion is the true religion, but more about my personal experience and how I felt about it. For instance, one day I decided to rebel. I had enough of blindly following their commands and said I did not want to go to church. My step-dad starts hurling punishments and threats at me in hopes to somehow convince me to go “or else”. Despite any threats he made I still did not move, I stood my ground and was determined not to give in. In that moment, he grabbed my leg as I was laying in my bed, pulled me completely off in one swift motion, banging my whole body onto the ground. He then wrapped his arm around my neck like some sort of chokehold, and carried me to the car to go to church. I was mortified. My face was covered in tears and fear, and my mother sat by and watched it all happen. Didn’t even try to stop him. Then it became clear to me that religion was more important in their eyes and minds than their own son.

After that I stopped fighting. I let it happen. Anything they wanted me to do, I’d do just to spare the conflict. Church camps, going to church multiple nights a week, basically anything church related, I did to stop an argument and fight from happening. I finished middle school switching between online school and actual school every other grade. I pretty much googled my way through 7th grade. I did most of 8th grade online as well, and then went to school for the last two months. Meanwhile for the past 2 years my step-dad was 3 hours away for work, and was staying there during the weekdays and coming home on the weekend. My mother must have had enough because we moved there shortly after I finished middle school. So there we were again, starting over once more. What couple friends I had, I yet again had to leave. We moved to a suburbs type place, where all the houses were similar and in a gated community. We stayed there for two years, my freshman and sophomore years of highschool. I didn’t make any friends, and I sat alone at lunch for the entirety of those two years. My mother and step-dad enjoyed it there, but missed their original church, as the new one we were going to was overwhelming, and not the same. So yet again we moved, back to where they were happy. Back to their “family” they would say. I tried to pick up the pieces of some of the friendships I had, but they were never really ever the same. Most of the little friends I had had turned to drugs and alcohol, none of which I never really had ambition for. But at least my mother and step-dad were happy right?

At this point in my life I was realizing I wanted affection and attention from another person. I started expressing interest in girls. I had “girlfriends” in the past but I didn’t fully realize what that meant or what it entailed. It’s just what kids called each other when they thought they had feelings for one another. The girls would giggle and gossip amongst their friends, and the guys would buy them gifts and hold their hands, and call it a relationship. Highschool opens up the whole can of worms we call puberty. I started having these feelings and emotions. Most guys my age wanted sex, any way they could get it. I don’t think I was scared of sex, I guess I just wanted something more intimate, something real. A companionship to some degree. The couple girls I dated in highschool only lasted a month tops. I was left wondering if something was wrong with me. I never really had many friends, and barely any girls ever expressed interest in me. I often wondered if I was just ugly, or came off as gay. But, after a while I stopped caring. At home I was still pretending to be a christian, and one day my senior year I had had enough. I feared how I would tell them. What would they think about me after I revealed to them I had been just going through the motions this whole time. Would they disown me? Would they kick me out and I’d have to start my own life? The only thing I could come up with is to write it on a piece of paper and hand it to them. They were sitting at the dinner table talking about some sort of topic I wasn’t paying attention to. I was too ashamed to even look at them. I quickly tossed the paper onto the center of the table, and darted straight back to my room. I laid there waiting for their reaction, waiting for the lectures and yelling. And sure enough, it came. The step-father came walking in and immediately started talking down to me. “How dare you think you are better than God!” he said. “What kind of man are you to question God?” “Are you that stupid to no believe in him?”. The yelling and lectures continued until I couldn’t take anymore. At the time I was driving my parents spare car, so I grabbed my keys and headed for the door. He immediately stood in my way. “That car belongs to me, and you are not taking it anywhere!”. I handed him the keys, and started walking down the road. I didn’t know where to go or who to turn to. My mother yet again just stood by and let everything happen. Didn’t even try to stop him or me. The only person I could think to go talk to was my youth pastor at the time, as he was the closest person I could walk to. I did not realize at the time that it was 3 miles away, but despite the pouring rain and the tears running down my face, I kept walking. Would I have to move out and live somewhere else? Would I have to drop out of high school and find a full time job? By the time I realized how far I walked, I was already there. I tried to stay as calm as I could as I walked to the door. I knocked, and shortly after he appeared. Jack was his name. Before he could even ask me what brought me to his door, I instantly hugged him and bawled my eyes out. We sat on his front porch and explained what happened, but I could tell that even he did not know what to say. He poured his whole life into this religion too, and now he has someone at his front door crying their eyes out because their parents are disappointed in them for doubting and forsaking that same religion. He basically told me that I was confused, and going through a tough time, so I was taking it out on God. I don’t know why I thought he would not be as brainwashed as my mother and step-dad, but I had no one else to turn to. I had no friends, no family, and now I couldn’t even turn to Jack. My mother pulled up in front of the house, calling me to get in and go home. I hopped into the car, and the rest of the memory faded. I knew my mother and step-dad loved this religion more than me, but I kept trying to convince myself it wasn’t true. After years and years of trying to fit in and belong in this new place, it finally became clear that it was not meant to be.

Fast forward to the end of my senior year. I graduated half a year early, so for my spring semester I was taking college classes at the local technical college to get ahead of the curve. While I was getting ahead of this so-called curve, I didn’t exactly know what I wanted to get ahead of. I was turning 18 and graduating high school, but I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.Should I pursue further education or the workforce? This is the first of many milestones you’ll find throughout life. Further education will eventually lead to the other, while hopefully bringing you more fortune and success, but isn’t always the case. Do I take the risk of crippling student loans debt in hopes to find a job in your educational field, or do I jump right into the workforce trying to find a job that can pay for all your bills and needs.

Reviews

[A M John]

I loved this. You have a very mature and considered writing voice. The way you calmly and very effectively portray emotional turmoil is concise and adroit. Your expressions and phrasing are neither boringly cliche nor inaccessibly experimental which gives it a strong sense of realism, something I feel came easily for you since this is your life. The style and structure also lends the story an almost effortless flow, it's no effort to read at all. Aside from a few grammar errors, this is a very strong and very enjoyable piece of writing.

[ardentnine]

Thank you very much. This is the first time I have delved into the writing world, and I really means a lot that someone appreciates the story I had to tell, and how I told it. Thank you!