Okay, so I have a lot of crap on my chest. I am going to try to express my raging emotions without swearing too much, but no promises. Recently I was having a PRIVATE conversation with a friend when this ass hole popped in to say hello. I mean, yes, I know the guy. And yes, technically he was my youth leader at church, but this guy just rubs me the wrong way. I'm mostly introverted, and this guy is such an extrovert that he would try to make friends with a pile of dog shit on the floor if he was alone in the room with it.
And he's nosy. He wants to know everything that's going on in my life and I work so hard to put up so many walls around my fragile heart. And I was letting down those walls for my friend to let them know what was really going on. And this guy comes in and 1. He bloody interrupts the conversation and 2. He gets down in my face, violating my personal space and 3. He catches me when I'm at my most vulnerable hoping to infiltrate my walls.
This guy already annoyed me like the feeling of having fiberglass shoved down your shirt, but this was too far. See, I go to church sure. And I believe in God and stuff. But honestly, I am terrified of church people. I loathe the people who pray for people at the altar. And I am scared of the pastor.
It all started long ago when I was a kid. At our old Church in Colorado Springs, my mom would throw me into the church daycare so she could do this ladies exercise group. And the lady who ran the daycare was a bitch. She was evil, a sinewy scabrous hag. She loathed me. And she would find any reason she could to get me in trouble or put me in timeout. And the one thing she hated most about me was my imagination.
That evil old hag separated me from the other kids just because I had an imagination and I loved dragons.
Another traumatizing church experience I had was when I was 11. See, I was always the odd kid out in school and nobody wanted to be my friend. So I made up my friends. I had fifteen or so imaginary dragons who loved me and understood me and entertained me. One day my mother and my grandmother (the grandma I hate) dragged me to the altar to be prayed for. And the lady praying for me tried to cast my imaginary dragons out as if they were demons!
It was that day that I swore to never loose my imagination. In sixth and seventh grade, I made some amazing friends who didn't judge me for being different.
Shit hit the fan the next year and I ended up being brutally torn from my friends and put in homeschool through that same church that screwed up my childhood. And I was held back, for "social" reasons. My teachers suspected I was mildly on the autism spectrum. I was so intellectually superior to almost all my peers and holding me back was one of the worst things my parents ever did to me. So I made more friends, even had a couple of crushes and for the first time found out a guy liked me.
Of course, I've found that almost every time in my life I've become satisfied with my condition and accept things the way they are, I am brutally torn from everything I love and forced to adjust to something new. After a year of homeschool, I found out we were moving to Texas, the state where grammatical correctness isn't everyone's strong suit, and the natives kill some of my favorite animals for sport.
As the move was rough, my parents couldn't homeschool me when adjusting to this uncivilized new homeland, and so I went to public school in 8th grade. I was resilient as ever. Within a year I made some new friends, a record for me I must admit, although eighth grade was rough and I felt like a minnow swimming upstream with hungry sharks wanting to devour me at any corner. I attracted my fair share of bullies too.
Our church in Texas was a daughter church of the one in Colorado that ruined my life, and I never felt truly accepted.
The next year my parents decided to homeschool me again. I went to a group to socialize with other kids, but the majority of them were younger and those even remotely close to my age didn't want anything to do with me.
The year after that, we moved again, this time to our current state of residence. And my parents homeschooled me tenth and eleventh grades. I was happy to move but I missed my friends. I made new friends, but I stayed in contact with the old ones.
Our church in our new state gave me a fresh start, but I could never forget the wounds of the past. And so as that horrible youth leader stooped down and got in my face, I couldn't let him know the pain I've gone through from church people alone. He couldn't see my scars of the past.
Of course since this is an art book and you guys have been so kind as to put up with my past, here's a ninja lemur I drew.
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