Sometimes, I Think I Should Just Get It Over With Already

I'm sure many of you are probably tired of hearing me gripe about my life, but I have something to tell you: I'm sick of it too. I keep having this strange compulsion to keep writing, to keep opening up those wounds, both new and old. Maybe it's because I can't speak openly about such things in my personal life. Few people know about me being in the closet about my atheism, and none know anything about the abuse in my past.

Right now, I'm getting frustrated, I want out, I want to finally break free, and declare to the world I'm an atheist. I want to no longer have to support a denomination I abhor, a denomination that refuses to do anything about the pedophilia in their midst, a denomination that's misogynist, supports complementarian theology, and is highly homophobic.

It makes me sick to think that in order to keep my cover, I have to keep donating to this despicable group. My money going to support this, my name on the membership rolls. I don't know what's holding me back, if it's fear, or something else. I know it's inevitable, I must do it sometime, I must come out, I didn't fight this hard to get what little progress I have made in my life, just to give up, and roll over, and pretend to be something I'm not for the rest of my life, just to make people around me happy.

There's an American analogy that some situations are like "ripping off a Band Aid", if something you are dreading is inevitable, it's best to just get it over with, fight through the pain. That's the way I need to think about it. I'm thinking that sometime after Christmas, I'll just go ahead and do it (or is waiting that long procrastinating out of fear, I wonder, putting it off for another day?)


I know I won't get a favorable reaction from the family. My dad will be surprised and probably disappointed, as well as my sister, but they'll recover, they may not understand it, but they'll accept me.

My mom, however, her reaction will be far different. How she reacts will say a lot about her, and whether or not I should keep her in my life. I know she will be angry, no doubt about it, and I can understand it on some level.

She may take it as a rejection of her as a mother she may be hating herself and feel like she did something along the way, and take it out on me (well, she did quite a few things wrong, including a few things that lead me down the path towards doubting my faith, but my decision was my own, and wasn't done because of her).

She was sold a false bill of goods. She was told, if you do this, do that, drill the Christian fundamentalist lifestyle and beliefs into their heads, keep them away from the influence of "the world", you will end up with a robot for Jesus, see, Proverbs 22:6 pretty much says so!

Once the anger passes, though, I'll see who she really is once and for all.I've been wondering about her Chameleon act, apparently she's trying to make me think she has changed, but I have seen little change in her life, no reason to trust her. She still think she hasn't done anything wrong, and she still to this day thinks I turned out better because of her homeschooling instead of what would have happened if (gasp), I would have went to public schools.

Coming out would prove once and for all who she is. I don't expect her to understand why I ended up becoming an atheist, and I definitely don't expect her to agree with me on anything related to theology or politics (so much has changed about my political views), but if she can't be willing to accept me as her own son, as an adult who has the right to their own life, and their own opinions, then that will show me who she really is, and whether or not it's worth even trying to have a relationship with her.

More than likely, she'll either distance herself from me, and quit trying to help me financially, or the most likely outcome is that she will try to bully me into accepting Christianity again, either way, the help I'm getting from her won't be worth dealing with her at that point.