11 Months Until I Can Move, But Where Do I Move To?

Yesterday, July 20th marks 11 months until I can sell my house, and I can't wait to move, this town has been nothing but problems, both with family and my former church, if you aren't familiar with all this, check out my updated My Story page, I have spoken about it at length, the problems with family, and the church/cult.

It's time to start over somewhere else, and I'm not sure if I should stay in the St. Louis area, or start all over somewhere else completely (which is what I'm leaning toward).

If leaving the St. Louis area entirely, I need a city that is not too expensive, not crowded/traffic congested endlessly (like say Atlanta, Chicago, New York City), and a place where industrial work, especially warehousing is plentiful.

"Homeschool Sex Machine": One Man's Humorous Look At His Homeschool Uprbinging.

My name is Matthew Pierce and I write stuff.  Sheldon is handing me the reins for
a guest post to introduce my new ebook.

Homeschool Sex Machine: Babes, Bible Quiz, and the Clinton Years  is a collection of stories about homeschool secret societies, deranged Sunday School teachers, and youth pastors with frosted tips.  

It also contains the word “bosoms,” which has
earned the ebook a well-deserved blacklisting from several Christian websites.

So, about me: I grew up in a conservative church environment and was homeschooled for approximately 37 years.  

 Thanks to an ingenious plan wherein I grew to the freakish height of 6'8, I was eventually able to enroll in a private school under the guise of "playing basketball". In reality, this was just a cover that allowed me to get close to girls.

Because if there’s one thing that babes love, it’s a homeschooled boy with Three Stooges ties and no social skills. 

Discovering Life: Alcohol

I spent from 12 years old to my escape this past December in a Southern Baptist Convention church, and Baptist churches of different varieties are well known for opposing alcohol. It's rather ironic, considering the fact that the Bible says that Jesus' first miracle was turning water into wine.

The excuses given by many SBC people I knew for this was rather funny, some claimed that it wasn't really wine he turned the water into, but a fermented grape drink that barely had any alcohol content at all. Both from the descriptions given of festive occasions in the Bible, and any sense of ancient history, that's highly unlikely.

It's been said that Jesus turned water into wine, but Baptists for centuries have been trying to turn it back into grape juice, which is rather accurate.

There's also the old jokes about Baptists and alcohol that are common in conservative Christian circles, most revolving around Baptists secretly trying to drink without their friends knowing.

"What's the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist? The Methodist will say hi to you in the liquor store"

"How do you keep a Baptist from drinking all your beer on a fishing trip? Invite another Baptist" 

For a few months after I left, I didn't drink any alcohol, not because of any lingering religious guilt or the like, but because I assumed that any amount of alcohol while on Cymbalta would be a disaster that would probably land me in a hospital.

Well, I found out that wasn't completely accurate, limited amounts of alcohol (2 drinks a day maximum) actually wouldn't be a problem. That kind of limit was fine by me, the idea of getting plastered drunk doesn't appeal to me at all, especially the throwing up afterwards. As a kid, when I would get the flu, the part I always dreaded the worst was throwing up, especially that acidic taste in the mouth and throat afterwards, bleh.

Anyway, about two months ago, I went to the brewery and restaurant of St. Louis brewing company  Schlafly. The food was great, but when in the restaurant, and during the brewery tour, they allowed people to sample different beers.

Some of them, I might have actually liked, and did like at first, but all of the beer I tried to some extent had this bitter seltzer like aftertaste. I was told later that this was the hops commonly used in beer, and that it often takes time to get used to it.

I gave up on beer after that, but not alcohol itself, and after asking some ex-fundamentalist friends online what they liked, I kept trying different things, some drinks became my favorites, others I hated. Here's a few of the drinks I have tried since then, and how I felt about them,

(A+) Angry Orchard Crisp Apple

I have found I really enjoy hard cider, and Angry Orchard is the best I have had so far. Crisp Apple is good, a slightly sour but very rich taste to it. It goes great with any kind of food or just kicking back or relaxing at the end of the day.

It All Adds Up, But I Wish It Didn't

(Sheldon's note: Reader discretion advised for this post, especially for abuse survivors)

I made the call was I was dreading making to my sister, but I had to know. Several weeks ago, she had made a vague reference to our "mother"  who I prefer not to refer to her as, (usually I just say her or she, or call her Mrs. Psycho, I can't even bring myself to say her name or refer to her as a mother), trying to protect her from her warped family, but said she hadn't protected her from who she needed to protect her from, our father. She made some vague reference that he had done some things when she was a teen that she found disturbing, she acted like she didn't want me to push it any further, so I didn't.

Even before she had said that, since I had broken free from them after The Confrontation, I began to realize a lot of things that I hadn't noticed before, I spent so much time during my years as the Undercover Agnostic just spending so much time and energy trying to survive that I had no sense of self reflection.

In recent months, some things started to add up, to make sense, that I wish didn't. I didn't want to believe it was possible, not because I had any illusions that she wasn't capable of it, but it felt so disturbing, so violating to even think about it.

So much made sense, the way I was simultaneously the favorite of the family in her eyes, but also hated, and she seemed to resent my very existence as a human being.

 I remembered the way she always seemed jealous of girlfriends and female friends as I was a teen, and would come up with bizarre excuses of why I shouldn't around them, and why they didn't measure up to her ridiculous standards of "godliness", and I could tell she was grasping at straws in trying to come up with excuses, even for her delusional mind, but at the time I couldn't piece together her agenda was. I remembered her delusions about the mother of my best friend Rose supposedly hitting on me when I turned 18 (she was doing no such thing).

I remembered the disturbing way she used to hug me, even though she knew I couldn't stand her hugging me, that always left me feeling violated, and my father, ever her enabler, would chew me out later for making it damn clear that I did not approve (and she would always get annoyed by it), "she just wants to show you that she loves you", etc. (she kept this up until I was about 19/20 years old by the way).

No, no, it just couldn't be possible, I don't want to think about this, I can't remember much of anything before I turned about 12, so it's possible it didn't happen, it probably didn't, you're probably just seeing patterns where they don't exist, I mean, she's pure evil, but that? ...shit, it probably did happen.

June 9th, 2004, One of the Best Days of My Life

June 8th, 2004, approximately 9 pm:

The phone rings that evening at my mom and dad's house, it's my sister, and my mom is wondering why she is calling so late from her home in Lake County, Indiana in the Chicago suburbs. The answer came rather quickly, "Mom, my water broke!".

My sister was 7 months pregnant, and had already had complications with this pregnancy, and had a miscarriage about 2 years before. It so happened that we were already planning to see her, in fact, the old Ford Econoline van that was my grandfather's had already been packed with most everything in it, including baby supplies and baby furniture my mom had been collecting for her.

My mom frantically had us pack what remaining items we needed, and shortly after 10pm, we were on the road. My mom was determined, come hell or high water, that she was going to be there for the birth of her first grand child.

She was so determined, in fact, that she literally floored the gas pedal, and the needle on the speedometer on the old van went up to it's maximum of 85 mph, as the speedometers of many vans and trucks of it's era did, and yet we still kept going faster. What was normally a 6 hour drive from our town in the St. Louis suburbs took only 4 hours.

Early that next morning, as the hours dragged on the hospital waiting room, as TV's were droning on with coverage of President Reagan's death and details of his funeral plans, my oldest niece, "Lilly" was born. She was only 3 pounds, 11 ounces, and short of needing oxygen for only a few hours, and having slight jaundice (which often happens with preemies), she was fine, actually more than fine. At only 5 days old, nurses were baffled at how she kept ending up on the opposite side of her hospital bed in the NICU unit. She was dragging herself by her knees and elbows.

Today, at 10 years old, she is the natural born leader of her two younger siblings, is over half as tall as my sister (which my sister is only 5'2, but still....), and loves animals, including the family's obnoxious Chihuahua, which strangely enough actually listens to her.