I think we all live different lives. Yes. Our surroundings. Our families. Our cultures. The color of our skin. Our religions or lack there of. Our education. What we eat, what we drink. And how we adapt to our surroundings, peers, families, and overall life.

I believe that one of my siblings may have things right and one has things wrong. The different comes into perspective and where they were at the time of life when things were imploding in my life. The one sibling saw, the other didn’t. Or at least, didn’t have an opportunity to see things as they were. It’s easier to just think of what we know to be inherently true based off our lived experiences.

Let me be clear. I am not exactly blaming the one sibling for their lack of insight. If that is in fact what it is. I think they had an overall understanding of what life was like in our home. I think they were upset at how I treated my father. And you know what, they had a right to be. Lots of people had rights to be mad at me for how I treated my father. The problem is, they didn’t have all the information.

My Dad was a second generation Finnish American man. Born in the 1940’s. A baby boom era man. He was raised with strict parents and other siblings. One sibling I had no idea about until I was 11 years old. And that haunts me. I’ve recently gotten into contact with a cousin from the family I had no idea about. We both are very similar in many ways. She and I do not attend the church. Her father purposely kept her away from the church we kids attended because he felt the church had cult type ideologies. I’ve believed that for many years, myself. – Anyway, my Dad. He was someone I didn’t develop a full relationship with. Ever. I felt very nervous about my father. From the time I was a child. He was an angry man when he was requiring. You knew when he was mad. And I stayed away. I once asked my Mom if she would leave my Dad. I was fearful of him. And stories my one sibling told me later in life – yea, he was angry. It’s not to say we didn’t make him angry. Yet sometimes, that anger seemed to be over the top. And then…. it was quiet.

I remember the first time I was disciplined by my Dad. I guess I wet the bed. I was young. And I got a spanking. I remember it hurt and it was over the top for a simple bed wetting. My eldest daughter wet the bed constantly. She had nighttime enurisis. I never punished her for wetting the bed. Ever. (Yes, she was diagnosed … so it is different. Kids sometimes wet the bed. My situation was never intentional) My Dad also criticized my food intake. Food was a comfort. Food was there for me when others were not. I remember him accusing me as a young kid of eating an entire blueberry pie. I did not. It hurt.

I didn’t see a lot of love or affection between my parents. It’s fair to say I didn’t really know how to engage in an adult relationship. Premarital sex is forbidden, as is dancing, gambling, drinking, but smoking cigarettes is above board. And please don’t think outside of the confines of what the church tells you to. You are to grow up and attend church, be how other people are, be successful in your career, and keep coming to church and socialize with the others – so they can assess your “righteousness”. Wait…. isn’t that for God?

I watched hypocracy. I got rides from my Dad to Marquette to the 25 year old man’s apartment that I was having sex with at 15 years old. The first time I had sex was at 15. And all the guy said to me was that I had a nice ass. That was all it took to lose my virginity. Someone was paying attention to me. And that’s incredibly sad.

I didn’t feel like I had the capacity to be myself. My Dad changed after Dianne died. My Mom, mostly. She devolved. A lot of my younger years, I don’t remember very well. What I can say is that Dianne was 11 years older than me. My next sibling 10 years older, and the last sibling 7 years older. So by the time I was “growing up”, they were out in college and living their lives. I didn’t know what it was like, much of the time, to live with my siblings that I can recall. I’m not saying that to make myself look better. I understand that PTSD/C-PTSD and other forms of mental illness can block certain memories/memory centers.

I was the youngest child. Of course I was an asshole. That is what the baby of the family does. I can’t help that my siblings were parentified. My older siblings were required to be my baby sitters. Thinking back, I really know that I was an accident. I think my parents thought they were going to have their lives back. That they would get to go visit their friends and not have a tag along. Along comes me. HI!

Either way, I lost Dianne, I lost my mom and dad (they were still alive, but they were hurting. A lot. Grief is REALLY hard). My brothers weren’t there to help pick up the pieces. And when they did come back, it felt like a holiday obligation. I didn’t feel nurtured during this time. I felt like I had to be acknowledged. And I was angry and resentful about where they were in their lives and where I was stuck. I was stuck in a religion that I resented. Traveling and being around people that didn’t exactly share my same values. I have always considered myself an ally to queer people, despite how religion devalues who they are. I have read many books about discrimination and I abhor it. And when I saw people in church devaluing people for how they behaved differently? It was intensely personal. And I wasn’t going to change to be comfortable. It still hurt seeing the look of disappointment, being lied to by my father. Being stuck in my bedroom not being able to call my best friend in Wisconsin. My other friends started to drift from me a ton when Mom went down. So I was spiraling into this depression PTSD hell. And life just kept piling on. Abusive relationships, drinking, smoking weed, going to a dance at Ishpeming High School and dirty dancing my ass off. I disobeyed the rules. Yes. No one stopped me. No one tried to see me for who I was. A hurting kid. Instead, I Felt like an insult to the family. Especially to my Father.

I am human. Being human doesn’t mean that you take everything that life throws at you. Sure, they say that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. Right? Even my Father, near the end of his life felt like he was through. He wanted his life to be over. He had lived through things that taxed him to his core, despite all his efforts to be the good follower, the good husband, the good ish father. His love language was providing money, not great at nurturing. Not great at raising me. Looking back though, I have sympathy for him. As I said. He was taxed to the core. His mind and body was shook. And that’s what it looks like when people say – he was so strong. Strength comes at a cost. No one recognizes what that cost is until they’ve been there.

I wanted to just go to school and feel okay. I’ve been diagnosed with depression for many years. I have learning disabilities with math. I think that my cognitive abilities have been sanctioned by my PTSD/C-PTSD as well. Someone can tell me something and a second later, it’s gone. Boom. Done. Wait, what did you say? I’m not deaf. I’m just nervous. I have so much of an intention to impress and be perfect that I say I understand. The words exit their mouth, heard by my ears, and in my anxious brain – I hear it, but then it’s gone. And then I Feel like an idiot.

I am at direct opposition to one of my siblings in that I see very little assistance in the religion we were brought up in. To my mind, it limited me and who I was capable of being. I was not given a fair chance because I didn’t adapt well. I was also expected to do something superhuman, and that’s bullshit. I was not set up for success. Not at home, not at school, and not knowing how to find what I needed. Instead, I found everything that I didn’t need in a package appearing to be what I needed.

A person you want to sleep with that also wants to sleep with you will always say what you want to hear. There are many people that victimized me. And at the time I didn’t realize that I was being victimized. By the letter of the law, I was being victimized. I could be wrong, but I believe that the church members saw it as that I put myself in the position to be victimized. That I held a lot of the blame. And, I do hold the blame. It doesn’t soleley belong to me. Men saw me as a target to get what they wanted. And I was not exactly a prize, but they were not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. I always assumed sex involved a guy getting off and me just being happy because I thought love and sex were one in the same.

Men and women are both aware of rights and wrongs in society. Our lawmakers and citizens design the law to make sure people are protected. Our current sitting President has been accused of sexually assaulting minors in the Jeffrey Epstein files. One allegation is that when a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD GIRL was tasked to give Donald Trump a blowjob, she bit his penis and he retaliated by hitting her. Donald Trump – if this is in fact true – HE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER! She was not even close to consentual age. He wanted to get his rocks off, according to the allegation and it was right in his mind to retaliate (allegedly). Men across time and religions (MULTIPLE) have valued women for procreation. For being sex objects. For homemaking. Some religions require women to be fully covered for fear of a man becoming turned on. By an elbow… an ankle. Wait…… Doesn’t the man understand that he has the mental capacity to know that looking at a woman should not devolve him to his basic instinct of – fuck you like an animal? Come on….. And this does also go for women and not JUST men. We can all be creeps.

I am worthy of being loved. My family and my church family really didn’t show me the love and the nurturing that I desperately needed. They sat in opposition to who I was becoming and who I reminded them of. I have no place in the Independent Apostolic Lutheran Church and I will not attend any services ever again. I cannot in good conscience allow myself to be force fed indoctination.

The outside is scary, for everyone. For me, regardless of where we come from – a lot is really acceptable. I’m worthy of a lot, to be honest. Much more than I gave myself credit for. I’m sorry to my 15 year old self for not being seen and the danger she put herself in just to be “loved” and or manipulated. And as a result, I don’t trust you, I don’t trust me. Yet here I am, 49 years old. Married to my husband, experiencing orgasms (because yes, I deserve orgasms too! – who knew?), bought a car, a house, have a job for the last six years, having a few friends, getting to know my niece Nora, having friends, and travelling. And I went to a bitching concert last night.

If the people I went to church with would have seen how blissfully happy I was to be at that concert last night… they would hopefully be happy for me. Yes, there was alcohol present. It’s Wisconsin after all. I did not drink anything, but others did. They kept me safe. Eric kept me safe. My early life didn’t. And one can use all the excuses that they want to, I do know the truth. What I recognize as the truth. I’m sorry that you cannot love me for the person I am. I’m finally starting to see happiness with myself. It’s too bad you can’t join me. That’s your loss. Not mine.