#i was an apologist for some of the worst shit in the bible. i was raised to be.

[kiitsume]

people don’t really talk about how being raised in a fundamentalist christian household and then growing up to be gay can make you almost crave or, like, expect punishments that will “rid you” of your gayness. like, when i first realized i was a lesbian, i actively looked up conversion camps and conversion therapies, even though i knew they were traumatic, because i felt like i deserved to be punished for accepting this as my identity and allowing myself to sin. i’m 21 and sometimes i still find myself feeling like i need to look into those avenues to “fix myself,” and the longer i’m gay the more i feel like i deserve it. it’s this ridiculous notion that righteous punishment will somehow cleanse my conscience and that i won’t have to “sin” any more, or that it’s my fault i’m nonreligious because i bought into this lie and didn’t punish myself soon enough or harsh enough or seek out the correct religious authority early enough and like. you end up carrying all this guilt and feeling like a glutton for righteous punishment where everything horrible that happens in your life is somehow justified because god-- one you may not even believe in anymore-- is punishing you for falling into sin.

#personal #vent #anti religion #anti christianity #conversion camp tw #homophobia tw #ask to tag #i've just been consuming a lot of atheist content today and my brain went 'oh well now lets go to a conversion camp and fix u up!' #like no. no i'm not gonna do that. what the fuck. #especially because in christianity suffering and punishment is glorified and like. overcoming struggles makes you admirable #so theres this part of me thats like 'it's not too late! you can suffer and fix yourself and it'll be great!' #i specificially say fundamentalist christian households because the christianity *i* practiced fits into the bite model and like. #we were the backwards christians. and by the time i got to middle and high school i was losing that a lot but. #i was homophobic well into high school even if at that point it was mostly internalized homophobia. #i was an apologist for some of the worst shit in the bible. i was raised to be. #i remember crying when i was a kid because i got grounded from church for one sunday and i was sure that god would come down during that #time and i would be sent to hell because i wasn't right with him. i remember my mom sitting me down and making me copy out all the verses #about a sin she thought i committed (something that took me days to finish) and then having a long talk with me about my eternal damnation #i remember when my dad was dying and i asked if i could pray enough to save him because he wasn't right with god and like. panicking #repeatedly about the idea that i hadn't done enough to save my father. and i remember at some point feeling like his death was punishment #for my sins and a way that god was trying to teach me not to doubt him. #i remember being raised with the idea that women were supposed to submit unquestioningly to their husbands and resist nothing #i wasnt the run of the mill christian and i wasnt even in one of the christian-based cults like mormonism or jws #and i'm glad i wasn't! but coming out of that believing that any worth my life had had in serving god was now null and void #and that without god nothing mattered and without my religion i would be destined for punishment and estrangement. was traumatic. #sorry for going off in the tags i have a lot to say